friendship a little in this style; when my pleased heart swelled with
conscious importance at the idea of exciting tender sighs and penseroso
glances at fourteen, and longed to disclose the triumph.
Though this was in my sallad days, as Cleopatra says, “when I was green
in judgement,” yet, believe me, I still blush for that solemn farce of
professed confidence which introduced the disclosure of the mighty
secret.
Our minds have, I trust, more lasting bands of union. They are, shall I
not venture to say, amiable, generous, and sincere; and, what will
secure duration to these bands of the same class? Amity towards each
other descends to us by inheritance; our mothers passed the halcyon days
of youth together. Loveliness was around them as a light, and envy never
made than shrink from the lustre of each other’s graces. They said, when
last they met, a little before the death of your excellent parent, “our
children will love each other.” Shall they be mistaken? My heart says
no! and I dare trust the kind response of yours.
* * * * *
P.S. You talked of reading the New Eloisa; throw it aside, I beseech
you.
LICHFIELD, OCT. 1762.
My dear Emma acknowledges, that, in her eyes, Capt. L---- is something
more than handsome;--that he has interested her attentions; yet she
hopes this impression will never amount to love, because she fears he is
fickle and libertine, practised also in the wiles of pretended
attachment. She even acknowledges that, were she convinced of the
reality of his affection, and the purity of his morals, she should yet
fear that his mind is not of the congenial class.
Ah! then, let us beg of Fate to nip this passion in the bud; for
passion, I am afraid, it already is. O! the dangerous influence of the
eye! Justly does Clarissa exclaim, “Wicked, wicked misleader!”
You ask me, if I expected implicit obedience when I bade you throw aside
Eloisa. I cannot say I did, but I meant to hint my opinion of its very
softening tendency.
It is a book which all young men should read, and the young women avoid,
except they have been educated in the flutter of high life. The Lady
Harriots of the age, of whom that excellent poem in Dodsley, “The
Modern Fine Lady,” is so exact a portrait, might perhaps do well to
soften their vain and selfish hearts, by the impassioned and beautiful
pages of the Eloisa; since love, in its most enthusiastic excess, has no
hazard to principle and to happiness so desperate as pride; boundless
dissipation and unprincipled extravagance being in their train.
I said also, that I thought our young men should read Eloisa, and these
are my reasons. Among the modern youth, satiric contempt of tender
attachment has succeeded to the enamoured Quixotism of former times.
With that sex, since chastity, unfortunately for it, is not the point of
honour, no guard can be substituted for masculine purity, so likely to
preserve it from the fatal effects of debauched habits, as a fervent and
constant passion for a refined and amiable woman. But love has no foe so
formidable as ridicule; and the natural passions are, in general, found
to be less potent than the artificial ones, if the latter are inspired
and hallowed by fashion. As an antidote to the bane of her satire, I
would present to our male youth the Eloisa of Rousseau.
When that same arbitrary, though fickle power, gave her sanction to
enamoured Constancy, it was better for the morality and for the
happiness of both sexes; but now, that she shrinks from the bosom of our
young men, blighted by the dread laugh of fashionable circles, what is
the consequence? Nature may be perverted, but she cannot be subdued.
Constitutional fervour, so much stronger in that sex than in ours,
snatches at casual and indiscriminate gratification.
Habits of sensuality once established, the heart becomes cold and
impenetrable amidst the indelicate indulgence of the senses, and loses
all power of sympathizing truly and equally, with the genuine and
joy-bestowing tenderness of uncorrupted sensibility. The libertine is
not aware how much of real voluptuousness his libertinism costs him.
Were I a parent, I would infinitely rather that my son’s talents were
buried in obscurity with a breeding wife and a scanty fortune, dead to
wealth and fame, but alive, in every nerve, to domestic comfort and
affection, than see him in an elegant drawing-room, yawning under the
ennui of exhausted pleasures, and in the (at best to him) insipid
society of a rich wife, whose (perhaps) amiable qualities not having
previously seized his heart, and warmed his imagination, want power to
inspirit his attention or awaken his tenderness.
Such lethargy is an incurable disease of the soul, and would prove more
fatal to his virtue and to his happiness, than all the thorns of care
and anxiety with which inauspicious fortune might surround the roses of
his youth.
As a preservation from such wretched insensibility, when I have sons,
they shall read Eloisa; but, for my daughters, should I have daughters,
amidst the pure, the gentle, the affectionate sentiments which their
domestic education must necessarily inspire, they will have too much
sensibility not to render an increase of it by such means, dangerous to
their peace, perhaps to their fame and safety. Without having read the
softening Eloisa, they will bring a larger portion of tenderness to the
arms of their husband, than they can have a tolerable chance of seeing
returned by the modern race of men.
Beneath the impression of these ideas, you will not wonder that I wish
this fascinating book had not, at this juncture, fallen into the hands
of one of the most affectionate and gentle of her sex, abounding, as it
does, with lavish fuel to a kindling attachment.
I knew you would not like the two last volumes so well as the former. If
you have finished the fourth, tell me if you do not feel some how
disgusted with Clara’s passion? She, who had so long been acquainted
with the amiable philosopher!--Confidante to both the lovers!--Herself
married in the intervening period! Then, to see the widow’s passion come
lagging, like a distanced horse, when the ardent race of love, which St
Preaux and the lovely Eloisa had run, was just finished! It appears to
me strange and unnatural.
In the sphere of friendship, Clara shone with unclouded light; but an
unreciprocal passion for the lover of Eloisa seems not congenial to a
turn of mind more sprightly than tender, more reasonable than enamoured;
and it sullies the lustre of her exertions to make them happy, while it
was probable they might be united, and to save them from themselves,
when their separation became necessary.
I see the author’s design, that it was to exalt the constancy of St
Preaux; but I think a new object had better have been introduced for
that purpose.
We will take our leave, for the present, of these philosophic lovers;
but I must not take my leave of you without some notice of the
conclusion of your letter, in which you tell me, that you shall expect
reciprocal confidence, and proceed to question me about the situation of
my own heart.
I meant to have gratified this obliging curiosity in my present letter;
but it is already long, and, were I now to resign the pen to egotism,
that prating gossip would be likely enough to swell it into voluminous
extent. There is no end of the tissues which, Arachne-like, she spins
out of her own bowels. A page or two, in my next, may perhaps find room
for her cobwebs. Adieu!
LICHFIELD, NOV. 1762.
* * * * *
I am glad you approve my reasoning respecting the Eloisa, though you had
not resolution to take my advice of throwing it aside; that you agree
with me in thinking the study of those tender pages best confined to our
male youth, upon whom a little enthusiasm might be of infinite use in
checking the fashionable prevalence of Epicurean love.
Estimable and honoured through the ages which have elapsed since his
death, has been the character of Petrarch, a young Italian ecclesiastic,
and one of the most celebrated poets of that country. He preserved a
tender and hopeless passion for the beautiful, the virtuous, the wedded
Laura, during 30 years; and, at the expiration of that time, was a
sincere mourner for her death, which happened from that dire contagion,
the plague, then raging at Avignon. Laura was a native of that city,
from whose environs Petrarch could never tear himself after he had,
during his visit there, accidentally beheld her, the then too charming
bride of a young French nobleman. He often used to retire to a romantic
valley in the neighbourhood, to sooth his troubled passions by the
composition of his celebrated sonnets, and to render vocal all its
echoes.
I am told no ingenious traveller visits Avignon without exploring the
Vale of Vaucluse; and, with the thrill of local enthusiasm, tracing up
the windings of the crystal Sorgue to their source in that fountain,
whose waters, of an immeasurable depth, sleep in a spacious cavern that
seems scooped in the rocks, and is overshadowed by their summits.
This fountain, with the surrounding scenery, and the charms of Laura,
whose summer residence was in that valley, are immortalized by the
beauty of the sonnets, which paint them in all the glow of poetic
colouring.
A gentleman danced with me at our last assembly, who had explored this
valley, and seemed pleased to see me eagerly listen to his descriptions
of its features. He also contrived to give me some idea of those
applauded sonnets. I long to see a fine translation[2] of them into our
own language.
How I regretted every summons to rejoin the dance with a partner so
capable of making the conversational interlude the most agreeable part
of the evening’s amusement! He was a stranger, and, though he looked
like a gentleman, the graces of countenance and figure were not his; he
danced very indifferently, yet, believe me, I would not have exchanged
my partner for any of the handsome militaries that made the ball so gay.
While he talked to me of a poet so renowned, so enamoured, and so
faithful; of Vaucluse and of Laura, the following apostrophe to
Petrarch’s memory, in Lyttleton’s enchanting Monody, rushed upon my
spirit, and increased the animation with which I listened:
Arise, O Petrarch! from th’ Elysian bowers,
With never-fading myrtles twined,
And fragrant with ambrosial flowers,
Where, to thy Laura, thou again art joined!
Arise! and hither bring the silver lyre!
Tuned by thy skilful hand,
To the soft notes of elegant desire,
With which, o’er many a land,
Was spread the fame of thy disastrous love!
If Petrarch was not happy, he was illustrious. Fruitless regrets, and
tender sorrows, whose indulgence sooths, though it cannot avail, are not
misery; and, having a tendency to refine and exalt the spirit above the
gross gratifications of indiscriminate connections, are a thousand times
more desirable than the pleasures, falsely so called, of a gay
dissipated young man of the present age, who laughs at sentiment, and
fancies he knows the sex.
Never may the peace of any friend of mine be dependent upon such a
being! I am, &c.
LICHFIELD, NOV. 1762.
* * * * *
You enquire after our studies. We have been lately engaged in exploring
the inestimable treasure which had, during so many ages, lain concealed
in the darkness of the Erse language. Macpherson has kindly and ably
drawn aside the curtain, and the venerable bards, the mighty heroes, the
maids of Caledonia and Ierne, with the spirits of the airy halls, come
forward, and, with just and graceful dignity, assert their claims to
ancient honours, and to an high station on classic ground.
I find fastidious people affect to question the originality of Ossian;
but we have the sanction of Lord Lyttleton’s opinion, with that of
other learned men, to abet the force of our conviction that the bold
ideas, and sublime imagery of these fragments, are not the composition
of modern genius, though it may have drawn out, enlarged, blended, and
connected them. There is a daring spirit in this work, resembling that
of the sacred writings; a great blaze of imagination, but it is the
random fire of the ruder ages.
Stranger, as was the author of these sombre dramas, to the sciences and
arts, even to agriculture itself, and therefore excluded from the
immense resources which they yield to the poet; yet, by the force of
native genius, the grandly simple objects, which an uncultivated, and
almost desert country could produce, are found sufficient for the
sublimest purposes of illustration, description, and imagery. We must
add, however, by the aid of superstition, which supplied the old bard
with very fine machinery from the changing form of the clouds, and from
the evolutions of the Aurora Borealis.
Sweet was the harp, and lofty was its tone,
To which the bards of Scotia’s ancient race
Warbled, in notes majestic, soft, and full,
The tales of other times;--her hardy sons,
Fleet in the chace, and warring with the chiefs
Of green Ierne!--Yet, I ween, there are,
Who, coldly listening to the lofty songs,
Pronounce them cloying; that they still present
A round of the same images; the sun,
The moon and stars, the mists, the blast, the storm,
And raging whirlwind; with the reedy lake,
Grey stream, and barren hill, and broken rock,
And heath, and starting roe, and aged tree,
That waves its branches o’er the mossy stone,
Which, frequent rising in the hunter’s path,
Guards breathless chiefs, dim in the narrow houses;
And ocean darkly rolling, or, beneath
The beam of morn, blue gleaming, far and wide;
With ships that bound before the swelling gale,
And clouds, whose spirits talk on midnight winds.
These, as the voice of Candour will confess,
Are limited resources; yet she deems
The cold complaint inaccurate. We know
Objects that seem the same to the dull powers
Of common observation, in new lights
Presented, bring the susceptible mind,
Warmly awake to picturesque effect,
And all its nice varieties, no sense
That blunts the spirit by satiety.
Have I not seen the young Hortensius stand
Musing, with folded arms and raptured gaze,
On those effects, so simple, yet sublime,
Of light and shadow? while an heap of stones,
Piled rudely in the corner of a cave,
Had caught his eye, as glanced the setting sun
Into the gloomy arch. So ’tis with those
Whose quick perceptions catch the varied tints
Of coyly shifting radiance, from the powers
Of poetry, that paints. They little heed
How frequently an object meets their gaze,
If seen in new position; or if light
More soft, or brilliant, strike upon the form,
Or half involved in deeper shade it stands.
You see my pen took the whim of concluding in numbers its observations
on Ossian’s poetry. And now let the objects of the imagination recede,
and the affairs of the heart resume their place on my paper. Those of
mine were sufficiently discussed in my last letter.
The business of yours is much more interesting, because it is more full
of hazard. I am in the quiet harbour of a probably life-long absence
from him to whose pilotism I had resigned my sensibility on the
dangerous sea of love; but we kept, as you see, pretty near the coast,
and the worst evil I had to encounter, on a voyage which reason must
deem a fruitless one, was the pain of absence. Disappointment I could
not know, since no illusive Hymeneal hopes had hung out false lights in
my brain-built watch-tower. But, for you, I fear the rocks and
quicksands of an improsperous and unequal marriage; a marriage of mental
inequality, which is the very worst sort.
You start, and repeat what you said in your last, that you do not think
there is any strong attachment on either side. He has not yet declared
himself your lover; he has “only been attentive, respectful,
insinuating!”
Dangerous wretch!--For is he not a libertine? and do we not know, from
the destiny and feelings of one dear and amiable friend, from those
pensive smiles which so superficially cover an aching heart, how
incompetent even the kindness of a libertine husband to the happiness of
a woman of delicacy!
A being of this order may temporarily assume that softness of manners,
which a very little observation would teach him is necessary to subdue
the heart of such a woman as yourself; but he is incapable, after they
have obtained their purpose, of preserving this refined respect and
engaging tenderness. The habits of his life militate against them, and
those will resume all their wounding coarseness in the bosom of
security.
If he should treat you, after marriage, with tolerable kindness and good
nature, it is the best you have reasonably to expect. What counterpoise,
in the scale of happiness, can be formed by that _best_ against the
delights you must renounce in the morning of your youth?--the bright
prospects of hope, whose animating charm is heightened by uncertainty;
and those precious hours from seventeen to twenty-one, which an
intelligent young woman will employ in such a cultivation of her
talents, as shall accomplish her for a companion to a man of sense and
knowledge; for the momentous task of educating her children properly
when she becomes a mother, and give her the pleasing power of diffusing
the spirit of intellectual refinement wherever she goes, and of
providing better resources against the lassitude of declining life,
than can be supplied by that annihilator of ideas, the card-table?
My dearest friend, take your resolution in time. Love is seldom to be
subdued, except at its first onset; and every hour, by which you prolong
your stay within eye-shot of the enemy, renders the victory more
doubtful. Justly does Madame d’Enclos observe, that, “in the amorous
warfare, the Parthian exercise is the best discipline.”
Determine, therefore, to quit Shrewsbury as soon as possible. London,
however, is not the best place of retreat. An attached heart, in the
absence of its object, may find that solitude in crowded rooms, and in
the whirl of dissipation, which, in quiet though not absolute
retirement, the attentions of friendship will, with industrious
kindness, preclude; conscious that the solitude of abstracted musing
presents fuel to the dangerous fires of hazardous or ineffectual love.
Return to Lichfield to me for the remainder of the winter! We will
banish all mention of Mr L----, which is a much better method than
abusing him. We will read ingenious authors, who shall rather give our
minds new ideas from the stores of science and observation, than
increase the susceptibility of our hearts. We will even venture to
criticise, as well as admire those authors, since the brightest gem has
some sullying vein, and since the sun itself has its spots.
The little Honora, who recites with the most perfect justness, and whose
comprehension is wonderful in such a child, shall read to us while we
work, and so cultivate her own fast-springing talents, while she amuses
and improves us.
The winter evenings, thus beguiled, will not seem long. We shall not
sigh for the viol and the harp to drown the noise of storms, which we
shall not hear, or of the drops from the eaves, which we shall not
count.
Without possessing much of that faculty called genius, my sister has a
very intelligent mind; her taste for poetry, and for every kind of
ingenious composition, is delicate, judicious, and awakened.
Yes! my dear Emma, we will employ ourselves from morn to midnight, and
the idea of Mr L. shall quickly fade away:
“For mark’d I where the bolt of Cupid fell,
“It fell upon a little western flower,
“Before milk-white, now purple with Love’s wound,
“And maidens call it love in idleness.”
Adieu! adieu!
LICHFIELD, JAN. 1763.
There are, as you justly observe, other faults in the Eloisa besides its
too softening influence upon the female heart, and the unpleasant effect
of Clara’s passion for the philosopher, so visibly introduced for the
purpose of giving eclat to his constancy, which, though forsaken and
renounced by Eloisa, he still preserves. I like that he should be put to
a test of that sort, by the attentions of a charming woman; but that
woman should not have been Clara.
We must greatly regret the affectation of singularity, which betrays so
fine a writer into vain attempts of reconciling irreconcilable
contrarieties; that the eccentric fervours of a luxuriant imagination
should so often bewilder his better sense in the labyrinths of
sophistry, till the distinctions of right and wrong are blended and
lost.
Yet insensibility alone can doubt that this work abounds with the
enchanting effusions of true genius; and prejudice only will attempt to
deny that we find an infinite number of remarks, as just as they are
new, interspersed through its pages, for the wise regulation of human
conduct in the interesting and varied situations of real life.
Two of St Preaux’ letters to Lord B----, and one to Mrs Orbe, are not,
as beautiful compositions, excelled by any thing I have read. The first
describes his return to Vevai, to Clarens, and Eloisa, after an eight
years’ absence, when, in that interval, she was become a wife and
mother.
Ah! what a touching history does that letter contain of the genuine
feelings, the strong conflicting agitations of an impassioned heart, in
the most trying of all imaginable situations!
The other letter to Lord B. has very different features; I know not
whether of mere excellence, for that, perhaps, is not possible, but
certainly of more sublimity. It contains the history of the expedition
to Meillerie. St Preaux’ solemn apostrophe to Eloisa is striking past
expression, on shewing her the cypher of her name on the rocks, which he
had engraven, in a thousand places, so many years before, interwoven
with enamoured verses, characteristic of his then situation.
How we tremble for them both, when he ventures to remind her of the time
he had past in contemplating her idea beneath those very rocks, when
they were covered with snow, and surrounded by frozen torrents; the
dreary silence only interrupted by the howl of the wintry winds, and, at
intervals, by the cries of the crow, and the screams of the eagle.
Then, in their return across the lake, the horrid temptation which
seizes St Preaux to plunge into its waters with a mistress,
irrecoverably lost to his hopes, yet still so passionately adored! and
the mutual and final conflicts, in the boat, of a passion with so much
difficulty vanquished!
The third letter is addressed to Mrs Orbe. It speaks to her of his
dream; of that fatal and impalpable veil it represented! Surely no
language, even with all the heightening powers of poetry, can bind the
attention, the imagination, and the heart, in stronger fetters than
those by which they are chained in perusing those three epistles!
Not any instance of supernatural agency in Shakespeare or Milton; not
the ghost of Fingal in Ossian, that fleets to Connal on the midnight
blast, as he lay beneath the aged tree, when dim and in tears it stood,
and stretched its pale hand over the hero!--nor “the spirit which passed
before the face of Job in the silence of the night, when deep sleep had
fallen on men, and when, though it stood still, he could not discern the
form thereof!”--Not any, nor all of these, have more of that sublimity
produced by a mixture of pathos, horror, and obscurity, than the
impenetrable veil which foretells the death of Eloisa.
You delight me by promising to dedicate your first leisure to the
perusal of the Caledonian bard. Infinitely harmonious, though not
measured, his mournful strains will be soothing to your ear, and his
sombre imagery graceful in your eye. These strains are in poetry, what
the tones of the Æolian harp are in music.
Perhaps you may not find your attention quite so much wrapt as mine in
the perusal; for I have a natural prepossession in favour of Ossianic
scenery; born, and nursed as I was, in the craggy heights of Derbyshire,
and remaining there till six years old.