"Haughty Stile and rapted wit sublime
All ages wond'ring at shall never climb,"

and that more truly than she knew, his

"Sacred works are not for imitation
But Monuments to future Admiration."

Not the "future Admiration" she believed his portion, but to the dead reputation which, fortunately for us, can have no resurrection.

CHAPTER XIII.

CHANCES AND CHANGES.

With the appearance of the little volume and the passing of the flutter of interest and excitement it had aroused, the Andover life subsided into the channel through which, save for one or two breaks, it was destined to run for many years. Until 1653, nothing of note had taken place, but this year brought two events, one full of the proud but quiet satisfaction the Puritan mother felt in a son who had ended his college course with distinction, and come home to renew the associations somewhat broken in his four years absence; the other, a sorrow though hardly an unexpected one. Samuel Bradstreet, who became a physician, living for many years in Boston, which he finally left for the West Indies, was about twenty at the time of his graduation from Harvard, the success of which was very near Anne Bradstreet's heart and the pride of his grandfather, Governor Dudley, who barely lived to see the fruition of his wishes for this first child of his favorite daughter. His death in July, 1653, softened the feeling that seems slowly to have arisen against him in the minds of many who had been his friends, not without reason, though many of them had showed quite as thorough intolerance as he. With increasing years, Dudley's spirit had hardened and embittered against all who ventured to differ from the cast-iron theology his soul loved. Bradstreet and Winthrop had both been a cross to him with the toleration which seemed to him the child of Satan himself. His intense will had often drawn concessions from Winthrop at which his feelings revolted and he pursued every sort of sectary with a zeal that never flagged. Hutchinson wrote: "He was zealous beyond measure against all sorts of heretics," and Roger Williams said bitterly: "It is known who hindered but never promoted the liberty of other men's consciences."

Between the "vagaries of many sectaries," the persistent and irrepressible outbreaks from Roger Williams, the bewildering and confounding presumption of Anne Hutchinson, who seems to have been the forerunner of other Boston agitations of like nature, Governor Dudley's last days were full of astonishments, not the least being the steady though mild opposition of his son-in-law Bradstreet to all harsh measures. Toleration came to seem to him at last the crowning sin of all the ages, and his last recorded written words are a valiant testimony against it. There was a curious tendency to rhyme in the gravest of these decorous Fathers; a tendency carefully concealed by some, as in John Winthrop's case, who confined his "dropping into poetry" to the margins of his almanacs. Others were less distrustful, and printed their "painful verses" on broad sheets, for general circulation and oppression. Governor Dudley rhymed but once, but in the bald and unequal lines, found in his pocket after death, condensed his views of all who had disagreed from him, as well as the honest, sturdy conviction in which he lived and died. They were written evidently but a short time before his death, and are in the beginning much after the order of his daughter's first poem.

Dim Eyes, deaf Ears, cold Stomach, shew
My dissolution is in view,
Eleven times seven near liv'd have I.
And now God calls I willing Die,
My Shuttle's shot, my Race is run,
My Sun is set, my Day is done.
My span is measured, Tale is told,
My Flower is faded and grown old.
My Dream is vanish'd, Shadows fled,
My Soul with Christ, my Body Dead,
Farewel dear Wife, Children and Friends,
Hate Heresie, make Blessed Ends,
Bear Poverty, live with good Men;
So shall we live with Joy agen.
Let men of God in Courts and Churches watch,
O're such as do a Toleration hatch,
Lest that ill Egg bring forth a Cockatrice
To poison all with Heresie and Vice.
If Men be left and otherwise Combine,
My epitaph's I DY'D NO LIBERTINE.

To the old Puritan, scowling to the last at any shade of difference from the faith to which he would willingly have been a martyr, a "Libertine" included all blasphemous doubters and defiers of current beliefs—Quakers, Antinomians and other pestilent people who had already set the Colony by the ears and were soon to accomplish much more in this direction. The verses were at once creed and protest, and are a fair epitome of the Puritan mind in 1650. Other rhymes from other hands had expressed equally uncompromising opinions. He had survived the anagramatic warning sent to him by an unknown hand in 1645, which still stands on the files of the first Church in Roxbury, and which may have been written by one of his opponents in the General Court.