consul bear to him, at Corioli, the supplicating embassy of humbled
Rome, after he had led the Volscians triumphant to her very gates, was
made the enemy’s general, and styled Coriolanus.
Listen to the stern and injured warrior, when he first beholds these
formidable interposers, and judge if Shakespeare uniformly considered
the passion of love as of weak and subordinate influence in the conduct
of life. The fair ambassadors appear at the moment in which he is
solemnly declaring that he will not listen to any farther overtures from
his thankless country; and he proceeds:--
“Ha! what shout is this?
Shall I be tempted to infringe my vow
At the same time ’tis made?--I will not.----
My wife comes foremost--then the honour’d mould
In which this trunk was framed; and in her hand
The grandchild to her blood!--But out affection!
All bond and privilege of nature break!
Let it be virtue to be obstinate!----[_Virgilia curtsies._
What is that curtsy worth?--or those dove’s eyes,
Which can make gods forsworn?”
After farther endeavours to stimulate his own resistance, he grows
tender again, exclaiming,--
---- O! for a kiss,
Long as my exile!--sweet as my revenge!
Does Shakespeare want intimacy with the tender passions? Affection
triumphs;--Coriolanus yields; and is murdered by the Volscians for what
they consider as his apostasy.
* * * * *
LICHFIELD, FEB. 1764.
From a reputed connoisseur in the fine arts, I can present you with an
observation, which is a perfect counterpart to the late decision you
transmitted to me from the literary party at Lady B----’s, concerning
Shakespeare’s lack of skill in conceiving and uttering amorous
sentiments.
This connoisseur maintained, last night, in our drawing-room, amidst a
large company, that Handel wanted delicacy and tenderness in his
compositions; yes, he advanced it, though familiar with the elegant and
enamoured sweetness which breathes through all the strains of the
delicious Acis and Galatea;--with the “Return, O God of Hosts,”--the
“Pious Orgies,”--“O Sleep, why dost thou leave me,”--“Father of
Heaven;”--and, in short, with a countless number of accompanied
recitatives and airs, which equally display an unmatched talent for
melting softness and tender persuasion.
The ingenious Mr S----, whose fine voice and perfect expression do so
much justice to the vocal music of Handel, was on my side in warmly
defending the claims of that great master to an equal degree of
excellence in the delicate and pathetic, as in the spirited and sublime
composition. It was acknowledged that we came off victorious in that
controversy.
After the dispute was closed, I mentioned a circumstance that gives an
uncommon degree of credit to one of Handel’s pathetic songs. A deceased
clerical friend of my father’s had given his female, as well as his male
children, literary educations, though he could not leave them fortunes.
One of these daughters passed a few days with us when I was in my
sixteenth year, in her road to town, whither she was going, in order to
superintend the education of two little girls of consequence, whose
mother had then lately died.
The governess-elect was not much more than twenty; her figure low, and
ill formed; her complexion pale, and of an olive tint; her face flat;
her mouth wide; and she had so extreme a squint, that one eye appeared
almost turned into her head. With this repulsive exterior, she had a
very pleasing address; her tone of voice, in speaking, was interesting,
and there was an attic spirit in her conversation.
She went with us to pass an evening at Mr Howard’s, where it is always
so pleasant to pass evenings. After supper, the moon shining splendidly
upon the gloom of a calm night, it was proposed that we should adjourn
to a pretty arched grotto, formed of shells and fossils, in this
gentleman’s garden. The grotto stands on the edge of a little velvet
lawn, planted with shrubs and trees, which have clumps of flowers around
their base. This lawn slopes down to a large pool, and, as we do not see
its termination, it appears from the grotto like a considerable river.
The moon was shedding a shower of diamonds in the water, and edging with
silver the highest leaves of the trees. Singing was proposed while we
were in the grotto; and our agreeable guest being solicited, favoured us
with the two single verses of that beautiful duet in Athaliah:
“Cease thy anguish, smile once more,
Let thy tears no longer flow!”
Her voice was of the most liquid softness, and she expressed those
honied and ever-soothing notes in a style the most enchantingly
touching. Tears of delight streamed down my cheeks as I listened, and I
fancied it impossible to feel an anguish so keen as might not be soothed
and comforted by the persuasive sweetness with which she uttered,
“No!--No!
Let thy tears no longer flow!” ----&c.
When the song was over, Mr H----d exclaimed, “My dear young lady,
whenever you shall wish to subdue a heart, let this song be your weapon
of attack, and it will be impossible you should meet an invulnerable
shield.”
When we returned to the stronger light of the candles, in the
supper-room, all the personal defects of the syren were vanished; at
least, I saw them no longer.
In a few weeks after, we heard that Mr L---- had married his children’s
governess, and that the bride and groom had travelled through Shrewsbury
to their seat in Wales, with a superb equipage, and a great retinue of
servants.
A friend of mine, intimate with Mrs L----’s sister, has since told me,
that when this lucky young woman had been about a month in Mr L----’s
family, as governess, (yet, as she had properly stipulated, treated by
himself and his company as a gentlewoman,) the house being full of
guests, it was one evening proposed that the song should go round. When
the governess was called upon, she sung the very air whose witching
sweetness had, in the grotto, taken prisoner every faculty of my young
imagination.
Her sister told my friend, that was the first time Mr L---- had heard
her sing. He had shewn little attention to the charms of her
conversation. The emanations of genius and of knowledge are, to the
generality of what are called polite men and women, but as colours to
the blind. We do not find it so with vocal music; where there is any
ear, it speaks to the passions, and their influence is universal.
The next morning, Mr L---- offered to the acceptance of the songstress,
in his own proper person, an attractive figure, a creditable degree of
intellect, at least for a man of fashion, a good character, and a
splendid fortune.
If Handel had wanted sweetness and delicacy in his strains, it is not
probable that such great effect would have been produced by an air of
his, warbled through lips so little Medicean.
I inclose a little musical recipe for love-sick melancholy. The first
verse is an old ditty to a gay and pleasing tune. The remaining stanzas
are mine, following the lead of the original in its pretty, though
quaint idea. I have found not only pleasure, but use, in singing to
myself, as I worked or walked, these anti-sorrowful strains. They impart
that exhilaration of spirits to a young female heart, beneath the
experienced fickleness of the other sex, which wine is said to produce
in the slighted swain, and without the mischiefs of ebriety, and with
more permanent counteraction to weak despondence.
But, to any thing resembling despondence, my regrets never amounted, or
they had been past the reach of a sing-song restorative. In truth, they
had no darker hue than a little pensive and peevish languor, stealing at
intervals over my cheerfulness; yet why should I suffer the slightest
dejection to pale, for an instant, the fires of my youth? Too glowing
are my friendships for my heart to stand in need of nourishing the dull
lamp of fruitless love, lest its mansion should grow chill and dreary
from the frost of indifference.
Quenched then, for ever, be this sickly flame!--and surely, the gentler
and more cheering influence of unmixed amity and universal benevolence,
which make the good of numbers their own, shall more than supply its
place, and more than recompence its extinction.
“Florio, by all the powers above,
Plighted to me eternal love;
And, as a rose adorned my breast,
He on a leaf the vow imprest!
But, while the winds did round us play,
Vow, leaf, and promise, blew away!”
For this, when summer mornings glow,
O! shall I veil their beams in woe?
And, mid the rosy hours of youth,
Weep and repine o’er vanish’d truth?
No! let me hail the shining day,
Blithe as the lark that meets its ray.
Beauty and health have joys, that prove
Balm for the wounds of slighted love;
And, when a faithful lover gains
The heart, a false one’s pride disdains,
Ungrateful Damon may deplore
What vain regret shall ne’er restore.
Julia to Florio then shall say,
“Vow, leaf, and promise, blew away!”
And to those winds I gave my grief,
That bore the love-recorded leaf;
Nor do I chide the gales or thee,
Since thou art false--and I am free!
And till return those hours of prime,
Borne on the onward stream of Time,
Yes, till the spring restores to me
That very leaf inscribed by thee,
Scorning thy sighs, shall Julia say,
“Vow, leaf, and promise, blew away!”
You will, perhaps, observe, that this spirited little song does not
exactly suit the nature of an attachment which was never plighted; nay,
whose very existence was hardly, by either party, confessed to the
other. No matter! it is joyous, and it cheers my spirits; it is
triumphant, and it liberates my heart!
Adieu!
LICHFIELD, APRIL 1764.
At last he is here,--this brother elect!--We had heard of his being
arrived in London a week before; but he fixed not with his sister the
period at which she would see him, mentioning business that might detain
him more than a fortnight.
My mother had engaged half Lichfield to play at cards with her on
Wednesday se’nnight. About one o’clock that day, Mrs Porter sent to
inform us, that her brother was that instant arrived, and would
accompany her hither to tea. She was one of the party engaged here, so
neither of them could be ignorant that, upon this plan, the first
interview must be witnessed by twenty pair of curious eyes. But it was
not for us to make that an objection. Unluckily, Mrs Porter’s
recommendation had transpired, and was become a card-table theme.
Nothing can be a secret if my father is to know it, so frank are his
communications. We had been unpleasantly conscious of this publicity.
On the message being delivered, sweet Sarah’s serenity became
considerably discomposed during a few minutes. “Some natural tears she
dropt;” but soon smiled them away. The elements seemed in unison with
her feelings; for the sun was just then looking mildly through one of
those vernal showers in which the present April has been so rich. Look,
love, said I, that calm and gilded rain promises flowers and fruits in
abundance; may those kindred tears prepare thy mind, as that shower
prepares the earth, for the flowers and fruits of wedded happiness!
I stood by her toilet while she dressed. It was with no particular
attention. If she was longer about that operation than usual, it was
from absence, not from solicitude. She sighed often; and once or twice
exclaimed,--“Ah! Heaven!” in a pensive and languid tone, and with an
emphatic shake of the head, as she put on her light hat and ribbands.
“Bless me!” said I, “one would think thou wert adorning a victim, and
not a mistress. If that idea has passed across thy mind, prithee, put a
stop to this business at once!--Study a pretty harangue of dismissal,
full of esteem, wayward heart, and so forth.”
Behold us then in the drawing-room. Every body arrived, except the most
interesting among the guests.--A loud rap at the hall door! A deep
carmine spread over my Sarah’s cheek, not generally crimson.
“That cheek, a stranger to the rose,
That best in ruddy milk-maids glows;
The courtlier lily opens there,
With all that’s soft, and all that’s fair.”
Restrained smiles pursed up the face of many a waning virgin of the
company, till it looked like a thin pikelet, half toasted.
The drawing-room door opens!--and in rustles, in all the pomp of blue
and white tissue and Brussels lace; and with the most satisfied air, our
honest friend, Mrs Porter, led by the intended,--a thin, pale personage,
somewhat below the middle height, with rather too much stoop in the
shoulders, and a little more withered, by Italian suns, than are our
English sober bachelors, after an elapse of only forty years, in a black
velvet coat, and a waistcoat richly embroidered with coloured flowers
upon gold tissue; a bag wig, in crimp buckle, powdered white as the
new-shorn fleece.
An unfortunate idea of a mountebank doctor, produced by the black velvet
coat and gold waistcoat, gave me some difficulty in managing my risible
muscles.
Mr Porter’s features are not irregular; his teeth very fine, though in a
mouth which, being rather concave than convex, seldom shews them, and he
looks extremely clean. The great desideratum, perceived at first view,
is the air of a gentleman, which I have often seen liberally and
gracefully diffused about some of our English merchants. It was here in
vain to look for it; neither did the tone of his voice, in speaking,
please me. These are, in my estimation, most important personalities;
mind having so much to do in producing the one, and in harmonizing the
other.
You know the Lichfield young women do not play at cards. Six or seven of
us were loitering at the windows and round the card-tables,--expectation
too busy with us for us to be busy with our needles. The beau was
presented by his sister to every one in turn, and judiciously made no
particular address to my sister. He said, gallantly enough, that he had
pleasure in seeing his native country the richest in beauty of any
nation through whose cities he had passed.
Our glowing Nannette was there, with her large and languishing hazle
eyes, warm cheek, and the tender fascination of her smile. Eliza W----,
in all her acquiline beauty, and with that air of grandeur, though
hardly yet sixteen, whose form so often reminds me of a passage in
Ossian: “Lovely, with her raven-hair, is the white-bosomed daughter of
Sorglan.” She also, whose charms are in their summer-ripeness, whose
name seems to have been prophetic of her seldom-equalled beauty, the
celebrated Helen White; yet has her cast of countenance more of
Raphael’s Madona, than of that less-chastened loveliness with which
imagination invests the faithless wife of Menelaus.
Miss A---- also was in the group; of shape correct, and of air
sprightly, with my sister, the fair bride-elect, whose form is so light
and elegant, whose countenance has so much modest intelligence, and, by
her side, Honora, “fresh and beautiful as the young day-star, when he
bathes his fair beams in the dews of spring.” Often, when Mr Porter’s
attention was otherwise engaged, she looked up in my sister’s face with
eyes moistened by solicitous tenderness.
This dear child will not live; I am perpetually fearing it,
notwithstanding the clear health which crimsons her cheek and glitters
in her eyes. Such an early expansion of intelligence and sensibility
partakes too much of the angelic, too little of the mortal nature, to
tarry long in these low abodes of frailty and of pain, where the
harshness of authority, and the impenetrability of selfishness, with the
worse mischiefs of pride and envy, so frequently agitate by their
storms, and chill by their damps, the more ingenious and purer spirits,
scattered, not profusely, over the earth.
This child seems angel before she is woman; how consummate shall she be
if she should be woman before she is actually angel! What delight must
then result to me from the consciousness that my sister and myself have
been instrumental in the cultivation of talents and of virtues, in
which the imagination, the sensibility, and warm disdain of every
grovelling propensity, which are, I flatter myself, characteristic of
one monitress, shall be united with the sweetness, the unerring
discretion, and self-command of the other! She will, by all those who
know how to appreciate excellence, be acknowledged, like Miranda, “to
have been formed of every creature’s best.”
But how I have wandered from a subject, certainly more important to me
at present, even than all the (perhaps) flattering promises which the
future makes in the glance, the tear, the smile of my Honora! Yet it is
one thing to be important to one’s feelings, and another to bear them
away on the light wings of heart-expanding Hope. But descend, thou
excursive pen, from these visionary altitudes, upon the firm, though not
flowery ground, of this projected marriage!
After tea, Mr Porter talked and attended chiefly to me. Declining cards,
and my father and mother engaged in them, it became a duty of politeness
to shew attention to some of the family he came to visit. It must have
distressed my sister to have been singled out for this purpose. Yet, so
prone are folk to gather opinions, as they gather flowers, from the
surface, instead of implanting them in their minds, by taking them up
from the roots, that I saw in the half-suppressed, but significant
smiles of our guests, that they thought the elder sister likely to bear
away the Hymeneal wreath from the milder brow of the appointed fair-one.
Our party broke up at nine. Mr and Mrs Porter supped, by engagement,
with their relation, Mr White. A few of my mother’s intimates, with our
beauteous Helen, staid supper here. The instant the brother and sister
were decamped, every body spoke at once, and all in jocose invective
upon your poor friend’s mischievous eyes, as they called them.
Sarah, smiling, claimed of me the promise I had asked of her, viz. that
she might accompany me into Italy. She claimed it with a rising blush,
and a tremulous motion in the eye-lid, visible only to my searching
glance, “which knows each line and trick of her sweet countenance;” but
to that glance it discovered a little latent chagrin, so natural to the
delicacy of virgin-pride.
Ah! sweet one, thought I, thou wilt never go into Italy under the Porter
auspices, if thou goest not a principal of the party. However, you may
be sure no such premature and needless assertion escaped my lip; yet,
vexed at an undiscerning idea of such apparently general influence, I
warmly declaimed upon its absurdity.
Honora gazed upon me while I was speaking, with eyes which bore animated
assent to my protest, and then turned them, with a smile of scorn, upon
the group, who were interrupting me with laughing, but earnest and
clamorous dissention. Throwing my arms round Honora’s neck, and kissing
her, I exclaimed, “Here is this child looking down upon you all as the
idlest dupes existing, to a style of behaviour which, being otherwise,
the man must have had too coarse a mind for the endurance of a woman of
delicacy.” Helen vowed she would find it all out at her uncle W----’s.
We shall know, added she, what our Italian prince thinks of these rival
sisters. “Rival!” I could have beat her.
Conceive this provoking Helen, rushing in as we were at breakfast, the
ensuing day, her fine face all in a glow, her hands spread: “It is
verily, and even so!--this irresistible madame Anne! Sarah must wear the
willow, but I think it will not be with a very aching heart.” “No,
indeed!” said the sweet maid, with a look of blended, or rather
instantaneously changing sensation, the result of which was ineffable.
It was a gleam of disdain, immediately softening into the most
affectionate sweetness, as her eyes remained fixed on me.
I asked Helen on what grounds she built her mighty probable conclusion.
“My uncle W----,” replied she, “told me he had asked Mr Porter how he
liked Mr and Mrs Seward?” “Extremely!” “And Miss Seward?” “I think her
charming.” (And Helen ran on in a string of hyperbole which I have no
inclination to repeat.) “The youngest?”--“She seems a modest, pleasing
young woman.”
“Now, for all this,” cried out Honora, “I don’t believe he likes Nancy
best.” I called her wiser than the aged, and grew so saucy to my mother,
that she looked grave, and took her pinch of snuff first at one nostril,
and then at the other, with swift and angry energy, and her eyes began
to grow dark and to flash. ’Tis an odd peculiarity; but the balls of my
mother’s eyes change from brown into black, when she feels either
indignation or bodily pain.
Reports of this imaginary preference of the eldest sister spread rapidly
through our little city; and, before night, it was asserted that he had
made proposals in form to Miss Seward.
Messages of enquiry concerning our healths only passed between us and
the Porters through the course of that day; but, at eleven the next
morning, the brother and sister called upon us to go with them to Mrs
Porter’s new house, just built, but not yet inhabited. He looked much
better; the mountebank had vanished with the black velvet. Helen joined
our party. Mr Porter’s whole attentions were devoted to Sarah; and
Honora and I exulted not a little over Helen about her prediction. He
took an opportunity of frankly offering his hand and heart to her
acceptance, ere we reached home, where he passed the remainder of the
day with us.
The general misconstruction of his civility to me had been much in his
favour. Hence maiden-pride was busy with its whisper, that now
rejection, on her part, would be deemed dislike on his, and preference
of another. So this circumstance acted as a powerful counterpoise to the
quack-doctor impression given by the black velvet and fine waistcoat,
which I had not been able to forbear imparting to her. She owned her
heart had recoiled a little from the unusual _tout-ensemble_ produced by
those habiliments. How much better did he look in his brown coat!
Behold him an accepted lover! and a very pressing one. He wants to hurry
the nuptials, saying he must be in Italy before winter. I am afraid I
see about him an impolite impatience of contradiction; a proud, not an
enamoured jealousy, and a considerable degree of peevishness. Heaven
protect my sweet Sarah’s peace!
When people are tolerably happy, how dangerous is a material change in
the habits of life! Ah! what halcyon days have this dear girl and I
passed with our little Honora, beneath the fair spires of tranquil
Lichfield! How immaterial were the clouds of an horizon so azure! Some
violence of temper, and vapourish despondency, from causes provokingly
trivial, on my mother’s part, some absurdities on my father’s; yet, left
so much to ourselves, and perfectly aware of the value of time, how
interesting have been our employments, how animated our pleasures!
You enquire after the duration of my enfranchisement from the fetters of
love. My heart has not resumed them; but, indeed, all its sensations
have, of late, been absorbed in my sister’s impending destiny.
The continual disgust you express to the joyless crowds and dissipation
of London, is worthy of an ingenuous mind, to which domestic pleasures
are, above all others, dear. Remember you have a relation in Lichfield,
who would be happy to receive you into her family.
In the dread of disappointment, I hardly dare trust myself with an idea
so agreeable, which flatters me with seeing you every day, and often all
the day, when I am in England.
In England!--Ah! now that my continental vision approaches its
realization, I begin to tremble at the thought how large a tract of seas
and shores, mountains and plains, must shortly divide me from the home
of my youth!--from my parents!--from my dear Honora!--That, during two
long years, I shall not see the rising sun slant his beams into the lake
of Stowe Valley, or change into pale gold the stone of the cathedral
turrets. Yet, though tempted, like the swallows, into warmer climates
afar off, my wings, any more than theirs, will not be cropt. I can fly
back again when I please. But Sarah, my dear Sarah! she must be borne
back by permission, and in a cage! a golden one, ’tis true, but still a
cage.