"What gripes of wind mine infancy did pain
What tortures I in breeding teeth sustain!"
which is very excellent realism, but not highly poetical, either in sentiment or expression. The Seasons have but little more claim to a hearing than the Elements, and in the poem on the Four Monarchies, which is merely a rhymed version of Raleigh's History of the World, the only notable lines are those containing Mrs. Bradstreet's defence of her sex:
"Now say, have Women worth? or have they none?
Or had they some, but with our Queen is't gone?
Nay Masculines, you have thus taxed us long;
But she, though dead, will vindicate our wrong.
Let such as say our Sex is void of Reason,
Know 'tis Slander now but once was Treason."
The queen to whom these lines refer is of course Elizabeth; and we can well believe that in her day so to asperse the sex as to decline to admit their possession of the attribute of reason may well have been treason sufficient, if reported to the highest quarter, to be punished by the terrible peine forte et dure. Although we may entirely sympathize with Mrs. Bradstreet's vigorous defence of her sex from the foul slanders of the "Masculines," it is difficult to see wherein she makes good her claim to be considered the Tenth Muse, or the Hundred and Tenth, if so many could be named. Nevertheless, at her death sermons laudatory of her life and work were preached in nearly every church in New England, and her afflicted family must have been greatly comforted by the number and expressions of the elegies with which they were fairly deluged. Here is a specimen from the pen of the Rev. John Norton: