Although she was born before the death of Shakespeare, she seems never to
have studied the works of that great dramatist. Her models were what Milton
called the "fantastics," a school of poets who mistook for manifestations
of poetic power, far-fetched and strained metaphors, oddities of
expression, remote comparisons, conceits, and strange groupings of thought.
She had especially studied Sylvester's paraphrase of _The Divine Weeks and
Works_ of the French poet Du Bartas, and probably also the works of poets
like George Herbert (1593-1633), of the English fantastic school. This
paraphrase of Du Bartas was published in a folio of 1215 pages, a few years
before Mrs. Bradstreet came to America. This book shows the taste which
prevailed in England in the latter part of the first third of the
seventeenth century, before Milton came into the ascendency. The fantastic
comparison between the "Spirit Eternal," brooding upon chaos, and a hen, is
shown in these lines from Du Bartas:--
"Or as a Hen that fain would hatch a brood
(Some of her own, some of adoptive blood)
Sits close thereon, and with her lively heat,
Of yellow-white balls, doth live birds beget:
Even in such sort seemed the Spirit Eternal
To brood upon this Gulf with care paternal.
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