I pass over Swift's early attachment to _The Romance of Biography (Vol 2 of 2) or Memoirs of Women Loved and Celebrated by Poets, from the Days of the Troubadours to the Present Age. 3rd ed. 2 Vols.

after a seven years' engagement: she is not in any way connected with

his literary history,--and what became of her afterwards is not known.

He excused himself by some pitiful subterfuges about fortune; but it

appears, from a comparison of dates, that the occasion of his breaking

off with her, was his rising partiality for another.

When Swift was an inmate of Sir William Temple's family at Moor Park, he

met with Esther Johnson, who appears to have been a kind of humble

companion to Sir William's niece, Miss Gifford. She is said by some to

have been the daughter of Sir William's steward; by others we are told

that her father was a London merchant, who had failed in business. This

was the interesting and ill-fated woman, since renowned as "Swift's

Stella."

She was then a blooming girl of fifteen, with silky black hair,

brilliant eyes, and delicate features. Her disposition was gentle and

affectionate; and she had a mind of no common order. Swift sometimes

employed his leisure in instructing Sir William's niece, and Stella was

the companion of her studies. Her beauty, talents, and docility,

interested her preceptor, who, though considerably older than herself,

was in the vigour of his life and intellectual powers; and she repaid

this interest with all the idolatry of a young unpractised heart,

mingled with a gratitude and reverence almost filial. When he took

possession of his living in Ireland, he might have married her; for she

loved him, and he knew it. She was perfectly independent of any family

ties, and had a small property of her own: but what were really his

views or his intentions, it is impossible to guess; nor at the reasons

of that most extraordinary arrangement, by which he contrived to bind

this devoted creature to him for life, and to enslave her heart and soul

to him for ever, without assuming the character either of a husband or a

lover. He persuaded her to leave England; and, under the sanction and

protection of a respectable elderly woman named Dingley, often alluded

to in his humorous poems, to take up her residence near him at Laracor.

Subsequently, when he became Dean of St. Patrick's, she had a lodging in

Dublin. He was accustomed to spend part of every day in her society, but

never without the presence of a third person; and when he was absent,

the two ladies took possession of his residence, and occupied it till

his return.

Two years after her removal to Ireland, and when she was in her

twentieth year, Stella was addressed by a young clergyman, whose name

was Tisdal; and sensible of the humiliating and equivocal situation in

which she was placed, and unable to bring Swift to any explanation of

his views or sentiments, she appears to have been inclined to favour the

addresses of her new admirer. He proposed in form; but Swift, without in

any way committing himself, contrived to prevent the marriage. Stella

found herself precisely in the same situation as before, and every year

increased his influence over her young and gentle spirit, as habit

confirmed and strengthened the bonds of a first affection. She lived on

in the hope that he would at length marry her; bearing his sullen

outbreakings of temper, soothing his morbid misanthropy, cheering and

adorning his life; and giving herself every day fresh claims to his

love, compassion, and gratitude, by her sufferings, her virtues, her

patient gentleness, and her exclusive devotion;--and all availed not!

During this extraordinary connection, Swift was accustomed to address

her in verse. Some of these poems, though worthless as poetry, derive

interest from the beauty of her character, and from that concentrated

vigour of expression which was the characteristic of all he wrote; as in

this descriptive passage:--

Her hearers are amazed from whence

Proceeds that fund of wit and sense,

Which, though her modesty would shroud,

Breaks like the sun behind a cloud;

While gracefulness its art conceals,

And yet through every motion steals.

Say, Stella, was Prometheus blind,

And forming you, mistook your kind?

No; 'twas for you alone he stole

The fire that forms a manly soul;

Then, to complete it every way,

He moulded it with female clay:

To _that_ you owe the nobler flame,

To _this_ the beauty of your frame.

He compliments her sincerity and firmness of principle in four nervous

lines:

Ten thousand oaths upon record

Are not so sacred as her word!

The world shall in its atoms end,

Ere Stella can deceive a friend!

Her tender attention to him in sickness and suffering, is thus

described, with a tolerable insight into his own character.

To her I owe

That I these pains can undergo;

She tends me like an humble slave,

And, when indecently I rave,

When out my brutish passions break,

With gall in every word I speak,

She, with soft speech, my anguish cheers,

Or melts my passions down with tears:

Although 'tis easy to descry

She wants assistance more than I,

She seems to feel my pains alone,

And is a Stoic to her own.

Where, among scholars, can you find

So soft, and yet so firm a mind?

These lines, dated March, 1724, are the more remarkable, because they

refer to a period when Stella had much to forgive;--when she had just

been injured, in the tenderest point, by the man who owed to her

tenderness and forbearance all the happiness that his savage temper

allowed him to taste on earth.

As Stella passed much of her time in solitude, she read a great deal.

She received Swift's friends, many of whom were clever and distinguished

men, particularly Sheridan and Delany; and on his public days she dined

as a guest at his table, where, says his biographer,[108] "the modesty

of her manners, the sweetness of her disposition, and the brilliance of

her wit, rendered her the general object of admiration to all who were

so happy as to have a place in that enviable society."

Johnson says that, "if Swift's ideas of women were such as he generally

exhibits, a very little sense in a lady would enrapture, and a very

little virtue astonish him;" and thinks, therefore, that Stella's

supremacy might be "only local and comparative;" but it is not the less

true, that she was beheld with tenderness and admiration by all who

approached her; and whether she could spell or not,[109] she could

certainly write very pretty verses, considering whom she had chosen for

her model:--for instance, the following little effusion, in reply to a

compliment addressed to her:

If it be true, celestial powers,

That you have formed me fair,

And yet, in all my vainest hours,

My mind has been my care;

Then, in return, I beg this grace,

As you were ever kind,

What envious time takes from my face,

Bestow upon my mind!

She had continued to live on in this strange undefinable state of

dependance for fourteen years, "in pale contented sort of discontent,"

though her spirit was so borne down by the habitual awe in which he

held her, that she never complained--when the suspicion that a younger

and fairer rival had usurped the heart she possessed, if not the rights

she coveted, added the tortures of jealousy to those of lingering

suspense and mortified affection.

A new attachment had, in fact, almost entirely estranged Swift from her,

and from his home. While in London, from 1710 to 1712, he was accustomed

to visit at the house of Mrs. Vanhomrigh, and became so intimate, that

during his attendance on the ministry at that time, he was accustomed to

change his wig and gown, and drink his coffee there almost daily. Mrs.

Vanhomrigh had two daughters: the eldest, Esther, was destined to be the

second victim of Swift's detestable selfishness, and become celebrated

under the name of Vanessa.

She was of a character altogether different from that of Stella. Not

quite so beautiful in person, but with all the freshness and vivacity of

youth--(she was not twenty,) and adding to the advantages of polished

manners and lively talents, a frank confiding temper, and a capacity

for strong affections. She was rich, admired, happy, and diffusing

happiness. Swift, as I have said, visited at the house of her mother.

His age, his celebrity, his character as a clergyman, gave him

privileges of which he availed himself. He was pleased with Miss

Vanhomrigh's talents, and undertook to direct her studies. She was

ignorant of the ties which bound him to the unhappy Stella; and charmed

by his powers of conversation, dazzled by his fame, won and flattered by

his attentions, surrendered her heart and soul to him before she was

aware; and her love partaking of the vivacity of her character, not only

absorbed every other feeling, but, as she expressed it herself, "became

blended with every atom of her frame."[110]

Swift, among his other lessons, took pains to impress her with his own

favourite maxims (it had been well for both had he acted up to them

himself)--"to speak the truth on all occasions, and at every hazard:

and to do what seemed right in itself, without regard to the opinions or

customs of the world." He appears also to have insinuated the idea, that

the disparity of their age and fortune rendered him distrustful of his

own powers of pleasing.[111] She was thus led on, by his open

admiration, and her own frank temper, to betray the state of her

affections, and proffered to him her hand and fortune. He had not

sufficient humanity, honour, or courage, to disclose the truth of his

situation, but replied to the avowal of this innocent and warm-hearted

girl, first in a tone of raillery, and then by an equivocal offer of

everlasting friendship.

The scene is thus given in Cadenus and Vanessa.

Vanessa, though by Pallas taught,

By Love invulnerable thought,

Searching in books for wisdom's aid,

Was in the very search betrayed.

....*....*....*....*

Cadenus many things had writ;

Vanessa much esteemed his wit,

And call'd for his poetic works.

Mean time the boy in secret lurks;

And, while the book was in her hand

The urchin from his private stand

Took aim, and shot with all his strength

A dart of such prodigious length,

It pierced the feeble volume through,

And deep transfix'd her bosom too.

Some lines, more moving than the rest,

Stuck to the point that pierced her breast,

And borne directly to the heart,

With pains unknown, increas'd her smart.

Vanessa, not in years a score,

Dreams of a gown of forty-four;

Imaginary charms can find,

In eyes with reading almost blind.

Cadenus now no more appears

Declin'd in health, advanc'd in years;

She fancies music in his tongue,

Nor farther looks, but thinks him young.

Vanessa is then made to disclose her tenderness. The expressions and the

sentiments are probably as true to the facts as was consistent with the

rhyme: but how cold, how flat, how prosaic! no emotion falters in the

lines--not a feeling blushes through them!--as if an ardent but delicate

and gentle girl would ever have made a first avowal of passion in this

_chop-logic_ style--

"Now," said the Nymph, "to let you see

My actions with your rules agree;

That I can vulgar forms despise,

And have no secrets to disguise;

I knew, by what you said and writ,

How dangerous things were men of wit;

You caution'd me against their charms,

But never gave me equal arms;

Your lessons found the weakest part,

Aimed at the head, but reach'd the heart!"

Cadenus felt within him rise

Shame, disappointment, guilt, surprise, &c.

* * * * *

It is possible he might have felt thus; and yet the excess of his

_surprise_ and _disappointment_ on the occasion, may be doubted. He

makes, however, a very candid confession of his own vanity.

Cadenus, to his grief and shame,

Could scarce oppose Vanessa's flame;

And, though her arguments were strong,

At least could hardly wish them wrong:

Howe'er it came, he could not tell,

But sure she never talked so well.

His pride began to interpose;

Preferred before a crowd of beaux!

So bright a nymph to come unsought!

Such wonder by his merit wrought!

'Tis merit must with her prevail!

He never knew her judgment fail.

She noted all she ever read,

And had a most discerning head!

The scene continues--he rallies her, and affects to think it all

Just what coxcombs call a bite.

(such is his elegant phrase.) He then offers her friendship instead of

love: the lady replies with very pertinent arguments; and finally, the

tale is concluded in this ambiguous passage, in which we must allow that

great room is left for scandal, for doubt, and for curiosity.

But what success Vanessa met

Is to the world a secret yet;--

Whether the nymph, to please her swain,

Talks in a high romantic strain,

Or whether he at last descends

To act with less seraphic ends;

Or to compound the business, whether

They temper love and books together;

Must never to mankind be told,

Nor shall the conscious Muse unfold.

Such is the story of this celebrated poem. The passion, the

circumstances, the feelings are real, and it contains lines of great

power; and yet, assuredly, the perusal of it never conveyed one emotion

to the reader's heart, except of indignation against the writer; not a

spark of poetry, fancy, or pathos, breathes throughout. We have a dull

mythological fable in which Venus and the Graces descend to clothe

Vanessa in all the attractions of her sex:--

The Graces next would act their part,

And showed but little of their art;

Their work was half already done,

The child with native beauty shone;

The outward form no help required;--

Each, breathing on her thrice, inspired

That gentle, soft, engaging air,

Which in old times advanced the fair.

And Pallas is tricked by the wiles of Venus into doing _her_ part.--The

Queen of Learning

Mistakes Vanessa for a boy;

Then sows within her tender mind

Seeds long unknown to womankind,

For manly bosoms chiefly fit,--

The seeds of knowledge, judgment, wit.

Her soul was suddenly endued

With justice, truth, and fortitude,--

With honour, which no breath can stain,

Which malice must attack in vain;

With open heart and bounteous hand, &c.

The nymph thus accomplished is feared by the men and hated by the women;

and Swift has shown his utter want of heart and good taste, by making

his homage to the woman he loved, a vehicle for the bitterest satire on

the rest of her sex. What right had he to accuse us of a universal

preference for mere coxcombs,--he who, through the sole power of his

wit and intellect, had inspired with the most passionate attachment two

lovely women not half his own age? Be it remembered, that while Swift

was playing the Abelard with such effect, he was in his forty-fifth

year, and though

He moved and bowed, and talked with so much grace,

Nor showed the parson in his gait or face,[112]

he was one of the ugliest men in existence,--of a bilious, saturnine

complexion, and a most forbidding countenance.

The poem of Cadenus and Vanessa was written immediately on his return to

Ireland and to Stella, (where he describes himself devoured by

melancholy and regret,) and sent to Vanessa. Her passion and her

inexperience seem to have blinded her to what was humiliating to herself

in this poem, and left her sensible only to the admiration it expressed,

and the hopes it conveyed. She wrote him the most impassioned letters;

and he replied in a style which, without committing himself, kept alive

all her tenderness, and rivetted his influence over her.

Meanwhile, what became of Stella? Too quick-sighted not to perceive the

difference in Swift's manner, pining under his neglect, and struck to

the heart by jealousy, grief, and resentment, her health gave way. His

pitiful resolve never to see her alone, precluded all complaint or

explanation. The Mrs. Dingley who had been chosen for her companion, was

merely calculated to save appearances;--respectable, indeed, in point of

reputation, but selfish, narrow-minded and weak. Thus abandoned to

sullen, silent sorrow, the unhappy Stella fell into an alarming state;

and her destroyer was at length roused to some remorse, by the daily

spectacle of the miserable wreck he had caused. He commissioned his

friend Dr. Ashe, "to learn the secret cause of that dejection of spirits

which had so visibly preyed on her health; and to know whether it was by

any means in his power to remove it?" She replied, "that the peculiarity

of her circumstances, and her singular connexion with Swift for so many

years, had given great occasion for scandal; that she had learned to

bear this patiently, hoping that all such reports would be effaced by

marriage; but she now saw, with deep grief, that his behaviour was

totally changed, and that a cold indifference had succeeded to the

warmest professions of eternal affection. That the necessary

consequences would be, an indelible stain fixed on her character, and

the loss of her good name, which was dearer to her than life."[113]

Swift answered, that in order to satisfy Mrs. Johnson's scruples, and

relieve her mind, he was ready to go through the mere ceremony of

marriage with her, on two conditions;--first, that they should live

separately exactly as they did before;--secondly, that it should be kept

a profound secret from all the world.[114] To these conditions, however

hard and humiliating, she was obliged to submit: and the ceremony was

performed privately by Dr. Ashe, in 1716. This nominal marriage spared

her at least some of the torments of jealousy, by rendering a union with

her rival impossible.

Yet, within a year afterwards, we find this ill-fated rival, the yet

more unhappy Vanessa,--more unhappy because endued by nature with

quicker passions, and far less fortitude and patience,--following Swift

to Ireland. She had a plausible pretext for this journey, being heiress

to a considerable property at Celbridge, about twelve miles from Dublin,

on which she came to reside with her sister;[115] but her real

inducement was her unconquerable love for him. Nothing could be more

_mal apropos_ to Swift than her arrival in Dublin: placed between two

women, thus devoted to him, his perplexity was not greater than his

heartless duplicity deserved: nothing could extricate him but the

simple, but desperate expedient of disclosing the truth, and this he

could not or would not do: regardless of the sacred ties which now bound

him to Stella, he continued to correspond with Vanessa and to visit her;

but "the whole course of this correspondence precludes the idea of a

guilty intimacy."[116] _She_, whose passion was as pure as it was

violent and exclusive, asked but to be his wife. She would have flung

down her fortune and herself at his feet, and bathed them with tears of

gratitude, if he would have deigned to lift her to his arms. In the

midst of all the mortification, anguish, and heart-wearing suspense to

which his stern temper and inexplicable conduct exposed her, still she

clung to the hopes he had awakened, and which, either in cowardice, or

compassion, or selfish egotism, he still kept alive. He concludes one of

his letters with the following sentence in French, "mais soyez assuree,

que jamais personne au monde n'a ete aimee, honoree, estimee, adoree,

par votre amie, que vous:"[117] and there are other passages to the same

effect, little agreeing with his professions to poor Stella:--one or the

other, or both, must have been grossly deceived.

After declarations so explicit, Vanessa naturally wondered that he

proceeded no farther; it appears that he sometimes endeavoured to

repress her over-flowing tenderness, by treating her with a harshness

which drove her almost to frenzy. There is really nothing in the

effusions of Heloise or Mdlle. de l'Espinasse, that can exceed, in

pathos and burning eloquence, some of her letters to him during this

period of their connection.[118] When he had reduced her to the most

shocking and pitiable state, so that her life or her reason were

threatened, he would endeavour to soothe her in language which again

revived her hopes--

Give the reed

From storms a shelter,--give the drooping vine

Something round which its tendrils may entwine,--

Give the parch'd flower the rain-drop,--and the meed

Of Love's kind words to woman![119]

It will be said, where was her sex's delicacy, where her woman's pride?

Alas!--

La Vergogna ritien debile amore,

Ma debil freno e di potente amore.

In this agonizing suspense she lived through eight long years; till,

unable to endure it longer, and being aware of the existence of Stella,

she took the decisive step of writing to her rival, and desired to know

whether she was, or was not, married to Swift? Stella answered her

immediately in the affirmative; and then, justly indignant that he

should have given any other woman such a right in him as was implied by

the question, she enclosed Vanessa's letter to Swift; and instantly,

with a spirit she had never before exerted, quitted her lodgings,

withdrew to the house of Mr. Ford, of Wood Park, and threw herself on

the friendship and protection of his family.

This lamentable tragedy was now brought to a crisis. Swift, on receiving

the letter, was seized with one of those insane paroxysms of rage to

which he was subject. He mounted his horse, rode down to Celbridge, and

suddenly entered the room in which Vanessa was sitting. His countenance,

fitted by nature to express the dark and fierce passions, so terrified

her, that she could scarce ask him whether he would sit down? He replied

savagely, "No!" and throwing down before her, her own letter to Stella,

with a look of inexpressible scorn and anger, flung out of the room, and

returned to Dublin.

This cruel scene was her death warrant.[120] Hitherto she had venerated

Swift; and in the midst of her sufferings, confided in him, idolized him

as the first of human beings. What must he now have appeared in her

eyes?--They say, "Hell has no fury like a woman scorned;"--it is not

so: the recoil of the heart, when forced to abhor and contemn, where it

has once loved, is far,--far worse; and Vanessa, who had endured her

lover's scorn, could not scorn _him_, and live. She was seized with a

delirious fever, and died "in resentment and in despair."[121] She

desired, in her last will, that the poem of Cadenus and Vanessa, which

she considered as a monument of Swift's love for her, should be

published, with some of his letters, which would have explained what was

left obscure, and have cleared her fame. The poem was published; but the

letters, by the interference of Swift's friends, were, at the time,

suppressed.

On her death, and Stella's flight, Swift absented himself from home for

two months, nor did any one know whither he was gone. During that time,

what must have been his feelings--_if_ he felt at all? what agonies of

remorse, grief, shame, and horror, must have wrung his bosom! he had, in

effect, murdered the woman who loved him, as absolutely as if he had

plunged a poniard into her heart: and yet it is not clear that Swift

was a prey to any such feelings; at least his subsequent conduct gave no

assurance of it. On his return to Dublin, mutual friends interfered to

reconcile him with Stella. About this time, she happened to meet, at a

dinner-party, a gentleman who was a stranger to the real circumstances

of her situation, and who began to speak of the poem of Cadenus and

Vanessa, then just published. He observed, that Vanessa must have been

an admirable creature to have inspired the Dean to write so finely.

"That does not follow," replied Mrs. Johnson, with bitterness; "it is

well known that the Dean could write finely on a _broomstick_." Ah! how

must jealousy and irritation, and long habits of intimacy with Swift,

have poisoned the mind and temper of this unhappy woman, before she

could have uttered this cruel sarcasm!--And yet she was true to the

softness of her sex; for after the lapse of several months, during which

it required all the attention of Mr. Ford and his family to sustain and

console her, she consented to return to Dublin, and live with the Dean

on the same terms as before. Well does old Chaucer say,

There can no man in humblesse him acquite

As woman can, he can be half so true

As woman be!

"Swift welcomed her to town," says Sheridan, "with that beautiful poem

entitled 'Stella at Wood Park;'" that is to say, he welcomed back to the

home from which he had driven her, the woman whose heart he had well

nigh broken, the wife he had every way injured and abused,--with a

tissue of coarse sarcasms, on the taste for magnificence she must have

acquired in her visit to Wood Park, and the difficulty of descending

From every day a lordly banquet

To half a joint--and God be thanket!

From partridges and venison with the right _fumette_,--to

Small beer, a herring, and the Dean.

And this was all the sentiment, all the poetry with which the occasion

inspired him!

Stella naturally hoped, that when her rival was no more, and Swift no

longer exposed to her torturing reproaches, that he would do her tardy

justice, and at length acknowledge her as his wife. But no;--it would

have cost him some little mortification and inconvenience; and on such a

paltry pretext he suffered this amiable and admirable woman, of whom he

had said, that "her merits towards him were greater than ever was in any

human being towards another;" and "that she excelled in every good

quality that could possibly accomplish a human creature,"--this woman

did he suffer to languish into the grave, broken in heart and blighted

in name. When Stella was on her death-bed, some conversation passed

between them upon this sad subject. Only Swift's reply was audible: he

said, "Well, my dear, it shall be acknowledged, if you wish it." To

which she answered with a sigh, "It is _now_ too late!"[122] It _was_

too late!--

What now to her was womanhood or fame?

She died of a lingering decline, in January, 1728, four years after the

death of Miss Vanhomrigh.

Thus perished these two innocent, warm-hearted and accomplished

women;--so rich in all the graces of their sex--so formed to love and to

be loved, to bless, and to be blessed,--sacrifices to the demoniac pride

of the man they had loved and trusted. But it will be said, "si elles

n'avaient point aime, elles seraient moins connues:" they have become

immortal by their connection with genius; they are celebrated, merely

through their attachment to a celebrated man. But, good God! what an

immortality! won by what martyrdom of the heart!--And what a celebrity!

not that with which the poet's love, and his diviner verse, crown the

deified object of his homage, but a celebrity, purchased with their

life-blood and their tears! I quit the subject with a sense of

relief:--yet one word more.

It was after the death of these two amiable women, who had deserved so

much from him, and whose enduring tenderness had flung round his odious

life and character their only redeeming charm of sentiment and interest,

that the native grossness and rancour of this incarnate spirit of libel

burst forth with tenfold virulence.[123] He showed how true had been his

love and his respect for _them_, by insulting and reviling, in terms a

scavenger would disavow, the sex they belonged to. Swift's

master-passion was pride,--an unconquerable, all-engrossing,

self-revolving pride: he was proud of his vigorous intellect, proud of

being the "dread and hate of half mankind,"--proud of his contempt for

women,--proud of his tremendous powers of invective. It was his boast,

that he never forgave an injury; it was his boast, that the ferocious

and unsparing personal satire with which he avenged himself on those who

offended him, had never been softened by the repentance, or averted by

the concessions of the offender. Look at him in his last years, when the

cold earth was heaped over those who would have cheered and soothed his

dark and stormy spirit; without a friend--deprived of the mighty powers

he had abused--alternately a drivelling idiot and a furious maniac, and

sinking from both into a helpless, hopeless, prostrate lethargy of body

and mind!--Draw,--draw the curtain, in reverence to the human ruin, lest

our woman's hearts be tempted to unwomanly exultation!

FOOTNOTES:

[107] As Swift said truly and wittily of himself:

As when a lofty pile is raised,

We never hear the workmen praised,

Who bring the lime or place the stones,

But all admire Inigo Jones;

So if this pile of scattered rhymes

Should be approved in after-times,

If it both pleases and endures,

The merit and the praise are yours!

_Verses to Stella._

[108] Sheridan's Life of Swift.

[109] Dr. Johnson, who allows Stella to have been "virtuous, beautiful,

and elegant," says she could not spell her own language: in those days

few women _could_ spell accurately.

[110] See her Letters.

[111] See some very poor verses found in Miss Vanhomrigh's desk, and

inserted in his poems, vol. x, p. 14.

[112] "The Author on himself," (Swift's poems.)

[113] Sheridan's Life of Swift, p. 316.

[114] How pertinaciously Swift adhered to these conditions, is proved by

the fact, that after the ceremony, he never saw her alone; and that

several years after, when she was in a dangerous state of health, and he

was writing to a friend about providing for her comforts, he desires

"that she might not be brought to the Deanery-house on any account, as

it was a very improper place for her to breathe her last

in."--_Sheridan's Life_, p. 356.

[115] "Marley Abbey, near Celbridge, where Miss Vanhomrigh resided, is

built much in the form of a real cloister, especially in its external

appearance. An aged man (upwards of ninety, by his own account,) showed

the grounds to my correspondent. He was the son of Mrs. Vanhomrigh's

gardener, and used to work with his father in the garden when a boy. He

remembered the unfortunate Vanessa well; and his account of her

corresponded with the usual description of her person, especially as to

her _embonpoint_. He said she went seldom abroad, and saw little

company; her constant amusement was reading, or walking in the garden.

Yet, according to this authority, her society was courted by several

families in the neighbourhood, who visited her, notwithstanding her

seldom returning that attention; and he added, that her manners

interested every one who knew her,--but she avoided company, and was

always melancholy save when Dean Swift was there, and then she seemed

happy. The garden was to an uncommon degree crowded with laurels. The

old man said, that when Miss Vanhomrigh expected the Dean, she always

planted with her own hand a laurel or two against his arrival. He showed

her favourite seat, still called Vanessa's Bower. Three or four trees,

and some laurels, indicate the spot. They had formerly, according to the

old man's information, been trained into a close arbour. There were two

seats and a rude table within the bower, the opening of which commanded

a view of the Liffey, which had a romantic effect; and there was a small

cascade that murmured at some distance. In this sequestered spot,

according to the old gardener's account, the Dean and Vanessa used often

to sit, with books and writing materials on the table before

them."--_Scott's Life of Swift._

[116] Scott's Life of Swift.

[117] Correspondence, (as quoted in Sheridan's Life of Swift.)

[118] I give one specimen, not as the most eloquent that could be

extracted, but as most illustrative of the story.

"You bid me be easy, and you would see me as often as you could; you had

better have said as often as you could get the better of your

inclination so much; or, as often as you remembered there was such a

person in the world. If you continue to treat me as you do, you will not

be made uneasy by me long. 'Tis impossible to describe what I have

suffered since I saw you last; I am sure I could have borne the rack

much better than those killing, killing words of yours. Sometimes I have

resolved to die without seeing you more; but those resolves, to your

misfortune, did not last long, for there is something in human nature

that prompts us to seek relief in this world. I must give way to it, and

beg you would see me, and speak kindly to me; for I am sure you would

not condemn any one to suffer what I have done, could you but know it.

The reason I write to you is this, because I cannot tell it you, should

I see you; for when I begin to complain, then you are angry, and there

is something in your look so awful, that it strikes me dumb. Oh! that

you may but have so much regard for me left, that this complaint may

touch your soul with pity! I say as little as ever I can. Did you but

know what I thought, I am sure it would move you. Forgive me, and

believe, I cannot help telling you this, and live."--LETTERS, Vol. xix.

page 421.

[119] Mrs. Hemans.

[120] Johnson's Life of Swift.

[121] Johnson, Sheridan. Scott.

[122] Scott's Life of Swift.--Sheridan has recorded another interview

between Stella and her destroyer, in which she besought him to

acknowledge her before her death, that she might have the satisfaction

of dying his wife; and he refused.

Dated Feb. 7, 1728, I find a letter from Swift to Martha Blount, written

in a style of gay badinage, and her answer; and in neither is there the

slightest allusion to his recent loss.--_Roscoe's Pope_, vol. viii. p.

460.

[123] It was after the death of Stella, that all Swift's coarsest

satires were written. He was in the act of writing the last and most

terrible of these, when he was seized with insanity; and it remains

unfinished.

CHAPTER XV.

POPE AND MARTHA BLOUNT.

If the soul of sensibility, which I believe Pope really possessed, had

been enclosed in a healthful frame and an agreeable person, we might

have reckoned him among our _preux chevaliers_, and have had sonnets

instead of satires. But he seems to have been ever divided between two

contending feelings. He was peculiarly sensible to the charms of women,

and his habits as a valetudinarian, rendered their society and attention

not only soothing and delightful, but absolutely necessary to him:

while, unhappily, there mingled with this real love for them, and

dependance on them as a sex, the most irascible self-love; and a

torturing consciousness of that feebleness and deformity of person,

which embittered all his intercourse with them. He felt that, in his

character of poet, he could, by his homage, flatter their vanity, and

excite their admiration and their fear; but, at the same time, he was

shivering under the apprehension that, as a man, they regarded him with

contempt; and that he could never hope to awaken in a female bosom any

feelings corresponding with his own. So far he was unjust to us and to

himself: his friend Lord Lyttelton, and his enemy Lord Hervey,[124]

might have taught him better.

On reviewing Pope's life, his works, and his correspondence, it seems to

me that these two opposite feelings contending in his bosom from youth

to age, will account for the general character of his poems with a

reference to our sex:--will explain why women bear so prominent a part

in all his works, whether as objects of poetical gallantry, honest

admiration, or poignant satire: why there is not among all his

productions more than one poem decidedly amatory, (and that one partly

suppressed in the ordinary editions of his works,) while women only have

furnished him with the materials of all his _chef-d'oeuvres_: his

Elegy, his 'Rape of the Lock,' the 'Epistle of Heloise,' and the second

of his Moral Essays. He may call us, and prove us, in his antithetical

style, "a contradiction:"[125] but we may retort; for, as far as women

are concerned, Pope was himself one miserable antithesis.

* * * * *

The "Elegy to the memory of an unfortunate Lady," refers to a tragedy

which occurred in Pope's early life, and over which he has studiously

drawn an impenetrable veil. When his friend Mr. Caryl wrote to him on

the subject, many years after the Elegy was published, Pope, in his

reply, left this part of the letter unnoticed; and a second application

was equally unsuccessful. His biographers are not better informed.

Johnson remarks upon the Elegy, that it commemorates the "amorous fury

of a raving girl, who liked self-murder better than suspense;" and

having given this deadly stroke with his critical fang, the grim old

lion of literature stalks on, and "stays no farther question." But is

this merciful, or is it just? by what right does he sit in judgment on

the unhappy dead, of whom he knew nothing? or how could he tell by what

course of suffering, disease, or tyranny, a gentle spirit may have been

goaded to frenzy? It was said, on the authority of some French author,

that she was secretly attached to one of the French princes: that, in

consequence, her uncle and guardian ("the mean deserter of a brother's

blood,") forced her into a convent, where, in despair and madness, she

put an end to her existence; and that the lines

Why bade ye else, ye powers! her soul aspire

Above the vulgar flight of low desire?

Ambition first sprung from your blest abodes;

The glorious fault of angels and of gods,--

refer to this ambitious passion. But then, again, this has been

contradicted. Warton's story is improbable and inconsistent with the

poem;[126] and the assertion of another author,[127] that she was in

love with Pope, and as deformed as himself, is most unlikely. "O ever

beauteous, ever friendly!" is rather a strange style of apostrophising

one deformed in person; and exposed to misery, and driven to suicide, by

a passion for himself. In short, it is all mystery, wonder, and

conjecture.

Other women who have been loved, celebrated, or satirized by Pope, are

at least more notorious, if not so interesting. His most lasting and

real attachment, was that which he entertained for Theresa and Martha

Blount, who alternately, or with divided empire, reigned in his heart or

fancy for five-and-thirty years. They were of an old Roman Catholic

family of Oxfordshire; and his acquaintance with them appears to have

begun as early as 1707, when he was only nineteen. Theresa, the

handsomest and most intelligent of the two sisters, was a brunette, with

black sparkling eyes. Martha was short in stature, fair, with blue eyes,

and a softer expression. They appear to have been tolerably amiable, and

much attached to each other: _au reste_, in no way distinguished, but by

the flattering admiration of a celebrated man, who has immortalised

both.

The verses addressed to them, convey in general, either counsel or

compliment, or at the most playful gallantry. His letters express

something beyond these. He began by admiring Theresa; then he wavered:

there were misunderstandings, and petulance, and mutual bickerings. His

susceptibility exposed him to be continually wounded; he felt deeply and

acutely; he was conscious that he could inspire no sentiment

corresponding with that which throbbed at his own heart: and some

passages in the correspondence cannot be read without a painful pity.

At length, upon some mutual offence, his partiality for Theresa was

transferred to Martha. In one of his last letters to Theresa, he says,

beautifully and feelingly, "We are too apt to resent things too highly,

till we come to know, by some great misfortune or other, how much we are

born to endure; and as for me, you need not suspect of resentment a soul

which can feel nothing but grief."

His attachment to Martha increased after his quarrel with Lady Mary W.

Montagu, and ended only with his life.

"He was never," says Mr. Bowles, "indifferent to female society; and

though his good sense prevented him, conscious of so many personal

infirmities, from marrying, yet he felt the want of that sort of

reciprocal tenderness and confidence in a female, to whom he might

freely communicate his thoughts, and on whom, in sickness and infirmity,

he could rely. All this Martha Blount became to him; by degrees, she

became identified with his existence. She partook of his

disappointments, his vexations, and his comforts. Wherever he went, his

correspondence with her was never remitted; and when the warmth of

gallantry was over, the cherished idea of kindness and regard

remained."[128]

To Martha Blount is addressed the compliment on her birth-day--

O be thou blest with all that heaven can send,--

Long health, long youth, long pleasure, and a friend!

And an epistle sent to her, with the works of Voiture, in which he

advises her against marriage, in this elegant and well-known passage,--

Too much your sex are by their forms confin'd,

Severe to all, but most to womankind;

Custom, grown blind with age, must be your guide;

Your pleasure is a vice, but not your pride.

By nature yielding, stubborn but for fame,

Made slaves by honour, and made fools by shame.

Marriage may all those petty tyrants chase,

But sets up one, a greater, in their place:

Well might you wish for change, by those accurst,

But the last tyrant ever proves the worst.

Still in constraint your suffering sex remains,

Or bound in formal or in real chains:

Whole years neglected, for some months adored,

The fawning servant turns a haughty lord.

Ah, quit not the free innocence of life

For the dull glory of a virtuous wife!

Nor let false shows, nor empty titles please,--

Aim not at joy, but rest content with ease.

Very excellent advice, and very disinterested, considering whence it

came, and to whom it was addressed!!

The poem generally placed after this in his works, and entitled "Epistle

to the _same_ Lady, on leaving town after the Coronation," was certainly

not addressed to Martha, but to Theresa. It appears from the

correspondence, that Martha was not at the Coronation in 1715, and that

Theresa was. The whole tenour of this poem is agreeable to the sprightly

person and character of Theresa, while "Parthenia's softer blush,"

evidently alludes to Martha. From an examination of the letters which

were written at this time, I should imagine, that though Pope had

previously assured the latter that she had gained the conquest over her

fair sister, yet the public appearance of Theresa at the Coronation, and

her superior charms, revived all his tenderness and admiration, and

suggested this gay and pleasing effusion.

In some fair evening, on your elbow laid,

You dream of triumphs in the rural shade;

In pensive thought recall the fancy'd scene,

See coronations rise on every green.

Before you pass th' imaginary sights

Of lords, and earls, and dukes, and garter'd knights,

While the spread fan o'ershades your closing eyes,--

Then give one flirt, and all the vision flies.

Thus vanish sceptres, coronets, and balls,

And leave you in lone woods or empty walls!

To Martha Blount is dedicated the "Epistle on the Characters of Women;"

which concludes with this elegant and flattering address to her.

O! blest with temper, whose unclouded ray

Can make to-morrow cheerful as to-day;

She who can love a sister's charms, or hear

Sighs for a daughter with unwounded ear;

She who ne'er answers till a husband cools,

Or if she rules him, never shows she rules:

Charms by accepting, by submitting sways,

Yet has her humour most when she obeys;

Let fops or fortune fly which way they will,

Disdains all loss of tickets or codille;

Spleen, vapours, or small-pox, above them all,

And mistress of herself though China fall.

The allusion to her affection for her sister, is just and beautiful; but

the compliment to her temper is understood not to have been quite

merited--perhaps, was rather administered as a corrective; for Martha

was weak and captious; and Pope, who had suffered what torments a female

wit could inflict, possibly found that peevishness and folly have also

their _desagremens_. He complains frequently, in his letters to Martha,

of the difficulty of pleasing her, or understanding her wishes.

Methinks, had I been a poet, or Pope, I would rather have been led about

in triumph by the spirited, accomplished Lady Mary, than "chained to the

footstool of two paltry girls."

They used to employ him constantly in the most trifling and troublesome

commissions, in which he had seldom even the satisfaction of contenting

them. He was accustomed to send them little presents almost daily, as

concert-tickets, ribbons, fruit, &c. He once sent them a basket of

peaches, which, with an affectation of careless gallantry, were

separately wrapped in part of the manuscript translation of the Iliad:

and he humbly requests them to return the wrappers, as he had no other

copy. On another occasion he sent them fans, on which were inscribed his

famous lines,

"Come, gentle air," th' Eolian shepherd said, &c.

Martha Blount was not so kind or so attentive to Pope in his last

illness as she ought to have been. His love for _her_ seemed blended

with his frail existence; and when he was scarcely sensible to any thing

else in the world, he was still conscious of the charm of her presence.

"When she came into the room," says Spence, "it was enough to give a new

turn to his spirits, and a temporary strength to him."

She survived him eighteen years, and died unmarried at her house in

Berkeley Square, in 1762. She is described, about that time, as a

little, fair, prim old woman, very lively, and inclined to gossip. Her

undefined connexion with Pope, though it afforded matter for mirth and

wonder, never affected her reputation while living; and has rendered her

name as immortal as our language and our literature. One cannot help

wishing that she had been more interesting, and more worthy of her

fame.

FOOTNOTES:

[124] Lord Hervey, with an exterior the most forbidding, and almost

ghastly, contrived to supersede Pope in the good graces of Lady M. W.

Montagu; carried off Mary Lepell, the beautiful maid of honour, from a

host of rivals, and made her Lady Hervey: and won the whole heart of the

poor Princess Caroline, who is said to have died of grief for his

loss.--_See Walpole's Memoirs of George II._

[125] "Woman's at best a contradiction still."

[126] See Roscoe's Life of Pope, p. 87. Warton says her name was

Wainsbury, and that she hung herself.

[127] Warburton.

[128] Bowles's edition of Pope, vol. i. page 69.

CHAPTER XVI.

POPE AND LADY M. W. MONTAGU.

In the same year with Martha Blount, and about the same age, died Lady

Mary W. Montagu. Every body knows that she was one of Pope's early

loves. She had, for several years, suspended his attachment to his first

favourites, the Blounts; and she really deserved the preference. But the

issue of this romantic attachment was the most bitter, the most

irreconcilable enmity. The cause did not proceed so much from any one

particular offence on either side, but rather from a multitude of

trifling causes, arising naturally out of the characters of both.

When they first met, Pope was about six-and-twenty; and from the recent

publication of the 'Rape of the Lock,' and 'The Temple of Fame,' &c. had

reached the pinnacle of fashion and reputation. Lady Mary was in her

twenty-third year, lately married to a man she loved, and had just burst

upon the world in all the blaze of her wit and beauty. Her masculine

acquirements and powers of mind--her strong good sense--her extensive

views--her frankness, decision, and generosity--her vivacity, and her

bright eyes, must altogether have rendered her one of the most

fascinating, as she really was one of the most extraordinary, women that

ever lived.

There stands, in a conspicuous part of this great city, a certain

monument, erected, it is said, at the cost of the ladies of Britain; but

in a spirit and taste which, I trust, are not those of my countrywomen

at large. Is this our patriotism? We may applaud the brave, who go forth

to battle to defend us, and preserve inviolate the sanctity of our

hearths and homes; but does it become us to lend our voice to exult in

victory, always bought at the expense of suffering, and aggravate the

din and the clamour of war--we, who ought to be the peace-makers of the

world, and plead for man against his own fierce passions? A huge brazen

image stands up, an impudent (false) witness of our martial enthusiasm;

but who amongst us has thought of raising a public statue to Lady

Wortley Montagu! to her who has almost banished from the world that pest

which once extinguished families and desolated provinces? To her true

patriotic spirit,--to her magnanimity, her generous perseverance, in

surmounting all obstacles raised by the outcry of ignorance, and the

obstinacy of prejudice, we owe the introduction of inoculation;--she

ought to stand in marble beside Howard the good.[129]

I should imagine that a strong impression must have been made on Lady

Mary's mind, by an incident which occurred just at the time she left

England for Constantinople. Lord Petre,--he who is consecrated to fame

in the Rape of the Lock, as the ravisher of Arabella Fermour's

hair,--died of the small-pox at the age of three-and-twenty, just after

his marriage with a young and beautiful heiress; his death caused a

general sympathy, and added to the dread and horror which was inspired

by this terrible disease: eighteen persons of his family had died of it

within twenty-seven years. In those days it was not even allowable to

mention, or allude to it in company.

Mr. Wortley was appointed to the Turkish embassy in 1716, and his wife

accompanied him. The letters which passed between her and Pope, during

her absence, are well known. In point of style and liveliness, the

superiority is on the lady's side; but the tone of feeling in Pope is

better, more earnest; his language is not always within the bounds of

that sprightly gallantry with which a man naturally addresses a young,

beautiful, and virtuous woman, who had condescended to allow his

homage.[130]

In one of his letters, written immediately after her departure, he asks

her how he had looked? how he had behaved at the last moment? whether he

had betrayed any deeper feeling than propriety might warrant? "For if,"

he says, "my parting looked like that of a common acquaintance, I am the

greatest of all hypocrites that ever decency made." And in a subsequent

letter he says, very feelingly and significantly, "May that person (her

husband) for whom you have left the world, be so just as to prefer you

to all the world. I believe his good sense leads him to do so now, as

gratitude will hereafter. May you continue to think him worthy of

whatever you have done! may you ever look upon him with the eyes of a

first lover, nay, if possible, with all the unreasonable happy fondness

of an unexperienced one, surrounded with all the enchantments and ideas

of romance and poetry! I wish this from my heart; and while I examine

what passes there in regard to you, I cannot but glory in my own heart,

that it is capable of so much generosity."

This was sufficiently clear. I need scarcely remark _en passant_, that

Pope's generosity and wishes were all _en pure perte_; his spitefulness

must have been gratified by the sequel of Lady Mary's domestic bliss;

her marriage ended in disgust and aversion; which, on her separation

from Mr. Wortley, subsided into a good-humoured indifference.[131]

After a union of twenty-seven years, she parted from him and went to

reside abroad. There were errors on both sides; but I am obliged to

admit that Lady Mary, with all her fine qualities, had two

faults,--intolerable and unpardonable faults in the eyes of a husband or

a lover. She wanted softness of mind, and refinement of feeling, in the

first place: and she wanted--how shall I express it?--she wanted

neatness and personal delicacy; and was, in short, that _odious_ thing,

a female sloven, as well as that _dangerous_ thing, a female wit.

In those days the style of dress was the most hideous imaginable. The

women wore a large quantity of artificial hair, in emulation of the

tremendous periwigs of the men; and Pope, in one of his letters to Lady

Mary, mentions her "full bottomed wig," which, he says, "I did but

assert to be a _bob_" and was answered, "Love is blind!" On her return

from Turkey, she sometimes allowed her own fine dark hair to flow loose,

and was fond of dressing in her Turkish costume. In this she was

imitated by several beautiful women of the day, and particularly by her

lovely contemporary, Lady Fanny Shirley, (Chesterfield's "Fanny,

blooming fair:" he seems to have admired her as much as he could

possibly admire any thing, next to himself and the Graces.) In her

picture at Clarendon Park, she too appears in the habit of Fatima.

_Apropos_, to the loves of the poets, Lady Fanny deserves to be

mentioned as the theme of all the rhymesters, and "the joy, the wish,

the wonder, the despair," of all the beaux of her day.[132]

But it is time to return to Pope. The epistle of Heloise to Abelard was

published during Lady Mary's absence, and sent to her: and it is clear

from a passage in one of his letters, that he wished her to consider the

last lines,--from

And sure, if fate some future bard shall join,

down to

He best can paint them, who can feel them most,

as applicable to himself and to his feelings towards her.

And yet, whatever might have been his devotion to Lady Mary before she

went abroad, it was increased tenfold after her memorable travels. At

present, when ladies of fashion make excursions of pleasure to the

pyramids of Egypt and the ruins of Babylon, a journey to Constantinople

is little more than a trip to Rome or Vienna; but in the last age it was

a prodigious and marvellous undertaking; and Lady Mary, on her return,

was gazed upon as an object of wonder and curiosity, and sought as the

most entertaining person in the world: her sprightliness and her beauty,

her oriental stories and her Turkish costume, were the rage of the day.

With Pope, she was on the most friendly terms:--by his interference and

negociation, a house was procured for her and Mr. Wortley, at

Twickenham, so that their intercourse was almost constant. When he

finished his translation of the Iliad, in 1720, Gay wrote him a

complimentary poem, in which he enumerates the host of friends who

welcomed the poet home from Greece; and among them, Lady Mary stands

conspicuous.

What lady's that to whom he gently bends?

Who knows not her! Ah, those are Wortley's eyes;

How art thou honoured, numbered with her friends,--

For she distinguishes the good and wise!

To this period we may also refer the composition of the Stanzas to Lady

Mary, which begin, "In beauty and wit."[133] The measure is trivial and

disagreeable, but the compliments are very sprightly and pointed.

She sat to Kneller for him in her Turkish dress; and we have the

following note from him on the subject, which shows how much he felt the

condescension.

"The picture dwells really at my heart, and I have made a perfect

passion of preferring your present face to your past. I know and

thoroughly esteem yourself of this year. I know no more of Lady Mary

Pierrepoint than to admire at what I have heard of her, or be pleased

with some fragments of hers, as I am with Sappho's. But now--I cannot

say what I would say of you now. Only still give me cause to say you

are good to me, and allow me as much of your person as Sir Godfrey can

help me to. Upon conferring with him yesterday, I find he thinks it

absolutely necessary to draw your face first, which, he says, can never

be set right on your figure, if the drapery and posture be finished

before. To give you as little trouble as possible, he purposes to draw

your face with crayons, and finish it up at your own house of a morning;

from whence he will transfer it to canvass, so that you need not go to

sit at his house. This, I must observe, is a manner they seldom draw any

but crowned heads, and I observe it with a secret pride and pleasure. Be

so kind as to tell me if you care, he should do this to-morrow at

twelve. Though, if I am but assured from you of the thing, let the

manner and time be what you best like; let every decorum you please be

observed. I should be very unworthy of any favour from your hands, if I

desired any at the expense of your quiet or conveniency in any degree."

He was charmed with the picture, and composed an extemporary compliment,

beginning

The playful smiles around the dimpled mouth,

That happy air of majesty and truth; &c.

which, considering that they are Pope's, are strangely defective in

rhyme, in sense, and in grammar. In a far different strain are the

beautiful lines addressed to Gay, during Lady Mary's absence from

Twickenham, and which he afterwards endeavoured to suppress. They are

curious on this account, as well as for being the solitary example of

amatory verse contained in his works.

Ah friend! 'tis true,--this truth you lovers know,

In vain my structures rise, my gardens grow;

In vain fair Thames reflects the double scenes,

Of hanging mountains, and of sloping greens;

Joy lives not here, to happier seats it flies,

And only dwells where Wortley casts her eyes.

What are the gay parterre, the chequer'd shade,

The morning bower, the evening colonnade,

But soft recesses of uneasy minds,

To sigh unheard in to the passing winds?

So the struck deer, in some sequester'd part,

Lies down to die, the arrow at his heart;

There, stretch'd unseen in coverts hid from day,

Bleeds drop by drop, and pants his life away.

These sweet and musical lines, which fall on the ear with such a lulling

harmony, are dashed with discord when we remember that the same woman

who inspired them, was afterwards malignantly and coarsely designated as

the Sappho of his satires. The generous heart never coolly degraded and

insulted what it has once loved; but Pope _could_ not be

magnanimous,--it was not in his spiteful nature to forgive. He says of

himself,

Whoe'er offends, at some unlucky time

Slides into verse, and hitches in a rhyme.[134]

One of Pope's biographers[135] seems to insinuate, that he had been led

on, by the lady's coquetry, to presume too far, and in consequence

received a repulse, which he never forgave. This is not probable: Pope

was not likely to be so desperate or dangerous an admirer; nor was Lady

Mary, who had written with her diamond ring on a window,

Let this great maxim be my virtue's guide:

In part, she is to blame that has been tried,--

He comes too near, that comes to be denied!--

at all likely to expose herself to such ridiculous audacity. The truth

is, I rather imagine, that there was a great deal of vanity on both

sides; that the lady was amused and flattered, and the poet bewitched

and in earnest: that _she_ gave the first offence by some pointed

sarcasm or personal ridicule, in which she was an adept, and that Pope,

gradually awakened from his dream of adoration, was stung to the quick

by her laughing scorn, and mortified and irritated by the consciousness

of his wasted attachment. He makes this confession with extreme

bitterness,--

Yet soft by nature, more a dupe than wit,

Sappho can tell you how this man was bit.

_Prologue to the Satires._

The lines as they stand in a first edition are even more pointed and

significant, and have much more asperity.

Once, and but once, his heedless youth was bit,

And liked that dangerous thing, a female wit.

Safe as he thought, though all the prudent chid,

He wrote no libels, but _my lady_ did;

Great odds in amorous or poetic game,

Where woman's is the _sin_, and man's the _shame_!

The result was a deadly and interminable feud. Lady Mary might possibly

have inflicted the first private offence, but Pope gave the first public

affront. A man who, under such circumstances, could grossly satirize a

female, would, in a less civilized state of society, have revenged

himself with a blow. The brutality and cowardice were the same.

The war of words did not, however, proceed at once to such extremity;

the first indication of Pope's revolt from his sworn allegiance, and a

conscious hint of the secret cause, may be found in some lines addressed

to a lady poetess,[136] to whom he pays a compliment at Lady Mary's

expense.

Though sprightly Sappho force our love and praise,

A softer wonder my pleased soul surveys,--

The mild Erinna blushing in her bays;

So while the sun's broad beam yet strikes the sight,

All mild appears the moon's more sober light.

Serene in virgin majesty she shines,

And unobserved, the glaring orb declines.

Soon after appeared that ribald and ruffian-like attack on her in the

satires. She sent Lord Peterborough to remonstrate with Pope, to whom he

denied the intended application; and his disavowal is a proved

falsehood. Lady Mary, exasperated, forgot her good sense and her

feminine dignity, and made common cause with Lord Hervey (the Lord Fanny

and the Sporus of the Satires.) They concocted an attack in verse,

addressed to the imitator of Horace; but nothing could be more unequal

than such a warfare. Pope, in return, grasped the blasting and vollied

lightnings of his wit, and would have annihilated both his adversaries,

if more than half a grain of truth had been on his side. But posterity

has been just: in his anger, he overcharged his weapon, it recoiled, and

the engineer has been "hoisted by his own petard."

Lady Mary's personal negligence afforded grounds for Pope's coarse and

severe allusions to the "colour of her linen, &c." His asperity,

however, did not reform her in this respect: it was a fault which

increased with age and foreign habits. Horace Walpole, who met her at

Florence twenty years afterwards, draws a hateful and disgusting picture

of her, as "old, dirty, tawdry, painted," and flirting and gambling with

all the young men in the place. But Walpole is terribly satirical; he

had a personal dislike to Lady Mary Wortley, whom he coarsely designates

as _Moll Worthless_,--and his description is certainly overcharged. How

differently the same characters will strike different people! Spence,

who also met Lady Mary abroad, about that time, thus writes to his

mother: "I always desired to be acquainted with Lady Mary, and could

never bring it about, though we were so often together in London. Soon

after we came to this place, her ladyship came here, and in five days I

was well acquainted with her. She is one of the most shining characters

in the world,--but shines like a comet: she is all irregularity, and

always wandering: the most wise, most imprudent, loveliest, most

disagreeable, best-natured, cruellest woman in the world!" Walpole could

see nothing but her dirt and her paint. Those who recollect his coarse

description, and do _not_ remember her letters to her daughter, written

from Italy about the same time, would do well to refer to them as a

corrective: it is always so easy to be satirical and ill-natured, and

sometimes so difficult to be just and merciful!

The cold scornful levity with which she treated certain topics, is

mingled with touches of tenderness and profound thought, which show her

to have been a disappointed, not a heartless woman. The extreme care

with which she cultivated pleasurable feelings and ideas, and shrunk

from all disagreeable impressions; her determination never to view her

own face in a glass, after the approach of age, or to pronounce the name

of her mad, profligate son, may be referred to a cause very different

from either selfishness or vanity: but I think the principle was

mistaken. While she was amusing herself with her silk-worms and her

orangerie at Como, her husband Wortley, with whom she kept up a constant

correspondence, was hoarding money and drinking tokay to keep himself

alive. He died, however, in 1761; and that he was connected with the

motives, whatever those were, which induced Lady Mary to reside abroad,

is proved by the fact, that the moment she heard of his death she

prepared to return to England, and she reached London in January 1762.

"Lady Mary is arrived," says Walpole, writing to George Montagu. "I have

seen her. I think her avarice, her dirt, and her vivacity, are all

increased. Her dress, like her language, is a galimatias of several

countries. She needs no cap, no handkerchief, no gown, no petticoat, no

shoes; an old black-laced hood represents the first; the fur of a

horseman's coat, which replaces the third, serves for the second; a

dimity petticoat is deputy, and officiates for the fourth; and slippers

act the part of the last." About six months after her arrival she died

in the arms of her daughter, the Countess of Bute, of a cruel and

shocking disease, the agonies of which she had borne with heroism rather

than resignation. The present Marquess of Bute, and the present Lord

Wharncliffe, are the great-grandsons of this distinguished woman: the

latter is the representative of the Wortley family.

FOOTNOTES:

[129] In Litchfield Cathedral stands the only memorial ever raised, by

public or private gratitude, to Lady Mary; it is a cenotaph, with Beauty

weeping the loss of her preserver, and an inscription, of which the

following words form the conclusion:--"To perpetuate the memory of such

benevolence, and to express her gratitude for the benefit she herself

received from this alleviating art, this monument is erected by

Henrietta Inge, relict of Theodore William Inge, and daughter of Sir

John Wrottesley, Bart, in 1789." One would like to have known the woman

who raised this monument.

[130] "You shall see (said Lady Mary referring to these letters) what a

goddess he made of me in some of them, though he makes such a devil of

me in his writings afterwards, without any reason that I know

of."--_Spence._

[131] I remember seeing, I think, in one of D'Israeli's works a fragment

of some lines which Lady Mary wrote on her husband, and which expressed

the utmost bitterness of female scorn.

[132] See, in Pope's Miscellanies, the sprightly stanzas, beginning

"Yes, I beheld th' Athenian Queen." They are addressed to Lady Fanny,

who had presented the poet with a standish, and two pens, one of steel

and one of gold. She was the fourth daughter of Earl Ferrers. After

numbering more adorers in her train than any beauty of her time, she

died unmarried, in 1778.--_Collins' Peerage, by Brydges._

[133]

In beauty and wit,

No mortal as yet,

To question your empire has dared;

But men of discerning

Have thought that, in learning,

To yield to a lady was hard.

[134] "I have often wondered," says the gentle-spirited Cowper, "that

the same poet who wrote the Dunciad should have written these lines,--

That mercy I to others show,

That mercy show to me!

Alas! for Pope, if the mercy he showed to others, was the measure of the

mercy he received!"--_Cowper's Letters_, vol. iii. p. 195.

[135] Mr. Bowles.

[136] Erinna: her real name is not known. But she was a friend of Lady

Suffolk, who wrote bad verses, and submitted them to Pope for

correction.

CHAPTER XVII.

POETICAL OLD BACHELORS.

There is a certain class of poets, not a very numerous one, whom I would

call poetical old bachelors. They are such as enjoy a certain degree of

fame and popularity themselves, without sharing their celebrity with any

fair piece of excellence; but walk each on his solitary path to glory,

wearing their lonely honours with more dignity than grace: for instance,

Corneille, Racine, Boileau, the classical names of French poetry, were

all poetical old bachelors. Racine--_le tendre Racine_--as he is called

_par excellence_, is said never to have been in love in his life; nor

has he left us a single verse in which any of his personal feelings can

be traced. He was, however, the kind and faithful husband of a cold,

bigoted woman, who was persuaded, and at length persuaded _him_, that he

would be _grille_ in the other world, for writing heathen tragedies in

this; and made it her boast that she had never read a single line of her

husband's works! Peace be with her!

And O, let her by whom the muse was scorn'd,

Alive nor dead, be of the muse adorn'd!

Our own Gray was in every sense, real and poetical, a cold fastidious

old bachelor, who buried himself in the recesses of his college; at once

shy and proud, sensitive and selfish. I cannot, on looking through his

memoirs, letters, and poems, discover the slightest trace of passion, or

one proof or even indication that he was ever under the influence of

woman. He loved his mother, and was dutiful to two tiresome old aunts,

who thought poetry one of the seven deadly sins--_et voila tout_. He

spent his life in amassing an inconceivable quantity of knowledge,

which lay as buried and useless as a miser's treasure; but with this

difference, that when the miser dies, his wealth flows forth into its

natural channels, and enriches others; Gray's learning was entombed with

him: his genius survives in his elegy and his odes;--what became of his

heart I know not. He is generally supposed to have possessed one, though

none can guess what he did with it:--he might well moralise on his

bachelorship, and call himself "a solitary fly,"--

Thy joys no glittering female meets,

No hive hast thou of hoarded sweets,

No painted plumage to display!

Collins was never a lover, and never married. His odes, with all their

exquisite fancy and splendid imagery, have not much interest in their

subjects, and no pathos derived from feeling or passion. He is reported

to have been once in love; and as the lady was a day older than himself,

he used to say jestingly, that "he came into the world _a day after the

fair_." He was not deeply smitten; and though he led in his early years

a dissipated life, his heart never seems to have been really touched. He

wrote an Ode on the Passions, in which, after dwelling on Hope, Fear,

Anger, Despair, Pity, and describing them with many picturesque

circumstances, he dismisses Love with a couple of lines, as dancing to

the sound of the sprightly viol, and forming with joy the light

fantastic round. Such was Collins's idea of love!

To these we may add Goldsmith. Of his loves we know nothing; they were

probably the reverse of poetical, and may have had some influence on his

purse and respectability, but none on his literary character and

productions. He also died unmarried.

Shenstone, if he was not a poetical old bachelor, was little better than

a poetical dangler. He was not formed to captivate: his person was

clumsy, his manners disagreeable, and his temper feeble and vacillating.

The Delia who is introduced into his elegies, and the Phillis of his

pastoral ballad, was Charlotte Graves, sister to the Graves who wrote

the Spiritual Quixotte. There was nothing warm or earnest in his

admiration, and all his gallantry is as vapid as his character. He never

gave the lady who was supposed, and supposed herself, to be the object

of his serious pursuit, an opportunity of accepting or rejecting him;

and his conduct has been blamed as ambiguous and unmanly. His querulous

declamations against women in general, had neither cause nor excuse; and

his complaints of infidelity and coldness are equally without

foundation. He died unmarried.

When we look at a picture of Thomson, we wonder how a man with that

heavy, pampered countenance, and awkward mien, could ever have written

the "Seasons," or have been in love. I think it is Barry Cornwall, who

says strikingly, that Thomson's figure "was a personification of the

Castle of Indolence, without its romance." Yet Thomson, though he has

not given any popularity or interest to the name of a woman, is said to

have been twice in love, after his own _lack-a-daisical_ fashion. He was

first attached to Miss Stanley, who died young, and upon whom he wrote

the little elegy,--

Tell me, thou soul of her I love! &c.

He alludes to her also in Summer, in the passage beginning,--

And art thou, Stanley, of the sacred band, &c.

His second love was long, quiet, and constant; but whether the lady's

coldness, or want of fortune, prevented a union, is not clear: probably

the latter. The object of this attachment was a Miss Young, who resided

at Richmond; and his attentions to her were continued through a long

series of years, and even till within a short time before his death, in

his forty-eighth year. She was his Amanda; and if she at all answered

the description of her in his Spring, she must have been a lovely and

amiable woman.

And thou, Amanda, come, pride of my song!

Form'd by the Graces, loveliness itself!

Come with those downcast eyes, sedate and sweet,

Those looks demure, that deeply pierce the soul,

Where, with the light of thoughtful reason mix'd,

Shines lively fancy and the feeling heart:

Oh, come! and while the rosy-footed May

Steals blushing on, together let us tread

The morning dews, and gather in their prime

Fresh-blooming flowers, to grace thy braided hair.

And if his attachment to her suggested that beautiful description of

domestic happiness with which his Spring concludes,--

But happy they, the happiest of their kind,

Whom gentler stars unite, &c.

who would not grieve at the destiny which denied to Thomson pleasures he

could so eloquently describe, and so feelingly appreciate?

Truth, however, obliges me to add one little trait. A lady who did not

know Thomson personally, but was enchanted with his "Seasons," said she

could gather from his works three parts of his character,--that he was

an amiable lover, an excellent swimmer, and extremely abstemious.

Savage, who knew the poet, could not help laughing at this picture of a

man who scarcely knew what love was; who shrunk from cold water like a

cat; and whose habits were those of a good-natured bon vivant, who

indulged himself in every possible luxury, which could be attained

without trouble! He also died unmarried.

Hammond, the favourite of our sentimental great-grandmothers, whose

"Love Elegies" lay on the toilettes of the Harriet Byrons and Sophia

Westerns of the last century, was an amiable youth, "very melancholy and

gentlemanlike," who being appointed equerry to Prince Frederic, cast his

eyes on Miss Dashwood, bed-chamber woman to the Princess, and she became

his Delia. The lady was deaf to his pastoral strains; and though it has

been said that she rejected him on account of the smallness of his

fortune, I do not see the necessity of believing this assertion, or of

sympathising in the dull invectives and monotonous lamentations of the

slighted lover. Miss Dashwood never married, and was, I believe, one of

the maids of honour to the late Queen.

Thus the six poets, who, in the history of our literature, fill up the

period which intervened between the death of Pope and the first

publications of Burns and Cowper--all died old bachelors!

CHAPTER XVIII.

FRENCH POETS.

VOLTAIRE AND MADAME DU CHATELET.

If we take a rapid view of French literature, from the reign of Louis

the Fourteenth, down to the Revolution, we are dazzled by the record of

brilliant and celebrated women, who protected or cultivated letters, and

obtained the homage of men of talent. There was Ninon; and there was

Madame de Rambouillet; the one _galante_, the other _precieuse_. One had

her St. Evremond; the other her Voiture. Madame de Sabliere protected La

Fontaine; Madame de Montespan protected Moliere; Madame de Maintenon

protected Racine. It was all patronage and protection on one side, and

dependance and servility on the other. Then we have the _intrigante_

Madame de Tencin;[137] the good-natured, but rather _bornee_ Madame de

Geoffrin; the Duchesse de Maine, who held a little court of _bel

esprits_ and small poets at Sceaux, and is best known as the patroness

of Mademoiselle de Launay. Madame d'Epinay, the _amie_ of Grimm, and the

patroness of Rousseau; the clever, selfish, witty, ever _ennuyee_, never

_ennuyeuse_ Madame du Deffand; the ardent, talented Mademoiselle de

l'Espinasse, who would certainly have been a poetess, if she had not

been a philosopheress and a Frenchwoman: Madame Neckar, the patroness of

Marmontel and Thomas:--_e tutte quante_. If we look over the light

French literature of those times, we find an inconceivable heap of _vers

galans_, and _jolis couplets_, licentious songs, pretty, well-turned

compliments, and most graceful badinage; but we can discover the names

of only two distinguished women, who have the slightest pretensions to a

poetical celebrity, derived from the genius, the attachment, and the

fame of their lovers. These were Madame du Chatelet, Voltaire's

"Immortelle Emilie:" and Madame d'Houdetot, the Doris of Saint-Lambert.

Gabrielle-Emilie le Tonnelier de Breteuil, was the daughter of the Baron

de Breteuil, and born in 1706. At an early age she was taken from her

convent, and married to the Marquis du Chatelet; and her life seems

thenceforward to have been divided between two passions, or rather two

pursuits rarely combined,--love, and geometry. Her tutor in both is said

to have been the famous mathematician Clairaut; and between them they

rendered geometry so much the fashion at one time, that all the women,

who were distinguished either for rank or beauty, thought it

indispensable to have a geometrician in their train. The "Poetes de

Societe" hid for a while their diminished heads, or were obliged to

study geometry _pour se mettre a la mode_.[138] Her friendship with

Voltaire began to take a serious aspect, when she was about

eight-and-twenty, and he was about forty; he is said to have succeeded

that _roue par excellence_, the Duc de Richelieu, in her favour.

This woman might have dealt in mathematics,--might have inked her

fingers with writing treatises on the Newtonian philosophy; she might

have sat up till five in the morning, solving problems and calculating

eclipses;--and yet have possessed amiable, elevated, generous, and

attractive qualities, which would have thrown a poetical interest round

her character; moreover, considering the horribly corrupt state of

French society at that time, she might have been pardoned "une vertu de

moins," if her power over a great genius had been exercised to some good

purpose;--to restrain his licentiousness, to soften his pungent and

merciless satire, and prevent the frequent prostitution of his

admirable and versatile talents. But a female sceptic, profligate from

temperament and principle; a termagant, "qui voulait furieusement tout

ce qu'elle voulait; "a woman with all the _suffisance_ of a pedant, and

all the _exigeance_, caprices, and frivolity of a fine lady,--_grands

dieux!_ what a heroine for poetry!

To a taste for Newton and the stars, and geometry and algebra, Madame du

Chatelet added some other tastes, not quite so sublime;--a great taste

for bijoux--and pretty gimcracks--and old china--and watches--and

rings--and diamonds--and snuff-boxes--and--puppet-shows![139] and, now

and then, _une petite affaire du coeur_, by way of variety.

Tout lui plait, tout convient a son vaste genie:

Les livres, les bijoux, les compas, les pompons,

Les vers, les diamants, le biribi,[140] l'optique,

L'algebre, les soupers, le latin, les jupons,

L'opera, les proces, le bal, et la physique!

This "Minerve de la France, la respectable Emilie," did not resemble

Minerva in _all_ her attributes; nor was she satisfied with a

_succession_ of lovers. The whole history of her _liaison_ with

Voltaire, is enough to put _en deroute_ all poetry, and all sentiment.

With her imperious temper and bitter tongue, and his extreme

irritability, no wonder they should have _des scenes terribles_.[141]

Marmontel says they were often _a couteaux tires_; and this, not

metaphorically but literally. On one occasion, Voltaire happened to

criticise some couplets she had written for Madame de Luxembourg.

"L'Amante de Newton"[142] could calculate eclipses, but she could not

make verses; and, probably, for that reason, she was most particularly

jealous of all censure, while she criticised Voltaire without manners or

mercy; and he endured it, sometimes with marvellous patience.

A dispute was now the consequence; both became furious; and at length

Voltaire snatched up a knife, and brandishing it exclaimed, "ne me

regarde donc pas avec tes yeux hagards et louches!" After such a scene

as this one would imagine that Love must have spread his light wings and

fled for ever. Could Emilie ever have forgiven those words, or Voltaire

have forgotten the look that provoked them?

But the _mobilite_ of his mind was one of the most extraordinary parts

of his character, and he was not more irascible than he was easily

appeased. Madame du Chatelet maintained her power over him for twenty

years; during five of which they resided in her chateau at Cirey, under

the countenance of her husband; he was a good sort of man, but seems to

have been considered by these two geniuses and their guests as a

complete nonentity. He was "_Le bon-homme, le vilain petit Trichateau_"

whom it was a task to speak to, and a penance to amuse. Every day,

after coffee, Monsieur rose from the table with all the docility

imaginable, leaving Voltaire and Madame to recite verses, translate

Newton, philosophise, dispute, and do the honours of Cirey to the

brilliant society who had assembled under his roof.

While the boudoir, the laboratory, and the sleeping-room of the lady,

and the study and gallery appropriated to Voltaire, were furnished with

Oriental luxury and splendour, and shone with gilding, drapery,

pictures, and baubles, the lord of the mansion and the guests were

destined to starve in half-furnished apartments, from which the wind and

the rain were scarcely excluded.[143]

In 1748, Voltaire and Madame du Chatelet paid a visit to the Court of

Stanislas, the ex-king of Poland, at Luneville, and took M. du Chatelet

in their train. There Madame du Chatelet was seized with a passion for

Saint-Lambert, the author of the "Saisons," who was at least ten or

twelve years younger than herself, and then a _jeune militaire_, only

admired for his fine figure and pretty _vers de societe_. Voltaire, it

is said, was extremely jealous; but his jealousy did not prevent him

from addressing some very elegant verses to his handsome rival, in which

he compliments him gaily on the good graces of the lady.

Saint-Lambert, ce n'est que pour toi

Que ces belles fleurs sont ecloses,

C'est ta main qui cueille les roses,

Et les epines sont pour moi![144]

Some months afterwards, Madame du Chatelet died in child-birth, in her

forty-fourth year.

Voltaire was so overwhelmed by this loss, that he set off for Paris

immediately _pour se dissiper_. Marmontel has given us a most ludicrous

account of a visit of condolence he paid him on this occasion. He found

Voltaire absolutely drowned in tears, and at every fresh burst of

sorrow, he called on Marmontel to sympathise with him. "Helas! j'ai

perdu mon illustre amie! Ah! ah! je suis au desespoir!"--Then exclaiming

against Saint-Lambert, whom he accused as the cause of the

catastrophe--"Ah! mon ami! il me l'a tuee, le brutal!" while Marmontel,

who had often heard him abuse his "_sublime_ Emilie" in no measured

terms, as "une furie, attachee a ses pas," hid his face with his

handkerchief in pretended sympathy, but in reality to conceal his

irrepressible smiles. In the midst of this scene of despair, some

ridiculous idea or story striking Voltaire's vivid fancy, threw him into

fits of laughter, and some time elapsed before he recollected that he

was inconsolable.

The death of Madame du Chatelet, the circumstances which attended it,

and the celebrity of herself and her lover, combined to cause a great

_sensation_. No elegies indeed appeared on the occasion,--"no tears

eternal that embalm the dead;" but a shower of epigrams and _bon

mots_--some exquisitely witty and malicious. The story of her ring, in

which Voltaire and her husband each expected to find his own portrait,

and which on being opened, was found, to the utter discomfiture of both,

to contain that of Saint-Lambert, is well known.

If we may judge from her picture, Madame du Chatelet must have been

extremely pretty. Her eyes were fine and piercing; her features

delicate, with a good deal of _finesse_ and intelligence in their

expression. But her countenance, like her character, was devoid of

interest. She had great power of mental abstraction; and on one occasion

she went through a most complicated calculation of figures in her head,

while she played and won a game at piquet. She _could_ be graceful and

fascinating, but her manners were, in general, extremely disagreeable;

and her parade of learning, her affectation, her egotism, her utter

disregard of the comforts, feelings, and opinions of others, are well

pourtrayed in two or three brilliant strokes of sarcasm from the pen of

Madame de Stael.[145] She even turns her philosophy into ridicule.

"Elle fait actuellement la revue de ses Principes;[146] c'est un

exercise qu'elle reitere chaque annee, sans quoi ils pourroient

s'echapper; et peut-etre s'en aller si loin qu'elle n'en retrouverait

pas un seul. Je crois bien que sa tete est pour eux une maison de force,

et non pas le lieu de leur naissance."[147]

That Madame du Chatelet was a woman of extraordinary talent, and that

her progress in abstract sciences was uncommon, and even _unique_ at

that time, at least among her own sex, is beyond a doubt; but her

learned treatises on Newton, and the nature of fire, are now utterly

forgotten. We have since had a Mrs. Marcet; and we have read of Gaetana

Agnesi, who was professor of mathematics in the University of Padua; two

women who, uniting to the rarest philosophical acquirements, gentleness

and virtue, have needed no poet to immortalize them.

Of the numerous poems which Voltaire addressed to Madame du Chatelet,

the Epistle beginning

Tu m'appelles a toi, vaste et puissant genie,

Minerve de la France, immortelle Emilie,

is a _chef d'oeuvre_, and contains some of the finest lines he ever

wrote. The Epistle to her on calumny, written to console her for the

abuse and ridicule which her abstractions and indiscretions had

provoked, begins with these beautiful lines--

Ecoutez-moi, respectable Emilie:

Vous etes belle; ainsi donc la moitie

Du genre humain sera votre ennemie:

Vous possedez un sublime genie;

On vous craindra; votre tendre amitie

Est confiante; et vous serez trahie:

Votre vertu dans sa demarche unie,

Simple et sans fard, n'a point sacrifie

A nos devots; craignez la calomnie.

With that famous ring, from which he had afterwards the mortification to

discover that his own portrait had been banished to make room for that

of Saint-Lambert, he sent her this elegant _quatrain_.

Barier grava ces traits destines pour vos yeux;

Avec quelque plaisir daignez les reconnoitre:

Les votres dans mon coeur furent graves bien mieux,

Mais ce fut par un plus grand maitre.

* * * * *

The heroine of the famous Epistle, known as "Les TU et les VOUS,"

(Madame de Gouverne,) was one of Voltaire's earliest loves; and he was

passionately attached to her. They were separated in the world:--she

went through the usual _routine_ of a French woman's existence,--I mean,

of a French woman _sous l'ancien regime_.

Quelques plaisirs dans la jeunesse,

Des soins dans la maternite,

Tous les malheurs dans la vieillesse,

Puis la peur de l'eternite.

She was first dissipated; then an _esprit fort_; then _tres devote_. In

obedience to her confessor, she discarded, one after the other, her

rouge, her ribbons, and the presents and billets-doux of her lovers; but

no remonstrances could induce her to give up Voltaire's picture. When he

returned from exile in 1778, he went to pay a visit to his old love;

they had not met for fifty years, and they now gazed on each other in

silent dismay. _He_ looked, I suppose, like the dried mummy of an ape:

_she_, like a withered _sorciere_. The same evening she sent him back

his portrait, which she had hitherto refused to part with. Nothing

remained to shed illusion over the past; she had beheld, even before the

last terrible proof--

What dust we doat on, when 'tis man we love.

And Voltaire, on his side, was not less dismayed by his visit. On

returning from her, he exclaimed, with a shrug of mingled disgust and

horror, "Ah, mes amis! je viens de passer a l'autre bord du Cocyte!" It

was not thus that Cowper felt for his Mary, when "her auburn locks were

changed to grey:" but it is almost an insult to the memory of true

tenderness to mention them both in the same page.

To enumerate other women who have been celebrated by Voltaire, would be

to give a list of all the beautiful and distinguished women of France

for half a century; from the Duchess de Richelieu and Madame de

Luxembourg, down to Camargo the dancer, and Clairon and le Couvreur the

actresses: but I can find no name of any _poetical_ fame or interest

among them: nor can I conceive any thing more revolting than the history

of French society and manners during the Regency and the whole of the

reign of Louis the Fifteenth.

FOOTNOTES:

[137] Madame de Tencin used to call the men of letters she assembled at

her house "mes betes," and her society went by the name of Madame de

Tencin's menagerie. Her advice to Marmontel, when a young man, was

excellent. See his Memoirs, vol. i.

[138] Correspondence de Grimm, vol. ii. 421.

[139] Je ris plus que personne aux marionettes; et j'avoue qu'une boite,

une porcelaine, un meuble nouveau, sont pour moi une vrai

jouissance.--_Oeuvres de Madame du Chatelet_--_Traite de Bonheur._

[140] The then fashionable game at cards.

[141] Voltaire once said of her, "C'est une femme terrible, qui n'a

point de flexibilite dans le coeur, quoiqu'elle l'ait bon." This

hardness of temper, this _volonte tyrannique_, this cold determination

never to yield a point, were worse than all her violence.

[142] The title which Voltaire gave her.

[143] "Vie privee de Voltaire et de Madame du Chatelet," in a series of

letters, written by Madame de Graffigny during her stay at Cirey. The

details in these letters are exceedingly amusing, but the style so

diffuse, that it is scarcely possible to make extracts.

[144] Epitre a Saint-Lambert.

[145] Madlle. de Launay: it has become necessary to distinguish between

two celebrated women bearing the same name, at least in sound.

[146] "Les principes de la philosophie de Newton."

[147] V. Correspondence de Madame de Deffand. In another letter from

Sceaux, Madame de Stael adds the following clever, satirical,--but most

characteristic picture:--

"En tout cas on vous garde un bon appartement: c'est celui dont Madame

du Chatelet, apres une revue exacte de toute la maison, s'etait emparee.

Il y aura un peu moins de meubles qu'elle n'y en avait mis; car elle

avait devaste tous ceux par ou elle avait passe pour garnir celui-la. On

y a trouve six ou sept tables; il lui en faut de toutes les grandeurs;

d'immenses pour etaler ses papiers, de solides pour soutenir son

necessaire, de plus legeres pour ses pompons, pour ses bijoux; et cette

belle ordonnance ne l'a pas garantie d'une accident pareil a celui qui

arrive a Philippe II. quand, apres avoir passe la nuit a ecrire, on

repandit une bouteille d'encre sur ses depeches. La dame ne s'est pas

piquee d'imiter la moderation de ce prince; aussi n'avait-il ecrit que

sur des affaires d'etat; et ce qu'on lui a barbouille, c'etait de

l'algebre, bien plus difficile a remettre au net."

CHAPTER XIX.

FRENCH POETRY CONTINUED.

MADAME D'HOUDETOT.

Saint-Lambert, who seemed destined to rival greater men than himself,

after carrying off Madame du Chatelet from Voltaire, became the favoured

lover of the Comtesse d'Houdetot, Rousseau's Sophie; she for whom the

philosopher first felt love, "_dans toute son energie, toutes ses

fureurs_,"--but in vain.

Saint-Lambert is allowed to be an elegant poet: his _Saisons_ were once

as popular in France, as Thomson's Seasons are here; but they have not

retained their popularity. The French poem, though in many parts

imitated from the English, is as unlike it as possible: correct,

polished, elegant, full of beautiful lines,--of what the French call _de

beaux vers_,--and yet excessively dull. It is equally impossible to find

fault with it in parts, or endure it as a whole. _Une petite pointe de

verve_ would have rendered it delightful; but the total want of

enthusiasm in the writer freezes the reader. As Madame du Deffand said,

in humorous mockery of his monotonous harmony, "Sans les oiseaux, les

ruisseaux, les hameaux, les ormeaux, et leur rameaux, il aurait bien pen

de choses a dire!"

Madame d'Houdetot was the _Doris_ to whom the Seasons are dedicated; and

the opening passage addressed to her, is extremely admired by French

critics.

Et toi, qui m'as choisi pour embellir ma vie,

Doux repos de mon coeur, aimable et tendre amie!

Toi, qui sais de nos champs admirer les beautes:

Derobe toi, Doris! au luxe des cites,

Aux arts dont tu jouis, au monde ou tu scais plaire;

Le printemps te rappelle au vallon solitaire;

Heureux si pres de toi je chante a son retour,

Ses dons et ses plaisirs, la campagne et l'amour!

Sophie de la Briche, afterwards Madame d'Houdetot, was the daughter of

a rich _fermier general_; and destined, of course, to a marriage de

convenance, she was united very young to the Comte d'Houdetot, an

officer of rank in the army; a man who was allowed by his friends to be

_tres peu amiable_, and whom Madame d'Epinay, who hated him, called

_vilain_, and _insupportable_. He was too good-natured to make his wife

absolutely miserable, but _un bonheur a faire mourir d'ennui_, was not

exactly adapted to the disposition of Sophie; and there was no principle

within, no restraint without, no support, no counsel, no example, to

guide her conduct or guard her against temptation.

The power by which Madame d'Houdetot captivated the gay, handsome,

dissipated Saint-Lambert, and kindled into a blaze the passions or the

imagination of Rousseau, was not that of beauty. Her face was plain and

slightly marked with the small-pox; her eyes were not good; she was

extremely short-sighted, which gave to her countenance and address an

appearance of uncertainty and timidity; her figure was _mignonne_, and

in all her movements there was an indescribable mixture of grace and

awkwardness. The charm by which this woman seized and kept the hearts,

not of lovers only, but of friends, was a character the very reverse of

that of Madame du Chatelet, who would have deemed it an insult to be

compared to her either in mind or beauty:--the absence of all

_pretension_, all coquetry; the total surrender of her own feelings,

thoughts, interests, where another was concerned; the frankness which

verged on giddiness and imprudence; the temper which nothing could

ruffle; the warm kindness which nothing could chill; the bounding spirit

of gaiety, which nothing could subdue,--these qualities rendered Madame

d'Houdetot an attaching and interesting creature, to the latest moment

of her long life. "Mon Dieu! que j'ai d'impatience de voir dix ans de

plus sur la tete de cette femme!" exclaimed her sister-in-law, Madame

d'Epinay, when she saw her at the age of twenty. But at the age of

eighty, Madame d'Houdetot was just as much a child as ever,--"aussi

vive, aussi enfant, aussi gaie, aussi distraite, aussi bonne et tres

bonne;"[148] in spite of wrinkles, sorrows, and frailties, she retained,

in extreme old age, the gaiety, the tenderness, the confiding

simplicity, though not the innocence of early youth.

Her _liaison_ with Saint-Lambert continued fifty years, nor was she ever

suspected of any other indiscretion. During this time he contrived to

make her as wretched as a woman of her disposition could be made; and

the elasticity of her spirits did not prevent her from being acutely

sensible to pain, and alive to unkindness. Saint-Lambert, from being her

lover, became her tyrant. He behaved with a peevish jealousy, a

petulance, a bitterness, which sometimes drove her beyond the bounds of

a woman's patience; and when ever this happened, the accommodating

husband, M. d'Houdetot would interfere to reconcile the lovers, and

plead for the recall of the offender.

When Saint-Lambert's health became utterly broken, she watched over him

with a patient tenderness, unwearied by all his _exigeance_, and

unprovoked by his detestable temper; he had a house near her's in the

valley of Montmorenci, and lived on perfectly good terms with her

husband. I must add one trait, which, however absurd, and scarcely

credible, it may sound in our sober, English ears, is yet true. M. and

Madame d'Houdetot gave a fete at Eaubonne, to celebrate the fiftieth

anniversary of their marriage. Sophie was then nearly _seventy_, but

played her part, as the heroine of the day, with all the grace and

vivacity of seventeen. On this occasion, the lover and the husband

chose, for the first time in their lives, to be jealous of each other,

and exhibited, to the amusement and astonishment of the guests, a

_scene_, which was for some time the talk of all Paris.

Saint-Lambert died in 1805. After his death, Madame d'Houdetot was

seized with a sentimental _tendresse_ for M. Somariva,[149] and

continued to send him bouquets and billets-doux to the end of her life.

She died about 1815.

To her singular power of charming, Madame d'Houdetot added talents of no

common order, which, though never cultivated with any perseverance, now

and then displayed, or rather _disclosed_ themselves unexpectedly,

adding surprise to pleasure. She was a musician, a poetess, a wit;--but

every thing, "par la grace de Dieu,"--and as if unconsciously and

involuntarily. All Saint-Lambert's poetry together is not worth the

little song she composed for him on his departure for the army:--

L'Amant que j'adore,

Pret a me quitter,

D'un instant encore

Voudrait profiter:

Felicite vaine!

Qu'on ne peut saisir,

Trop pres de la peine

Pour etre un plaisir![150]

It is to Madame d'Houdetot that Lord Byron alludes in a striking passage

of the third canto of Childe Harold, beginning

Here the self-torturing sophist, wild Rousseau,[151] &c.

And _apropos_ to Rousseau, I shall merely observe, that there is, and

can be but one opinion with regard to his conduct in the affair of

Madame d'Houdetot: it was abominable. She thought, as every one who ever

was connected with that man, found sooner or later, that he was all made

up of genius and imagination, and as destitute of heart as of moral

principle. I can never think of his character, but as of something at

once admirable, portentous and shocking; the most great, most gifted,

most wretched;--worst, meanest, maddest of mankind!

* * * * *

Madame du Chatelet and Madame d'Houdetot must for the present be deemed

sufficient specimens of French poetical heroines;--it were easy to

pursue the subject further, but it would lead to a field of discussion

and illustration, which I would rather decline.[152]

Is it not singular that in a country which was the cradle, if not the

birth-place of modern poetry and romance, the language, the literature,

and the women, should be so essentially and incurably _prosaic_? The

muse of French poetry never swept a lyre; she grinds a barrel-organ in

her serious moods, and she scrapes a fiddle in her lively ones; and as

for the distinguished French women, whose memory and whose characters

are blended with the literature, and connected with the great names of

their country,--they are often admirable, and sometimes interesting; but

with all their fascinations, their charms, their _esprit_, their

_graces_, their _amabilite_, and their _sensibilite_, it was not in the

power of the gods or their lovers to make them _poetical_.

FOOTNOTES:

[148] Memoires et Lettres de Madame d'Epinay, tom. 1. p. 95.

[149] M. Somariva is well known to all who have visited Paris, for his

fine collection of pictures, and particularly as the possessor of

Canova's famous Magdalen.

[150] See Lady Morgan's France, and the Biographie Universelle.

[151] Stanza 77, and more particularly stanza 79.

[152] In one of Madame de Genlis' prettiest Tales--"Les preventions

d'une femme," there is the following observation, as full of truth as of

feminine propriety. I trust that the principle it inculcates has been

kept in view through the whole of this little work.

"Il y a plus de pudeur et de dignite dans la douce indulgence qui semble

ignorer les anecdotes scandaleuses ou du moins, les revoquer en doute,

que dans le dedain qui en retrace le souvenir, et qui s'erige

publiquement en juge inflexible."

CONCLUSION.

HEROINES OF MODERN POETRY.

Heureuse la Beaute que le poete adore!

Heureux le nom qu'il a chante!

DE LAMARTINE.

It will be allowed, I think, that women have reason to be satisfied with

the rank they hold in modern poetry; and that the homage which has been

addressed to them, either directly and individually, or paid indirectly

and generally, in the beautiful characters and portraits drawn of them,

ought to satisfy equally female sentiment and female vanity. From the

half ethereal forms which float amid moonbeams and gems, and odours and

flowers, along the dazzling pages of Lalla Rookh, down to Phoebe

Dawson, in the Parish Register:[153] from that loveliest gem of polished

life, the young Aurora of Lord Byron, down to Wordsworth's poor Margaret

weeping in her deserted cottage;[154]--all the various aspects between

these wide extremes of character and situation, under which we have been

exhibited, have been, with few exceptions, just and favourable to our

sex.

In the literature of the classical ages, we were debased into mere

servants of pleasure, alternately the objects of loose incense or coarse

invective. In the poetry of the Gothic ages, we all rank as queens. In

the succeeding period, when the platonic philosophy was oddly mixed up

with the institutions of chivalry, we were exalted into

divinities;--"angels called, and angel-like adored." Then followed the

age of French gallantry, tinged with classical elegance, and tainted

with classical licence, when we were caressed, complimented, wooed and

satirised by coxcomb poets,

Who ever mix'd their song with light licentious toys.

There was much expenditure of wit and of talent, but in an ill

cause;--for the feeling was, _au fond_, bad and false;--"et il n'est

guere plaisant d'etre empoisonne, meme par l'esprit de rose."

In the present time a better spirit prevails. We are not indeed

sublimated into goddesses; but neither is it the fashion to degrade us

into the playthings of fopling poets. We seem to have found, at length,

our proper level in poetry, as in society; and take the place assigned

to us as women--

As creatures not too bright or good,

For human nature's daily food;

For transient sorrows, simple wiles,

Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears and smiles![155]

We are represented as ruling by our feminine attractions, moral or

exterior, the passions and imaginations of men; as claiming, by our

weakness, our delicacy, our devotion,--their protection, their

tenderness, and their gratitude: and, since the minds of women have

been more generally and highly cultivated; since a Madame de Stael, a

Joanna Baillie, a Maria Edgeworth, and a hundred other names, now

shining aloft like stars, have shed a reflected glory on the whole sex

they belong to, we possess through them, a claim to admiration and

respect for our mental capabilities. We assume the right of passing

judgment on the poetical homage addressed to us, and our smiles alone

can consecrate what our smiles first inspired.[156]

If we look over the mass of poetry produced during the last twenty-five

years, whether Italian, French, German, or English, we shall find that

the predominant feeling is honourable to women, and if not gallantry, is

something better.[157] It is too true, that the incense has not been

always perfectly pure. "Many light lays,--ah, woe is me

there-fore!"[158] have sounded from one gifted lyre, which has since

been strung to songs of patriotism and tenderness. Moore, whom I am

proud, for a thousand reasons, to claim as my countryman, began his

literary and amatory career, fresh from the study of the classics, and

the poets of Charles the Second's time; and too often through the thin

undress of superficial refinement, we trace the grossness of his models.

It is said, I know not how truly, that he has since made the _amende

honorable_. He has possibly discovered, that women of sense and

sentiment, who have a true feeling of what is due to them as women, are

not fitly addressed in the style of Anacreon and Catullus; have no

sympathies with his equivocal Rosas, Fanny, and Julias, and are not

flattered by being associated with tavern orgies and bumpers of wine,

and such "tipsey revelry." Into themes like these he has, it is true,

infused a buoyant spirit of gaiety, a tone of sentiment, and touches of

tender and moral feeling, which would reconcile us to them, if any thing

could; as in the beautiful songs, "When time, who steals our years

away,"--"O think not my spirits are always as light,"--"Farewell! but

whenever you think on the hour,"--"The Legacy," and a hundred others.

But how many _more_ are there, in which the purity and earnestness of

the feeling vie with the grace and delicacy of the expression! and in

the difficult art (only to be appreciated by a singer) of marrying verse

to sound, Moore was never excelled--never equalled--but by Burns. He

seems to be gifted, as poet and musician, with a double instinct of

harmony, peculiar to himself.

Barry Cornwall is another living poet who has drunk deep from the

classics and from our older writers; but with a finer taste and a better

feeling, he has borrowed only what was decorative, graceful and

accessory: the pure stream of his sentiment flows unmingled and

untainted,--

Yet musical as when the waters run,

Lapsing through sylvan haunts deliciously.[159]

It is not without reason that Barry Cornwall has been styled the "Poet

of woman," _par excellence_. It enhances the value, it adds to the charm

of every tender and beautiful passage addressed to us, that we know them

to be sincere and heartfelt,

Not fable bred,

But such as truest poets love to write.

It is for the sake of _one_, beloved "beyond ambition and the light of

song,"--and worthy to be so loved, that he approaches _all_ women with

the most graceful, delicate, and reverential homage ever expressed in

sweet poetry. His fancy is indeed so luxuriant, that he makes whatever

he touches appear fanciful: but the beauty adorned by his verse, and

adorning his home, is not imaginary; and though he has almost hidden his

divinity behind a cloud of incense, she is not therefore less _real_.

The life Lord Byron led was not calculated to give him a good opinion of

women, or to place before him the best virtues of our sex. Of all modern

poets, he has been the most generally popular among female readers; and

he owes this enthusiasm not certainly to our obligations to _him_; for,

as far as women are concerned, we may designate his works by a line

borrowed from himself,--

With much to excite, there's little to exalt.

But who, like him, could administer to that "_besoin de sentir_" which I

am afraid is an ingredient in the feminine character all over the world?

Lord Byron is really the Grand Turk of amatory poetry,--ardent in his

love,--mean and merciless in his resentment: he could trace passion in

characters of fire, but his caustic satire burns and blisters where it

falls. Lovely as are some of his female portraits, and inimitably

beautiful as are some of his lyrical effusions, it must be confessed

there is something very Oriental in all his feelings and ideas about

women; he seems to require nothing of us but beauty and submission.

Please him--and he will crown you with the richest flowers of poetry,

and heap the treasures of the universe at your feet, as trophies of his

love; but once offend, and you are lost,--

There yawns the sack--and yonder rolls the sea!

Campbell, ever elegant and tender, has hymned us all into divinities;

and through his sweet and varied page

Where love pursues an ever devious race,

True to the winding lineaments of grace,

we figure under every beautiful aspect that truth and feeling could

inspire, or poetry depict.

Sir Walter Scott ought to have lived in the age of chivalry, (if we

could endure the thoughts of his living in any other age but our own!)

so touched with the true antique spirit of generous devotion to our sex

are all his poetical portraits of women. I do not find that he has, like

most other writers of the present day, mixed up his personal feelings

and history with his poetry; or that any fair and distinguished object

will be so thrice fortunate as to share his laurelled immortality. We

must therefore treat him like Shakspeare, whom alone he resembles--and

claim him for us all.

Then there is Rogers, whose compliments to us are so polished, so

pointed, and so elegantly turned, and have such a drawing-room air, that

they seem as if intended to be presented to Duchesses, by beaux in white

kid gloves. And there is Coleridge who approaches women with a sort of

feeling half earthly, half heavenly, like that with which an Italian

devotee bends before his Madonna--

And comes unto his courtship as his prayer.

And there is Southey, in whose imagination we are all heroines and

queens; and Wordsworth, lost in the depths of his own tenderness!

* * * * *

The time is not yet arrived, when the loves of the living poets, or of

those lately dead, can be discussed individually, or exhibited at full

length. The subject is much too hazardous for a contemporary, and more

particularly for a female to dwell upon. Such details belong properly to

the next age, and there is no fear that these gossiping times will leave

any thing a mystery for posterity. The next generation will be

infinitely wiser on these interesting subjects than their grandmothers.

Yet a few years, and what is scandal and personality _now_, will _then_

be matter for biography and history. Then many a love, destined to rival

that of Petrarch in purity and celebrity, and that of Tasso in interest,

shall be divulged; the thread of many a poetical romance now coiled up

in mystic verse, shall then be evolved. Then we shall know the true

history of Lord Byron's "Fare thee well." We shall then know more than

the mere name of his Mary,[160] who first kindled his boyish fancy, and

left an ineffaceable impression on his young heart, and whose history is

said to be shadowed forth in "The Dream." We may then know who was the

heroine of "Remember him whom passion's power:" whose moonlight charms

at once so radiant and so shadowy, inspired "She walks in beauty;" we

shall be told, perhaps, who was the Thyrza, so loving and beloved in

life, and whose early death, which appears to have taken place during

his travels, is so deeply, so feelingly lamented: and who was his

Ginevra,[161] and what spot of earth was made happy by her beautiful

presence--if any thing so divinely beautiful ever was!

Then we shall not ask in vain who was Campbell's Caroline?[162] Whether

she did, indeed, walk this earth in mortal beauty, or was not rather

invoked by the poet's spell, from the soft evening star which shone upon

her bower?

Then we shall know upon whose white bosom perished that rose,[163]

which, dying, bequeathed with its odorous breath a tale of truest love

to after-times, and glory to her, whose breast was its envied tomb--to

_her_, whose heart has thrilled to the homage of her poet,--yet who

would "_blush to find it fame_!"

Then we shall know who was the "Lucy,"

Who dwelt among the untrodden ways,

Beside the springs of Dove![164]

and who was the heroine of that most exquisite picture of feminine

loveliness in all its aspects, "She was a Phantom of delight."[165]--No

phantom, it is said, but a fair reality:

A being, breathing thoughtful breath,

A traveller betwixt life and death,

yet fated not to die, while verse can live!

Then we shall know whose tear has been preserved by Rogers with a power

beyond "the Chymist's magic art;" who was the lovely bride who is

destined to blush and tremble in his Epithalamium, for a thousand years

to come; and to what fair obdurate is addressed his "Farewell."

We may then learn who was that sweet Mary who adorned the cottage-home

of Wilson; and who was the "Wild Louisa," of whom he has drawn such a

captivating picture; first as the sprightly girl floating down the

dance,

With footsteps light as falling snow,

and afterwards as the matron and the mother, hanging over the cradle of

her infant, and blessing him in his sleep.

Then we may _tell_ who was the "Bonnie Jean," sung by Allan Cunningham,

whose destructive charms are so pleasantly, so naturally touched upon.

Sair she slights the lads--

Three are like to die;

Four in sorrow listed,--

And five flew to sea!

This rural beauty, who caused such terrible devastation, and who, it is

said, first made a poet of her lover, became afterwards his wife; and in

her matronly character, she inspired that beautiful little effusion of

conjugal tenderness, "The Poet's Bridal Song." When first published, it

was almost universally copied, and committed to memory; and Allan

Cunningham may not only boast that he has woven a wreath "to grace his

Jean,"

While rivers flow and woods are green,

but that he has given the sweet wife, seated among her children in

sedate and matronly loveliness, an interest even beyond that which

belongs to the young girl he has described with raven locks and cheeks

of cream, driving rustic admirers to despair, or lingering with her

lover at eve,

--Amid the falling dew,

When looks were fond, and words were few!

Such is the charm of affection, and truth, and moral feeling, carried

straight into the heart by poetry!

What a new interest and charm will be given to many of Moore's beautiful

songs, when we are allowed to trace the feeling that inspired them,

whether derived from some immediate and present impression; or from

remembered emotion, that sometimes swells in the breast, like the

heaving of the waves, when the winds are still! Several of the most

charming of his lyrics are said to be inspired by "the heart so warm,

and eyes so bright," which first taught him the value of domestic

happiness;--taught him that the true poet need not rove abroad for

themes of song, but may kindle his genius at the flame which glows on

his own hearth, and make the Muses his household goddesses.[166]

Gifford, the late editor of the Quarterly Review, and the author of the

Baviad and Maeviad, was in early youth doomed to struggle with poverty,

obscurity, ill health, and every hardship which could check the rise of

genius. He has himself described the effect produced on his mind, under

these circumstances, by his attachment to an amiable and gentle girl. "I

crept on," he says, "in silent discontent, unfriended and unpitied;

indignant at the present, careless of the future,--an object at once of

apprehension and dislike. From this state of abjectness, I was raised by

a young woman of my own class. She was a neighbour; and whenever I took

my solitary walk with my Wolfius in my pocket, she usually came to the

door, and by a smile, or a short question, put in the friendliest

manner, endeavoured to solicit my attention. My heart had been long shut

to kindness; but the sentiment was not dead within me; it revived at the

first encouraging word; and the gratitude I felt for it, was the first

pleasing sensation I had ventured to entertain for many dreary months."

There are two little effusions inserted in the notes to the Baviad and

Maeviad, which have since been multiplied by copies, and have found their

way into almost all collections of lyric poetry and "Elegant Extracts;"

one of these was composed during the life of Anna; the other, written

after her death, and beginning,

I wish I were where Anna lies,

For I am sick of lingering here,

is extremely striking from its unadorned simplicity and profound

pathos.--Such was not the prevailing style of amatory verse at the time

it was written, nearly fifty years ago. Mr. Gifford never married; and

the effect of this early disappointment could be traced in his mind and

constitution to the last moments of his life.

The same sad bereavement which tended to make Gifford a caustic critic

and satirist, made Mr. Bowles a sentimental poet. The subject of his

Sonnets was real; but he who has pointed out the difference between

natural and fabricated feeling, should not have left a _blank_ for the

name of her he laments. He gives us indeed a formal permission to fill

up the blank with any name we choose. But it is not the same thing; the

name of the woman who inspired a poet, is quite as important to

posterity, as the name of the poet himself.

Who was the Hannah, whose fickleness occasioned that exquisite little

poem which Montgomery has inscribed "To the memory of her who is dead to

me?" It tells a tale of youthful love, of trusting affection, suddenly

and eternally blighted,--and with such a brevity, such a simplicity,

such a fervent yet heart-broken earnestness, that I fear it must be

true!

At some future time, we shall, perhaps, be told who was the beautiful

English girl, whose retiring charms won the heart of Hyppolito

Pindemonte, when he was here some years ago. His Canzone on her is, in

Italy, considered as his masterpiece,[167] and even compared to some of

Petrarch's. There are indeed few things in the compass of Italian poetry

more sweet in expression, more true to feeling, than the lines in which

Pindemonte, describing the blooming youth, the serene and quiet grace of

this fair girl, disclaims the idea of even wishing to disturb the

heavenly calm of her pure heart by a passion such as agitates his own.

Il men di che puo Donna esser cortese

Ver chi l'ha di se stesso assai piu cara,

Da te, vergine pura, io non vorrei.

This was being very peculiarly disinterested.--We may also learn, at

some future time, who was the sweet Elvire, to whom Alphonse de

Lamartine has promised immortality, and not promised more than he has

the power to bestow. He is one of the few French poets, who have created

a real and a strong interest out of their own country. He has

vanquished, by the mere force of genius and sentiment, all the

difficulties and deficiencies of the language in which he wrote, and has

given to its limited poetical vocabulary a charm unknown before. He thus

addresses Elvire in one of the _Meditations Poetiques_.

Vois, d'un oeil de pitie, la vulgaire jeunesse

Brillante de beaute, s'enivrant de plaisir;

Quand elle aura tari sa coupe enchanteresse,

Que restera-t-il d'elle? a peine un souvenir:

Le tombeau qui l'attend l'engloutit tout entiere,

Un silence eternel succede a ses amours;

Mais les siecles auront passe sur ta poussiere,

Elvire!--et tu vivras toujours!

* * * * *

Over some of the heroines of modern poetry, the tomb has recently

closed; and the flowers scattered there, could not be disturbed without

awakening a pang in the bosoms of those who survive. They sleep, but

only for a while: they shall rise again--the grave shall yield them up,

"even in the loveliest looks they wore," for a poet's love has redeemed

them from death and from oblivion! Methinks I see them even now with the

prophetic eye of fancy, go floating over the ocean of time, in the light

of their beauty and their fame, like Galatea and her nymphs triumphing

upon the waters!

Others, perhaps, (the widow of Burns, and the widow of Monti, for

instance,) are declining into wintry age: sorrow and thought have

quenched the native beauty on their cheek, and furrowed the once

polished brow; yet crowned by poetry with eternal youth and unfading

charms, they will go down to posterity among the Lauras, the Geraldines,

the Sacharissas of other days;--Nature herself shall feel decrepitude,

And, palsy-smitten, shake her starry brows,

ere these grow old and die!

And some, even now, move gracefully through the shades of domestic life,

and the universe, of whose beauty they will ere long form a part, knows

them not. Undistinguished among the ephemeral divinities around them,

not looking as though they felt the future glory round their brow, nor

swelling with anticipated fame, they yet carry in their mild eyes, that

light of love, which has inspired undying strains,

And Queens hereafter shall be proud to live

Upon the alms of their superfluous praise!

FOOTNOTES:

[153] Crabbe's Poems.

[154] See the Excursion.

[155] Wordsworth.

[156]

Even so the smile of woman stamps our fates,

And consecrates the love it first creates!

_Barry Cornwall._

[157] See in particular Schiller's ode, "Honour to Women," one of the

most elegant tributes ever paid to us by a poet's enthusiasm. It may be

found translated in Lord F. Gower's beautiful little volume of

Miscellanies.

[158]

Many light lays (ah! woe is me the more)

In praise of that mad fit which fools call _love_,

I have i' the heat of youth made heretofore,

That in light wits did loose affections move;

But all these follies do I now reprove, &c.

_Spenser._

[159] Marcian Colonna.

[160] Miss Chaworth, now Mrs. Musters.

[161] Lord Byron's Works, vol. iii. p. 183, (small edit.)

[162] Campbell's Poems, vol. ii. p. 202.

[163] Barry Cornwall's Poems, "Lines on a Rose."

[164] Wordsworth's Poems, vol. i. p. 181.

[165] Wordsworth, vol. ii. p. 132.

[166] See in Moore's Lyrics the beautiful song. "I'd mourn the hopes

that leave me." The concluding stanza is in point:

"Far better hopes shall win me,

Along the path I've yet to roam,

The mind that burns within me,

And pure smiles from thee _at home_."

[167] See in the "Opere di Pindemonte," the Canzone, "O Giovanetta che

la dubbia via."

THE END.

LONDON:

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The Romance of Biography (Vol 2 of 2) or Memoirs of Women Loved and Celebrated by Poets, from the Days of the Troubadours to the Present Age. 3rd ed. 2 Vols. · 第 21 / 21 章

I pass over Swift's early attachment to Jane Waryng, whom he deserted