FRENCH POETS (continued.)
MADAME D'HOUDETOT 333
CONCLUSION.
HEROINES OF MODERN POETRY 342
THE LOVES OF THE POETS.
CHAPTER I.
CAREW'S CELIA.--LUCY SACHEVEREL.
From the reign of Charles the First may be dated that revolution in the
spirit and form of our lyric poetry, which led to its subsequent
degradation. The first Italian school of poetry, to which we owed our
Surreys, our Spensers, and our Miltons, had now declined. The high
contemplative tone of passion, the magnanimous and chivalrous homage
paid to women, gradually gave way before the French taste and French
gallantry, introduced, or at least encouraged and rendered fashionable,
by Henrietta Maria and her gay household. The muse of amatory poetry (I
presume there _is_ such a Muse, though I know not to which of the Nine
the title properly applies,) no longer walked the earth star-crowned and
vestal-robed, "col dir pien d'intelletti, dolci ed alti,"--"with love
upon her lips, and looks commercing with the skies;"--she suited her
garb to the fashion of the times, and tripped along in guise of an
Arcadian princess, half regal, half pastoral, trailing a sheep-hook
crowned with flowers, and sparkling with foreign ornaments,
Pale glistering pearls and rainbow-coloured gems.
Then in the "brisk and giddy paced times" of Charles the Second, she
flaunted an airy coquette, or an unblushing courtezan, ("unveiled her
eyes--unclasped her zone;") and when these sinful doings were banished,
she took the hue of the new morals--new fashions--new manners,--and we
find her a court prude, swimming in a hoop and red-heeled shoes,
"conscious of the rich brocade," and ogling behind her fan; or else in
the opposite extreme, like a _bergere_ in a French ballet, stuck over
with sentimental common-places and artificial flowers.
This, in general terms, was the progress of the lyric muse, from the
poets of Queen Elizabeth's days down to the wits of Queen Anne's. Of
course, there are modifications and exceptions, which will suggest
themselves to the poetical reader; but it does not enter into the plan
of this sketch to treat matters thus critically and profoundly. To
return then to the days of Charles the First.
It must be confessed that the union of Italian sentiment and imagination
with French vivacity and gallantry, was, in the commencement,
exceedingly graceful, before all poetry was lost in wit, and gallantry
sunk into licentiousness.
Carew, one of the first who distinguished himself in this style, has
been most unaccountably eclipsed by the reputation of Waller, and
deserved better than to have had his name hitched into line between
Sprat and Sedley;
Sprat, Carew, Sedley, and a hundred more.[1]
As an amatory poet, he is far superior to Waller: he had equal
smoothness and fancy, and much more variety, tenderness, and
earnestness; if his love was less ambitiously, and even less honourably
placed, it was, at least, more deep seated, and far more fervent. The
real name of the lady he has celebrated under the poetical appellation
of Celia, is not known--it is only certain that she was no "fabled
fair,"--and that his love was repaid with falsehood.
Hard fate! to have been once possessed
As victor of a heart,
Achieved with labour and unrest,
And then forced to depart!
From the irregular habits of Carew, it is possible he might have set the
example of inconstancy; and yet this is but a poor excuse for _her_.
Carew spent his life in the Court of Charles the First, who admired and
loved him for his wit and amiable manners, though he reproved his
_libertinage_. In the midst of that dissipation, which has polluted some
of his poems, he was full of high poetic feeling, and a truly generous
lover: for even while he wooes his fair one in the most soul-moving
terms of flowery adulation and tender entreaty, he puts her on her guard
against his own arts, and thus sweetly pleads against himself;
Rather let the lover pine,
Than his pale cheek should assign
A perpetual blush to thine!
And his admiration of female chastity is elsewhere frequently, as well
as forcibly, expressed.--With all his elegance and tenderness, Carew is
never feeble; and in his laments there is nothing whining or unmanly.
After lavishing at the feet of his mistress the most passionate
devotion, and the most exquisite flattery, hear him rebuke her pride
with all the spirit of an offended poet!
Know, Celia! since thou art so proud,
'Twas I that gave thee thy renown;
Thou hadst in the forgotten crowd
Of common beauties, lived unknown,
Had not my verse exhaled thy name,
And with it impt the wings of fame.
That killing power is none of thine,
I gave it to thy voice and eyes,
Thy sweets, thy graces, all are mine.
Thou art my star--shin'st in my skies;
Then dart not from thy borrowed sphere
Light'ning on him, who fixed thee there.
The identity of his Celia is now lost in a name,--and she deserves it:
perhaps had she appreciated the love she inspired, and been true to that
she professed, she might have won her elegant lover back to virtue, and
wreathed her fame with his for ever. Disappointed in the object of his
idolatry, Carew plunged madly into pleasure, and thus hastened his end.
He died, as Clarendon tells us, with "deep remorse for his past
excesses, and every manifestation of Christianity his best friends could
desire."
Besides his Celia, Carew has celebrated several other ladies of the
Court, and particularly Lady Mary Villars; the Countess of Anglesea;
Lady Carlisle, the theme of all the poets of her age, and her lovely
daughter, Lady Anne Hay, on whom he wrote an elegy, which begins with
some lines never surpassed in harmony and tenderness.
I heard the virgin's sigh! I saw the sleek
And polish'd courtier channel his fresh cheek
With real tears; the new betrothed maid
Smil'd not that day; the graver senate laid
Their business by; of all the courtly throng
Grief seal'd the heart, and silence bound the tongue!
....*....*....*....*
We will not bathe thy corpse with a forc'd tear,
Nor shall thy train borrow the blacks they wear;
Such vulgar spice and gums embalm not thee,
That art the theme of Truth, not Poetry.
Here Carew has fallen into the vulgar error, that _poetry_ and _fiction_
are synonymous.
Lady Anne Wentworth,[2] daughter of the first Earl of Cleveland, who,
after making terrible havoc in the heart of the Lord Chief Justice
Finch, married Lord Lovelace, is another of Carew's fair heroines. For
her marriage he wrote the epithalamium,
Break not the slumbers of the bride, &c.
As Carew is not a _popular_ poet, nor often found in a lady's library, I
add a few extracts of peculiar beauty.
TO CELIA.
Ask me no more where Jove bestows,
When June is past, the fading rose;
For in your beauties orient dee
Those flowers as in their causes sleep.
Ask me no more, whither do stray
The golden atoms of the day;
For in pure love, Heaven did prepare
Those powders to enrich your hair.
Ask me no more, whither doth haste
The nightingale, when May is past;
For in your sweet dividing throat
She winters, and keeps warm her note.
Ask me no more, where those stars light
That downwards fall in dead of night;
For in your eyes they sit--and there
Fix'd become, as in their sphere.
Ask me no more, if east or west,
The phoenix builds her spicy nest;
For unto you at last she flies,
And in your fragrant bosom dies.
....*....*....*....*
Ladies, fly from Love's smooth tale,
Oaths steep'd in tears do oft prevail;
Grief is infectious, and the air,
Inflam'd with sighs, will blast the fair:
Then stop your ears when lovers cry,
Lest yourself weep, when no soft eye
Shall with a sorrowing tear repay
That pity which you cast away.
....*....*....*....*
And when thou breath'st, the winds are ready straight
To filch it from thee; and do therefore wait
Close at thy lips, and snatching it from thence,
Bear it to heaven, where 'tis Jove's frankincense.
Fair goddess, since thy feature makes thee one,
Yet be not such for these respects alone;
But as you are divine in outward view,
So be within as fair, as good, as true.
....*....*....*....*
Hark! how the bashful morn in vain
Courts the amorous marigold
With sighing blasts and weeping vain;
Yet she refuses to unfold.
But when the planet of the day
Approacheth with his powerful ray,
Then she spreads, then she receives,
His warmer beams into her virgin leaves.
So shalt thou thrive in love, fond boy;
If thy tears and sighs discover
Thy grief, thou never shalt enjoy
The just reward of a bold lover:
But when with moving accents thou
Shall constant faith and service vow,
Thy Celia shall receive those charms
With open ears, and with unfolded arms.
The gallant and accomplished Colonel Lovelace was, I believe, a relation
of the Lord Lovelace who married Lady Anne Wentworth, and the friend and
contemporary of Carew. His fate and history would form the groundwork of
a romance; and in his person and character he was formed to be the hero
of one. He was as fearlessly brave as a knight-errant; so handsome in
person, that he could not appear without inspiring admiration; a
polished courtier; an elegant scholar; and to crown all, a lover and a
poet. He wrote a volume of poems, dedicated to the praises of Lucy
Sacheverel, with whom he had exchanged vows of everlasting love. Her
poetical appellation, according to the affected taste of the day, was
_Lucasta_. When the civil wars broke out, Lovelace devoted his life and
fortunes to the service of the King; and on joining the army, he wrote
that beautiful song to his mistress, which has been so often quoted,--
Tell me not, sweet, I am unkind,
That from the nunnery
Of thy chaste breast and quiet mind
To war and arms I fly.
True, a new mistress now I chase,
The first foe in the field;
And with a stronger faith embrace
A sword, a horse, a shield.
Yet this inconstancy is such
As you too shall adore;
I could not love thee, dear! so much,
Lov'd I not honour more.
The rest of his life was a series of the most cruel misfortunes. He was
imprisoned on account of his enthusiastic and chivalrous loyalty; but no
dungeon could subdue his buoyant spirit. His song "to Althea from
Prison," is full of grace and animation, and breathes the very soul of
love and honour.
When Love, with unconfined wings,
Hovers within my gates,
And my divine Althea brings
To whisper at the grates;
When I lie tangled in her hair,
And fettered to her eye,
The birds that wanton in the air,
Know no such liberty.
Stone walls do not a prison make,
Nor iron bars a cage;
Minds innocent and quiet take
That for a hermitage.
If I have freedom in my love,
And in my soul am free,--
Angels alone that soar above
Enjoy such liberty.
Lovelace afterwards commanded a regiment at the siege of Dunkirk, where
he was severely, and, as it was supposed, mortally wounded. False
tidings of his death were brought to England; and when he returned, he
found his Lucy ("O most wicked haste!") married to another; it was a
blow he never recovered. He had spent nearly his whole patrimony in the
King's service, and now became utterly reckless. After wandering about
London in obscurity and penury, dissipating his scanty resources in riot
with his brother cavaliers, and in drinking the health of the exiled
King and confusion to Cromwell, this idol of women and envy of men,--the
beautiful, brave, high-born, and accomplished Lovelace, died miserably
in a little lodging in Shoe Lane. He was only in his thirty-ninth year.
The mother of Lucy Sacheverel was Lucy, daughter of Sir Henry Hastings,
ancestor to the present Marquis of Hastings. How could she so belie her
noble blood? I would excuse her were it possible, for she must have been
a fine creature to have inspired and appreciated such a sentiment as
that contained in the first song; but facts cry aloud against her. Her
plighted hand was not transferred to another, when time had sanctified
and mellowed regret; but with a cruel and unfeminine precipitancy. Since
then her lover has bequeathed her name to immortality, he is
sufficiently avenged. Let her stand forth condemned and scorned for
ever, as faithless, heartless,--light as air, false as water, and rash
as fire.--I abjure her.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Pope.
[2] The only daughter of this Lady Anne Wentworth, married Sir W. Noel,
and was the ancestress of Lady Byron, the widow of the poet.
CHAPTER II.
WALLER'S SACHARISSA.
The courtly Waller, like the lady in the Maids' Tragedy, loved with his
ambition,--not with his eyes; still less with his heart. A critic, in
designating the poets of that time, says truly that "Waller still lives
in Sacharissa:" he lives in her name more than she does in his poetry;
he gave that name a charm and a celebrity which has survived the
admiration his verses inspired, and which has assisted to preserve them
and himself from oblivion. If Sacharissa had not been a real and an
interesting object, Waller's poetical praises had died with her, and she
with them. He wants earnestness; his lines were not inspired by love,
and they give "no echo to the seat where love is throned." Instead of
passion and poetry, we have gallantry and flattery; gallantry, which was
beneath the dignity of its object; and flattery, which was yet more
superfluous,--it was painting the lily and throwing perfume on the
violet.
Waller's Sacharissa was the Lady Dorothea Sydney, the eldest daughter of
the Earl of Leicester, and born in 1620. At the time he thought fit to
make her the object of his homage, she was about eighteen, beautiful,
accomplished, and admired. Waller was handsome, rich, a wit, and
five-and-twenty. He had ever an excellent opinion of himself, and a
prudent care of his worldly interests. He was a great poet, in days when
Spenser was forgotten, Milton neglected, and Pope unborn. He began by
addressing to her the lines on her picture,
Such was Philoclea and such Dorus' flame.[3]
Then we have the poems written at Penshurst,--in this strain,--
Ye lofty beeches! tell this matchless dame,
That if together ye fed all one flame,
It could not equalise the hundredth part
Of what her eyes have kindled in my heart, &c.
The lady was content to be the theme of a fashionable poet: but when he
presumed farther, she crushed all hopes with the most undisguised
aversion and disdain: thereupon he rails,--thus--
To thee a wild and cruel soul is given,
More deaf than trees, and prouder than the heaven;
Love's foe profest! why dost thou falsely feign
Thyself a Sydney? From which noble strain
He sprung that could so far exalt the name
Of love, and warm a nation with his flame.[4]
His mortified vanity turned for consolation to Amoret, (Lady Sophia
Murray,) the intimate companion of Sacharissa. He describes the
friendship between these two beautiful girls very gracefully.
Tell me, lovely, loving pair!
Why so kind, and so severe?
Why so careless of our care
Only to yourselves so dear?
....*....*....*....*
Not the silver doves that fly
Yoked to Cytherea's car;
Not the wings that lift so high,
And convey her son so far,
Are so lovely, sweet and fair,
Or do more ennoble love,
Are so choicely matched a pair,
Or with more consent do move.
And they are very beautifully contrasted in the lines to Amoret--
If sweet Amoret complains,
I have sense of all her pains;
But for Sacharissa, I
Do not only grieve, but die!
....*....*....*....*
'Tis amazement more than love,
Which her radiant eyes do move;
If less splendour wait on thine,
Yet they so benignly shine,
I would turn my dazzled sight
To behold their milder light.
....*....*....*....*
Amoret! as sweet and good
As the most delicious food,
Which but tasted does impart
Life and gladness to the heart.
Sacharissa's beauty's wine,
Which to madness doth incline,
Such a liquor as no brain
That is mortal, can sustain.
But Lady Sophia, though of a softer disposition, and not carrying in her
mild eyes the scornful and destructive light which sparkled in those of
Sacharissa, was not to be "berhymed" into love any more than her fair
friend. She applauded, but she repelled; she smiled, but she was cold.
Waller consoled himself by marrying a city widow, worth thirty thousand
pounds.
The truth is, that with all his wit and his elegance of fancy, of which
there are some inimitable examples,--as the application of the story of
Daphne, and of the fable of the wounded eagle; the lines on
Sacharissa's girdle; the graceful little song, "Go, lovely Rose," to
which I need only allude, and many others,--Waller has failed in
convincing us of his sincerity. As Rosalind says, "Cupid might have
clapped him on the shoulder, but we could warrant him heart-whole." All
along our sympathy is rather with the proud beauty, than with the
irritable self-complacent poet. Sacharissa might have been proud, but
she was not arrogant; her manners were gentle and retiring; and her
disposition rather led her to shun than to seek publicity and
admiration.
Such cheerful modesty, such humble state,
Moves certain love, but with as doubtful fate;
As when beyond our greedy reach, we see
Inviting fruit on too sublime a tree.[5]
The address to Sacharissa's _femme-de-chambre_, beginning, "Fair
fellow-servant," is not to be compared with Tasso's ode to the Countess
of Scandiano's maid, but contains some most elegant lines.
You the soft season know, when best her mind
May be to pity, or to love inclined:
In some well-chosen hour supply his fear,
Whose hopeless love durst never tempt the ear
Of that stern goddess; you, her priest, declare
What offerings may propitiate the fair:
Rich orient pearl, bright stones that ne'er decay,
Or polished lines, that longer last than they.
....*....*....*....*
But since her eyes, her teeth, her lip excels
All that is found in mines or fishes' shells,
Her nobler part as far exceeding these,
None but immortal gifts her mind should please.
These lines impress us with the image of a very imperious and disdainful
beauty; yet such was not the character of Sacharissa's person or
mind.[6] Nor is it necessary to imagine her such, to account for her
rejection of Waller, and her indifference to his flattery. There was a
meanness about the man: he wanted not birth alone, but all the high and
generous qualities which must have been required to recommend him to a
woman, who, with the blood and the pride of the Sydneys, inherited their
large heart and noble spirit. We are not surprised when she turned from
the poet to give her hand to Henry Spencer, Earl of Sunderland, one of
the most interesting and heroic characters of that time. He was then
only nineteen, and she was about the same age. This marriage was
celebrated with great splendour at Penshurst, July 30, 1639.
Waller, who had professed that his hope
Should ne'er rise higher
Than for a pardon that he dared admire,
pressed forward with his congratulations in verse and prose, and wrote
the following letter, full of pleasant imprecations, to Lady Lucy
Sydney, the younger sister of Sacharissa. It will be allowed that it
argues more wit and good nature than love or sorrow; and that he was
resolved that the willow should sit as gracefully and lightly on his
brow, as the myrtle or the bays.
"To my Lady Lucy Sydney, on the marriage of my Lady
Dorothea, her Sister.
"MADAM.--In this common joy, at Penshurst, I know none to
whom complaints may come less unseasonable than to your
Ladyship,--the loss of a bedfellow being almost equal to
that of a mistress; and therefore you ought, at least, to
pardon, if you consent not to the imprecations of the
deserted, which just Heaven, no doubt, will hear.
"May my Lady Dorothea, if we may yet call her so, suffer as
much, and have the like passion, for this young Lord, whom
she has preferred to the rest of mankind, as others have had
for her; and may this love, before the year come about, make
her taste of the first curse imposed on womankind--the pains
of becoming a mother. May her first-born be none of her own
sex, nor so like her, but that he may resemble her Lord as
much as herself.
"May she, that always affected silence and retiredness, have
the house filled with the noise and number of her children,
and hereafter of her grand-children, and then may she arrive
at that great curse, so much declined by fair ladies,--_old
age_. May she live to be very old, and yet seem young--be
told so by her glass--and have no aches to inform her of the
truth: and when she shall appear to be mortal, may her Lord
not mourn for her, but go hand-in-hand with her to that
place, where, we are told, there is neither marrying nor
giving in marriage, that being there divorced, we may all
have an equal interest in her again. My revenge being
immortal, I wish that all this may also befall their
posterity to the world's end and afterwards.
"To you, Madam, I wish all good things, and that this loss
may, in good time, be happily supplied with a more constant
bedfellow of the other sex.
"Madam, I humbly kiss your hands, and beg pardon for this
trouble from your Ladyship's most humble Servant,
E. WALLER."
Lady Sunderland had been married about three years; she and
her youthful husband lived in the tenderest union, and she
was already the happy mother of two fair infants, a son and a
daughter,--when the civil wars broke out, and Lord Sunderland
followed the King to the field. In the Sydney papers are some
beautiful letters to his wife, written from the camp before
Oxford. The last of these, which is in a strain of playful
and affectionate gaiety, thus concludes,--"Pray bless Poppet
for me![7] and tell her I would have wrote to her, but that,
upon mature deliberation, I found it uncivil to return an
answer to a lady in another character than her own, which I
am not yet learned enough to do.--I beseech you to present
his service to my Lady,[8] who is most passionately and
perfectly yours, &c.
"SUNDERLAND."
Three days afterwards this tender and gallant heart had ceased to beat:
he was killed in the battle of Newbury, at the age of three-and-twenty.
His unhappy wife, on hearing the news of his death, was prematurely
taken ill, and delivered of an infant, which died almost immediately
after its birth. She recovered, however, from a dangerous and protracted
illness, through the affectionate and unceasing attentions of her
mother, Lady Leicester, who never quitted her for several months. Her
father wrote her a letter of condolence, which would serve as a model
for all letters on similar occasions. "I know," he says, "that it is to
no purpose to advise you not to grieve; that is not my intention: for
such a loss as yours, cannot be received indifferently by a nature so
tender and sensible as yours," &c. After touching lightly and delicately
on the obvious sources of consolation, he reminds her, that her duty to
the dead requires her to be careful of herself, and not hazard her very
existence by the indulgence of grief. "You offend him whom you loved, if
you hurt that person whom he loved; remember how apprehensive he was of
your danger, how grieved for any thing that troubled you! I know you
lived happily together, so as nobody but yourself could measure the
contentment of it. I rejoiced at it, and did thank God for making me one
of the means to procure it for you," &c.[9]
Those who have known deep sorrow, and felt what it is to shrink with
shattered nerves and a wounded spirit from the busy hand of consolation,
fretting where it cannot heal, will appreciate such a letter as this.
Lady Sunderland, on her recovery, retired from the world, and centering
all her affections in her children, seemed to live only for them. She
resided, after her widowhood, at Althorpe, where she occupied herself
with improving the house and gardens. The fine hall and staircase of
that noble seat, which are deservedly admired for their architectural
beauty, were planned and erected by her. After the lapse of about
thirteen years, her father, Lord Leicester, prevailed on her to choose
one from among the numerous suitors who sought her hand: he dreaded,
lest on his death, she should be left unprotected, with her infant
children, in those evil times; and she married, in obedience to his
wish, Sir Robert Smythe, of Sutton, who was her second cousin, and had
long been attached to her. She lived to see her eldest son, the second
Earl of Sunderland, a man of transcendant talents, but versatile
principles, at the head of the government, and had the happiness to
close her eyes before he had abused his admirable abilities, to the
vilest purposes of party and court intrigue. The Earl was appointed
principal Secretary of State in 1682: his mother died in 1683.
There is a fine portrait of Sacharissa at Blenheim, of which there are
many engravings. It must have been painted by Vandyke, shortly after her
marriage, and before the death of her husband. If the withered branch,
to which she is pointing, be supposed to allude to her widowhood, it
must have been added afterwards, as Vandyke died in 1641, and Lord
Sunderland in 1643. In the gallery at Althorpe, there are three pictures
of this celebrated woman. One represents her in a hat, and at the age of
fifteen or sixteen, gay, girlish, and blooming: the second, far more
interesting, was painted about the time of her first marriage: it is
exceedingly sweet and lady-like. The features are delicate, with
redundant light brown air, and eyes and eyebrows of a darker hue; the
bust and hands very exquisite: on the whole, however, the high breeding
of the face and air is more conspicuous than the beauty of the person.
These two portraits are by Vandyke; nor ought I to forget to mention
that the painter himself was supposed to have indulged a respectful but
ardent passion for Lady Sunderland, and to have painted her portrait
literally _con amore_.[10]
A third picture represents her about the time of her second marriage:
the expression wholly changed,--cold, faded, sad, but still
sweet-looking and delicate. One might fancy her contemplating with a
sick heart, the portrait of Lord Sunderland, the lover and husband of
her early youth, and that of her unfortunate but celebrated brother,
Algernon Sydney; both which hang on the opposite side of the gallery.
The present Duke of Marlborough, and the present Earl Spencer, are the
lineal descendants of Waller's Sacharissa.
One little incident, somewhat prosaic indeed, proves how little heart
there was in Waller's poetical attachment to this beautiful and
admirable woman. When Lady Sunderland, after a retirement of thirty
years, re-appeared in the court she had once adorned, she met Waller at
Lady Wharton's, and addressing him with a smiling courtesy, she reminded
him of their youthful days:--"When," said she, "will you write such fine
verses on me again?"--"Madam," replied Waller, "when your Ladyship is
young and handsome again." This was contemptible and coarse,--the
sentiment was not that of a well-bred or a feeling man, far less that
of a lover or a poet,--no!
Love is not love,
That alters where it alteration finds.
One would think that the sight of a woman, whom he had last seen in the
full bloom of youth and glow of happiness,--who had endured, since they
parted, such extremity of affliction, as far more than avenged his
wounded vanity, might have awakened some tender thoughts, and called
forth a gentler reply. When some one expressed surprise to Petrarch,
that Laura, no longer young, had still power to charm and inspire him,
he answered, "Piaga per allentar d'arco non sana,"--"The wound is not
healed though the bow be unbent." This was in a finer spirit.
Something in the same character, as his reply to Lady Sunderland, was
Waller's famous repartee, when Charles the Second told him that his
lines on Oliver Cromwell were better than those written on his royal
self. "Please your Majesty, we poets succeed better in fiction than in
truth." Nothing could be more admirably _apropos_, more witty, more
courtier-like: it was only _false_, and in a poor, time-serving spirit.
It showed as much meanness of soul as presence of mind. What true poet,
who felt as a poet, would have said this?
FOOTNOTES:
[3] Alluding to the two heroines of Sir Philip Sydney's Arcadia;
Sacharissa was the grandniece of that _preux chevalier_, and hence the
frequent allusions to his name and fame.
[4] Alluding to Sir Philip Sydney.
[5] Lines on her picture.
[6] Sacharissa, the poetical name Waller himself gave her, signifies
_sweetness_.
[7] His infant daughter, then about two years old, afterwards
Marchioness of Halifax.
[8] The Countess's mother, Lady Leicester, who was then with her at
Althorpe.
[9] Sydney's Memorials, vol. ii. p. 271.
[10] See State Poems, vol. iii. p. 396.
CHAPTER III.
BEAUTIES AND POETS.
Nearly contemporary with Waller's Sacharissa lived several women of high
rank, distinguished as munificent patronesses of poetry, and favourite
themes of poets, for the time being. There was the Countess of Pembroke,
celebrated by Ben Jonson,
The subject of all verse,
Sydney's sister, Pembroke's mother.
There was the famous Lucy Percy, Countess of Carlisle, very clever, and
very fantastic, who aspired to be the Aspasia, the De Rambouillet of her
day, and did not quite succeed. She was celebrated by almost all the
contemporary poets, and even in French, by Voiture. There was Lucy
Harrington, Countess of Bedford, who, notwithstanding the accusation of
vanity and extravagance which has been brought against her, was an
amiable woman, and munificently rewarded, in presents and pensions, the
incense of the poets around her. I know not what her Ladyship may have
paid for the following exquisite lines by Ben Jonson; but the reader
will agree with me, that it could not have been _too_ much.
ON LUCY COUNTESS OF BEDFORD.
This morning, timely rapt with holy fire,
I thought to form unto my zealous muse
What kind of creature I could most desire
To honour, serve, and love; as poets use:
I meant to make her fair, and free, and wise,
Of greatest blood, and yet more good than great.
I meant the day-star should not brighter rise,
Nor lend like influence from his ancient seat.
I meant she should be courteous, facile, sweet,
Hating that solemn vice of greatness, _pride_;
I meant each softest virtue there should meet,
Fit in that softer bosom to reside.
Only a learned, and a manly soul
I purpos'd her; that should, with even powers,
The rock, the spindle, and the sheers controul
Of destiny, and spin her own free hours.
Such when I meant to feign, and wished to see,
My muse bade Bedford write,--and that was she.
There was also the "beautiful and every way excellent" Lady Anne
Rich,[11] the daughter-in-law of her who was so loved by Sir Philip
Sydney; and the memorable and magnificent--but somewhat masculine--Anne
Clifford, Countess of Cumberland, Pembroke, and Dorset, who erected
monuments to Spenser, Drayton, and Daniel; and above them all, though
living a little later, the Queen herself, Henrietta Maria, whose
feminine caprices, French graces, and brilliant eyes, rendered her a
very splendid and fruitful theme for the poets of the time.[12]
There was at this time a kind of traffic between rich beauties and poor
poets. The ladies who, in earlier ages, were proud in proportion to the
quantity of blood spilt in honour of their charms, were now seized with
a passion for being berhymed. Surrey, and his Geraldine, began this
taste in England by introducing the school of Petrarch: and Sir Philip
Sydney had entreated women to listen to those poets who promised them
immortality,--"For thus doing, ye shall be most fair, most wise, most
rich, most every thing!--ye shall dwell upon superlatives:"[13] and
women believed accordingly. In spite of the satirist, I do maintain,
that the love of praise and the love of pleasing are paramount in our
sex, both to the love of pleasure and the love of sway.
This connection between the high-born beauties and the poets was at
first delightful, and honourable to both: but, in time, it became
degraded and abused. The fees paid for dedications, odes, and sonnets,
were any thing but sentimental:--can we wonder if, under such
circumstances, the profession of a poet "was connected with personal
abasement, which made it disreputable?"[14] or, that women, while they
required the tribute, despised those who paid it,--and were paid for
it?--not in sweet looks, soft smiles, and kind wishes, but with silver
and gold, a cover at her ladyship's table "below the salt," or a bottle
of sack from my lord's cellar. It followed, as a thing of course, that
our amatory and lyric poetry declined, and instead of the genuine
rapture of tenderness, the glow of imagination, and all "the purple
light of love," we have too often only a heap of glittering and empty
compliment and metaphysical conceits.--It was a miserable state of
things.
It must be confessed that the aspiring loves of some of our poets have
not proved auspicious even when successful. Dryden married Lady
Elizabeth Howard, the daughter of the Earl of Berkshire: but not "all
the blood of all the Howards" could make her either wise or amiable: he
had better have married a milkmaid. She was weak in intellect, and
violent in temper. Sir Walter Scott observes, very feelingly, that "The
wife of one who is to gain his livelihood by poetry, or by any labour
(if any there be,) equally exhausting, must either have taste enough to
relish her husband's performances, or good nature sufficient to pardon
his infirmities." It was Dryden's misfortune, that Lady Elizabeth had
neither one nor the other.
Of all our really great poets, Dryden is the one least indebted to
woman, and to whom, in return, women are least indebted: he is almost
devoid of _sentiment_ in the true meaning of the word.--"His idea of
the female character was low;" his homage to beauty was not of that kind
which beauty should be proud to receive.[15] When he attempted the
praise of women, it was in a strain of fulsome, far-fetched, laboured
adulation, which betrayed his insincerity; but his genius was at home
when we were the subject of licentious tales and coarse satire.
It was through this inherent want of refinement and true respect for our
sex, that he deformed Boccaccio's lovely tale of Gismunda; and as the
Italian novelist has sins enough of his own to answer for, Dryden might
have left him the beauties of this tender story, unsullied by the
profane coarseness of his own taste. In his tragedies, his heroines on
stilts, and his drawcansir heroes, whine, rant, strut and rage, and tear
passion to tatters--to very rags; but love, such as it exists in gentle,
pure, unselfish bosoms--love, such as it glows in the pages of
Shakspeare and Spenser, Petrarch and Tasso,--such love
As doth become mortality
Glancing at heaven,
he could not imagine or appreciate, far less express or describe. He
could pourtray a Cleopatra; but he could not conceive a Juliet. His
ideas of our sex seem to have been formed from a profligate actress,[16]
and a silly, wayward, provoking wife; and we have avenged
ourselves,--for Dryden is not the poet of women; and, of all our English
classics, is the least honoured in a lady's library.
Dryden was the original of the famous repartee to be found, I believe,
in every jest book: shortly after his marriage, Lady Elizabeth, being
rather annoyed at her husband's very studious habits, wished herself _a
book_, that she might have a little more of his attention.--"Yes, my
dear," replied Dryden, "an almanack."--"Why an almanack?" asked the wife
innocently.--"Because then, my dear, I should change you once a year."
The laugh, of course, is on the side of the wit; but Lady Elizabeth was
a young spoiled beauty of rank, married to a man she loved; and her
wish, methinks, was very feminine and natural: if it was spoken with
petulance and bitterness, it deserved the repartee; if with tenderness
and playfulness, the wit of the reply can scarcely excuse its
ill-nature.
Addison married the Countess of Warwick. Poor man! I believe his
patrician bride did every thing but beat him. His courtship had been
long, timid, and anxious; and at length, the lady was persuaded to marry
him, on terms much like those on which a Turkish Princess is espoused,
to whom the Sultan is reported to pronounce, "Daughter, I give thee this
man to be thy slave."[17] They were only three years married, and those
were years of bitterness.
Young, the author of the Night Thoughts, married Lady Elizabeth Lee, the
daughter of the Earl of Litchfield, and grand-daughter of the too
famous, or more properly, infamous Duchess of Cleveland:--the marriage
was not a happy one. I think, however, in the two last instances, the
ladies were not entirely to blame.
But these, it will be said, are the wives of poets, not the loves of the
poets; and the phrases are not synonymus,--_au contraire_. This is a
question to be asked and examined; and I proceed to examine it
accordingly. But as I am about to take the field on new ground, it will
require a new chapter.
FOOTNOTES:
[11] Daughter of the first Earl of Devonshire, of the Cavendish family.
She was celebrated by Sidney Godolphin in some very sweet lines, which
contain a lovely female portrait. Waller's verses on her sudden death
are remarkable for a signal instance of the Bathos,
That horrid word, at once like lightning spread,
Struck all our ears,--_the Lady Rich is dead_!
[12] See Waller, Carew, D'Avenant: the latter has paid her some
exquisite compliments.
[13] Sir Philip Sydney's Works, "Defence of Poesie."
[14] Scott's Life of Dryden, p. 89.
[15] With the exception of the dedication of his Palamon and Arcite to
the young and beautiful Duchess of Ormonde (Lady Anne Somerset, daughter
of the Duke of Beaufort.)
[16] Mrs. Reeves, his mistress: she afterwards became a nun.
[17] Johnson's Life of Addison.
CHAPTER IV.
CONJUGAL POETRY.
If it be generally true, that Love, to be poetical, must be wreathed
with the willow and the cypress, as well as the laurel and the
myrtle,--still it is not _always_ true. It is not, happily, a necessary
condition, that a passion, to be constant, must be unfortunate; that
faithful lovers must needs be wretched; that conjugal tenderness and
"domestic doings" are ever dull and invariably prosaic. The witty
invectives of some of our poets, whose domestic misery stung them into
satirists, and blasphemers of a happiness denied to them, are familiar
in the memory--ready on the lips of common-place scoffers. But of
matrimonial poetics, in a far different style, we have instances
sufficient to put to shame such heartless raillery; that there are not
more, is owing to the reason which Klopstock has given, when writing of
his angelic Meta. "A man," said he, "should speak of his wife as seldom
and with as much modesty as of himself."
A woman is not under the same restraint in speaking of her husband; and
this distinction arises from the relative position of the two sexes. It
is a species of vain-glory to boast of a possession; but we may exult,
unreproved, in the virtues of him who disposes of our fate. Our
inferiority has here given to us, as women, so high and dear a
privilege, that it is a pity we have been so seldom called on to exert
it.
The first instance of conjugal poetry which occurs to me, will perhaps
startle the female reader, for it is no other than the gallant Ovid
himself. One of the epistles, written during his banishment to Pontus,
is addressed to his wife Perilla, and very tenderly alludes to their
mutual affection, and to the grief she must have suffered during his
absence.
And thou, whom young I left when leaving Rome,
Thou, by my woes art haply old become:
Grant, heaven! that such I may behold thy face,
And thy changed cheek, with dear loved kisses trace;
Fold thy diminished person, and exclaim,
Regret for me has thinned this beauteous frame.
Here then we have the most abandoned libertine of his profligate times
reduced at last in his old age, in disgrace and exile, to throw himself,
for sympathy and consolation, into the arms of a tender and amiable
wife; and this, after spending his life and talents in deluding the
tenderness, corrupting the virtue, and reviling the characters of women.
In truth, half a dozen volumes in praise of our sex could scarce say
more than this.
Every one, I believe, recollects the striking story of Paulina, the wife
of Seneca. When the order was brought from Nero that he should die, she
insisted upon dying with him, and by the same operation. She accordingly
prepared to be bled to death; but fainting away in the midst of her
sufferings, Seneca commanded her wounds to be bound up, and conjured her
to live. She lived therefore; but excessive weakness and loss of blood
gave her, during the short remainder of her life, that spectral
appearance which has caused her conjugal fidelity and her pallid hue to
pass into a proverb,--"As pale as Seneca's Paulina;" and be it
remembered, that Paulina was at this time young in comparison of her
husband, who was old, and singularly ugly.
This picturesque story of Paulina affects us in our younger years; but
at a later period we are more likely to sympathise with the wife of
Lucan, Polla Argentaria, who beheld her husband perish by the same death
as his uncle Seneca, and, through love for his fame, consented to
survive him. She appears to have been the original after whom he drew
his beautiful portrait of Cornelia, the wife of Pompey. Lucan had left
the manuscript of the Pharsalia in an imperfect state; and his wife, who
had been in its progress his amanuensis, his counsellor and confidant,
and therefore best knew his wishes and intentions, undertook to revise
and copy it with her own hand. During the rest of her life, which was
devoted to this dear and pious task, she had the bust of Lucan always
placed beside her couch, and his works lying before her: and in the form
in which Polla Argentaria left it, his great poem has descended to our
times.
I have read also, though I confess my acquaintance with the classics is
but limited, of a certain Latin poetess Sulpicia, who celebrated her
husband Calenas: and the poet Ausonius composed many fine verses in
praise of a beautiful and virtuous wife, whose name I forget.[18]
But I feel I am treading unsafe ground, rendered so both by my
ignorance, and by my prejudices as a woman. Generally speaking, the
heroines of classical poetry and history are not much to my taste; in
their best virtues they were a little masculine, and in their vices, so
completely unsexed, that one would rather not think of them--speak of
them--far less write of them.
* * * * *
The earliest instance I can recollect of modern conjugal poetry, is
taken from a country, and a class, and a time where one would scarce
look for high poetic excellence inspired by conjugal tenderness. It is
that of a Frenchwoman of high rank, in the fifteenth century, when
France was barbarised by the prevalence of misery, profligacy, and
bloodshed, in every revolting form.
Marguerite-Eleonore-Clotilde de Surville, of the noble family of Vallon
Chalys, was the wife of Berenger de Surville, and lived in those
disastrous times which immediately succeeded the battle of Agincourt.
She was born in 1405, and educated in the court of the Count de Foix,
where she gave an early proof of literary and poetical talent, by
translating, when eleven years old, one of Petrarch's Canzoni, with a
harmony of style wonderful, not only for her age, but for the times in
which she lived. At the age of sixteen she married the Chevalier de
Surville, then, like herself, in the bloom of youth, and to whom she
was passionately attached. In those days, no man of noble blood, who had
a feeling for the misery of his country, or a hearth and home to defend,
could avoid taking an active part in the scenes of barbarous strife
around him; and De Surville, shortly after his marriage, followed his
heroic sovereign, Charles the Seventh, to the field. During his absence,
his wife addressed to him the most beautiful effusions of conjugal
tenderness to be found, I think, in the compass of poetry. In the time
of Clotilde, French verse was not bound down by those severe laws and
artificial restraints by which it has since been shackled: we have none
of the prettinesses, the epigrammatic turns, the sparkling points, and
elaborate graces, which were the fashion in the days of Louis Quatorze.
Boileau would have shrugged up his shoulders, and elevated his eyebrows,
at the rudeness of the style; but Moliere, who preferred
J'aime mieux ma mie, oh gai!
to all the _fades galanteries_ of his contemporary _bels esprits_,
would have been enchanted with the naive tenderness, the freshness and
flow of youthful feeling which breathe through the poetry of Clotilde.
The antique simplicity of the old French lends it such an additional
charm, that though in making a few extracts, I have ventured to
modernize the spelling, I have not attempted to alter a word of the
original.
Clotilde has entitled her first epistle "Heroide a mon epoux Berenger;"
and as it is dated in 1422, she could not have been more than seventeen
when it was written. The commencement recalls the superscription of the
first letter of Heloise to Abelard.
Clotilde, au sien ami, douce mande accolade!
A son epoux, salut, respect, amour!
Ah, tandis qu'eploree et de coeur si malade,
Te quier[19] la nuit, te redemande au jour--
Que deviens? ou cours tu? Loin de ta bien-aimee,
Ou les destins, entrainent donc tes pas?
'Faut que le dise, helas! s'en crois la renommee
De bien long temps ne te reverrai pas?
She then describes her lonely state, her grief for his absence, her
pining for his return. She laments the horrors of war which have torn
him from her; but in a strain of eloquent poetry, and in the spirit of a
high-souled woman, to whom her husband's honour was dear as his life,
she calls on him to perform all that his duty as a brave knight, and his
loyalty to his sovereign require. She reminds him, with enthusiasm, of
the motto of French chivalry, "mourir plutot que trahir son devoir;"
then suddenly breaking off, with a graceful and wife-like modesty, she
wonders at her own presumption thus to address her lord, her husband,
the son of a race of heroes,--
Mais que dis! ah d'ou vient qu'orgueilleuse t'advise!
Toi, escolier! toi, l'enfant des heros
Pardonne maintes soucis a celle qui t'adore--
A tant d'amour, est permis quelque effroi.
She describes herself looking out from the tower of her castle to watch
the return of his banner; she tells him how she again and again visits
the scenes endeared by the remembrance of their mutual happiness. The
most beautiful touches of description are here mingled with the fond
expressions of feminine tenderness.
La, me dis-je, ai recu sa derniere caresse,
Et jusqu'aux os, soudain, me sens bruler.
Ici les ung ormeil, cercle par aubespine
Que doux printemps ja[20] courronnait de fleurs,
Me dit adieu--Sanglots suffoquent ma poctrine,
Et dans mes yeux roulent torrents de pleurs.
....*....*....*....*
D'autresfois, ecartant ces cruelles images,
Crois m'enfoncant au plus dense des bois,
Meler des rossignols aux amoureuse ramages,
Entre tes bras, mon amoureux voix:
Me semble ouir, echappant de ta bouche rosee,
Ces mots gentils, qui me font tressaillir,
Ainz[21] vois au meme instant que me suis abusee
Et soupirant, suis prete a defailler!
After indulging in other regrets, expressed with rather more naivete
than suits the present taste, she bursts into an eloquent invective
against the English invaders[22] and the factious nobles of France,
whose crimes and violence detained her husband from her arms.
Quand reverrai, dis-moi, ton si duisant[23] visage?
Quand te pourrai face a face mirer?
T'enlacer tellement a mon frement[24] corsage,
Que toi, ni moi, n'en puissions respirer?
and she concludes with this tender _envoi_:
Ou que suives ton roi, ne mets ta douce amie
En tel oubli, qu'ignore ou git ce lieu:
Jusqu'alors en souci, de calme n'aura mie,--
Plus ne t'en dis--que t'en souvienne! adieu!
Clotilde became a mother before the return of her husband; and the
delicious moment in which she first placed her infant in his father's
arms, suggested the verses she has entitled "Ballade a mon epoux, lors,
quand tournait apres un an d'absence, mis en ses bras notre fils
enfancon."
The pretty burthen of this little ballad has often been quoted.
Faut etre deux pour avoir du plaisir,
Plaisir ne l'est qu'autant qu'on le partage!
But, says the mother,
_Un tiers_ si doux ne fait tort a plaisir?
and should her husband be again torn from her, she will console herself
in his absence, by teaching her boy to lisp his father's name.
Gentil epoux! si Mars et ton courage
Plus contraignaient ta Clotilde a gemir,
De lui montrer en son petit langage,
A t'appeller ferai tout mon plaisir--
Plaisir ne l'est qu'autant qu'on le partage!
Among some other little poems, which place the conjugal and maternal
character of Clotilde in a most charming light, I must notice one more
for its tender and heartfelt beauty. It is entitled "Ballade a mon
premier ne," and is addressed to her child, apparently in the absence of
its father.
O cher enfantelet, vrai portrait de ton pere!
Dors sur le sein que ta bouche a presse!
Dors petit!--clos, ami, sur le sein de ta mere,
Tien doux oeillet, par le somme oppresse.
Bel ami--cher petit! que ta pupille tendre,
Goute un sommeil que plus n'est fait pour moi:
Je veille pour te voir, te nourir, te defendre,
Ainz qu'il est doux ne veiller que pour toi!
Contemplating him asleep, she says,
N'etait ce teint fleuri des couleurs de la pomme,
Ne le diriez vous dans les bras de la mort?
Then, shuddering at the idea she had conjured up, she breaks forth into
a passionate apostrophe to her sleeping child,
Arrete, cher enfant! j'en fremis toute entiere--
Reveille toi! chasse un fatal propos!
Mon fils .... pour un moment--ah revois la lumiere!
Au prix du tien, rends-moi tout mon repos!
Douce erreur! il dormait .... c'est assez, je respire.
Songes legers, flattez son doux sommeil;
Ah! quand verrai celui pour qui mon coeur soupire,
Au miens cotes jouir de son reveil?
....*....*....*....*
Quand reverrai celui dont as recu la vie?
Mon jeune epoux, le plus beau des humains
Oui--deja crois voir ta mere, aux cieux ravie,
Que tends vers lui tes innocentes mains.
Comme ira se duisant a ta premiere caresse!
Au miens baisers com' t'ira disputant!
Ainz ne compte, a toi seul, d'epuiser sa tendresse,--
A sa Clotilde en garde bien autant!
Along the margin of the original MS. of this poem, was written an
additional stanza, in the same hand, and quite worthy of the rest.
Voila ses traits ... son air ... voila tout ce que j'aime!
Feu de son oeil, et roses de son teint....
D'ou vient m'en ebahir? _autre qu'en tout lui meme,
Put-il jamais eclore de mon sein?_
This is beautiful and true; beautiful, because it is true. There is
nothing of fancy nor of art, the intense feeling gushes, warm and
strong, from the heart of the writer, and it comes home to the heart of
the reader, filling it with sweetness.--Am I wrong in supposing that the
occasional obscurity of the old French will not disguise the beauty of
the sentiment from the young wife or mother, whose eye may glance over
this page?
It is painful, it is pitiful, to draw the veil of death and sorrow over
this sweet picture.
What is this world? what asken men to have?
Now with his love--now in his cold grave,
Alone, withouten any companie![25]
De Surville closed his brief career of happiness and glory (and what
more than these could he have asked of heaven?) at the seige of Orleans,
where he fought under the banner of Joan of Arc.[26] He was a gallant
and a loyal knight; so were hundreds of others who then strewed the
desolated fields of France: and De Surville had fallen undistinguished
amid the general havoc of all that was noble and brave, if the love and
genius of his wife had not immortalised him.
Clotilde, after her loss, resided in the chateau of her husband, in the
Lyonnois, devoting herself to literature and the education of her son:
and it is very remarkable, considering the times in which she lived,
that she neither married again, nor entered a religious house. The fame
of her poetical talents, which she continued to cultivate in her
retirement, rendered her, at length, an object of celebrity and
interest. The Duke of Orleans happened one day to repeat some of her
verses to Margaret of Scotland, the first wife of Louis the Eleventh;
and that accomplished patroness of poetry and poets wrote her an
invitation to attend her at court, which Clotilde modestly declined. The
Queen then sent her, as a token of her admiration and friendship, a
wreath of laurel, surmounted with a bouquet of daisies, (Marguerites, in
allusion to the name of both,) the leaves of which were wrought in
silver and the flowers in gold, with this inscription: "Marguerite
d'Ecosse a Marguerite d'Helicon." We are told that Alain Chartier,
envious perhaps of these distinctions, wrote a satirical _quatrain_, in
which he accused Clotilde of being deficient in _l'air de cour_, and
that she replied to him, and defended herself in a very spirited
_rondeau_. Nothing more is known of the life of this interesting woman,
but that she had the misfortune to survive her son as well as her
husband; and dying at the advanced age of ninety, in 1495, she was
buried with them in the same tomb.[27]
FOOTNOTES:
[18] Elton's Specimens.
[19] Querir.
[20] Ja--jadis (the old French _ja_ is the Italian _gia_).
[21] Ainz:--cependant (the Italian _anzi_).
[22] She calls them "the Vultures of Albion."
[23] Duisant, _seduisant_.
[24] Fremissant.
[25] Chaucer.
[26] He perished in 1429, leaving his widow in her twenty-fourth year.
[27] Les Poetes Francais jusqu'a Malherbes, par Augin. A good edition of
the works of Clotilde de Surville was published at Paris in 1802, and
another in 1804. I believe both have become scarce. Her _Poesies_
consist of pastorals, ballads, songs, epistles, and the fragment of an
epic poem, of which the MS. is lost. Of her merit there is but one
opinion. She is confessedly the greatest poetical genius which France
could boast in a period of two hundred years; that is, from the decline
of the Provencal poetry, till about 1500.
CHAPTER V.
CONJUGAL POETRY CONTINUED.
VITTORIA COLONNA.
Half a century later, we find the name of an Italian poetess, as
interesting as our Clotilde de Surville, and far more illustrious.
Vittoria Colonna was not thrown, with all her eminent gifts and
captivating graces, among a rude people in a rude age; but all
favourable influences, of time and circumstances, and fortune,
conspired, with native talent, to make her as celebrated as she was
truly admirable. She was the wife of that Marquis of Pescara, who has
earned himself a name in the busiest and bloodiest page of history:--of
that Pescara who commanded the armies of Charles the Fifth in Italy,
and won the battle of Pavia, where Francis the First was taken prisoner.
But great as was Pescara as a statesman and a military commander, he is
far more interesting as the husband of Vittoria Colonna, and the laurels
he reaped in the battle-field, are perishable and worthless, compared to
those which his admirable wife wreathed around his brow. So thought
Ariosto; who tell us, that if Alexander envied Achilles the fame he had
acquired in the songs of Homer, how much more had he envied Pescara
those strains in which his gifted consort had exalted his fame above
that of all contemporary heroes? and not only rendered herself immortal;
Col dolce stil, di che il miglior non odo,
Ma puo qualunque, di cui parli o scriva
Trar dal sepolcro, e fa ch'eterno viva.
He prefers her to Artemisia, for a reason rather quaintly expressed,--
----Anzi
Tanto maggior, quanto e piu assai beli' opra,
Che por sotterra un uom, trarlo di sopra.
"So much more praise it is, to raise a man above the earth, than to bury
him under it." He compares her successively to all the famed heroines of
Greece and Rome,--to Laodamia, to Portia, to Arria, to Argia, to
Evadne,--who died with or for their husbands; and concludes,
Quanto onore a Vittoria e piu dovuto
Che di Lete, e del Rio che nove volte
L'ombre circonda, ha tratto il suo consorte,
Malgrado delle parche, e della morte.[28]
In fact, at a period when Italy could boast of a constellation of female
talent, such as never before or since adorned any one country at the
same time, and besides a number of women accomplished in languages,
philosophy, and the abstruser branches of learning, reckoned sixty
poetesses, nearly contemporary, there was not one to be compared with
Vittoria Colonna,--herself the theme of song; and upon whom her
enthusiastic countrymen have lavished all the high-sounding superlatives
of a language, so rich in expressive and sonorous epithets, that it
seems to multiply fame and magnify praise. We find Vittoria designated
in Italian biography, as _Diva_, divina, maravigliosa, elettissima,
illustrissima, virtuosissima, dottissima, castissima, gloriosissima, &c.
But immortality on earth, as in heaven, must be purchased at a certain
price; and Vittoria, rich in all the gifts which heaven, and nature, and
fortune combined, ever lavished on one of her sex, paid for her
celebrity with her happiness: for thus it has ever been, and must ever
be, in this world of ours, "ou les plus belles choses ont le pire
destin."
Her descent was illustrious on both sides. She was the daughter of the
Grand Constable Fabrizio Colonna, and of Anna di Montefeltro, daughter
of the Duke of Urbino, and was born about 1490. At four years old she
was destined to seal the friendship which existed between her own family
and that of d'Avalo, by a union with the young Count d'Avalo, afterwards
Marquis of Pescara, who was exactly her own age. Such infant marriages
are contracted at a fearful risk; yet, if auspicious, the habit of
loving from an early age, and the feeling of settled appropriation,
prevents the affections from wandering, and plant a mutual happiness
upon a foundation much surer than that of fancy or impulse. It was so in
this instance,
Conforme era l'etate
Ma 'l pensier piu conforme.
Vittoria, from her childish years, displayed the most extraordinary
talents, combined with all the personal charms and sweet proprieties
more characteristic of her sex. When not more than fifteen or sixteen,
she was already distinguished among her countrywomen, and sought even by
sovereign princes. The Duke of Savoy and the Duke of Braganza made
overtures to obtain her hand; the Pope himself interfered in behalf of
one of these princes; but both were rejected. Vittoria, accustomed to
consider herself as the destined bride of young d'Avalo, cultivated for
him alone those talents and graces which others admired and coveted, and
resolved to wait till her youthful lover was old enough to demand the
ratification of their infant vows. She says of herself,
Appena avean gli spirti intera vita,
Quando il mio cor proscrisse ogn' altro oggetto.
Pescara had not the studious habits or literary talents of his betrothed
bride; but his beauty of person, his martial accomplishments, and his
brave and noble nature, were precisely calculated to impress her
poetical imagination, as contrasted with her own gentler and more
contemplative character. He loved her too with the most enthusiastic
adoration; he even prevailed on their mutual parents to anticipate the
period fixed for their nuptials; and at the age of seventeen they were
solemnly united.
The first four years after their marriage were chiefly spent in a
delightful retreat in the island of Ischia, where Pescara had a palace
and domain. Here, far from the world, and devoted to each other, and to
the most elegant pursuits, they seem to have revelled in such bliss as
poets fancy and romancers feign. Hence the frequent allusions to the
island of Ischia, in Vittoria's later poems, as a spot beloved by her
husband, and the scene of their youthful happiness. One thing alone was
wanting to complete this happiness: Heaven denied them children. She
laments this disappointment in the 22d Sonnet, where she says, that
"since she may not be the mother of sons, who shall inherit their
father's glory, yet she will at least, by uniting her name with his in
verse, become the mother of his illustrious deeds and lofty fame."
Pescara, whose active and martial genius led him to take a conspicuous
part in the wars which then agitated Italy, at length quitted his wife
to join the army of the Emperor. Vittoria, with tears, resigned him to
his duties. On his departure she presented him with many tokens of love,
and among the rest, with a banner, and a dressing-gown richly
embroidered; on the latter she had worked with her own hand, in silken
characters, the motto, "Nunquam minus otiosus quam cum otiosus
erat."[29] She also presented him with some branches of palm, "In segno
di felice augurio;" but her bright anticipations were at first cruelly
disappointed. Pescara, then in his twenty-second year, commanded as
general of cavalry at the battle of Ravenna, where he was taken
prisoner, and detained at Milan. While in confinement, he amused his
solitude by showing his Vittoria that he had not forgotten their mutual
studies and early happiness at Ischia. He composed an essay or dialogue
on Love, which he addressed to her; and which, we are told, was
remarkable for its eloquence and spirit as a composition, as well as for
the most high-toned delicacy of sentiment. He was not liberated till the
following year.
Vittoria had taken for her _devise_, such was the fashion of the day, a
little Cupid within a circle formed by a serpent, with the motto, "Quem
peperit virtus prudentia servet amorem,"--"The love which virtue
inspired, discretion shall guard;" and during her husband's absence,
she lived in retirement, principally in her loved retreat in the island
of Ischia, devoting her time to literature, and to the composition of
those beautiful Sonnets in which she celebrated the exploits and virtues
of her husband. He, whenever his military or political duties allowed of
a short absence from the theatre of war, flew to rejoin her; and these
short and delicious meetings, and the continual dangers to which he was
exposed, seem to have kept alive, through many long years, all the
romance and fervour of their early love. In the 79th Sonnet, Vittoria so
beautifully alludes to one of these meetings, that I am tempted to
extract it, in preference to others better known, and by many esteemed
superior as compositions.
Qui fece il mio bel sol a noi ritorno,
Di Regie spoglie carco, e ricche prede:
Ahi! con quanto dolor, l'occhio rivede
Quei lochi, ov' ei mi fea gia il giorno!
Di mille glorie allor cinto d' intorno,
E d'onor vero, alla piu altiera sede
Facean delle opre udite intera fede
L'ardito volto, il parlar saggio adorno.
Vinto da prieghi miei, poi mi mostrava
Le belle cicatrici, e 'l tempo, e 'l modo
Delle vittorie sue tante, e si chiare.
Quanta pena or mi da, gioja mi dava;
E in questo, e in quel pensier, piangendo gode
Tra poche dolci, e assai lagrime amare.
This description of her husband returning, loaded with spoils and
honours;--of her fond admiration, mingled with a feminine awe, of his
warlike demeanor;--of his yielding, half reluctant, to her tender
entreaties, and showing her the wounds he had received in battle;--then
the bitter thoughts of his danger and absence, mingling with, and
interrupting these delicious recollections of happiness,--are all as
true to feeling as they are beautiful in poetry.
After a short career of glory, Pescara was at length appointed
commander-in-chief of the Imperial armies, and gained the memorable
battle of Pavia. Feared by his enemies, and adored by his soldiers, his
power was at this time so great, that many attempts were made to shake
his fidelity to the Emperor. Even the kingdom of Naples was offered to
him if he would detach himself from the party of Charles the Fifth.
Pescara was not without ambition, though without "the ill that should
attend it." He wavered--he consulted his wife;--he expressed his wish to
place her on a throne she was so fitted to adorn. That admirable and
high-minded woman wrote to confirm him in the path of honour, and
besought him not to sell his faith and truth, and his loyalty to the
cause in which he had embarked, for a kingdom. "For me," she said,
"believe that I do not desire to be the wife of a King; I am more proud
to be the wife of that great captain, who in war, by his valour, and in
peace, by his magnanimity, has vanquished the greatest monarchs."[30]
On receiving this letter, Pescara hastened to shake off the subtle
tempters round him; but he had previously become so far entangled, that
he did not escape without some impeachment of his before stainless
honour. The bitter consciousness of this, and the effects of some
desperate wounds he had received at the battle of Pavia, which broke out
afresh, put a period to his life at Milan, in his thirty-fifth year.[31]
The Marchesana was at Naples when the news of his danger arrived. She
immediately set out to join him; but was met at Viterbo by a courier,
bearing the tidings of his death. On hearing this intelligence, she
fainted away; and being brought a little to herself, sank into a stupor
of grief, which alarmed her attendants for her reason or her life.
Seasonable tears at length came to her relief; but her sorrow, for a
long, long time, admitted no alleviation. She retired, after her first
overwhelming anguish had subsided, to her favourite residence in the
isle of Ischia, where she spent, almost uninterruptedly, the first seven
years of her widowhood.
Being only in her thirty-fifth year, in the prime of her life and
beauty, and splendidly dowered, it was supposed that she would marry
again, and many of the Princes of Italy sought her hand; her brothers
urged it; but she replied to their entreaties and remonstrances, with a
mixture of dignity and tenderness, that "Though her noble husband might
be by others reputed dead, he still lived to her, and to her heart."[32]
And in one of her poems, she alludes to these attempts to shake her
constancy. "I will preserve," she says, "the title of a faithful wife to
my beloved,--a title dear to me beyond every other: and on this
island-rock,[33] once so dear to _him_, will I wait patiently, till time
brings the end of all my griefs, as once of all my joys."
D'arder sempre piangendo non mi doglio!
Forse avro di fedele il titol vero,
Caro a me sopra ogn' altro eterno onore.
Non cambiero la fe,--ne questo scoglio
Ch' al _mio_ sol piacque, ove finire spero
Come le dolci gia, quest' amare ore![34]
This Sonnet was written in the seventh year of her widowhood. She says
elsewhere, that her heart having once been so nobly bestowed, disdains a
meaner chain; and that her love had not ceased with the death of its
object.--
Di cosi nobil fiamma amore mi cinse,
Ch' essendo spenta, in me viva l' ardore.
There is another, addressed to the poet Molza, in which she alludes to
the fate of his parents, who, by a singular providence, both expired in
the same day and hour: such a fate appeared to her worthy of envy; and
she laments very tenderly that Heaven had doomed her to survive him with
whom her heart lay buried. There are others addressed to Cardinal Bembo,
in which she thus excuses herself for making Pescara the subject of her
verse.
Scrivo sol per sfogar l' interna doglia;
La pura fe, l' ardor, l' intensa pena
Mi scusa appo ciascun; che 'l grave pianto
E tal, che tempo, ne raggion l' affrena.
There is also a Canzone by Vittoria, full of poetry and feeling, in
which she alludes to the loss of that beauty which once she was proud to
possess, because it was dear in her husband's sight. "Look down upon
me," she exclaims, "from thy seat of glory! look down upon me with those
eyes that ever turned with tenderness on mine! Behold, how misery has
changed me; how all that once was beauty is fled!--and yet I am--I am
the same!"--(Io son--io son ben dessa!)--But no translation--none at
least that I could execute--would do justice to the deep pathos, the
feminine feeling, and the eloquent simplicity of this beautiful and
celebrated poem. The reader will find it in Mathias's collection.[35]
After the lapse of several years, her mind, elevated by the very nature
of her grief, took a strong devotional turn: and from this time, we
find her poetry entirely consecrated to sacred subjects.
The first of these _Rime spirituali_ is exquisitely beautiful. She
allows that the anguish she had felt on the death of her noble husband,
was not alleviated, but rather nourished and kept alive in all its first
poignancy, by constantly dwelling on the theme of his virtues and her
own regrets; that the thirst of fame, and the possession of glory, could
not cure the pining sickness of her heart; and that she now turned to
Heaven as a last and best resource against sorrow.[36]
Poiche 'l mio casto amor, gran tempo tenne
L' alma di fama accesa, ed ella un angue
In sen nudrio, per cui dolente or langue,--
Volta al Signor, onde il remedio venne.
....*....*....*....*
Chiamar qui non convien Parnasso o Delo;
Ch' ad altra acqua s' aspira, ad altro monte
Si poggia, u' piede uman per se non sale.
Not the least of Vittoria's titles to fame, was the intense adoration
with which she inspired Michel Angelo. Condivi says he was enamoured of
her divine talents. "In particolare egli amo grandemente la Marchesana
di Pescara, del cui divino spirito era inamorato:" and he makes use of a
strong expression to describe the admiration and friendship she felt for
him in return. She was fifteen years younger than Michel Angelo, who not
only employed his pencil and his chisel for her pleasure, or at her
suggestion, but has left among his poems several which are addressed to
her, and which breathe that deep and fervent, yet pure and reverential
love she was as worthy to inspire as he was to feel.
I cannot refuse myself the pleasure of adding here one of the Sonnets,
addressed by Michel Angelo to the Marchesana of Pescara, as translated
by Wordsworth, in a peal of grand harmony, almost as _literally_
faithful to the expression as to the spirit of the original.
SONNET.
Yes! hope may with my strong desire keep pace,
And I be undeluded, unbetrayed;
For if of our affections none find grace
In sight of Heaven, then, wherefore had God made
The world which we inhabit? Better plea
Love cannot have, than that in loving thee
Glory to that eternal peace is paid,
Who such divinity to thee imparts
As hallows and makes pure all gentle hearts.
His hope is treacherous only whose love dies
With beauty, which is varying every hour:
But, in chaste hearts, uninfluenced by the power
Of outward change, there blooms a deathless flower,
That breathes on earth the air of Paradise.
He stood by her in her last moments; and when her lofty and gentle
spirit had forsaken its fair tenement, he raised her hand and kissed it
with a sacred respect. He afterwards expressed to an intimate friend his
regret, that being oppressed by the awful feelings of that moment, he
had not, for the first and last time, pressed his lips to hers.
Vittoria had another passionate admirer in Galeazzo di Tarsia, Count of
Belmonte in Calabria, and an excellent poet of that time.[37] His
attachment was as poetical, but apparently not quite so Platonic, as
that of Michel Angelo. His beautiful Canzone beginning,
A qual pietra sommiglia
La mia bella Colonna,
contains lines rather more impassioned than the modest and grave
Vittoria could have approved: for example--
Con lei foss' io da che si parte il sole,
E non ci vedesse altri che le stelle,
--Solo una notte--e mai non fosse l' Alba!
Marini and Bernardo Tasso were also numbered among her poets and
admirers.
Vittoria Colonna died at Rome, in 1547. She was suspected of favouring
in secret the reformed doctrines; but I do not know on what authority
Roscoe mentions this. Her noble birth, her admirable beauty, her
illustrious marriage, her splendid genius, (which made her the worship
of genius--and the theme of poets,) have rendered her one of the most
remarkable of women;--as her sorrows, her conjugal virtues, her
innocence of heart, and elegance of mind, have rendered her one of the
most interesting.
Where could she fix on mortal ground
Those tender thoughts and high?
Now peace, the woman's heart hath found,
And joy, the poet's eye![38]
Antiquity may boast its heroines; but it required virtues of a higher
order to be a Vittoria Colonna, or a Lady Russel, than to be a Portia
or an Arria. How much more graceful, and even more sublime, is the moral
strength, the silent enduring heroism of the Christian, than the stern,
impatient defiance of destiny, which showed so imposing in the heathen!
How much more difficult is it sometimes to live than to die!
Piu val d' ogni vittoria un bel soffirire.
Or as Campbell has expressed nearly the same sentiment,
To bear, is to conquer our fate!
FOOTNOTES:
[28] Orlando Furioso, canto 37.
[29] "Never less idle than when idle."
[30] "Non desidero d'esser moglie d'un re; bensi di quel gran capitano,
il quale non solamente in guerra con valor, ma ancora in pace con la
magnanimita ha saputo vincere i re piu grande." (Vita di Vittoria
Colonna, da Giambattista Rota.)
[31] See in Robertson's Charles V. an account of the generous conduct of
Pescara to the Chevalier Bayard.
[32] Che il suo sole, quantunque dagli altri fosse riputato morte,
appresso di lei sempre vivea. (Vita.)
[33] Ischia.
[34] Sonnet 74.
[35] Componimenti Lirici, vol. i. 144.
[36] L'honneur d'avoir ete, entre toutes les poetes, la premiere a
composer un recueil de poesies sacrees, appartient, toute entiere, a
Vittoria Colonna. (See Ginguene.) Her masterpieces, in this style, are
said to be the sonnet on the death of our Saviour.--
"Gli Angeli eletti al gran bene infinito;"
and the hymn
"Padre Eterno del cielo!"
which is sublime: it may be found in Mathias's Collection, vol. iii.
[37] Died 1535.
[38] Mrs. Hemans.
CHAPTER VI.
CONJUGAL POETRY CONTINUED.
VERONICA GAMBARA.
Vittoria Colonna, and her famed friend and contemporary, Veronica,
Countess of Correggio, are inseparable names in the history of Italian
literature, as living at the same time, and equally ornaments of their
sex. They resembled each other in poetical talent, in their domestic
sorrows and conjugal virtues: in every other respect the contrast is
striking. Vittoria, with all her genius, seems to have been as lovely,
gentle, and feminine a creature as ever wore the form of woman.
No lily--no--nor fragrant hyacinth,
Had half such softness, sweetness, blessedness.
Veronica, on the contrary, was one,
----to whose masculine spirit
To touch the stars had seemed an easy flight.
She added to her talents and virtues, strong passions,--and happily also
sufficient energy of mind to govern and direct them. She had not
Vittoria's personal charms: it is said, that if her face had equalled
her form, she would have been one of the most beautiful women of her
time; but her features were irregular, and her grand commanding figure,
which in her youth was admired for its perfect proportions, grew large
and heavy as she advanced in life. She retained, however, to the last,
the animation of her countenance, the dignity of her deportment, and
powers of conversation so fascinating, that none ever approached her
without admiration, or quitted her society without regret.
Her verses have not the polished harmony and the graceful suavity of
Vittoria's; but more vigour of expression, and more vivacity of
colouring. Their defects were equally opposed: the simplicity of
Veronica sometimes borders upon harshness and carelessness; the uniform
sweetness of Vittoria is sometimes too elaborate and artificial.
Veronica Gambara was born in 1485. Her _fortunate_ parents, as her
biographer expresses it,[39] were Count Gian Francisco Gambara, and Alda
Pia. In her twenty-fifth year, when already distinguished as a poetess,
and a woman of great and various learning, she married Ghiberto Count of
Correggio, to whom she appears to have been attached with all the
enthusiasm of her character, and by whom she was tenderly loved in
return. After the birth of her second son, she was seized with a
dangerous disorder, of what nature we are not told. The physicians
informed her husband that they did not despair of her recovery, but that
the remedies they should be forced to employ would probably preclude all
hope of her becoming again a mother. The Count, who had always wished
for a numerous offspring, ordered them to employ these remedies
instantly, and save her to him at every other risk. She recovered; but
the effects upon her constitution were such as had been predicted.
Like Vittoria Colonna, she made the personal qualities and renown of her
husband the principal subjects of her verse. She dwells particularly on
his fine dark eyes, expressing very gracefully the various feelings they
excited in her heart, whether clouded with thought, or serene with
happiness, or sparkling with affection.[40] She devotes six Sonnets and
a Madrigal to this subject; and if we may believe his poetical and
admiring wife, these "occhi stellante" could combine more variety of
expression in a single glance than ever did eyes before or since.
Lieti, mesti, superbi, umili, altieri,
Vi mostrate in un punto; onde di speme
E di timor m' empiete.--
There is great power and pathos in one of her poems, written on his
absence.
O Stella! O Fato! del mio mal si avaro!
Ch' l mio ben m'allontani, anzi m'involi--
Fia mai quel di ch' io lo riveggia o mora?[41]
Veronica lost her husband, after nine years of the happiest union.[42]
He gave her an incontrovertible proof of his attachment and boundless
confidence, by leaving her his sole executrix, with the government of
Correggio, and the guardianship of his children during their minority.
Her grief on this occasion threw her into a dangerous and protracted
fever, which during the rest of her life attacked her periodically. She
says in one of her poems, that nothing but the fear of not meeting her
beloved husband in Paradise prevented her from dying with him. She not
only vowed herself to a perpetual widowhood, but to a perpetual
mourning; and the extreme vivacity of her imagination was displayed in
the strange trappings of woe with which she was henceforth surrounded.
She lived in apartments hung and furnished with black, and from which
every object of luxury was banished: her liveries, her coach, her
horses, were of the same funereal hue. There is extant a curious letter
addressed by her to Ludovico Rossi, in which she entreats her dear
Messer Ludovico, by all their mutual friendship, to procure, at any
price, a certain black horse, to complete her set of carriage
horses--"piu che notte oscuri, conformi, proprio a miei travagli." Over
the door of her sleeping-room she inscribed the distich which Virgil has
put into the mouth of Dido.
Ille meos, primus qui me sibi junxit, amores
Abstulit: ille habeat secum servetque sepulchro!
He who once had my vows, shall ever have,
Beloved on earth and worshipped in the grave!
But, unlike Dido, she did not "profess too much." She kept her word.
Neither did she neglect her duties; but more fortunate in one respect
than her fair and elegant friend the Marchesana, she had two sons, to
whose education she paid the utmost attention, while she administered
the government of Correggio with equal firmness and gentleness. Her
husband had left a daughter,[43] whom she educated and married with a
noble dower. Her eldest son, Hypolito, became a celebrated military
commander; her youngest and favourite son, Girolamo, was created a
cardinal. Wherever Veronica loved, it seems to have been with the same
passionate _abandon_ which distinguished her character in every thing.
Writing to a friend to recommend her son to his kind offices, she
assures him that "he (her son) is not only a part of herself--but rather
_herself_. Remember," she says, "Ch'egli e la Veronica medesima,"--a
strong and tender expression.
We find her in correspondence with all the most illustrious characters,
political and literary, of that time; and chiefly with Ariosto, Bembo,
Molza, Sanazzaro, and Vittoria Colonna. Ariosto has paid her an elegant
compliment in the last canto of the Orlando Furioso. She is one among
the company of beautiful and accomplished women and noble knights, who
hail the poet, at the conclusion of his work, as a long-travelled
mariner is welcomed to the shore:
Veronica da Gambara e con loro
Si grata a Febo, e al santo aonio coro.
This was distinction enough to immortalize her, if she had not already
immortalized herself.
Veronica was not a prolific poetess; but the few Sonnets she has left,
have a vigour, a truth and simplicity, not often met with among the
_rimatori_ of that rhyming age. She has written fewer good poems than
Vittoria Colonna, but among them, two which are reckoned superior to
Vittoria's best,--one addressed to the rival monarchs, Charles the Fifth
and Francis the First, exhorting them to give peace to Italy, and unite
their forces to protect civilized Europe from the incursions of the
infidels; the other, which is exquisitely tender and picturesque, was
composed on revisiting her native place Brescia, after the death of her
husband.
Poi che per mia ventura a veder torno, &c.
It may be found in the collection of Mathias.
Veronica da Gambara died in 1550, and was buried by her husband.
It should seem that poetical talents and conjugal truth and tenderness
were inherent in the family of Veronica. Her niece, Camilla Valentini,
the authoress of some very sweet poems, which are to be found in various
_Scelte_, married the Count del Verme, who died after a union of several
years. She had flung herself, in a transport of grief, on the body of
her husband; and when her attendants attempted to remove her, they found
her--dead! Even in that moment of anguish her heart had broken.
O judge her gently, who so deeply loved!
_Her_, who in reason's spite, without a crime,
Was in a trance of passion thus removed!
I have been detained too long in "the sweet South;" yet, before we quit
it for the present, I must allude to one or two names which cannot be
entirely passed over, as belonging to the period of which we have been
speaking--the golden age of Italy and of literature.
Bernardino Rota, who died in 1575, a poet of considerable power and
pathos, has left a volume of poems, "In vita e in morte di Porzia
Capece;" she was a beautiful woman of Naples, whom he loved and
afterwards married, and who was snatched from him in the pride of her
youth and beauty. Among his Sonnets, I find one peculiarly striking,
though far from being the best. The picture it presents, with all its
affecting accompaniments, and the feelings commemorated, are obviously
taken from nature and reality. The poet--the husband--approaches to
contemplate the lifeless form of his Portia, and weeping, he draws from
her pale cold hand the nuptial ring, which he had himself placed on her
finger with all the fond anticipations of love and hope--the pledge of a
union which death alone could dissolve: and now, with a breaking heart,
he transfers it to his own. Such is the subject of this striking poem,
which, with some few faults against taste, is still singularly
picturesque and eloquent, particularly the last six lines.--
SONETTO.
Questa scolpita in oro, amica fede,
Che santo amor nel tuo bel dito pose,
O prima a me delle terrene cose!
Donna! caro mio pregio,--alta mercede--
Ben fu da te serbata; e ben si vede
Che al commun' voler' sempre rispose,
Del di ch' il ciel nel mio pensier' t' ascose,
E quanto puote dar, tutto mi diede!
Ecco ch' io la t' invola--ecco ne spoglio
Il freddo avorio che l' ornava; e vesto
La mia, piu assai che la tua, mano esangue.
Dolce mio furto! finche vivo io voglio
Che tu stia meco--ne le sia molesto
Ch' or di pianto ti bagni,--e poi di sangue!
LITERAL TRANSLATION.
"This circlet of sculptured gold--this pledge which sacred
affection placed on that fair hand--O Lady! dearest to me of
all earthly things,--my sweet possession and my lovely
prize,--well and faithfully didst thou preserve it! the bond
of a mutual love and mutual faith, even from that hour when
Heaven bestowed on me all it could bestow of bliss. Now
then--O now do I take it from thee! and thus do I withdraw
it from the cold ivory of that hand which so adorned and
honoured it. I place it on mine own, now chill, and damp,
and pale as thine.--O beloved theft!--While I live thou
shall never part from me. Ah! be not offended if thus I
stain thee with these tears,--and soon perhaps with life
drops from my heart."
Castiglione, besides being celebrated as the finest gentleman of his
day, and the author of that code of all noble and knightly
accomplishments, of perfect courtesy and gentle bearing--"Il
Cortigiano," must have a place among our conjugal poets. He had married
in 1516, Hypolita di Torrello, whose accomplishments, beauty, and
illustrious birth, rendered her worthy of him. It appears, however, that
her family, who were of Mantua, could not bear to part with her,[44] and
that after her marriage, she remained in that city, while Castiglione
was ambassador at Rome. This separation gave rise to a very impassioned
correspondence; and the tender regrets and remonstrances scattered
through her letters, he transposed into a very beautiful poem, in the
form of an epistle from his wife. It may be found in the appendix to
Roscoe's Leo X. (No. 196.) Hypolita died in giving birth to a daughter,
after a union of little more than three years, and left Castiglione for
some time inconsolable. We are particularly told of the sympathy of the
Pope and the Cardinals on this occasion, and that Leo condoled with him
in a manner equally unusual and substantial, by bestowing on him
immediately a pension of two hundred gold crowns.
FOOTNOTES:
[39] Zamboni.
[40] "Molto vagamente spiegando i varj e differenti effetti che andavano
cagionando nel di lei core, a misura che essi eran torbidi, o lieti, o
sereni"--_See her Life by Zamboni._
[41] Sonnet 16.
[42] Ghiberto da Correggio died 1518.
[43] Constance; by his first wife, Violante di Mirandola.
[44] Serassi.--Vita di Baldassare Castiglione.
CHAPTER VII.
CONJUGAL POETRY CONTINUED.
STORY OF DR. DONNE AND HIS WIFE.
My next instance of conjugal poetry is taken from the literary history
of our own country, and founded on as true and touching a piece of
romance as ever was taken from the page of real life.
Dr. Donne, once so celebrated as a writer, now so neglected, is more
interesting for his matrimonial history, and for one little poem
addressed to his wife, than for all his learned, metaphysical, and
theological productions. As a poet, it is probable that even readers of
poetry know little of him, except from the lines at the bottom of the
pages in Pope's version, or rather translation, of his Satires, the
very recollection of which is enough to "set one's ears on edge," and
verify Coleridge's witty and imitative couplet.--
Donne--whose muse on dromedary trots,--
Twists iron pokers into true love knots.
It is this inconceivable harshness of versification, which has caused
Donne to be so little read, except by those who make our old poetry
their study. One of these critics has truly observed, that "there is
scarce a writer in our language who has so thoroughly mixed up the good
and the bad together." What is good, is the result of truth, of passion,
of a strong mind, and a brilliant wit: what is bad, is the effect of a
most perverse taste, and total want of harmony. No sooner has he kindled
the fancy with a splendid thought, than it is as instantly quenched in a
cloud of cold and obscure conceits: no sooner has he touched the heart
with a feeling or sentiment, true to nature and powerfully expressed,
than we are chilled or disgusted by pedantry or coarseness.
The events of Donne's various life, and the romantic love he inspired
and felt, make us recur to his works, with an interest and a curiosity,
which while they give a value to every beauty we can discover, render
his faults more glaring,--more provoking,--more intolerable.
In his youth he lavished a considerable fortune in dissipation, in
travelling, and, it may be added, in the acquisition of great and
various learning. He then entered the service of Lord Chancellor
Ellesmere, as secretary. Under the same roof resided Lady Ellesmere's
niece, Anne Moore, a lovely and amiable woman. She was about nineteen,
and Donne was about thirty, handsome, lively, and polished by travel and
study. They met constantly, and the result was a mutual attachment of
the most ardent and romantic character. As they were continually
together, and always in presence of watchful relations ("ambushed round
with household spies," as he expresses it,) it could not long be
concealed. "The friends of both parties," says Walton, "used much
diligence and many arguments to kill or cool their affections for each
other, but in vain:" and the lady's father, Sir George Moore, "knowing
prevention to be the best part of wisdom," came up to town in all haste,
and carried off his daughter into the country. But his preventive wisdom
came too late: the lovers had been secretly married three weeks before.
This precipitate step was perhaps excusable, from the known violence and
sternness of Sir George's character. His daughter was well aware that
his consent would never be voluntary: she preferred marrying without it,
to marrying against it; and trusted to obtain his forgiveness when there
was no remedy:--a common mode of reasoning, I believe, in such cases.
Never perhaps was a youthful error of this description more bitterly
punished--more deeply expiated--and so little repented of!
The Earl of Northumberland undertook to break the matter to Sir George,
to reason with him on the subject; and to represent the excellent
qualities of his son-in-law, and the duty of forgiveness, as a wise man,
a father, and Christian. His intention was benevolent, and we have
reason to regret that his speech or letter has not been preserved; for
(such is human inconsistency!) this very Earl of Northumberland never
could forgive his own daughter a similar disobedience,[45] but followed
it with his curse, which he was with difficulty prevailed on to retract.
His mediation failed: Sir George, on learning that his precautions came
too late, burst into a transport of rage, the effect of which resembled
insanity. He had sufficient interest in the arbitrary court of James, to
procure the imprisonment of Donne and the witnesses of his daughter's
marriage; and he insisted that his brother-in-law should dismiss the
young man from his office,--his only support. Lord Ellesmere yielded
with extreme reluctance, saying, "he parted with such a friend and such
a secretary, as were a fitter servant for a King." Donne, in sending
this news to his wife, signs his name with the quaint oddity, which was
so characteristic of his mind,--_John Donne, Anne Donne,--undone_: and
_undone_ they truly were. As soon as he was released he claimed his
wife; but it was many months before they were allowed to meet.
Have we for this kept guard, like spy o'er spy?
Had correspondence whilst the foe stood by?
Stolen (more to sweeten them) our many blisses
Of meetings, conference, embracements, kisses?
Shadow'd with negligence our best respects?
Varied our language through all dialects
Of becks, winks, looks; and often under boards,
Spoke dialogues, with our feet far from our words?
And after all this passed purgatory,
Must sad divorce make us the vulgar story?[46]
At length this unkind father in some degree relented; he suffered his
daughter and her husband to live together, but he refused to contribute
to their support; and they were reduced to the greatest distress. Donne
had nothing. "His wife had been curiously and plentifully educated; both
their natures generous, accustomed to confer, not to receive
courtesies;" and when he looked on her who was to be the partner of his
lot, he was filled with such sadness and apprehension as he could never
have felt for himself alone.[47]
In this situation they were invited into the house of a generous kinsman
(Sir Francis Woolley), who maintained them and their increasing family
for several years, "to their mutual content" and undiminished
friendship.[48] Volumes could not say more in praise of both than this
singular connection:--to bestow favours, so long continued and of such
magnitude, with a grace which made them sit lightly on those who
received them, and to preserve, under the weight of such obligation,
dignity, independence, and happiness, bespeaks uncommon greatness of
spirit and goodness of heart and temper on all sides.
This close and domestic intimacy was dissolved only by the death of Sir
Francis, who had previously procured a kind of reconcilement with the
father of Mrs. Donne, and an allowance of about eighty pounds a year.
They fell again into debt, and into misery; and "doubtless," says old
Walton, with a quaint, yet eloquent simplicity, "their marriage had been
attended with a heavy repentance, if God had not blessed them with so
mutual and cordial affections, as, in the midst of their sufferings,
made their bread of sorrow taste more pleasantly than the banquets of
dull and low-spirited[49] people." We find in some of Donne's letters,
the most heart-rending pictures of family distress, mingled with the
tenderest touches of devoted affection for his amiable wife. "I write,"
he says, "from the fire-side in my parlour, and in the noise of three
gamesome children, and by the side of her, whom, because I have
transplanted into a wretched fortune, I must labour to disguise that
from her by all such honest devices, as giving her my company and
discourse," &c. &c.
And in another letter he describes himself, with all his family sick,
his wife stupified by her own and her children's sufferings, without
money to purchase medicine,--"and if God should ease us with burials, I
know not how to perform even that; but I flatter myself that I am dying
too, for I cannot waste faster than by such griefs.
--From my hospital. "JOHN DONNE."
This is the language of despair; but love was stronger than despair, and
supported this affectionate couple through all their trials. Add to
mutual love the spirit of high honour and conscious desert; for in the
midst of this sad, and almost sordid misery and penury, Donne, whose
talents his contemporaries acknowledged with admiration, refused to take
orders and accept a benefice, from a scruple of conscience, on account
of the irregular life he had led in his youthful years.
But in their extremity, Providence raised them up another munificent
friend. Sir Robert Drury received the whole family into his house,
treated Donne with the most cordial respect and affection, and some time
afterwards invited him to accompany him abroad.
Donne had been married to his wife seven years, during which they had
suffered every variety of wretchedness, except the greatest of
all,--that of being separated. The idea of this first parting was beyond
her fortitude; she said, her "divining soul boded her some ill in his
absence," and with tears she entreated him not to leave her. Her
affectionate husband yielded; but Sir Robert Drury was urgent, and would
not be refused. Donne represented to his wife all that honour and
gratitude required of him; and she, too really tender, and too devoted
to be selfish and unreasonable, yielded with "an unwilling willingness;"
yet, womanlike, she thought she could not bear a pain she had never
tried, and was seized with the romantic idea of following him in the
disguise of a page.[50] In a delicate and amiable woman, and a mother,
it could have been but a momentary thought, suggested in the frenzy of
anguish. It inspired, however, the following beautiful dissuasion, which
her husband addressed to her.
By our first strange and fatal interview;
By all desires which thereof did ensue;
By our long-striving hopes; by that remorse
Which my words' masculine persuasive force
Begot in thee, and by the memory
Of hurts which spies and rivals threaten'd me,--
I calmly beg: but by thy father's wrath,
By all pains which want and divorcement hath,
I conjure thee;--and all the oaths which I
And thou have sworn to seal joint constancy,
I here unswear, and overswear them thus:
Thou shall not love by means so dangerous.
Temper, O fair Love! Love's impetuous rage;
Be my true mistress, not my feigned page.
I'll go, and by thy kind leave, leave behind
Thee, only worthy to nurse in my mind
Thirst to come back. O! if thou die before,
My soul from other lands to thee shall soar:
Thy (else almighty) beauty cannot move
Rage from the seas, not thy love teach them love,
Nor tame wild Boreas' harshness: thou hast read
How roughly he in pieces shivered
Fair Orithea, whom he swore he loved.
Fall ill or good, 'tis madness to have proved
Dangers unurg'd: feed on this flattery,
That absent lovers one in th' other be.
Dissemble nothing,--not a boy,--nor change
Thy body's habit nor mind: be not strange
To thyself only: all will spy in thy face
A blushing, womanly, discovering grace.
When I am gone dream me some happiness,
Nor let thy looks our long hid love confess:
Nor praise nor dispraise me; nor bless nor curse
Openly love's force; nor in bed fright thy nurse
With midnight starlings, crying out, Oh! oh!
Nurse, oh! my love is slain! I saw him go
O'er the white Alps alone; I saw him, I,
Assailed, ta'en, fight, stabb'd, bleed, fall, and die!
Augur me better chance, except dread Jove
Think it enough for me to have had thy love.
I would not have the heart of one who could read these lines, and think
only of their rugged style, and faults of taste and expression. The
superior power of truth and sentiment have immortalised this little
poem, and the occasion which gave it birth. The wife and husband parted,
and he left with her another little poem, which he calls a "Valediction,
forbidding to mourn."
When Donne was at Paris, and still suffering under the grief of this
separation, he saw, or fancied he saw, the apparition of his wife pass
through the room in which he sat, her hair dishevelled and hanging down
upon her shoulders, her face pale and mournful, and carrying in her arms
a dead infant. Sir Robert Drury found him a few minutes afterwards in
such a state of horror, and his mind so impressed with the reality of
this vision, that an express was immediately sent off to England, to
inquire after the health of Mrs. Donne. She had been seized, after the
departure of her husband, with a premature confinement; had been at the
point of death; but was then out of danger, and recovering.
This incident has been related by all Donne's biographers, by some with
infinite solemnity, by others with sneering incredulity. I can speak
from experience, of the power of the imagination to impress us with a
palpable sense of what is _not_, and cannot be; and it seems to me that,
in a man of Donne's ardent, melancholy temperament, brooding day and
night on the one sad idea, a high state of nervous excitement is
sufficient to account for this impression, without having recourse to
supernatural agency, or absolute disbelief.
Donne, after several years of study, was prevailed on to enter holy
orders; and about four years afterwards, his amiable wife died in her
twelfth confinement.[51] His grief was so overwhelming, that his old
friend Walton thinks it necessary thus to apologise for him:--"Nor is it
hard to think (being that passions may be both changed and heightened by
accidents,) but that the abundant affection which was once betwixt him
and her, who had so long been the delight of his eyes and the companion
of his youth; her, with whom he had divided so many pleasant sorrows and
contented fears, as common people are not capable of, should be changed
into a commensurable grief." He roused himself at length to his duties;
and preaching his first sermon at St. Clement's Church, in the Strand,
where his beloved wife lay buried, he took for his text, Jer. iii. v.
1,--"Lo! I am the man that hath seen affliction;" and sent all his
congregation home in tears.
* * * * *
Among Donne's earlier poetry may be distinguished the following little
song, which has so much more harmony and elegance than his other pieces,
that it is scarcely a fair specimen of his style. It was long popular,
and I can remember when a child, hearing it sung to very beautiful
music.
Send home my long stray'd eyes to me,
Which, oh! too long have dwelt on thee!
But if from thee they've learnt such ill,
Such forced fashions
And false passions,
That they be
Made by thee
Fit for no good sight--keep them still!
Send home my harmless heart again,
Which no unworthy thought could stain!
But if it hath been taught by thine
To make jestings
Of protestings,
To forget both
Its word and troth,
Keep it still--'tis none of mine!
Perhaps it may interest some readers to add, that Donne's famous lines,
which have been quoted _ad infinitum_,--
The pure and eloquent blood
Spoke in her cheeks, and so distinctly wrought,
Ye might have almost said her body thought!
were not written on his wife, but on Elizabeth Drury, the only daughter
of his patron and friend, Sir Robert Drury. She was the richest heiress
in England, the wealth of her father being considered almost
incalculable; and this, added to her singular beauty, and extraordinary
talents and acquirements, rendered her so popularly interesting, that
she was considered a fit match for Henry, Prince of Wales. She died in
her sixteenth year.
Dr. Donne and his wife were maternal ancestors of the Poet Cowper.
FOOTNOTES:
[45] Lady Lucy Percy, afterwards the famous Countess of Carlisle,
mentioned in page 33.
[46] Donne's poems.
[47] Walton's Lives.
[48] Walton's Life of Donne.--Chalmers's Biography.
[49] i. e. low-minded.
[50] Chalmers's Biography.
[51] In 1617.
CHAPTER VII.
CONJUGAL POETRY CONTINUED.
HABINGTON'S CASTARA.
One of the most elegant monuments ever raised by genius to conjugal
affection, was Habington's Castara.
William Habington, who ranks among the most graceful of our old minor
poets, was a gentleman of an ancient Roman Catholic family in
Worcestershire, and born in 1605.[52] On his return from his travels, he
saw and loved Lucy Herbert, the daughter of Lord Powis, and
grand-daughter of the Earl of Northumberland. She was far his superior
in birth, being descended, on both sides, from the noblest blood in
England; and her haughty relations at first opposed their union. It was,
however, merely that degree of opposition, without which the "course of
true love would have run _too_ smooth." It was just sufficient to pique
the ardour of the lover, and prove the worth and constancy of her he
loved. The history of their attachment has none of the painful interest
which hangs round that of Donne and his wife: it is a picture of pure
and peaceful happiness, and of mutual tenderness, on which the
imagination dwells with a soft complacency and unalloyed pleasure; with
nothing of romance but what was borrowed from the elegant mind and
playful fancy, which heightened and embellished the delightful reality.
If Habington had not been born a poet, a tombstone in an obscure country
church would have been the only memorial of himself and his Castara.
"She it was who animated his imagination with tenderness and elegance,
and filled it with images of beauty, purified by her feminine delicacy
from all grosser alloy." In return, he may be allowed to exult in the
immortality he has given her.
Thy vows are heard! and thy Castara's name
Is writ as fair i' the register of fame,
As the ancient beauties which translated are
By poets up to Heaven--each there a star.
....*....*....*....*
Fix'd in Love's firmament no star shall shine
So nobly fair, so purely chaste as thine!
The collection of poems which Habington dedicated to his Castara, is
divided into two parts: those written before his marriage he has
entitled "The Mistress," those written subsequently, "The Wife."
He has prefixed to the whole an introduction in prose, written with some
quaintness, but more feeling and elegance, in which he claims for
himself the honour of being the first _conjugal_ poet in our language.
To use his own words: "Though I appear to strive against the stream of
the best wits in erecting the same altar to chastity and love, I will,
for one, adventure to do well without a precedent."
Habington had, however, been anticipated, as we have seen, by some of
the Italian poets whom he has imitated: he has a little of the
_recherche_ and affectation of their school, and is not untinctured by
the false taste of his day. He has not great power, nor much pathos; but
these defects are redeemed by a delicacy of expression uncommon at that
time; by the interest he has thrown round a love as pure as its object,
and by the most exquisite touches of fancy, sentiment, and tenderness.
Without expressly naming his wife in his prefatory remarks, he alludes
to her very beautifully, and exults, with a modest triumph, in the value
of his rich possession.
"How unhappy soever I may be in the elocution, I am sure the theme is
worthy enough. * * * Nor was my invention ever sinister from the
straight way of chastity; and when love builds upon _that_ rock, it may
safely contemn the battery of the waves, and the threatenings of the
wind. Since time, that makes a mockery of the finest structures, shall
itself be ruined before _that_ be demolished. Thus was the foundation
laid; and though my eye, in its survey, was satisfied even to curiosity,
yet did not my search rest there. The alabaster, ivory, porphyry, jet,
that lent an admirable beauty to the outward building, entertained me
with but half pleasure, since they stood there only to make sport for
ruin. But when my soul grew acquainted with the owner of that mansion, I
found that oratory was dumb when it began to speake her."
He then describes her wisdom; her wit; her innocence,--"so unvitiated by
conversation with the world, that the subtle-witted of her sex would
have termed it ignorance;" her modesty "so timorous, it represented a
besieged city standing watchfully on her guard: in a word, all those
virtues which should restore woman to her primitive state of virtue,
fully adorned her." He then prettily apologises for this indiscreet
rhetoric on such a subject. "Such," he says, "I fancied her; for to say
she is, or was such, were to play the merchant, and boast too much of
the value of the jewel I possess, but have no mind to part with."
He concludes with this just, yet modest appreciation of himself:--"If
not too indulgent to what is mine own, I think even these verses will
have that proportion in the world's opinion, that heaven hath allotted
me in fortune,--not so high as to be wondered at, nor so low as to be
contemned."
In the description of "the MISTRESS," are some little touches inimitably
graceful and complimentary. Though couched in general terms, it is of
course a portrait of Lucy Herbert, such as she appeared to him in the
days of their courtship, and fondly recalled and dwelt upon, when she
had been many years a wife and a mother. He represents her "as fair as
Nature intended her, helpt, perhaps, to a more pleasing grace by the
sweetness of education, not by the sleight of art." This discrimination
is delicately drawn.--He continues, "she is young; for a woman, past the
delicacy of her spring, may well move to virtue by respect, never by
beauty to affection. In her carriage, sober, thinking her youth
expresseth life enough, without the giddy motion fashion of late hath
taken up."--(This was early in the reign of the grave and correct
Charles the First. What would Habington have said of the flaunting,
fluttering, voluble beauties of Charles the Second's time?)
He extols the melody of her voice, her knowledge of music, and her grace
in the dance: above all, he dwells on her retiring modesty, the
favourite theme of his praise in prose and verse, which seems to have
been the most striking part of her character, and her greatest charm in
the eyes of her lover. He concludes, with the beautiful sentiment I have
chosen as a motto to this little book.--"Only she, who hath as great a
share in virtue as in beauty, deserves a noble love to serve her, and a
free poesie to speak her!"
The poems are all short, generally in the form of _sonnets_, if that
name can be properly applied to all poems of fourteen lines, whatever
the rhythmical arrangement. The subjects of these, and their quaint
expressive titles, form a kind of chronicle of their loves, in which
every little incident is commemorated. Thus we have, "to Castara,
inquiring why I loved her."--"To Castara, softly singing to herself."
"To Castara, leaving him on the approach of night."--
What should we fear, Castara? the cool air
That's fallen in love, and wantons in thy hair,
Will not betray our whispers:--should I steal
A nectar'd kiss, the wind dares not reveal
The treasure I possess!
"To Castara, on being debarred her presence," (probably by her father,
Lord Powis.)--
Banish'd from you, I charged the nimble wind,
My unseen messenger, to speak my mind
In amorous whispers to you!
"Upon her intended journey into the country."--"Upon Seymors," (a house
near Marlow, where Castara resided with her parents, and where, it
appears, he was not allowed to visit her.)--"On a trembling kiss she
had granted him on her departure." The commencement of this is
beautiful:
The Arabian wind, whose breathing gently blows
Purple to the violet, blushes to the rose,
Did never yield an odour such as this!
Why are you then so thrifty of a kiss,
Authorized even by custom? Why doth fear
So tremble on your lip, my lip being near?
Then we have, "to Castara, on visiting her in the night."--This alludes
to a meeting of the lovers, at a time they were debarred from each
other's society.
The following are more exquisitely graceful than any thing in Waller,
yet much in his style.
TO ROSES IN THE BOSOM OF CASTARA.
Ye blushing virgins happy are
In the chaste nunnery of her breast;
For he'd profane so chaste a fair
Who e'er should call it Cupid's nest.
Transplanted thus, how bright ye grow!
How rich a perfume do ye yield!
In some close garden, cowslips so
Are sweeter than i' the open field.
In those white cloisters live secure,
From the rude blasts of wanton breath;
Each hour more innocent and pure,
Till ye shall wither into death.
Then that which living gave ye room,
Your glorious sepulchre shall be;
There needs no marble for a tomb,--
That breast hath marble been to me!
The epistle to Castara's mother, Lady Eleanor Powis, who appears to have
looked kindly on their love, contains some very beautiful lines, in
which he asserts the disinterestedness of his affection for Castara,
rich as she is in fortune, and derived from the blood of Charlemagne.
My love is envious! would Castara were
The daughter of some mountain cottager,
Who, with his toil worn out, could dying leave
Her no more dower than what she did receive
From bounteous Nature; her would I then lead
To the temple, rich in her own wealth; her head
Crowned with her hair's fair treasure; diamonds in
Her brighter eyes; soft ermines in her skin,
Each India in her cheek, &c.
This first part closes with "the description of Castara," which is
extended to several stanzas, of unequal merit. The following compose in
themselves a sweet picture:
Like the violet, which alone
Prospers in some happy shade,
My Castara lives unknown,
To no looser eye betray'd.
For she's to herself untrue
Who delights i' the public view.
....*....*....*....*