man

MRS. ANNE BRADSTREET, RIGHT PANARETES,

Mirror of her Age, Glory of her Sex, whose Heaven-born-Soul leaving its
earthly Shrine, chose its native home, and was taken to its Rest, upon
the 16th Sept. 1672."

All of which strikes us as a little hyperbolic, while the phrase "Patron
of Virtue" does not appear as very happily chosen, and the reference of
the reverend gentleman in the body of his "poem" to the

"Black, fatal, dismal, inauspicious day"

would be a little overdone if applied to a general catastrophe. Yet even
this balderdash is of interest as showing us the estimate in which was
held America's first woman of letters the first at least to attain note
and thus worthy, in that respect at least, to be held as patron saint by
all the lady writers of our day and country.

There were a few other women writers during the period of settlement;
but they were very few. As may be gathered from the tenor of the quoted
lines from Anne Bradstreet's prologue, the spirit of Puritanism was
opposed to literary pursuits by a woman, at least to the degree of a
profession. Indeed, it is probable that there was widespread sympathy
with the sentiments of the chronicler of the following incident, in
which is to be seen the regard in which were held feminine _litterati_:

"The Governor of Hartford upon Connecticut came to Boston, and brought
his wife with him (a godly young woman and of special parts) who was
fallen into a sad infirmity, the loss of her understanding and reason,
which had been growing upon her divers years by occasion of her giving
herself wholly to reading and writing, and had written many books. Her
husband being very loving and tender of her was loath to grieve her; but
he saw his error when it was too late. For if she had attended to her
household affairs, and such things as belong to women, and not gone out
of her way and calling to meddle in such things as are proper for men,
whose minds are stronger, she had kept her wits and might have improved
them usefully and honorably in the place God had set her."

It was Governor Winthrop whose domestic affliction arose from such a
strange cause; and it is not unlikely that he inspired the words here
set down. At all events, the comments are amusing. If all the women now
writing books were to suffer like penalty with Mistress Winthrop the
insane asylums would have to be considerably enlarged; but authorship
seems to have grown less fatal to the fair sex