Anne Bradstreet and Her Time | Page 6

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her sentences into the thought of to-day, and it is evident, that aside
from the morbid conscientiousness produced by her training, that she
was the victim of moods arising from constant ill-health. Her
constitution seems to have been fragile in the extreme, and there is no
question but that in her case as in that of many another child born into
the perplexed and troubled time, the constant anxiety of both parents,
uncertain what a day might bring forth, impressed itself on the baby
soul. There was English fortitude and courage, the endurance born of
faith, and the higher evolution from English obstinacy, but there was
for all of them, deep self-distrust and abasement; a sense of
worthlessness that intensified with each generation; and a perpetual,
unhealthy questioning of every thought and motive. The progress was
slow but certain, rising first among the more sensitive natures of
women, whose lives held too little action to drive away the mists, and
whose motto was always, "look in and not out"--an utter reversal of the
teaching of to-day. The children of that generation lost something that

had been the portion of their fathers. The Elizabethan age had been one
of immense animal life and vigor, and of intense capacity for
enjoyment, and, deny it as one might, the effect lingered and had gone
far toward forming character. The early Nonconformist still shared in
many worldly pleasures, and had found no occasion to condense
thought upon points in Calvinism, or to think of himself as a refugee
from home and country.
The cloud at first no bigger than a man's hand, was not dreaded, and
life in Nonconformist homes went on with as much real enjoyment as if
their ownership were never to be questioned. Serious and sad, as certain
phases come to be, it is certain that home life developed as suddenly as
general intelligence. The changes in belief in turn affected character.
"There was a sudden loss of the passion, the caprice, the subtle and
tender play of feeling, the breath of sympathy, the quick pulse of
delight, which had marked the age of Elizabeth; but on the other hand
life gained in moral grandeur, in a sense of the dignity of manhood, in
orderliness and equable force. The larger geniality of the age that had
passed away was replaced by an intense tenderness within the narrower
circle of the home. Home, as we now conceive it, was the creation of
the Puritan. Wife and child rose from mere dependants on the will of
husband or father, as husband or father saw in them saints like himself,
souls hallowed by the touch of a divine spirit and called with a divine
calling like his own. The sense of spiritual fellowship gave a new
tenderness and refinement to the common family affections."
The same influence had touched Thomas Dudley, and Dorothy Dudley
could have written of him as Lucy Hutchinson did of her husband: "He
was as kind a father, as dear a brother, as good a master, as faithful a
friend as the world had." In a time when, for the Cavalier element,
license still ruled and lawless passion was glorified by every play
writer, the Puritan demanded a different standard, and lived a life of
manly purity in strange contrast to the grossness of the time. Of
Hutchinson and Dudley and thousands of their contemporaries the
same record held good: "Neither in youth nor riper years could the most
fair or enticing woman draw him into unnecessary familiarity or
dalliance. Wise and virtuous women he loved, and delighted in all pure

and holy and unblameable conversation with them, but so as never to
excite scandal or temptation. Scurrilous discourse even among men he
abhorred; and though he sometimes took pleasure in wit and mirth, yet
that which was mixed with impurity he never could endure."
Naturally with such standards life grew orderly and methodical. "Plain
living and high thinking," took the place of high living and next to no
thinking. Heavy drinking was renounced. Sobriety and self-restraint
ruled here as in every other act of life, and the division between
Cavalier and Nonconformist became daily more and more marked.
Persecution had not yet made the gloom and hardness which soon came
to be inseparable from the word Puritan, and children were still allowed
many enjoyments afterward totally renounced. Milton could write, even
after his faith had settled and matured:
"Haste then, nymph, and bring with thee Jest and youthful jollity, Quips
and Cranks and wanton Wiles, Nods and becks and wreathed Smiles,
Such as hang on Hebe's cheek And love to live in dimple sleek; Sports
that wrinkled care derides And Laughter holding both his sides."
Cromwell himself looked on at masques and revels, and Whitelock, a
Puritan lawyer and his