:

measure: but when I heare a nugiperous Gentledame inquire what dresse the Queen is in this week: what the nudiustertian fashion of the Court; with egge to be in it in all haste, whatever it be; I look at her as the very gizzard of a trifle, the product of a quarter of a cypher, the epitome of Nothing, fitter to be kickt, if shee were of a kickable substance, than either honour'd or humour'd. 10 To speak moderately, I truly confesse it is beyond the ken of my understanding to conceive, how, those women should have any true grace, or valuable vertue, that have so little wit, as to disfigure 15 themselves with such exotick garbes, as not only dismantles their native lovely lustre, but transclouts them into gant-bargeese, ill-shapen-shotten-shell-fish, Egyptian Hyeroglyphicks, or at the best into 20 men indeed, weil furnished but with meer French flurts of the pastery, which a proper English woman should scorne with her heels: it is no marvell they weare drails on the hinder part of their

have been a solitary widdower almost twelve yeares, purposed lately to make a step over to my Native Country for a yoke-fellow but when I consider how 5 women there have tripe-wifed themselves with their cladments, I have no heart to the voyage, least their nauseous shapes and the Sea, should work too sorely upon my stomach. I speak sadly; me thinkes it should breake the hearts of Englishmen, to see so many goodly Englishwomen imprisoned in French Cages, peering out of their hood-holes for some men of mercy to help them with a little wit, and no body relieves them.

It is a more common then convenient saying, that nine Taylors make a man: it were well if nineteene could make a woman to her minde: if Taylors were

morall principles, they would disdain to be led about like Apes, by such mymick Marmosets. It is a most unworthy thing, for men that have bones in them, to

heads, having nothing as it seems in the 25 spend their lives in making fidle-cases fore-part, but a few Squirrils brains to help them frisk from one ill-favour'd fashion to another.

for futulous womens phansies; which are the very pettitoes of Infirmity, the giblets of perquisquilian toyes. I am so charitable to think, that most of that

These whimm' Crown'd shees, these 30 mystery would worke the cheerfuller

fashion-fansying wits,

Are empty thin brain'd shells, and fidling
Kits.

The very troublers and impovishers of mankind, I can hardly forbeare to commend to the world a saying of a Lady living sometime with the Queen of Bohemia, I know not where shee found it, but it is pitty it should be lost.

The world is full of care, much like unto a bubble;

Women and care, and care and women,

and women and care and trouble.

35

while they live, if they might bee well discharged of the tyring slavery of mistyring women: it is no little labour to be continually putting up English-women into Out-landish caskes; who if they be not shifted anew, once in a few months, grow too sowre for their Husbands. What this Trade will answer for themselves when God shall take measure of 40 Taylors consciences is beyond my skill to imagine. There was a time when

The joyning of the Red-Rose with the
White,

45 Did set our State into a Damask plight

The Verses are even enough for such odde pegma's I can make my selfe sicke at any time, with comparing the dazling splender wherewith Our Gentlewomen 50 were imbellished in some former habits, with the gut-foundered goosdom, wherewith they are now surcingled and debauched. Wee have about five or six of them in our Colony: if I see any of 55 them accidentally, I cannot cleanse my phansie of them for a moneth after. I

But now our Roses are turned to Flore de lices, our Carnations to Tulips, our Gilliflowers to Dayzes, our CityDames, to an indenominable Quæmalry of overturcas'd things. Hee that makes Coates for the Moone, had need to take measure every noone: and he that makes for women, as often, to keepe them from Lunacy.

I have often heard divers Ladies vent loud feminine complaints of the weari

some varieties and chargable changes of
fashions: I marvell themselves preferre
not a Bill of Redresse. I would Essex 1
Ladies would lead the Chore, for the
honour of their County and persons; or
rather the thrice honorable Ladies of the
Court, whom it best besemes: who may
well presume of a Le Roy le veult from
our sober King, a Les Seigneurs ont as-
sentus from our prudent Peers, and the 10
like Assentus, from our considerate, I
dare not say wife-worne Commons: who
I beleeve had much rather passe one
such Bill, than pay so many Taylors Bills
as they are forced to doe.

which invent antique foole-fangles, meerly for fashion and novelty sake.

In a word, if I begin once to declaime against fashions, let men and women 5 look well about them, there is somewhat in the businesse; I confesse to the world, I never had grace enough to be strict in that kinde; and of late years, I have found syrrope of pride very wholesome in a due Dos, which makes mee keep such store of that drugge by me, that if any body comes to me for a question-full or two about fashions, they never complain of me for giving them hard measure, or under-weight.

15

But I addresse my self to those who can both hear and mend all if they please: I seriously fear, if the pious Parliament doe not find a time to state

Most deare and unparallel'd Ladies, be pleased to attempt it: as you have the precellency of the women of the world for beauty and feature; so assume the honour to give, and not take Law from 20 fashions, as ancient Parliaments have

any in matter of attire: if ye can trans-
act so faire a motion among yourselves
unanimously, I dare say, they that most
renite, will least repent. What greater
Honour can your Honors desire, then to 25
build a Promontory president to all
foraigne Ladies, to deserve so eminently
at the hands of all the English Gentry
present and to come: and to confute the
opinion of all the wise men in the world;
who never thought it possible for women
to doe so good a work?

30

done in part, God will hardly finde a time to state Religion or Peace: They are the surquedryes of pride, the wantonnesse of idlenesse, provoking sins, the certain prodromies of assured judgement, Zeph. 1. 7, 8.

It is beyond all account, how many Gentlemens and Citizens estates are deplumed by their feather-headed wives, what useful supplies the pannage of England would afford other Countries, what rich returnes to it selfe, if it were not sliced out into male and female fripperies: and what a multitude of misimploy'd hands, might be better improv'd in some more manly Manufactures for the publique weale: it is not easily credible, what may be said of the preterpluralities of Taylors in London:

If any man think I have spoken rather merrily than seriously he is much mistaken. I have written what I write with 35 all the indignation I can, and no more then I ought. I confesse I veer'd my tongue to this kinde of Language de industria though unwillingly, supposing those I speak to are uncapable of 40 I have heard an honest man say, that not grave and rationall arguments.

I desire all Ladies and Gentlewomen to understand that all this while I intend not such as through necessary modesty to avoyd morose singularity, 45 follow fashions slowly, a flight shot or two off, shewing by their moderation, that they rather draw countermont with their hearts, then put on by their examples.

I point my pen only against the lightheel'd beagles that lead that chase so fast, that they run all civility out of breath, against these Ape-headed pullets,

long since there were numbered between Temple-barre and Charing-Crosse, eight thousand of that Trade: let it be conjectured by that proportion how many there are in and about London, and in all England, they will appeare to be very numerous. If the Parliament would please to mend women, which their Husbands dare not doe, there need not 50 so many men to make and mend as there are. I hope the present dolefull estate of the Realme, will perswade more strongly to some considerate course herein, than I now can.

1 All the counties and shires of England have had wars in them since the Conquest, but Essex, which 18 onely free, and should be thankfull. [Printed in the original edition as a marginal gloss.]

WARD'S OPINION OF IRELAND

NOT OF THE NATION UNIVERSALLY, NOR
OF ANY MAN IN IT, THAT HATH SO

Son and Heire, I mean the Pope, that
service for which Lewis the eleventh
kept his Barbor Oliver, which makes
them so blood-thirsty. They are the

MUCH AS ONE HAIRE OF CHRIS- 5 Very Offall of men, Dregges of Man-
TIANITY OR HUMANITY GROWING ON
HIS HEAD OR BEARD, BUT ONELY OF
THE TRUCULENT CUT-THROATS, AND

SUCH AS SHALL TAKE UP ARMES IN
THEIR DEFENCE.

[From The Simple Cobler of Aggawamm.]

kind, Reproach of Christendom, the Bots that crawle on the Beasts taile, I wonder Rome it self is not ashamed of them.

I begge upon my hands and knees, that the Expedition against them may be undertaken while the hearts and hands of our Souldiery are hot, to whom I will be bold to say briefly: Happy is he that shall reward them as they have served 15 us, and Cursed be he that shall do that work of the Lord negligently, Cursed be he that holdeth back his Sword from blood: yea, Cursed be he that maketh not his Sword starke drunk with Irish blood, that doth not recompence them double for their hellish treachery to the English. that maketh them not heaps upon heaps, and their Country a dwelling place for Dragons, an Astonishment to Nations: Let not that eye look for pity, nor that hand to be spared, that pities or spares them, and let him be accursed, that curseth not them bitterly.

These Irish anciently called Antropophagi, man-eaters: Have a Tradition among them, That when the Devill shewed our Saviour all the Kingdomes of the Earth and their glory, that he would 20 not shew him Ireland, but reserved it for himselfe it is probably true, for he hath kept it ever since for his own peculiar; the old Fox foresaw it would eclipse the glory of all the rest: he thought it wis- 25 dome to keep the land for a Boggards for his unclean spirits imployed in this Hemisphere, and the people, to doe his

Em

The first American volume of poems, composed with literary intent and printed in adequate form, was issued in London in 1650 with this tremendous title page:

THE TENTH MUSE Lately sprung up in America. Severall Poems, compiled with great variety of Wit and Learning, full of delight. Wherein especially is contained a compleat discourse and description of the Four Elements, Constitutions, Ages of Man, Seasons of the Year. Together with an Exact Epitome of the Four Monarchies, viz. The Assyrian, Persian, Grecian, Roman. Also a Dialogue between Old England and New, concerning the late troubles. With divers other pleasant and serious Poems. By a Gentlewoman in those parts.

The author of this work,-not of the title page however, was Anne, the daughter of Governor Dudley, who had accompanied her father to New England in 1880, and who soon was destined to be the most extravagantly praised woman in early American history. Her contemporaries spoke in superlatives whenever they mentioned her. Had Virgil heard her poems. they declared, he would have committed his own to the flames. Cotton Mather, after mentioning all the learned women of antiquity, was of opinion that to the list now was to be added the superior of them all :-"Madam Ann Bradstreet, the daughter of our Governor Dudley, and the consort of our Governor Bradstreet, whose poems, divers times printed, have afforded a grateful entertainment unto the ingenious, and a monument for her memory beyond the stateliest marbles."

One cannot dismiss utterly a poet who won completely her own generation even when one finds in that poet's work hardly a single element of what modern times demand in its poetry. Like her age she was fundamentally didactic and always religious. The subjects which she preferred no pen could lift into poetic expression. And yet she was not devoid of poetic feeling. In other times, indeed, she might have become a lyrist of real distinction. Even as it is, she must be counted in one respect as a real force in the history of American poetry. The American landscape awakened in her something new and original. She became one of the very first in all English literature to put actual wild nature into poetry, nature described with enthusiasm and with the eye of the poet actually upon the landscape. Her "Four Seasons of the Year" and her "Contemplations" were written a full generation before the poems of the Countess of Winchelsea hailed by Wordsworth as the pioneer in the field of English nature poetry of the modern type, and almost a century before the work of Thomson. Always she worked with handicaps well nigh fatal to literary merit. She was physically frail; she was without literary environment.-the atmosphere of the Colonies was anything but æsthetic: moreover, she was a true daughter of her generation: she gave to poetry only the unused fragments of her time. Married at sixteen, she was first of all a helpmeet of her husband. She was the mother of eight children, and as she expressed it,

I nurst them up with pain and care,

For cost nor labor did I spare,

Tell at the last they felt their wing,
Mounted the trees, and learned to sing.

Sing indeed literally many of them did in later years. From her has descended a notable line of poets and literary leaders. Dr. Holmes, the Danas, the Channings, Wendell Phillips, Buckminster, and many other traced their line back to this earliest singer of the New England wilderness.