MEN, WOMEN, AND BOOKS; A SELECTION OF SKETCHES, ESSAYS, AND CRITICAL MEMOIRS, UNCOLLECTED PKOSE WRITINGS. BY LEIGH HUNT. IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. II. NEW YORK: HARPER & BROTHERS. 1847. College Library CONTENTS. I. SOCIAL MORALITY. SUCKLING AND BEN JONSON. Curious instance of variability in moral opinion. Pope's tradition of Sir John Suckling and the cards. New edition of Ben Jonson, and samples of the genius and arrogance of that writer, with a summary of his poetical character . page 7 II. POPE IN SOME LIGHTS IN WHICH HE IS NOT USUALLY REGARDED. Unfaded interest of the subject of Pope and others. Shakspeare not equally at home with modern life, though more so with general hu- manity. Letters of Pope. A wood-engraving a century ago. Pope with a young lady in a stage-coach. Dining with maids of honor. Riding to Oxford by moonlight. Lovability not dependent on shape. Insincerity not always what it is taken for. Whigs, Tories, and Catholics. Masterly exposition of the reason why people live uncomfortably together. "Rondeaulx," and a Ron- deau. . , . . . ,.x-.--. v : - ; . . . . .20 III. GARTH, PHYSICIANS, AND LOVE-LETTERS. Garth, and a dedication to him by Steele. Garth, Pope, and Arbuth- not. Other physicians in connection with wit and Literature. Desirableness of a selection from the less-known works of Steele, and of a collection of real Love-Letters. Two beautiful specimens from the : Lover." . . ''*'. . 36 1163244 IV CONTENTS. IV. COWLEY AND THOMSON. Nature intended poetry as well as matter-of-fact. Mysterious Anec- dote of Cowley. Remarkable similarity between him and Thom- son. Their supposed difference (as Tory and Whig.) Thomson's behavior to Lady Hertford. His answer to the genius-starvation principle. His letters to his friends, &c. . . . page 47 V. BOOKSTALLS AND "GALATEO." Beneficence of Bookstalls. " Galateo, or a treatise on Politeness." Swift. Ill-breeding of Fashion. Curious instance of Italian deli- cacy of reproof. . 58 VI. BOOKBINDING AND " HELIODORUS." A rapture to the memory of Mathias Corvinus, king and bookbinder. Bookbinding, good and bad. Ethiopics of Heliodorus. Striking account of raising a dead body. . . . . . .67 VII. VER-VERT; OR, THE PARROT OF THE NUNS. CHAPTER I. Character and manners of Ver-Vert. His popularity in the Convent, and the life he had with the Nuns. Toilets and looking-glasses not unknown among those ladies. Four Canary birds and two cats die of rage and jealousy 78 CHAPTER II. Further details respecting the piety and accomplish- ments of our hero. Sister Melanie in the habit of exhibiting them. A visit from him requested by the Nuns of the Visitation at Nantes. Consternation in the Convent. The visit conceded. Agonies at his departure. 82 CHAPTER III. Lamentable state of manners in the boat which carries our hero down the Loire. He becomes corrupted. His biting the Nun that came to meet him. Ecstasy of the other Nuns on hear- ing of his arrival S6 CHAPTER THE LAST. Admiration of the Parrot's new friends con- verted into astonishment and horror. Ver-Vcrt keeps no measures with his shocking acquirements. The Nuns fly from him in terror, and determine upon instantly sending him back, not, however, with- out pity. His return, and astonishment of his old friends. He is sentenced to solitary confinement, which restores his virtue. Transport of the Nuns, who kill him with kindness. . . 90 CONTENTS. V VIII. SPECIMENS OF BRITISH POETESSES. No. I. Paucity of collections of our female poetry. Specimens of Anne Bullen, Q,ueen Elizabeth, Lady Elizabeth Carew, Lady Mary Worth, Katharine Philips, the Duchess of Newcastle, Anne Killigrew, the Marchioness of Wharton, Mrs. Taylor, Aphra Behn, and the Countess of Winchelsea ...... page 95 No. II. Miss Vanhomrigh, Lady Russell, Mrs. Mauly, Mrs. Brere- ton, Mrs. Greville, Lady Henrietta O'Neil ; Duchess of Devonshire, Miss Carter, Charlotte Smith, Miss Seward, and Mrs. Tighe. Ill No. III. Mrs. Hunter, Mrs. Barbauld, Lady Anne Barnard, and Hannan More. ......... 124 IX. DUCHESS OF ST. ALBANS, AND MARRIAGES FROM THE STAGE. Comic actors and actresses more engaging to the recollection than tragic. Charles the Second and Nell Gwynn. Marriage of Har- riett Mellon with the Duke of St. Albans and Mr. Coutts. Mar- riages of Lucretia Bradshaw with Mr. Folkes, of Anastasia Robin- son with Lord Peterborough, Beard the singer with Lady Henri- etta Herbert, Lavinia Fenton with the Duke of Bolton, Mary Woffington with Captain Cholmondeley, Signer Gallini the dancer with Lady Elizabeth Bertie, O'Brien the Comedian with Lady Su- san Fox, Elizabeth Linley with Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Eliza- beth Farren with the Earl of Derby, Louisa Brunton with Earl Craven, Mary Catherine Bolton with Lord Thurlow. Remarks on Marriages-from the Stage. /- ^ , . stts . rf . 137 LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU. AN ACCOUNT OF HER LIFE AND WRITINGS. A party of wits and beauties. Lady Louisa Stuart's Introductory Anecdotes. Lady Mary's recommendation respecting marriage. Her early life and studies. Marries Mr. Wortley. The union not happy. Her introduction at court, and curious adventure there with Mr. Craggs. Accompanies her husband in his embassy to Constantinople. Excellence of her letters from Turkey. Portraits of her. Conjugal insignificance of Mr. Wortley. Pope's unfortu- nate passion discussed. Lady Mary the introducer of inoculation into England. She separates from Mr. Wortley, and resides abroad for twenty -two years. Reason of that sojourn. Her addic- VI CONTENTS. tion to scandal. Morality of that day. Question for moral pro- gress. Alleged conduct of Lady Mary abroad. Her return to her native country. Her last days, and curious establishment. Char- acter of Wortley, jun. Specimen of Lady Mary's "wit and good writing ; and summary of her character. . . . page 169 XI. LIFE AND AFRICAN VISIT OF PEPYS. Characteristics of Autobiography. Account of Pepys's <: Diary," and summary of his life. His voyage to Tangier, and business in that place. Character and behavior of its Governor, the "infamous Colonel Kirke." Pepys's return to England. Gibbon's ancestor, the herald. Pepys and Lord Sandwich, &c 219 XII. LIFE AND LETTERS OF MADAME DE SEVIGNE. Singular and fortunate reputation of Madame de Sevigne. Unsatis- factory biographies of her. Her parentage, education, and early life. Description of her person and manners. United with the Marquis de Sevigne. His frivolities and death. Unsuccessful love made to her by her cousin Bussy Rabutin, who revenges him- self by calumny. Character and conduct of Bussy. His corres- pondence with his cousin. His account of the effect produced upon her by her dancing with the king. The young widow's mode of life. Her visits at court, and observations of public occurrences. Her life in the country. List and characters of her associates. Account of the Marquis her son, and of her correspondence with her daughter, Madame de Grignan. Surviving descendants of the family. Specimens of Madame de Scvigne's letters. Expected Marriage of Lauzan with Mademoiselle. Strange ways of Pome- nars, and of Du Plessis. Story of the footman who couldn't make hay. Tragical terminations of gay campaigns. Brinvilliers and La Voisin, the poisoners. Striking catastrophe in a ball-room. A scene at court. Splendor of Madame de Montospan. Descrip- tion of an iron-fbundry ; of a gallop of coaches : of a great wedding ; of a crowded assembly. Horace Walpole's account of Madame de Sevigne's house at Livry. Character of her writings by Sir James Mackintosh. Attempt to form their true estimate. . . 250 MEN, WOMEN, AND BOOKS, SOCIAL MORALITY. SUCKLING AND BEN JONSON. Curious instance of variability in moral opinion. Pope's tradition of Sir John Suckling and the cards. New edition of Ben Jonson, and samples of the genius and arrogance of that writer, with a summary of his poetical character. IT is curious to see the opinion entertained in every successive age respecting the unimprovability or un- alterableness of its prevailing theory of morals, com- pared with their actual fluctuation. The " philosopher owns with a sigh" (as Gibbon would have phrased it, for we believe there is an ultimate preferment for mankind in this tendency to follow a fashion), that a court, a king, the example of a single ruling individual, can effect the virtues of an age far beyond the whole mass of their ordinary practisers, at least, so as to give the moral color to the period, and throw the bias in favor of this or that tendency. The staid habits of George III., in certain respects, produced a corres- ponding profession of them throughout the country ; but the case was different in the reigns of the Georges 8 BOCIAL MORALITY. before him, who, dull individuals as they were, kept mistresses like their sprightlier predecessors. Even William III. had a mistress. In Cromwell's time, the prevailing moral strength, or virtus, consisted in a sense of religion. It may be answered, that these fashions, as far as they were such, did not influence either the practice or opinions of conscientious men ; but our self-love would be mistaken in that conclusion. Our remote ancestors were not the less cannibals be- cause we shudder at the idea of dining upon Jones ; neither would some very near ones fail to startle us with their opinions upon matters, which we take it for granted, they regarded in the same light as ourselves. No longer than a hundred years back, and in the mouth of no less a moralist than Pope, we find the following puzzling bit of information respecting Sir John Suckling : "Suckling was an immoral man, as well as de- bauched." Now, where is the distinction, in our present moral system, between immorality and debauchery? All immorality is not debauchery, but all debauchery we hold to be immoral. What could Pope mean ? Why, he meant that Sir John cheated at cards. Neither his drinking nor his gallantry were to be un- derstood as affecting his moral character. It was the use of cards with marks upon them that was to de- prive debauchery of its good name ! " The story of the French cards," continues Pope, in explanation of his above remark, " was told me by the late Duke of Buckingham ; and he had it from old Lady Dorset herself." We are by no means convinced, by the way, that Suckling gave into such a disgraceful practice, merely SUCKLING AND BEN JON8ON. 9 because the Duke of Buckingham was told so by "old Lady Dorset." " That lady," resumes the poet (he is talking to S pence, and these stories are from " Spence's Anec- dotes"), " took a very odd pride in boasting of her fa- miliarities with Sir John Suckling. She is the mistress and goddess in his poems ; and several of those pieces were given by herself to the printer. This the Duke of Buckingham used to give as one instance of the fondness she had to let the world know how well they were acquainted." " To be taken, to be seen, These have crimes accounted been." The age was not scrupulous about the fact, but it was held very wrong to mention it ; and hence Lady Dorset was accounted a loose speaker, and doubtless not to be quite trusted. The dishonest cards them- selves did not affect the pride she took in the card- player. Query, how far such a woman was to be believed in anything ? But the most curious part of the business remains what it was to-wit, Pope's own discrepation of immorality from debauchery. And as the Reverend Mr. Spence expresses no amazement at the passage, it will be hardly unfair to conclude that he saw nothing in it to surprise him. We believe we have already observed somewhere, that Swift, who was a dignitary of the church, was intimate with the reputed mistresses of two kings, the Countess of Suffolk, George the Second's favorite, and the Countess of Orkney, King William's. The latter he pronounced to be the " wisest woman he ever knew," as the former was declared by all her friends to be one of the most amiable. But we may see how little gallantry was 1* 10 SOCIAL MORALITY. thought ill of, in the epistolary correspondences of those times, Pope's included, and in the encouraging banter, for instance, which he gives on the subject to his friend Gay, whose whole life appears to have been passed in a good-humored sensualism. See also how Pope, and Swift, and others, trumped up Lord Bolingbroke fora philosopher! a man who, besides being profound in nothing but what may be called the elegant extracts of commonplace, was one of the most debauched of men of the world. As we have touched upon Spence's Anecdotes, we might as well look farther into the book, since it is a very fit one to notice in these articles, and occasions many a pleasant chat at a fireside. The late republi- cation of the works of Ben Jonson has given a fresh interest to such remarks as the following : "It was a general opinion (says Pope) that Ben Jonson and Shakspeare lived in enmity against one another. Betterton has assured me often, that there was nothing in it, and that such a supposition was founded only on the two parties, which in their life- time listed under one, and endeavored to lessen the character of the other mutually. Dryden used to think, that the verses Jonson made on Shakspeare's death had something of satire at the bottom ; for my part I can't discover anything like it in them." We are now reading Ben Jonson through in Mr. Moxon's beautiful edition, and having finished nearly all his dramas, and not long since read his miscellane- ous poems, and our memory serving us pretty well for what remains to be re-perused, our impression of him is, at all events, fresh upon us. A critic in the Times,* whose pen is otherwise so * 1839. SUCKLING AND BEN JONSON. 11 good as to make us regret its party bias, appears to us to have treated Jonson's new editor, Mr. Barry Corn- wall, with a very unjustifiable air of scorn and indig- nation, both as if he had no right to speak of Ben Jon- son at all, and as if he possessed no merit as a writer himself. It is not necessary to the reputation of Mr. Cornwall that we should undertake to defend what such critics as Lamb and Hazlitt have admired. The writer of the beautiful " Dramatic Sketches " (which were the first to restore the quick impulsive dialogue of the old poets), and a greater number of excellent songs than have been written by any man living except Mr. Moore, has surely every right in the world, dra- matic and lyrical, to speak of Ben Jonson, unless you were to except that sympathy with his coarseness and his love of the caustic, which, saving a poor verbal tact, and a worship of authority, was the only qualification for a critical sense of him possessed by the petulant and presumptuous Gifford. But the Times' critic has been led perhaps to this depreciation of the new editor, by thinking he has greatly undervalued a favorite author ; while, on the other hand, we ourselves cannot but think that Mr. Cornwall, with all his admiration of him, has yet somewhat depreciated Ben Jonson in consequence of his over-valuement by others. It appears to us, that he does not do justice to the serious part of him, to the grandeur, for example, which is often to be found in his graver writing, both as to thought and style, sometimes, we think, amounting even to the "sublime," which is a quality our poet totally denies him. We would instance that answer of Cethegus to Catiline, when the latter says "Who would not fall with all the world about him'? CETHEGUS. Not I, tiiai would stand on U, when it falls}' 1 12 SOCIAL MORALITY. Also the passage where it is said of Catiline, advancing with his army, ' The day grew black with him, And fate descended nearer to the earth;" and the other in which he is described as coming on " Not with the face Of any man, but of a public ruin;" (though we think we have read that in some Latin au- thor, and indeed it is at all times difficult to say where Jonson has not been borrowing). The vindictive quietness of Cicero's direction to the lictors to put Statilius and Gabinius to death, is very like a sublima- tion above the highest ordinary excitability of human resentment. Marlowe might have written it " Take them To your cold hands, and let them fed death from you." And the rising of the ghost of Sylla, by way of pro- logue to this play, uttering, as he rises, 11 Dost thou not fed me, ROME T' appears to us decidedly sublime, making thus the evil spirit of one man equal to the great city, and to all the horrors that are about to darken it. Nor is the open- ing of the speech of Envy, as prologue to the " Poetas- ter," far from something of a like elevation. The accumulated passion, in her shape, thinks herself warranted to insult the light, and her insult is very grand : " Light, I salute thee, but with wounded nerves, Wishing thy golden splendor pitchy darkness." SUCKLING AND BEN JONSON. 13 Milton has been here, and in numerous other places, imitating his learned and lofty-tongued predecessor. On the other hand, besides acknowledging the great- ness of his powers in general, and ranking him as second only in his age to Shakspeare (which might surely propitiate the fondest partisan), Mr. Cornwall has done ample and eloquent justice to Jonson's powers as a satirist, to his elegant learning, and his profuse and graceful fancy ; and if he objects to his tediousness, coarseness, and boasting, and to the praise emphatical- ly bestowed on him for "judgment," we are compelled to say, in spite of our admiration and even love of the old poet (for it is difficult to help loving those to whom we are indebted for great pleasures), that we think he might have spoken more strongly on those points, and not been either unjust or immodest. If Jonson, in spite of his airs of independence, had not been a Tory poet and a court flatterer, the Tory critics (we do not say the present one, but the race in general), would have trampled upon him for his arrogance, quite as much as they have exalted him. Even Gifford would have in- sulted him, though he evidently liked him out of a vanity of self-love, as well as from the sympathies above mentioned. The right equilibrium in Jonson's mind was so far overborne by his leaning to power in preference to the beautiful (which is an inconsistency, and, so to speak, unnaturalness in the poetical condi- tion), that while he was ever huffing and lecturing the very audiences that came to hear him, he could not help consulting the worst taste of their majorities, and writing whole plays, like " Bartholomew Fair," full of the absolutest, and sometimes loathsomest, trash, to show that he was as strong as their united vulgar knowledges ; and, he might have added, as dull in his 14 SOCIAL MORALITY. condescension to boot. And as to the long-disputed question, whether he was arrogant or not, and a " swaggerer" (which indeed, as Charles Lamb has inti- mated, might be shown, after a certain sublimated fashion, in the very characters in which he chiefly ex- celled Sir Epicure Mammon, Bobadil, &c., and, it may be added, Catiline and Sejanus too), how any- body, who ever read his plays, could have doubted, or affected to doubt it, is a puzzle that can only be ac- counted for, upon what accounts for any critical phe- nomenon, party or personal feeling. "That Ben Jonson," says the critic in the Times, " had not the most equable temper in the world that he had a high opinion of his own capacity, and saw no reason to conceal it, we at once admit : but such de- fects are often the concomitants of generous and noble minds ; and we should recollect that, if he was fierce when assailed, few men have had equal provocation during life, or baser injustice done to their memory. Jonson's enemies, to whom Mr. Barry Cornwall has a hankering wish to lean, seem to have been a mere set of obscure authors dependent on the theatre, to whose reputation Jonson's success was perhaps inju- rious, and whose minds, at least, seem to have been embittered by it. Horace, Ovid, Aristophanes, and twenty other poets, have praised themselves more highly than he did. Milton, who seems to have had Ben Jonson's works much in his hands, his style, both in verse and prose, being evidently modelled on that of his predecessor, imitated him in this likewise." Now, what " provocation" Jonson had during his life, which his own assumptions did not originate, is yet, we believe, to be ascertained. The obscure au- thors, of whom his enemies are here made to consist, SUCKLING AND BEN JONSON. 15 were, by his own showing (as well by allusion as by acknowledged characterization), some, perhaps all, of the most admired of our old English dramatists then writing, with the exception of Beaumont and Fletcher. Self-praise was a fashion in ancient poetry, but has never been understood as more allowable to modern imitation than the practice of self-murder, which was also an ancient fashion ; and if Milton, amidst his glorious pedantries (of the better spirit of which, as well as a worse, Jonson must be allowed to have par- taken) permitted himself to indulge in personal boast- ing, it was in a very different style indeed from that of his predecessor, as the reader may judge from the following specimens. Ben says of his muse, " The garland that she wears their hands must twine, Who can both censure, understand, define What merit is : then cast those piercing rays Round as a crown, instead of honor'd bays, About his poesy ; which, he knows, affords Words above action, matter above words." Prologue to CYNTHIA'S REVBLS. And " Cynthia's Revels" is, upon the whole, a very poor production, with scarcely a beautiful passage in it, except the famous lyric, "Queen and Huntress." Yet in the epilogue to this play (as if conscious that his " will" must serve for the deed), the actor who de- livers it is instructed to talk thus : " To crave your favor with a begging knee, Were to distrust the writer's faculty. To promise better, when the next we bring, Prorogues disgrace, commends not anything. Stiffly to stand on this, and proudly approve The play, might tax the maker of self-love. I'll only speak what I have heard him say, ' By God! 'tis good, and if you like 't, you may.' " 16 SOCIAL MORALITY. The critics, naturally enough, thought this not over modest ; so in the prologue to his next play the " Po- etaster" (which was written to ridicule pretension in his adversaries), he makes a prologue "in armor" tread Envy under foot, and requests the audience that, if he should once more swear his play is good, they would not charge him with "arrogance," for Ke " loathes" it ; only he knows " the strength of his own muse," and they who object to such phrases in him are the " common spawn of ignorance," " base detractors," and " illiterate apes." In this play of the " Poetaster," the scene of which is laid in the court of Augustus, Jonson himself is " Horace," and such men as Decker and Marston the fops and dunces whom Horace sati- rizes ; and in the epilogue, after saying that he will leave "the monsters" to their fate, he informs his hearers, that he means to write a tragedy next time, in which he shall essay " To strike the ear of time in those fresh strains, As shall, beside the cunning of their ground, Give cause to some of wonder, some dcspile, And some despair, to imitate the sound." The tragedy, accordingly, of " Sejanus" made its ap- pearance : in an address concerning which to the reader, while noticing some old classical rules which he has not attended to, he says, " In the meantime, if in truth of argument, dignity of persons, gravity and height of elevation, fulness and frequency of sentence, I have discharged the other offices of a tragic writer, let not the absence of those forms be imputed to me, wherein I shall give you occasion hereafter, and with- out my boast to think / could better prescribe, than omit the due sense of, for want of a convenient knowl- edge." SUCKLING AND BEN JONSON. 17 In the dedication of " The Fox" to the two Universi- ties, the writer's language, speaking of some " worthier fruits," which he hopes to put forth, is this : " Wherein, if my hearers be true to me, / shall raise the despised head of poetry again, and stripping her out of those rotten and base rags wherewith the times have adul- terated her form, restore her to her primitive habit, feature, and majesty, and render her worthy to be em- braced and kissed of all the great and master-spirits of our world" And beautifully is this said. But Shakspeare had then nearly written all his plays, AND WAS STILL WRITING ! The three preceding years are supposed to have produced " Macbeth," " Lear," and " Othello !" Marston, Decker, Chapman, Drayton, Middleton, Webster ; in short, almost all those whom posterity admires or reverences under the title of the Old English Dramatists, were writing also ; and it was but nine years before, that Spenser had published the second part of the " Fairie Queene," in which the " despised head of poetry" had been set up with the lustre of an everlasting sun, and such as surely had not let darkness in upon the land again, followed as it was by all those dramatic lights, and the double or triple sun of Shakspeare himself ! The " master- spirits" whom Ben speaks of, must at once have laughed at the vanity, and been sorry for the genius of the man who could so talk in such an age. Above all, what could Shakespeare have thought of his way- ward, his learned, but in these respects certainly not very wise, nor very friendly, friend? We could quote similar evidences of the most preposterous self- love from the prologues, or epilogues, or the body, of the greater part of his plays: but we tire of the task, especially when we think, not only of the genius which 18 SOCIAL MORALITY. did itself as well as others such injustice, but of the good-nature that lay at the bottom of his very arro- gance and envy ; for, that he strongly felt the passion of envy, of which he is always accusing others, we have as little doubt, as that he struggled against and surmounted it at frequent and glorious intervals ; and, besides his saying more things in praise as well as blame of his contemporaries than any man living, (partly perhaps in his assumed right of censor, but much also out of a joviality of good- will,) his lines to the memory of Shakespeare do as much honor to the final goodness of his heart, as to the grace and dignity of his -style and imagination. But even his friends as well as enemies thought him immodest and arrogant, and publicly lamented it. See what Randolph and Carew, as well as Owen Feltham, say of him in their responses to his famous ode, begin- ning, " Come, leave the loathed stage, And the more loathsome age !" an invective, which he wrote because one of his plays had been damned. In short, Ben is an anomaly in the list of great poets ; and we can only account for him, as for a greater (Dante, who has contrived to make his muse more grandly disagreeable), by supposing that his nature in- cluded the contradictions of some ill-matched progeni- tors, and that, while he had a grace for one parent or ancestor, he had a slut and fury for another. Nor should we have taken these liberties with so great a name, but in our zeal for the greater names of truth and justice. Amicus, Ben Jonson ; amicus every clever critic, whether in Whig paper or Tory; but magis arnica, Proof. SUCKLING AND BEN JONSON. 19 If asked to give our opinion of Ben Jonson's powers in general, we should say that he was a poet of a high order, as far as learning, fancy, and an absolute rage of ambition, could conspire to make him one ; but that he never touched at the highest, except by violent ef- forts, and during the greatest felicity of his sense of success. The material so predominated in him over the spiritual, the sensual over the sentimental, that he was more social than loving, and far more wilful and fanciful than imaginative. Desiring the strongest immediate effect, rather than the best effect, he sub- served by wholesale in his comedies to the grossness and commonplace of the very multitude whom he hectored ; and in love with whatsoever he knew or uttered, he set learning above feeling in writing his tragedies, and never knew when to leave off, whether in tragedy or comedy. His style is more clear and correct than impassioned, and only rises above a cer- tain level at remarkable intervals, when he is heated by a sense of luxury or domination. He betrays what was weak in himself, and even a secret misgiving, by incessant attacks upon the weakness and envy of others ; and, in his highest moods, instead of the healthy, se- rene, and good-natured might of Shakspeare, has some- thing of a puffed and uneasy pomp, a bigness instead of greatness, analogous to his gross habit of body : nor, when you think of him at any time, can you well sepa- rate the idea from that of the assuming scholar and the flustered man of taverns. But the wonder after all is, that, having such a superfoetation of art in him, he had still so much nature ; and that the divine bully of the old English Parnassus could be, whenever he chose it, one of the most elegant of men. POPE IN SOME LIGHTS IN WHICH HE IS NOT USUALLY REGARDED. Unfaded interest of the subject of Pope and others. Shakspeare not equally at home with modern life, though more so with general humanity. Let- ters of Pope. A wood-engraving a century ago. Pope with a young lady in a stage-coach. Dining with maids of honor. Riding to Oxford by moonlight. Lovability not dependent on shape. Insincerity not always what it it is taken for. Whigs, Tories, and Catholics. Masterly exposition of the reason why people live uncomfortably together. " Ron- deaulx" and a Rondeau. THOSE who have been conversant in early life with Pope and the other wits of Queen Anne, together with the Bellendens, Herveys, Lady Suffolks, and other feminities, are never tired of hearing of them after- wards, let their subsequent studies be as lofty as they may in the comparison. We can no more acquire a dislike to them, than we can give up a regard for the goods and chattels to which we have been accustomed in our houses, or for the costume with which we asso- ciate the ideas of our uncles, and aunts, and grand- fathers. They are authors who come within our own era of manners and customs, within the period of coats and waistcoats, and snuff-taking, and the same kinds of eating and drinking ; they have lived under the same dynasty of the Georges, speak the same un- obsolete language, and inhabit the same houses ; in short, are at home with us. Shakspeare, with all his POPE, IN SOME LIGHTS, ETC. 21 marvellous power of coming among us, and making us laugh and weep so as none of them can, still comes (so to speak) in a doublet and beard ; he is an ancestor, "Master Shakspeare," one who says "yea" and "nay," and never heard of Pall Mall or the opera. The others are " yes" and "no" men swearers of last Tuesday's oaths, or payers of its compliments cousins, and aunts, and every-day acquaintances. Pope is " Mr. Pope," and comes to " tea" with us. Nobody, alas ! ever drank tea with Shakspeare ! The sympa- thies of a slip-slop breakfast are not his ; nor of coffee, nor Brussels carpets, nor girandoles and ormoulu; neither did he ever take snuff, or a sedan, or a "coach" to the theatre ; nor behold, poor man ! the coming glories of silver forks. His very localities are no longer ours except in name ; whereas the Cork-streets, and St. James's-streets, and Kensingtons, are still al- most the identical places in many respects really such in which the Arbuthnots lived, and the Steeles lounged, and the Maids of Honor romped in the gar- dens at night time, to the scandal of such of the sister- hood as had become married.* Another reason why one likes the wits and poets of that age is, that, besides being contemporary with one's commonplaces, they have associated them with their wit and elegance. We know not how the case may be with others, but this is partly the reason why we like the houses built a century ago, with their old red brick, and their seats in the windows. A portrait of the same period is the next thing to having the peo- ple with us ; and we rarely see a tea-table at which a graceful woman presides, without its reminding us of " The Rape of the Lock." It hangs her person with * Vide the Suffolk Correspondence," vol. i., p. 333. 22 POPE, IN SOME LIGHTS IN WHICH sylphs as well as jewellery, and inclines us to use a pair of scissors with the same blissful impudence as my Lord Petre.* There is a third reason, perhaps, lying sometimes underneath our self-love ; but it takes a sort of impu- dence in the very modesty to own it ; for who can well dare to say that he ever feels oppressed by the genius of Shakspeare and his contemporaries ! As if there could be any possibility of rivalry ! Who ventures to measure his utmost vanity with the skies ? or to say to all nature, " You really excel the existing generation ?" And yet something of oppressiveness in the shape of wonder and admiration, may be allowed to turn us away at times from the contemplation of Shakspeare or the stars, and make us willing to repose in the easy chairs of Pope'and one's grandmother. We confess, for our own parts, that as " Love may venture in, Where it dare not well be seen ;" or rather, as true, hearty, loving, vanity-forgetting love warrants us in keeping company with the greatest of the loving, so we do find ourselves in general quite at our ease in the society of Shakspeare himself, emotion * The reader need scarcely be reminded that the "peer" who "spread the glittering forfex wide," was a Lord Petre, of the noble Catholic fam- ily still existing. As the poem was written in 1711, he must have been " Robert, seventh Baron Petre." who succeeded to the title in 1707, and died in 1713. He married the year after the writing of the poem, and died the year following ; so that his life seems to have been " short and sweet." It is pleasant to see by the peerages, that the family intermarried in the present century with that of the Blounts of Mapledurham the friends of Pope; and that one of the sisters of the bride was named Arabella, probably after Arabella Fermor, the Belinda of the poet. A sense of the honors conferred by genius gives the finishing grace to noble families that have the luck to possess them. HE IS NOT USUALLY REGARDED. 23 apart. We are rendered so by the humanity that rec- onciles us to our defects, and by the wisdom which preferred love before all things. Setting hats and caps aside, and coming to pure flesh and blood, and whatso- ever survives fashion and conventionalism, who can jest so heartily as he ? who so make you take " your ease at your inn ?" who talk and walk with you, feel, fancy, imagine ; be in the woods, the clouds, fairy-land, among friends (there is no man so fond of drawing friends as he is), or if you want a charming woman to be in love with and live with forever, who can so paint her in a line? " Pretty, and witty ; wild, and yet too, gentle." All that the Popes and Priors could have conspired with all the Suffolks and Montagues to say of delight- ful womanhood, could not have outvalued the compre- hensiveness of that line. Still, as one is accustomed to think eyen of the most exquisite women in connection with some costume or other, be it no more than a slip- per to her foot, modern dress insists upon clothing them to one's imagination, in preference to dress ancient. We cannot love them so entirely in the dresses of Arcadia, or in the ruffs and top-knots of the time of Elizabeth, as in the tuckers and tresses to which we have been accustomed. As they approach our own times, they partake of the warmness of our homes. " Anne Page " might have been handsomer, but we cannot take to her so heartily as to " Nancy Dawson," or to "Mary Lepell." Imogen there seems no match- ing or dispensing with ; and yet Lady Winchelsea when Miss Kingsmill, or Mrs. Brooke when she was Fanny Moore the Clergyman's daughter, dancing un- der the cherry-trees of the parsonage garden, and " as 24 POPE, IN SOME LIGHTS IN WHICH remarkable for her gentleness and suavity of manners as for her literary talents," we cannot but feel that the " Miss " and the " Fanny " carries us away with it in spite of all the realities mixed up with those desue- tudes of older times. We have been led into those reflections by a volume of Pope's Letters, which we read over again the other day, and which found our regard for him as fresh as ever, notwithstanding all that we have learnt to love and admire more. We cannot live with Pope and the wits as entirely as we used to do at one period. Cir- cumstances have re-opened new worlds to us, both real and ideal, which have as much enlarged (thank Heaven !) our possessions, as though to a house of the sort above mentioned had been added the gardens of all the east, and the forests (with all their visions) of Greece and the feudal times. Still the house is there, furnished as aforesaid, and never to be given up. And as men after all their day-dreams, whether of poetry or of business (for it is little suspected how much fancy mingles even with that too) are glad to be called to dinner or tea, and see the dear familiar faces about them, so, though the author we admire most be Shaks- peare, and the two books we can least dispense with on our shelves are Spenser and the " Arabian Nights," we never quit these to look at our Pope, and our Par- nell and Thomson, without a sort of household pleas- ure in our eyes, and a grasp of the volume as though some Mary Lepell, or Margaret Bellenden, or some Mary or Marianne of our own had come into the room herself, and held out to us her cordial hand. Here, then, is a volume of " Pope's Letters," com- plete in itself (not one of the voluminous edition), a duodecimo, lettered as just mentioned, bound in call HE IS NOT USUALLY REGARDED. 25 (plain at the sides, but gilt and flowered at the back,) and possessing a portrait with cap, open shirt-collar, and great black eyes. We are bibliomaniacs enough to like to give these details, and hope that the reader does not despise them. At the top of the first letter there is one of those engraved head-pieces, of ludi- crously ill design and execution, which used to " adorn" books a century ago ; things like uncouth dreams, magnified out of all proportion, and innocent of possi- bility. The subject of the present is Hero and Lean- der. Hero, with four dots for eyes, nose and mouth, is as tall as the tower itself out of which she is leaning ; and Leander has had a sort of platform made for him, at the side of the tower, flat on the water, and obvi- ously on purpose to accommodate his dead body, just as though a coroner's inquest had foreseen the necessity there would be for it. But we must not be tempted at present into dwelling upon illustrations of this kind. We design some day, if a wood engraver will stand by us, to give something of an historical sketch of their progress through old romances, classics, and spelling- books, with commentaries as we proceed and a " fetch- ing out" of their beauties ; not without an eye to those initial letters and tail-pieces, in which As, and Bs, nymphs, satyrs, and dragons, &c. flourish into every species of monstrous, grotesque, and half-human exu- berance. What we would more particularly take occasion to say from the volume before us, agreeably to our design of noticing whatever has been least or not at all no- ticed by the biographers, is, that notwithstanding our long intimacy with the writings of Pope, we found in it some things which we do not remember to have ob- served before, little points of personal interest, which VOL. II. 2 26 POPE, IN SOME LIGHTS IN WHICH become great enough in connection with such a man, to be of consequence to those who would fain know him as if they had lived with him, and which the biog- raphers (who, in fact, seldom do more than repeat one another) have not thought it worth their while to attend to. The first is, that whereas the personal idea of Pope, which we generally present to our minds in conse- quence of the best-known prints of him is that of an elderly man, we here chiefly see him as a young one, from the age of sixteen to thirty, and mostly while he lived at Binfield in Windsor Forest, when his princi- pal fame arose from his happiest production, " The Rape of the Lock." We see him also caressed, as he deserved to be, by the ladies ; and intimating with a becoming ostentation (considering the consciousness of his personal defects which he so touchingly avows at other times), what a very " lively young fellow," he was (to speak in the language of the day,) and how pleased they were to pay him attention. The late republi- cation of the writings of Lady Mary Wortley Mon- tague has revived the discussion respecting her sup- posed, and but too probable brusquerie towards him (for no man deserved greater delicacy in repulse from a woman, than one so sensitive and so unhappily formed as he). We shall here give, as a counter lump of sugar to those old bitters, a passage from a letter writ- ten when he was twenty-one, in which he describes the effect which the gayety of his conversation had on a young lady whom he met in a stage-coach. What he says about a " sick woman " being the " worst of evils," is not quite so well. It is not in the taste of Spenser and the other great poets his superiors ; yet we must not take it in its worst sense either, but only HE IS NOT USUALLY REGARDED. 27 as one of those " airs " which it was thought becom- ing in such " young fellows " to give themselves in those days, when people had not properly recovered from the unsentimentalizing effects of the gallantry of the court of Charles II. For the better exhibitions of these our passages of interest, rescued from the com- parative obscurity occasioned by the neglect of biog- raphers, we shall give them heads. POPE ADMIRED BY A YOONG LADY IN A STAGE-COACH. " The morning after I parted from you, I found myself (as I had prophecy'd) all alone, in an uneasy stage-coach ; a doleful change from that agreeable company I enjoyed the night before ! without the least hope of entertainment, but from my last resource in such cases a book. I then began to enter into an acquaintance with the moralists, and had just received from them some cold consolation for the inconve- nience of this life and the uncertainty of human affairs, when I per- ceived my vehicle to stop, and heard from the side of it the dreadful news of a sick woman preparing to enter it. "Tis not easy to guess at my mortification ; but being so well fortified with philosophy I stood resigned, with a stoical constancy, to endure the worst of evils a sick woman. I was, indeed, a little comforted to find by her voice and dress that she was a gentlewoman ; but no sooner was her hood re- moved, but I saw one of the most beautiful faces I ever beheld ; and to increase my surprise, I heard her salute me by my name. I never had more reason to accuse nature for making me short-sighted than now, when I could not recollect I had ever seen those fair eyes which knew me so well, and was utterly at a loss how to address myself; till, with a great deal of simplicity and innocence, she let me know (even before I discovered my ignorance) that she was the daughter of one in our neighborhood, lately married, who having been consulting her physi- cians in town, was returning into the country, to try what good air and a new husband could do to recover her. My father, you must know, has sometimes recommended the study of physic to me ; but I never had any ambition to be a doctor till this instant. I ventured to prescribe some fruit, (which I happened to have in the coach,) which being for- bidden her by her doctors, she had the more inclination to ; in short, I tempted her, and she ate ; nor was I more like the devil, than she like ' Eve.' Having the good success of the aforesaid gentleman before my eyes, I put on the gallantry of the old serpent, and in spite of my evil form, accosted her with all the gayety I was master of, which had so 28 POPE, IN SOME LIGHTS IN WHICH good effect, that in less than an hour she grew pleasant, her color re- turned, and she was pleased to say my prescription had wrought an immediate cure ; in a word, I had the pleasantest journey imaginable." We learn from this passage, by the way, that Pope's father sometimes expressed his wish to see his son a physician. The son, however, wisely avoided a profession which would have severely tried his health, and not very well have suited his personal appearance. Otherwise, there can be no doubt he would have made an excellent member of the faculty, learned, bland, sympathetic, and entertaining. The passage we shall extract next is better known, but we give it because Maids of Honor are again flourishing. The poet is here again at his ease with the fair sex. The " prince, with all his ladies on horse- back," is George II.. then Prince of Wales, who is thus seen compelling his wife's maids of honor to ride out with him whether their mistress went or not, and to go hunting " over hedges and ditches on borrowed hacks !" The case is otherwise now ; and the lovely Margaret Dillons, and Spring Rices, and Listers, have the luck to follow a gentlewoman instead of a brute. They can also go in carriages instead of on horse- back, when they prefer it. Whether they have not still, however, occasionally to undergo that dreadful catastrophe, "a red mark in the forehead from an uneasy hat," may be made a question. POPE DINING AND WALKING BY MOONLIGHT WITH MAIDS OP HONOR. " I went by water to Hampton Court, unattended by all but my own virtues, which were not of so modest a nature as to keep themselves or me concealed ; for I met the prince with all his ladies on horseback coming from hunting. Mrs. (Bellenden)* and Mrs L. (Lepell) took * The old title of Mistress, applied to unmarried ladies, was then still struggling with that of Miss ; each was occasionally given. IIB IS NOT USUALLY REGARDED. 29 me into protection (contrary to the laws against harboring papists), and gave me a dinner, with something I liked better an opportunity of con versation with Mrs. H (Howard, afterwards Lady Suffolk). We all agreed that the life of a maid of honor was of all things the most miser- able; and wished that every woman who envied had a specimen of it. To eat Westphalia ham in a morning, ride over hedges and ditches on borrowed hacks, come home in the heat of the day with a fever, and (what is worse a hundred times) with a red mark in the forehead from an uneasy hat ; all this may qualify them to make excellent wives for fox- hunters, and bear abundance of ruddy-complexioned children. As soon as they can wipe off the sweat of the day, they must simper an hour, and catch cold in the princess's apartment; from thence (as Shakspeare has it) "to dinner with what appetite they may;" and after that, till mid- night, walk, work, or think, which they please. I can easily believe no lone house in Wales, with a mountain and rookery, is more contempla- tive than this court; and as a proof of it I need only tell you, Mrs L walked all alone with me three or four hours by moonlight ; and we met no creature of any quality but the King, who gave audience to the vice- chamberlain, all alone, under the garden- wall." We hope Lady Mary Wortley saw this letter ; for she was jealous of the witty and beautiful Lepell, who married a flame of hers, Lord Hervey ; and though she is understood to have scorned the pretensions of Pope herself, it is in the nature of dispositions like hers not to witness pretensions even paid to the rejected without a pang. Our closing extract will mount the little immortal, in his turn, upon an eminence, on which he is certainly very seldom contemplated in the thoughts of any body; and yet it was a masculine one to which he appears to have been accustomed ; to- wit, horseback. He rides in the present instance from Binfield to Ox- ford, a distance of thirty miles, no mean one for his delicate frame. In a subsequent letter we find him taking the like journey and to the same place, in com- pany with Lintott the bookseller, of whose overween- ing manners, and " eye," meanwhile, " to business," he gives a very amusing account, not omitting an intima- 30 POPE, IN SOME LIGHTS IN WHICH tion that he was the better rider, and did not at all suffer under the bookseller's cockney inexperience. But we prefer to see him journeying by himself. There is a sweet and poetical thoughtfulness in the passage, betwixt ease and solemnity. POPE JOURNEYING ON HORSEBACK BY MOONLIGHT. " Nothing could have more of that melancholy which once used to please me than my last day's journey ; for after having passed through my favorite woods in the forest, with a thousand reveries of past pleasure, I rode over hanging hills, whose tops were edged with groves, and whose feet watered with winding rivers, listening to the falls of cataracts below, and the murmuring of the winds above ; the gloomy verdure of Stonor succeeded to these, and then the shades of evening overtook me. The moon rose in the clearest sky I ever saw, by whose solemn light I paced on slowly without company, or any interruption to the range of my thoughts. About a mile before I reached Oxford, all the bells tolled in dif- ferent notes, and the clocks of every college answered one another, and sounded forth, some in a deeper, some in a softer tone, that it was eleven at night. All this was no ill preparation to the life I have led since, among those old walls, venerable galleries, stone porticos, studious walks, and solitary scenes of the university. I wanted nothing but a black gown and a salary, to be as mere a bookworm as any there. I conformed myself to the college hours was rolled up in books lay in one of the most ancient dusky parts of the university and was as dead to the world as any hermit of the desert. If anything was alive or awake in me, it was a little vanity, such as even those good men used to entertain when the monks of their own order extolled their piety and abstraction ; for I found myself received with a sort of respect which this idle part of man- kind, the learned, pay to their species, who are as considerable here as the busy, the gay, and the ambitious are in your world." In a letter containing this extract, is one of those touching passages we have mentioned, in which he alludes to his personal deformity. " Here, at my Lord* H 'a (Harcourt's 1), I see a creature nearer an angel than a woman (though a woman be very near as good as an angel). I think you have formerly heard me mention Mrs. T as a credit to the maker of angels ; she is a relation of his lordship's, and he gravely pro- posed her to me for a wife. Being tender of her interests, and knowing HE is NOT USUALLY REGARDED. 31 that she is less indebted to fortune than I, I told him, 'twas what he could never have thought of, if it had not been his misfortune to be blind, and what I could never think of, while I had eyes to see both her and myself." This is one of those rare occasions in which the most artificial turn of language, if gracefully put, is not unsuitable to the greatest depth of feeling, the speaker being taxed, as it were, to use his utmost address, both for his own sake and the lady's. We speak of " de- formity" in reference to Pope's figure, since, un- doubtedly, the term is properly applied; and one of the greatest compliments that can be paid his memory (which may be sincerely done), is to think that a woman could really have loved him. But he had wit, fancy, sensibility, fame, and the " finest eyes in the world ;" and he would have worshipped her with so much gratitude, and filled her moments with so much intellectual entertainment, that we can believe a woman to have been very capable of a serious pas- sion for him, especially if she was a very good and clever woman. As to minor faults of shape, even of his own sort, we take them to be nothing whatsoever in the way of such love. We have seen them em- bodying the finest minds and most generous hearts; and believe, indeed, that a woman is in luck who has the wit to discern their lovability ; for it begets her a like affection, and shows that her own nature is worthy of it. This volume of Letters is the one that was occasioned by the surreptitious collection published by Curll. It contains the correspondence with Walsh, Wycherley, Trumbal, and Cromwell, those to "Several Ladies," to Edward Blount, and Gay, &c. The style is generally artificial, sometimes provokingly so, as in the answer to Sir William Trumbal's hearty and natural con- 32 POPE, IN SOME LIGHTS IN WHICH gratulations on the "Rape of the Lock." It vexes one to see so fine a poet make such an owl of himself with his labored deprecations of flattery (of which there was none), and self-exaltations above the love of fame. The honest old statesman (a delightful character by the way, and not so rare as inexperience fancies it) must have smiled at the unconscious insincerity of his little great friend. ' Unconscious" we say, for it is a mistake tp conclude that an insincerity of this kind may not have a great deal of truth in it, as regards the writer's own mind and intentions ; and Pope, at the time, had not lived long enough to become aware of his weakness in this respect; perhaps never did. On the other hand, there are abundant proofs in these Letters of the best kind of sincerity, and of the most exquisite good sense. Pope's heart and purse (which he could moderately afford) were ever open to his friends, let his assertions to that effect be taken by a shallow and envious cunning in as much evidence to the con- trary as it pleases. He was manifestly kind to every- body in every respect, except when they provoked his wit and self-love a little too far; and then only, or chiefly, as it affected him publicly. He had little tricks of management, we dare say ; that must be an indulgence conceded to his little crazy body, and his fear of being jostled aside by robuster exaction ; and we will not swear that he was never disingenuous be- fore those whom he had attacked. That may have been partly owing to his very kindness, uneasy at see- ing the great pain which he had given ; for his satire was bred in him by reading satire (Horace, Boileau, and others) ; and it was doubtless more bent on being admired for its wit than feared for its severity, ex- quisitively severe though he could be, and pleased as a HE IS NOT USUALLY REGARDED. 33 man of so feeble a body must have been at seeing his pen so formidable. He fondly loved his friends. We see by this book, that before he was six and twenty, he had painted Swift's portrait (for he dabbled in oil painting) three times; and he was always wishing Gay to come and live with him, doubtless at his expense. He said on one of these occasions, " Talk not of ex- penses ; Homer (that is, his translation) will support his children." And when Gay was in a bad state of health, and might be thought in want of a better air, Pope told him he would go with him to the south of France ; a journey which, for so infirm and habitual a homester, would have been little less, than if an invalid nowadays should propose to go and live with his friend in South America. '*' There are some passages in this volume so curiously appplicable to the state of things now existing among us,* that we are tempted to quote one or two of them : " I am sure (says he) if all Whigs and all Tories had the spirit of one Roman Catholic I know (his friend Edward Blount, to whom he is writ- ing,) it would be well for all Roman Catholics ; and if all Roman Catho- lics had always had that spirit, it had been well for all others, and we had never been charged with so wicked a spirit as that of persecution." Again, in a letter to Craggs, " I took occasion to mention the superstition of some ages after the sub- version of the Roman empire, which is too manifest a truth to be denied, and does in no tort reflect upon the present professors of our faith (he wa himself a Catholic) icho art free, from it. Our silence in these points may, with some reason, make our adversaries think we allow and persist in those bigotries, which yet, in reality, all good and sensible men despise, though they are persuaded not to speak against them ; I cannot tell why, since now it is no way the interest even of the worst of our priesthood, as it might have been then, to have them smothered in silence," Let the above be the answer to those who prefond 1838. 2* 34 POPE, IN SOME LIGHTS IN WHICH to think that the Catholics are still as ignorant and bigoted as they were in the days of Queen Mary ! as though such enlightened Catholics as Pope, and such revolting ones as Mary herself, had never assisted to bring them to a better way of thinking. For the exquisite good sense we had spoken of, take the following passage, which is a master- piece : " Nothing hinders the constant agreement of people who live to- gether but mere vanity : a secret insisting upon what they think their dignity or merit, and inward expectation of such an over-measure of deference and regard as answers to their own extravagant false scale, and which nobody can pay, because non but themselves can tell read- ily to what pitch it amounts." Thousands of houses would be happy to-morrow if this passage were written in letters of gold over the mantel-piece, and the offenders could have the courage to apply it to themselves. We shall conclude this article with an observation or two, occasioned by a rondeau in the volume, not otherwise very mentionable. The first is, that in its time, and till lately, it was almost the only rondeau, we believe, existing in the language, certainly the only one that had attracted notice ; secondly, that it does not obey the laws of construction laid down by the exam- ple of Marot, and pleasantly set forth of late in a pub- lication on "Rondeaulx" (pray pronounce the word in good honest old French, with the eaulx, like the beat- ing up of eggs for a pudding) ; third, that owing to the lesser animal spirits prevailing in this country, the larger form of the rondeau is not soon likely to obtain ; fourth, that in a smaller and more off-hand shape it seems to us deserving of revival, and extremely well calculated to give effect to such an impulse as naturally HE IS NOT USUALLY REGARDED. 35 inclines us to the repetition of two or three words ; and fifth and last, that as love sometimes makes people im- prudent, and gets them excused for it, so this loving perusal of Pope and his volume has tempted us to publish a rondeau of our own, which was written on a real occasion, and therefore may be presumed to have had the aforesaid impulse. We must add, lest our egotism should be thought still greater on the occasion than it is, that the lady was a great lover of books and impulsive writers : and that it was our sincerity as one of them which obtained for us this delightful compliment from a young enthusiast to an old one. " Jenny kiss'd me when we met, Jumping from the chair she sat in ; Time, you thief! who love to get Sweets into your list, put that in. Say I'm weary, say I'm sad, Say that health and wealth have miss'd me, Say I'm growing old, but add, Jenny kiss'd me." GARTH, PHYSICIANS, AND LOVE-LETTERS. Garth, and a Dedication to him by Steele. Garth, Pope, and Arbuthnot. Other physicians in connection with wit and literature. Desirable- ness of a selection from the less-known works of Steele, and of a collection of real Love-Letters. Two beautiful specimens from the " Lover.' 1 WE never cast our eyes towards " Harrow on the Hill" (let us keep these picturesque denominations of places as long as we can) without thinking of an amia- ble man and most pleasant wit and physician of Queen Anne's time, who lies buried there, Garth, the author of the " Dispensary." He was the Whig physician of the men of letters of that day, as Arbuthnot was the Tory: and never were two better men sent to console the ailments of two witty parties, or show them what a nothing party is, compared with the humanity re- maining under the quarrels of both. We are not going to repeat what has been said of Garth so often before us. Our chief object, as far as regards himself, is to lay before the reader some pas- sages of a Dedication which appears to have escaped notice, and which beautifully enlarges upon that pro- fessional generosity which obtained him the love of all parties, and the immortal panegyrics of Dryden and Pope. It is by Sir Richard Steele, and is written as none but a congenial spirit could write, in love with the same virtues, and accustomed to the consolation derived from them. GARTH, PHYSICIANS, ETC. 37 To SIR SAMUEL GARTH, M.D. SIR, "As soon as I thought of making the Lover a present to one of my friends, I resolved, without further distracting my choice, to send it to the Best Nalured-Man. You are so universally known for this character, that an epistle so directed would find its way to you without your name ; and I believe nobody but you yourself would deliver such a superscription to any other person. " This propensity is the nearest akin to love; and good nature is the worthiest affection of the mind, as love is the noblest passion of it. While the latter is wholly occupied in endeavoring to make happy one single object, the other diffuses its benevolence to all the world. ***** " The pitiful artifices which empyrics are guilty of to drain cash out of valetudinarians, are the abhorrence of your generous mind; and it is as common with Garth to supply indigent patients with money for food, as to receive it from wealthy ones for physic. * * * * * "This tenderness interrupts the satisfactions of conversation, to which you are so happily turned ; but we forgive you that our mirth is often insipid to you, while you sit absent to what passes amongst us, from your care of such as languish in sickness. We are sensible that their distresses, instead of being removed by company, return more strongly to your imagination, by comparison of their condition to the jollities of health. " But I forget I am writing a dedication," &c., &c., &c. This picture of a man sitting silent, on account of his sympathies with the absent, in the midst of such conversation as he was famous for excelling in, is very interesting, and comes home to us as if we were in his company. Who will wonder that Pope should write of Garth as he did ? " Farewell, Arbuthnot's raillery On every learned sot : And Garth, the best good Christian he, Although he knows it not." This exquisite compliment to Garth has been often noticed, as at once confirming the scepticism attributed to him, and vindicating the Christian spirit with which it was accompanied. But it has not been remarked, 38 GARTH, PHYSICIANS, AND that Pope, with a further delicacy, highly creditable to all parties, has here celebrated, in one and the same stanza, his Tory and his Whig medical friend. The delicacy is carried to its utmost towards Arbuthnot also, when we consider that that learned wit had the reputation of being as orthodox a Christian in belief as in practice. The modesty of his charity is thus taxed to its height, and therefore as highly compli- mented, by the excessive praise bestowed on the Chris- tian spirit of the rival wit, Whig, and physician. The intercourse in all ages, between men of letters and lettered physicians is one of the most pleasing sub- jects of contemplation in the history of authorship. The necessity (sometimes of every description) on one side, the balm afforded on the other, the perfect mutual understanding, the wit, the elegance, the genius, the masculine gentleness, the honor mutually done and received, and not seldom the consciousness that friend- ships so begun will be recognized and loved by pos- terity, all combine to give it a very peculiar character of tender and elevated humanity, and to make us, the spectators, look on, with an interest partaking of the gratitude. If it had not been for Arbuthnot, posterity might have been deprived of a great deal of Pope. " Friend to my life, which did not you prolong, The world had wanted many an idle song ;" says he, in his Epistle to the Doctor. And Dryden, in the " Postscript" to his translation of" Virgil," speaks, in a similar way, of his medical friends, and of the whole profession : "That I have recovered, in some measure, the health which I had lost by too much application to this work, is owing, next to God's mercy, to the skill and care of Dr. Guibbons and Dr. Hobbs, the two ornaments of their profession, whom I can only pay by this acknowledgment. Tho whole faculty has always been ready to oblige me." LOVE-LETTERS. 39 Pope again, in a letter to his friend Allen, a few weeks before he died, pays the like general compli- ment : " There is no end of my kind treatment from the faculty. They are, in general, the most amiable companions, and the best friends, as well as most learned men I know." We are sorry we cannot quote a similar testimony from Johnson, in one of his very best passages ; but we have not his " Lives of the Poets" at hand, and cannot find it in any similar book. It was to Johnson that Dr. Brocklesby offered not only apartments in his house, but an annuity ; and the same amiable man is known to have given a considerable sum of money to his friend Burke. The extension of obligations of this latter kind is, for many obvious reasons, not to be de- sired. The necessity on the one side must be of as peculiar and, so to speak, of as noble a kind as the generosity on the other ; and special care would be taken by a necessity of that kind, that the generosity should be equalled by the means. But where the cir- cumstances have occurred, it is delightful to record them. And we have no doubt, that in proportion to the eminence of physicians' names in the connection of their art with other liberal studies, the records would be found numerous with all, if we had the luck to discover them. There is not a medical name con- nected with literature, which is not that of a generous man in regard to money matters, and, commonly speaking, in all others. Blackmore himself, however dull as a poet and pedantic as a moralist, enjoyed, we believe, the usual reputation of the faculty for benevo- lence. We know not whether Cowley is to be men- tioned among the physicians who have taken their degrees in wit or poetry, for perhaps he never prac- 40 GARTH, PHYSICIANS, AND tised. But the annals of our minor poetry abound in medical names, all them eminent for kindness. Ar- buthnot, as well as Garth, wrote verses, and no feeble ones either, as may be seen by a composition of his in the first volume of "Dodsley's Collection," entitled " Know Thyself." Akenside was a physician ; Arm- strong, Goldsmith, and Smollett were physicians ; Dr. Cotton, poor Cowper's friend, author of the " Visions," was another ; and so was Grainger, the translator of " Tibulius," who wrote the thoughtful " Ode on Soli- tude," and the beautiful ballad entitled " Bryan and Pe* reene." Percy (who inserted the ballad with more feel- ing than propriety in his " Reliques of Ancient English Poetry") says of Grainger, that he was "one of the most friendly, generous, and benevolent men he ever knew." Goldsmith, even in his own poverty, was known to have given guineas to the poor, by way of prescrip- tions; and when he died, his stair-case in the Temple was beset by a crowd of mourners out of Fleet-street, such as Dives in his prosperity would sooner have laughed at, than Lazarus would, or Mary Magdalen. Smollett had his full portion of generosity in money matters, though he does not appear to have possessed so much of the customary delicacy ; otherwise he never would have given "ostentatious" Sunday dinners to poor authors, upon whose heads he took the opportu- nity of cracking sarcastic jokes ! But he was a dis- eased subject, and probably had a blood as bad as his heart was good. Of Armstrong and Akenside we are not aware that any particular instances of generosity have been recorded, but they both had the usual repu- tation for benevolence, and wrote of it as if they de- served it. Akenside also excited the enthusiastic gen- erosity of a friend ; which an ungenerous man is not LOVE-LETTERS. 41 likely to do, though undoubtedly it is possible he might, considering the warmth of the heart in which it is ex- cited. The debt of scholarship and friendship to the profession was handsomely acknowledged in his in- stance by the affection of Dyson, who, when Akenside was commencing practice, assisted him with three hundred a year. That was the most magnificent fee ever given I We know not, indeed, who is calculated to excite a liberal enthusiasm, if a liberal physician is not. There is not a fine corner in the mind and heart to which he does not appeal ; and in relieving the frame, he is too often the only means of making virtue itself comfort- able. The physician is well-educated, well-bred, has been accustomed to the infirmities of his fellow-crea- tures, therefore understands how much there is in them to be excused as well as relieved; his manners are rendered soft by the gentleness required in sick-rooms ; he learns a Shakspearian value for a smile and a jest, by knowing how grateful to suffering is the smallest drop of balm ; and the whole circle of his feelings and his knowledge (generally of his success too, but that is not necessary) gives him a sort of divine superiority to the mercenary disgraces of his profession. There are pretenders and quacks, and foolish favorites in this as in all professions, and the world may occasionally be startled by discovering that there is such a phenomenon as a physician at once skilful and mean, eminent and selfish. But the ordinary jests on the profession are never echoed with greater good- will than by those who do not deserve them ; and to complete the merit of the real physician* of the man whose heart and behavior do good, as well as his prescriptions, he possesses that humility in his knowledge which candidly owns 42 GARTH, PHYSICIANS, AND the limit of it, and which is at once the proudest, most modest, and most engaging proof of his attainments, because it shows that what he does know he knows truly, and that he holds brotherhood with the least in- structed of his fellow-creatures. It is a pity that some one, who loves the literature of the age of Queen Anne, and the sprightly fathers of English essay- writing, does not make a selection from the numerous smaller periodical works which were set up by Steele, and which in some instances were carried on but to a few numbers, such as this of the " Lover" above mentioned, the " Spinster," the " Theatre," &c. They were generally, it is true, the offspring of haste and necessity ; but the necessity was that of a genius full of wit and readiness ; and a small volume of the kind, prefaced with some hearty semibiographical ret- rospect of the man and his writings, would really, we believe, contain as good a specimen of the volatile ex- tract of Steele (if the reader will allow us what seems a pun) as of his finest second-best papers out of the Tatler. We speak, we must own, chiefly from a knowledge of the " Lover," never having even seen some of the others ; which is another reason for con- jecturing that such a volume might be acceptable to many who are acquainted with his principal works. But there is another volume which has long been suggested to us by the " Lover," and which would surpass in interest whatever might be thus collected out of the whole literature of that day ; and that is (we here make a present of the suggestion to any one who has as much love, and more time for the work than we have) a Collection of Genuine Love- Letter s ; not such stuff as Mrs. Behn and others have given to the world, but genuine in every sense of the word, authentic LOVE-LETTERS. 43 well written, and full of heart. Even those in which the heart is not so abundant, but in which it is yet to be found, elevating gallantry into its sphere, might be admitted ; such as one or two of Pope's to Lady Mary, and a pleasant one (if our memory does not deceive us) of Congreve's to Arabella Hunt the singer. Elo- isa's should be there by all means (not Abelard's, ex- cept by way of note or so, for they are far inferior ; as he himself was a far inferior person, and had little or no love in him except that of having his way). Those of Lady Temple to Sir William, when she was Miss Osborne, should not be absent. Steele himself would furnish some charming ones of the lighter sort, (with heart enough too in them for half a dozen grave people ; more, we fear, than " dear Prue" had to give him in return). There would be several, deeply af- fecting, out of the annals of civil and religious strife ; and the collection might be brought up to our own time, by some of those extraordinary outpourings of a mind remarkable for the prematurity as well as abundance of its passion and imagination, in the cor- respondence of Goethe with Bettina Brentano, who, in the words of Shelley, may truly be called a " child of love and light."* The most agreeable of metaphysi- cians, Abraham Tucker, author of the " Light of Na- ture Pursued," collected, and copied out in two manu- script volumes, the letters which had passed between himself and a beloved wife, " whenever they happened to be absent from each other," under the title of a " Picture of Artless Love." He used to read them to his daughters. These manuscripts ought to be extant somewhere, for he died only in the year 1744, and he * See the two volumes from the German, not long since published, under the title of " Goethe's Correspondence with a Child." 44 GARTH, PHYSICIANS, AND gave one of them to her father's family, while the other was most likely retained as an heir-loom in his own, which became merged into that of Mildmay. The whole book would most likely be welcome to the reading world ; but at all events some extracts from it could hardly fail to enrich the collection we have been recommending. We will here give out of the " Lover" itself, and as a sample both of that periodical of Steele's, and of the more tragical matter of what this volume of love-letters might consist of, two most exquisite specimens, which passed between a wife and her husband on the eve of the latter's death on the scaffold. He was one of the victims to sincerity of opinion during the civil wars ; and the more sincere, doubtless, and public spirited, in proportion to his domestic tenderness ; for private and public affection, in their noblest forms, are identical at the core. Two more truly loving hearts we never met with in book ; nor such as to make us more im- patiently desire that they had continued to live and bless one another. But there is a triumph in calamity itself, when so beautifully borne. Posterity takes such sufferers to its heart, and crowns them with its tears. " There are very tender things," says Steele, " to be recited from the writings of poetical authors, which express the utmost tenderness in an amorous com- merce ; but, indeed, I never read anything which, to me, had so much nature and love, as an expression or two in the following letter. But the reader must be let into the circumstances of the matter to have a right sense of it. The epistle was written by a gentlewoman to her husband, who was condemned to suffer death. The unfortunate catastrophe happened at Exeter in the time of the late rebellion. A gentleman, whose LOVE-LETTERS. 45 name was Penruddock, to whom the letter was written, was barbarously sentenced to die, without the least appearance of justice. He asserted the illegality of his enemies' proceedings, with a spirit worthy his inno- cence ; and the night before his death his lady wrote to him the letter which I so much admire, and is as follows : MRS. PfiNRCDDOCK'S LAST LETTER TO HER HUSBAND. " My dear Heart, " My sad parting was so far from making me forget you, that I scarce thought upon myself since ; but wholly upon you. Those dear em- braces which I yet feel, and shall never lose, being the faithful testimo- nies of an indulgent husband, have charmed my soul to such a rever- ence of your remembrance, that were it possible, I would, with my own blood, cement your dead limbs to live again, and (with reverence) think it no sin to rob heaven a little longer of a martyr. Oh ! my dear, you must now pardon my passion, this being my last, (oh, fatal word !) that ever you will receive from me ; and know, that until the last minute that I can imagine you shall live, I shall sacrifice the prayers of a Christian, and the groans of an afflicted wife. And when you are not (which sure by sympathy I shall know,) I shall wish my own dissolu- tion with you, that so we may go hand in hand to heaven. 'Tis too late to tell you what I have, or rather have not done for you ; how be- ing turned out of doors because I came to beg mercy ; the Lord lay not your blood to their charge. I would fain discourse longer with you, but dare not ; passion begins to drown my reason, and will rob me of my devoirs, which is all I have left to serve you. Adieu, therefore, ten thousand times, my dearest dear ; and since I must never see you more, take this prayer, May your faith be so strengthened that your con- stancy may continue ; and then I know heaven will receive you ; whither grief and love will in a short time (I hope) translate, " My dear, " Your sad, but constant wife, even to love your ashes when dead, " ARCNDEL PENRUDDOCK. " May the 3rd, 1655, eleven o'clock at night. Your children beg your blessing, and present their duties to you." " I do not know," resumes Steele, " that I ever read anything so affectionate as that line, Those dear em- 46 GARTH, PHYSICIANS, ETC. braces which I yet feel. Mr. Penruddock's answer has an equal tenderness, which I shall recite also, that the town may dispute, whether the man or the woman expressed themselves the more kindly ; and strive to imitate them in less circumstances of distress ; for from all no couple upon earth are exempt." MR. PENRUDDOCK'S LAST LETTER TO HIS LADY. " Dearest, best of Creatures ! " I had taken leave of the world when I received yours : it did at once recall my fondness to life, and enable me to resign it. As I am sure I shall leave none behind me like you, which weakens my resolu- tion to part from you, so when I reflect I am going to a place where there are none but such as you, I recover my courage. But fondness breaks in upon me ; and as I would not have my tears flow to-morrow, when your husband, and the father of our dear babes, is a public spectacle, do not think meanly of me, that I give way to grief now in private, when I see my sand run so fast, and within a few hours I am to leave you helpless, and exposed to the merciless and insolent that have wrongfully put me to a shameless death, and will object the shame to my poor children. I thank you for* all your goodness to me, and will endeavor so to die as to do nothing unworthy that virtue in which we have mutually supported each other, and for which I desire you not to repine that I am first to be rewarded, since you ever preferred me to yourself in all other things. Afford me, with cheerfulness, the prece- dence in this. I desire your prayers in the article of death ; for my own will then be offered for you and yours. - "J. PENRFDDOCK:" Steele says nothing after this ; and it is fit, on every account, to respect his silence. COWLEY AND THOMSON. Nature intended poetry as well as matter of fact. Mysterious anecdote of Cowley. Remarkable similarity between him and Thomson. Their supposed difference (as Tory and Whig.} Thomson's behavior to Lady Hertford. His answer to the genius-starvation principle. His letters to his friends, fyc. "Nee vos, dulcissima mundi Nomina, vos, Muss, libertas, otia, libri, Hortique, sylvseque, anima remanente relinquam." " Nor by me e'er shall you, You, of all names the sweetest and the best, You, Muses, books, and liberty, and rest, You, gardens, fields, and woods, forsaken be, As long as life itself forsakes not me." THESE verses, both the Latin and the translation, are from the pen of an excellent man, and a better poet than he has latterly been thought Cowley. But how came he, among his " sweetest and best names," to omit love ? to leave out all mention of the affections ? Thereby hangs an anecdote that shall be noticed presently. Meantime, with a protest against the omis- sion, the verses make a good motto for this verse-loving paper, begun on a fine summer's morning, amidst books and flowers. Our position is not so lucky as Cowley's in respect to " woods," having nothing to boast of, in that matter, beyond the suburbanity of a few lime-trees 48 COWLEY AND THOMSON. and the neighborhood of Kensington Gardens ; but this does not hinder us from loving woods with all our might, nay, aggravates the intensity of the passion. A like reason favors our yearning after " liberty " and " rest," and especially after " fields ;" the brickmakers threatening to swallow up those which the nursery- men have left us. Well ! We always hope to live in the thick of all that we desire, some day ; and meantime we do live there as well as imagination can contrive it ; which she does in a better manner than is realized by many a possessor of oaks thick as his pericranium. A book, a picture, a memory, puts us, in the twinkling of an eye, in the midst of the most enchanting solitudes, reverend with ages, beautiful- with lawns and deer, glancing with the lovely forms of nymphs. And it does not at all baulk us, when we look up and find ourselves sitting in a little room with a fire-place, and perhaps, with some town-cry coming along the street. Your muffin-crier is a being as full of the romantic mystery of existence, as a Druid, or an ancient Tuscan ; and what would books or pictures be, or cities themselves, without that mind of man, in the circuit of whose world the soli- tudes of poetry lie, as surely as the last Court Calen- dar does, or the traffic of Piccadilly. Do the " green " minds of the " knowing " fancy that Nature intended nothing to be made out of trees, but coach-wheels, and a Park or so ? Oh, they of little wit ! Nature intended trees to do all that they do do ; that is to help to fur- nish poetry for us as well as houses ; to exist in the imagination as well as in Buckinghamshire ; to " Live in description, and look green in song." Nature intended that there should be odes and epic COWLEY AND THOMSON. 49 poems, quite as much as that men in Bond street should eat tartlets, or that there should be Howards and Rothschilds. The Earl of Surrey would have told you so, who was himself a Howard, and who perished on the scaffold, while his poems have gone on, living and lasting. Nature's injunction was not only, " Let there be things tangible ;" but " Let there be things also imaginable, fanciful, spiritual ;" thoughts of fairies and Elysiums; Arcadias twofold, one in real Greece, and the other in fabulous ; Cowleys and Miltons as well as Cromwells ; immortal Shakspeares, as well as cus- toms that would perish but for their notice. Alas ! " your poet," nevertheless, is not exempt from " your weakness," as Fal staff would have phrased it. He occasionally undergoes a double portion, in the pro- cess of a sensibility which exists for our benefit ; and good, innocent, sequestered Cowley, whose desires in things palpable appear to have been bounded by a walk in a wood, and a book under his arm, must have expe- rienced some strange phases of suffering. Sprat says of him, -that he was the " most amiable of mankind ;" and yet it is reported, that in his latter days he could not endure the sight of a woman 1 that he would leave the room if one came into it! Here is a case for the respectful consideration of the philosopher the medical, we suspect. The supposed reason is, that he had been disappoint- ed in love, perhaps ill-treated. But in so gentle a mind as his, disappointment could hardly have taken the shape of resentment and incivility towards the whole sex. The probability is, that it was some mor- bid weakness. He should have out-walked and di- verted it, instead of getting fat and looking at trees out of a window ; he should have gone more to town and VOL. ir. 3 50 COWLEY AND THOMSON. the play, or written more plays of his own, instead of relieving his morbidity with a bottle too much in company with his friend the Dean. We suspect, however, from the portraits of Cowley, that his blood was not very healthy by nature. There is a young as well as an old portrait of him, by good artists, evident likenesses ; and both of them have a puffy, unwholesome look ; so that his flesh seems to have been an uncongenial habitation for so sweet a soul. The sweeter it, for preserving its dulcitudes as it did. This morbid temperament is, perhaps, the only dif- ference in their natures between two men, in whom we shall proceed to notice what appears to us a re- markable similarity in every other respect, almost amounting to a sort of identity. It is like a metempsy- chosis without a form of change ; or only with such as would naturally result from a difference of times. Cowley and Thomson were alike in their persons, their dispositions, and their fortunes. They were both fat men, not handsome ; very amiable and sociable ; no enemies to a bottle ; taking interest both in politics and retirement; passionately fond of external nature, of fields, woods, gardens, &c. ; bachelors, in love, and disappointed ; faulty in style, yet true poets in them- selves, if not always the best in their writings, that is to say, seeing everything in its poetical light ; child- like in their ways ; and, finally, they were both made easy in their circumstances by the party whom they served ; both went to live at a little distance from Lon- don, and on the banks of the Thames ; and both died of a cold and fever, originating in a careless exposure to the weather, not without more than a suspicion of previous " jollification " with the. Dean," on Cowley's COWLEY AND THOMSON. 51 part, and great probability of a like vivacity on that of Thomson, who had been visiting his friends in London. Thomson could push the bottle like a regular bon vi- vant : and Cowley's death is attributed to his having forgotten his proper bed, and slept in a field all night, in company with his reverend and jovial friend Sprat. Johnson says that, at Chertsey, the villagers talked of " the drunken Dean." But in one respect, it may be alleged, Cowley and Thomson were different, and very different ; for one was a Tory, and the other a Whig. True, nominally, and by the accident of education ; that is to say, Cowley was brought up on the Tory side, and Thomson on the Whig ; and loving their fathers and mothers and friends, and each seeing his cause in its best possible light, they naturally adhered to it, and tried to make others think as well of it as they did themselves. But the truth is, that neither of them was Whig or Tory, in the ordinary sense of the word. Cowley was no fonder of power in the understood Tory sense, than Thomson was of liberty in the restricted, unprospective sense of the partisans of King Wil- liam. Cowley was for the beau ideal of Toryism ; that is for order and restraint, as being the only safe- guards of liberty ; and Thomson was for a liberty and freedom of service, the eventual realization of which would have satisfied the most romantic of Radicals. See his poems througout, especially the one entitled "Liberty." Cowley never vulgarized about Crom- well, as it was the fashion for his party to do. He thought him a bad man, it is true, but also a great man ; he said nobler things about him than any royalist of his day, except Andrew Marvel (if the latter is to be called a royalist) ; and he was so free from a factious 52 COWLEY AND THOMSON. partiality, that in his comedy, "Cutter of Coleman- street," which he intended as a satire on the Puritans, he could not help seeing such fair play to all parties, that the irritated Tories pronounced it a satire on them- selves. There are doubtless many such Tories still as Cowley, owing to the same predisposing circumstances of education and turn of mind men who only see the cause in its graceful and poetical light whose admira- tion of power takes it for granted that the power will be well exercised, and whose loyalty is an indulgence of the disposition to personal attachment. But if edu- cation had given the sympathies of these men their natural tendency to expand, they would have been on the anti-Tory side ; just as many a pretended lover of liberty (whom you may know by his arrogance, ill- nature, or other want of sympathy) has no business on the Whig or Radical side, but ought to proclaim him- self what he is, a Tory. Had Thomson, in short, lived in Cowley's time, and had a royalist to his father, the same affections that made him a Whig in the time of George the Second, would have made him just the sort of Tory that Cowley was during the Restoration ; and had Cowley had a Whig for his father, and lived in the little Court of Frederick, Prince of Wales, he would have been just the same sort of Whig politician as Thomson ; for it was rather personal than political friendship that procured Cowley his ease at last ; and Frederick, Prince of Wales, was mean enough to take back the pension he had given Thomson, because his Highness had become offended with the poet's friend, Lyttleton. Such is the completion of the remarkable likeness in character and fortunes between these two excellent men. Nor is the spirit of the similarity injured by the COWLEY AND THOMSON. 53 fault of the one as a writer consisting in what are called conceits, and that of the other in turgidity ; for neither of the faults touched the heart of the writers, while both originated in the very humility and simplicity of the men, and in that disposition to admire others which is most dangerous to the most ingenious though not to the greatest men. Cowley and Thomson both fancied their own natural language not great enough for their subjects ; and Cowley, in the wit which he found in fashion, and Thomson, in the Latin classics which were the favorites of the more sequestered world of his youth, thought he had found a style which, while it endeared him to those whom he most regarded among the living, would, by the very help of their sanction, secure him with the ages to come. We will conclude this article with a few notes sug- gested by the latest edition of Thomson (Pickering's), by far the fullest of any, and containing letters and early poems never before published. "Thomson," observes his new biographer, in this edition, " was one summer the guest of Lady Hertford at her country seat ; but Johnson says, he took more pleasure in carousing with her lord than in assisting her studies, and therefore was never again invited a charge which Lord Buchan eagerly repels, but upon as little authority as it was originally made." Now this charge is in all probability true ; and what does it amount to? Not to anything that the noble critic need have been eager to repel. It was impossible for Thomson to treat Lady Hertford unkindly; but nothing is more probable than that he was puzzled with her " studies," whereas he knew well what to do with her husband's wine ; and hence may have arisen a dilemma. The mistake was in good Lady Hert- 54 COWLEY AND THOMSON. ford's dignifying her innocent literary whims with the name of " studies," and thinking there was anything on the critic's part to " study" in them. In the following happy passage Thomson has com- pletely refuted the argument of those mechanical and not very humane or modest understandings, who, be- cause they will only work for " a consideration" them- selves, and feel that without restrictions upon them they would possibly burst out of bounds and do noth- ing, tell us that the only way to get works of genius done by men of genius is to keep them half-starved, and so force them. The mistake arises from their knowing nothing of the nature of genius ; which is a thing that can no more help venting what fills and agitates it, than the flower can help secreting honey, or than light, as Thomson says, can help shining. For "genius" read " mechanical talent" like their own, and there might be something to say for their argument, if cruelty were not always a bad argument, and the harm done to the human spirit by it not to be risked for any imaginary result of good. " What you observe concerning the pursuit of poetry, so far engaged in it as I am, is certainly just. Besides, let him quit it who can, and ' erit inihi magnus Apollo,' or something as great. A true genius, like light, must be beaming forth, as a false one is an incurable disease. One would not, however, climb Parnassus, any more than your mortal hills, to fix forever on the barren top. No ; it is some little dear retirement in the vale below that gives the right relish to the prospect, which, without that, is nothing but enchantment; and, though pleasing for some time, at last leaves us in a desert. The great fat doctor of Bath* told me that poets should be kept poor the more to animate their genius. This is like the cruel custom of putting a bird's eyes out that it may sing the sweeter ; but, surely, they sing sweetest amid the luxuriant woods, while the full spring blooms around them." The last biographer of Thomson does not seem to * Probably Cheyne. COWLEY AND THOMSON. 55 have thought it necessary to enter into any niceties of judgment on various points that come under his notice. He gives an anecdote that was new to us, respecting Allen Ramsay's " Gentle Shepherd," but leaves the degree of credit belonging to it to be determined by the reader. " About thirty years ago," says the story, " there was a respectable old man of the name of John Steel, who was well acquainted with Allan Ramsay ; and he told John Steel himself, that when Mr. Thomson, the author of ' The Seasons,' was in his shop at Edinburgh, getting him- self shaven, Ramsay was repeating some of his poems. Mr. Thomson says to him, ' I have something to emit to the world, but I do not wish to father it.' Ramsay asked what he would give him, and he would father it. Mr. Thomson replied, all the profit that arose from the publication. ' A bargain be it,' said Ramsay. Mr. Thomson delivered him the man- uscript. So, from what is said above, Mr. Thomson, the author of 'The Seasons,' is the author of ' The Gentle Shepherd,' and Allan Ramsay is the father of it. This, I believe, is the truth." There is not a trace of resemblance to Thomson's style in the " Gentle Shepherd." It is far more nat- ural and off-hand ; though none of its flights are so high, nor would you say that the poet (however charm- ing and he is so) is capable of such fine things as Thomson. And then the politics are Tory ! These tales originate in mere foolish envy. The biographer gives an opinion respecting Thom- son's letters, which appears to us the reverse of being well founded : and he adds a reason for it, very little characteristic surely of so modest and single-hearted a man as the poet, who would never have been hindered from writing to a friend, merely because he thought he did not excel hr letter- writing. " It must be evident," says he, " from the letters in this me- moir, that Thomson did not excel in correspondence ; and his dislike to writing letters, which was very great, may have been either the cause or effect of his 56 COWLEY AND THOMSON. being inferior in this respect to other poets of the last century.'* His dislike to writing was pure indolence. He re- posed upon the confidence which his friends had in his affection, secure of their pardon for his not writing. When any particular good was to be done, he could write fast enough ; and he always wrote well enough. We have just given a specimen ; and here follow a few more bits out of the very same collection existing, which are at once natural and new enough to show how rich, in fact, the letters are, and what a pity it is he did not write more. Speaking of a little sum (1.2/.) which he wished to borrow of a friend to help a sister in business, he says " I will not draw upon you, in case you be not prepared to defend your- self; but if your purse be valiant, please to inquire for Jean or Elizabeth Thomson, at the Rev. Mr. Gusthart's ; and if this letter be not a sufficient testimony of the debt, I will send you whatever you desire. "It is late, and I would not lose this post; like a laconic man of busi- ness, therefore, I must here stop short ; though I have several things to impart to you through your canal,* to the dearest, truest-hearted youth that treads on Scottish ground. The next letter I write you shall be washed clean from business in the Castalian fountain. " I am whipping and spurring to finish a tragedy for you this winter, but I am still at some distance from the goal, which makes me fear being distanced . Remember me to all friends ; and, above them all, to Mr. Forbes. Though my affection to him is not fanned by letters, yet is it as high as when I was his brother in the vertu, and played at chess with him in a post-chaise." To the same." Petty" (that is, Dr. Patrick Murdoch, the " little round, fat, oily man of God" in the Castle of Indolence) " came here two or three days ago; 1 have not yet seen the round man of God to be. He is to be parsonified a few days hence : how a gown and cassock will become him ! and with what a holy leer he will edify the devout females ! There is no doubt of his having a call, for he is immediately to enter upon a tolerable * Channel. " Canal," I presume, was a Scotticism. COWLEY AND THOMSON. 57 living. God grant him more, and as fat as himself. It rejoices me to see one worthy, honest, excellent man, raised, at least, to independence." To Doctor Cranston. " My spirits have gotten such a serious turn by these reflections, that, although I be thinking on Misjohn, I declare I shall hardly force a laugh before we part; for this, I think, will be my last letter from Edinburgh, for I expect to sail every day. Well, since I was speaking of that merry soul, I hope he is as bright, as easy, as degage, as susceptible of an intense laugh as he used to be ; tell him, when you see him, that I laugh, in imagination, with him; ha, ha , ha !" To Mr. Patteson (his deputy in the Inspector- Generalship of the Leeward Islands, and one of the friends whom he describes in the Castle of Indolence). "I must recommend to your favor and protection Mr. James Smith, searcher in St. Christopher's: and I beg of you, as occasion shall serve, and as you find he merits it, to advance him in the business of the customs. He is warmly recommended to me by Sargent, who, in verity, turns out one of the best men of our youthful acquaintance honest, honorable, friendly, and generous. If we are not to oblige one another, life becomes a paltry, selfish affair, a pitiful morsel in a corner." We hope that " here be proofs" of Thomson's hav- ing been as sincerely cordial and even eloquent in his letters, as in his other writings. They have, it is true, in other passages, a little of the higher and more elaborate tone of his poetry, but only just enough to show how customary the tone was to him in his most serious moments, and therefore an interesting evidence of the sort of complexional nature there was in his very art something analogous to his big, honest, un- wieldy body ; " more fat," to use his own words, " than bard beseem'd," but with a heart inside it for every- thing good and graceful. 3* BOOKSTALLS AND " GALATEO." Beneficence of Bookstalls. " Galatea, or a Treatise on Politeness.' 11 Swift. Ill-breeding of Fashion. Curious instance of Italian delicacy of reproof. GREAT and liberal is the magic of the bookstalls; truly deserved is the title of cheap shops. Your second-hand bookseller is second to none in the worth of the treasure which he dispenses ; far superior to most ; and infinitely superior in the modest profits he is content with. So much so, that one really feels ashamed sometimes to pay him such nothings for his goods. In some instances (for it is not the case with every one) he condescends even to expect to be " beaten down" in the price he charges, petty as it is ; and accordingly, he is good enough to ask more than he will take, as though he did nothing but refine upon the pleasures of the purchaser. Not content with valuing knowledge and delight at a comparative noth- ing, he takes ingenious steps to make even that nothing less ; and under the guise of a petty struggle to the contrary (as if to give you an agreeable sense of your energies) seems dissatisfied unless he can send you away thrice blessed, blessed with the book, blessed with the cheapness of it, and blessed with the advan- tage you had over him in making the cheapness cheaper. Truly, we fear that out of a false shame we BOOKSTALLS AND " GALATEO. 59 have too often defrauded our second-hand friend of the generous self-denial he is thus prepared to exercise in our favor ; and by giving him the price set down in his catalogue, left him with impressions to our disad- vantage. And yet who can see treasures of wisdom and beauty going for a price which seems utterly unwor- thy of them, and stand haggling with any comfort, for a sixpence or threepence more er less; doubting whether the merits of Shakspeare or Spenser can bear the weight of another fourpenny piece ; or whe- ther the volume that Alexander the Great put into a precious casket, has a right to be estimated at the value of a box of wafers ? To be serious ; they who can afford to give a second-hand bookseller what he asks in his catalogue, may in general do it with good reason, as well as a safe conscience. He is one of an anxious and indus- trious class of men compelled to begin the world with laying out ready money and living very closely : and if he prospers, the commodities and people he is con- versant with, encourage the .good impressions with which he set out, and generally end in procuring him a reputation for liberality as well as acuteness. Now observe. Not long since, we picked up, within a short interval of each other, and for eighteen pence, versions of the two most famous books of instruction in polite manners, that Italy, their first Christian teacher, refined the world with; the 'Courtier* of Count Baldassare Castiglione (Raphael's friend), for a shilling ; and the ' Galateo' of Giovanni della Casa, Archbishop of Benevento (who wrote the banter on the name of John, which is translated in a certain volume of poems), for sixpence. The former we may 60 BOOKSTALLS AND " GALATEO." perhaps give an account of another time. It is a book of greater pretensions, and embracing wider and more general considerations than ' Galateo ;' which chiefly concerns itself with what is decorous and graceful in points more immediately relating to the person and presence. Some of these would be held of a trifling, and others of a coarse nature in the present day, when we are reaping the benefit of treatises of this kind ; and the translator, in his notes, has shown an unseason- able disposition to extract amusement from that which the more gentlemanlike author feels bound but not willing to notice. Casa indeed, before he became a bishop, had not always been decent in his other works ; and it is curious to observe that these public teachers of decorum, who do not avoid, if they do not seek, subjects of an unpleasant nature, have generally been less nice in their own practice, than they might have been. Chesterfield himself was a man of no very refined imagination, and Swift is proverbially coarse. Swift indeed has said, that " a nice man is a man of nasty ideas," which may be true of some kinds of nice men, but is certainly not of all. The difference depends upon whether the leading idea of a man's mind is deformity or beauty. A man undoubtedly may avoid what is unbecoming from thinking too nicely of it ; but in that case, the habitual idea is deformity. On the other hand, he may tend to the becoming out of such an habitual love of the beautiful, that the mind naturally adjusts itself to that side of things, with- out thinking of the other ; just as some people affect grace, and others are graceful by a certain harmony of nature, moving their limbs properly without endeav- oring to do so ; or just as some people give money out of ostentation or for fear of being thought stingy, BOOKSTALLS AND "GALATEO." fl while others do il for the pure delight of giving. Swift might as well have said of these latter, that they were people of penurious ideas, as that all who love clean- ness or decorum are people of nasty ones. The next step in logic would be, that a rose was only a rose, be- cause it had an excessive tendency to be a thistle. Poor, admirable, perplexing Swift, the master-mind of his age ! He undid his own excuse, when he talked in this manner ; for with all his faults (some of them accountable only from a perplexed brain) and with all which renders his writings in some respects so revolt- ing, it might have been fancied that he made himself a sort of martyr to certain good intentions, if he had not taken these pains to undo the supposition, and perhaps there was something of the kind, after all, in his hero- ical ventures upon the reader's disgust ; though the habits of his contemporaries were not refined in this respect, and are therefore not favorable to the conclu- sion. A thorough treatise on good manners would startle the readers of any generation, our own certainly not excepted ; and partly for this reason, that out of the servility of a too great love of the prosperous we are always confounding fashion with good-breeding, though no two things can in their nature be more different, fashion going upon the ground of assumption and ex- clusiveness, and good-breeding on that of general be- nevolence. A fashionable man may indeed be well bred ; but it will go hard with him to be so and pre- serve his fashionableness. To take one instance out of a hundred : there came up a fashion some time ago of confining the mutual introduction of a man's guests to the announcement of their names by a servant, on their entrance into the room ; so that unless you came 62 BOOKSTALLS AND " GALATEO. last, everybody el& did not know who you were ; and if you did, you yourself perhaps were not acquainted with the name of a single other person in the room. The consequence in a mixed part^ was obvious. Even the most tragical results might have taken place ; aad perhaps have so. We were present on one occasion, where some persons of different and warm political opinions were among the company, and it was the merest chance in the world that one of them was not insulted by the person sitting next him, the conversa- tion every instant tending to the subject of ratting, and some of the hearers sitting on thorns while it was going on. Now good-breeding has been justly defined "the art of making those easy with whom you converse;" and here was a fashionable violation of it.* We shall conclude this article with an extract of the most striking passage in the book before us. It is en- titled ' Count Richard,' and is given as " an instance of delicate reproof." The reproof is delicate enough in some respects, and of a studied benevolence ; but whether the delicacy is perfect, we shall inquire a little when we have repeated it. At all events, the ac- count is singular and interesting, as a specimen of the highest ultra-manners of those times, the sixteenth century. " There was, some years ago, a Bishop of Verona, whose name was John Matthew Gilberto ; a man deeply read in the Holy Scrip- tures, and thoroughly versed in all kinds of polite literature. This prelate, amongst many other laudable qualities, was a man of great elegance of manners, and of great generosity ; and entertained those * If it be too troublesome to the benevolence of fashionable society to introduce people to one another on these occasions viva voce, why not Jet the card of each person, on entering, be given to the servant, whose business it should be to put it in a rack for the purpose ; so that at least it might be known who was in the room, and who notl BOOKSTALLS AND "GALATEO." 63 many gentlemen and people of fashion, who frequented his house, with the utmost hospitality, and (without transgressing the bounds of mode- ration) with such a decent magnificence, as became a man of his sacred character. " It happened, then, that a certain nobleman, whom they called Cvunt Richard, passing through Verona at that time, spent several days with the bishop and his family ; in which every individual almost was distinguished by his learning and politeness. To whom, as this illus- trious guest appeared particularly well bred, and every way agreeable, they were full of his encomiums ; and would have esteemed him a most accomplished person, but that his behavior was sullied with one trifling imperfection ; which the prelate himself also, a man of great penetra- tion, having observed, he communicated the affair, and canvassed it over with some of those with whom he was most intimate. Who, though they were unwilling to offend, on so trifling an occasion, a guest of such consequence, yet at length agreed that it was worth while to give the Count a hint of it in a friendly manner. When there- fore the Count, intending to depart the next day, had, with a good grace, taken leave of the family, the Bishop sent for one of his most intimate friends, a man of great prudence and discretion, and gave him a strict charge, that, when the Count was now mounted, and going to enter upon his journey, he should wait on him part of the way, as a mark of respect ; and, as they rode along, when he saw a convenient opportu- nity, he should signify to the Count, in as gentle and friendly a man- ner as possible, that which had before been agreed upon amongst them- selves. " Now this domestic of the Bishop's was a man of advanced age ; of singular learning, uncommon politeness, and distinguished eloquence, and also of a sweet and insinuating address, who had himself spent a great part of his life in the courts of great princes ; and was called, and perhaps is at this time called Galateo ; at whose request, and by whose encouragement, I first engaged in writing this treatise. " This gentleman, then, as he rode by the side of the Count, on his departure, insensibly engaged him in a very agreeable conversation on various subjects. After chattering together very pleasantly, upon one thing after another, and it appearing now time for him to return to Ve- rona, the Count began to insist upon his going back to his friends, and for that purpose he himself waited on him some little part of the way. There, at length, Galateo, with an open and free air, and in the most obliging expressions, thus addressed the Count : ' My Lord,' says he, ' the Bishop of Verona, my master, returns you many thanks for the honor which you have done him : particularly that you did not disdain to take up your residence with him, and to make some little stay within the narrow confines of his humble habitation 64 BOOKSTALLS AND "CALATEO.' " ' Moreover, as he is thoroughly sensible of the singular favor you have conferred upon him on this occasion, he has enjoined me, in re- turn, to make you a tender of some favor on his part ; and begs you in a more particular manner, to accept cheerfully, and in good part, his intended kindness. " ' Now, my Lord, the favor is this : The Bishop, my master, esteems your lordship as a person truly noble : so graceful in all your deport- ment, and so polite in your behavior, that he hardly ever met with your equal in this respect ; on which account has he studied your Lord- ship's character with a more than ordinary attention, and minutely scrutinized every part of it, he could not discover a single article which he did not judge to be extremely agreeable, and deserving of the high- est encomiums. Nay, he would have thought your Lordship complete in every respect, without a single exception, but that in one particular action of yours, there appeared some little imperfection ; which is, that when you are eating at table, the motion of your lips and mouth causes an uncommon smacking kind of a sound, which is rather offensive to those who have the honor to sit at table with you. This is what the good prelate wished to have your Lordship acquainted with ; and en- treats you, if it is in your power, carefully to correct this ungraceful habit for the future ; and that your Lordship would favorably accept this friendly admonition, as a particular mark of kindness ; for the Bishop is thoroughly convinced, that there is not a man in the whole world, besides himself, who would have bestowed upon your Lordship a favor of this kind." " The Count, who had never before been made acquainted with this foible of his, on hearing himself thus taxed, as it were with a thing of this kind, blushed a little at first, but, soon recollecting himself, like a man of sense, thus answered : ' Pray, sir, do me the favor to return my compliments to the Bishop, and tell his Lordship, that if the presents which people generally make to each other, were all of them such as his Lordship has made me, they would really be much richer than they now are. However, sir, I cannot but esteem myself greatly obliged to the Bishop for this polite instance of his kindness and friendship for me ; and you may assure his Lordship, I will most undoubtedly use my utmost endeavors to correct this failing of mine for the future. In the meantime, sir, I take my leave of you, and wish you a safe and pleas- ant ride home." " The translator has the following note o'n this story : " It may be questioned, whether the freedom of an English Univer- sity, where a man would be told of his foibles with an honest laugh, BOOKSTALLS AND " GALATEO." 65 and a thump on the -back, would not have shocked Count Richard leee than this ceremonions management of the affair." p. 23. The virtue of the thump on the back would certainly depend on the honesty of the laugh ; that is to say, on the real kindness of it, and the willingness of the laugher to undergo a similar admonition. But motives and results on these occasions are equally problematical ; and upon the whole, that sort of manual of politeness is not to be commended. With regard to the exquisite delicacy of the admon- isher of Count Richard, exquisite it was to a certain literal extent, and not without much that is spiritual. It was studied and elaborate enough; and above all, the adviser did not forget to dwell upon the good qualities of the person advised, and so make the fault as nothing in comparison. For as it has been well observed by a late philosopher (Godwin), that " advice is not disliked for its own sake, but because so few people know how to give it," so the ignorance gener- ally si own by advisers consists in not taking care to do justice to the merits of the other party, and sheath- ing the wound to the self-love in all the balm possible. And it must be owned, that for the most part advisers are highly in want of advice themselves, and do but thrust their pragmatical egotism in the teeth of the vanity they are hurting. Now, without supposing that the exquisite Bishop and his messenger, who gave the advice to Count Richard, were not men of really good- breeding in most respects, or that the latter in particu- lar did not deserve the encomiums bestowed on him by Monsignore della Casa, we venture, with infinite apol- ogies and self-abasement before the elegant ghost of his memory, to think, that on the present occasion, he and his employer failed in one great point ; to wit, that 66 BOOKSTALLS AND " GALATEO. of giving the Count to understand, that they themselves were persons who failed, or in the course of their ex- perience had failed, in some nice points of behavior ; otherwise (so we conceive they should have spoken) they would not have presumed to offer the benefit of that experience to so accomplished a gentleman. For we hold, that unless it is a father or a mother, or some such person, whose motives are to be counted of supe- rior privilege to all chance of being misconstrued or resented (and even then, the less the privilege is as- sumed the better), nobody has a right to advise another, or can give it without presumption, who is not pre- pared to consult the common right of all to a conr siderate, or rather what may be called an equalizing, treatment of their self-love ; and as arrogant people are famous for the reverse of this delicacy, so it was an ar rogation, though it did not imply habitual arro- gance, in good Signer Galateo, to say not a syllable of his own defects, while pointing out one to his noble and most courteous guest BOOKBINDING AND HELIODORUS." A rapture to the memory of Mathias Corvinus, king and bookbinder. Bookbinding good and bad. Ethiopics of Heliodorus. Striking ac- count of raising a dead body. GLORY be to the memory of Mathias Corvinus, king of Hungary and Bohemia, son of the great Huniades, and binder of books in vellum and gold. He placed fifty thousand volumes, says Warton, "in a tower which he had erected in the metropolis of Buda : and in this library he established thirty amanuenses, skilled in painting, illuminating, and writing, who under the con- duct of Felix Ragusinus, a Dalmatian, consummately learned in the Greek, Chaldaic, and Arabic languages, and an elegant designer and painter of ornaments on vellum, attended incessantly to the business of trans- cription and decoration. The librarian was Bartholo- mew Fontius, a learned Florentine, the writer of many philological books, and a professor of Greek and ora- tory at Florence. When Buda was taken by the Turks in the year 1526, Cardinal Bqzmanni offered, for the redemption of this inestimable collection, two hundred thousand pieces of the imperial money: yet without effect; for the barbarous besiegers defaced or destroyed most of the books, in the violence of seizing the splen- did covers and the silver bosses and clasps with which they were enriched. The learned Obsopaeus relates, that a book was brought him by an Hungarian soldier, 68 BOOKBINDING AND "HELIODORUS." which he had picked up with many others, in the pil- lage of King Corvino's library, and had preserved as a prize, merely because the covering retained some marks of gold and rich workmanship. This proved to be a manuscript of the Ethiopics of Heliodorus^ from which in the year 1534, Obsopaeus printed at Basil the first edition of that elegant Greek romance."* Methinks we see this tower, doubtless in a garden, the windows overlooking it, together with the vine- yards which produced the Tokay that his majesty drank while reading, agreeably to the notions of his brother book-worm, the King of Arragon. The transcribers and binders are at work in various apartments below ; midway is a bath, with an orangery ; and up aloft, but not too high to be above the tops of the trees through which he looks over the vineyards towards his belov- ed Greece and Italy, in a room tapestried with some fair story of Atalanta or the Golden Fleece, sits the king in a chair-couch, his legs thrown up and his face shaded from the sun, reading one of the passages we are about to extract from the romance of Heliodorus, some illumination in which casts up a light on his manly beard, tinging its black with tawny. What a fellow ! Think of being king of the realms of Tokay, and having a library of fifty thousand vol- umes in vellum and gold, with thirty people constantly beneath you, copying, painting, and illuminating, and every day sending you up a fresh one to look at ! We were going to say, that Dr. Dibdin should have existed in those days, and been his majesty's chaplain, or his confessor. But we doubt whether he could have borne the bliss. (Vide his ecstacies, passim, on the charms of vellums, tall copies, and blind tooling.) * " History of English Poetry." Edition of 1840, Vol. u. p. 552. BOOKBINDING AND " HEHODOEU8." 69 Yet, as confessor and patron, they would admirably have suited. The doctor would have continually ab- solved the king from the sin of thinking of his next box of books during sermon-time, or looking at the pictures in his missal instead of reading it ; and the king would have been always bestowing benefices on the doctor, till the latter began to think he needed absolution himself. Not being a king of Hungary, nor rich, nor having a confessor to absolve us from sins of expenditure, how lucky is it that we can take delight in books whose outsides are of the homeliest description ! How willing are we to waive the grandeur of outlay ! how contented to pay for some precious volume a shilling instead of two pounds ten ! Bind we would, if we could : there is no doubt of that. We should have liked to challenge the majesty of Hungary to a bout at bookbinding, and seen which would have ordered the most intense and ravishing legatura ; something, at which De Seuil, or Grollier himself, should have " Sigh'd, and look'd, and sigh'd again ;" something which would have made him own, that there was nothing between it and an angel's wing. Meantime, nothing comes amiss to us but dirt, or tat- ters, or cold, plain, calf, school binding, a thing which we hate for its insipidity and formality, and for its attempting to do the business as cheaply and usefully as possible, with no regard to the liberality and pic- turesqueness befitting the cultivators of the generous infant mind. Keep from our sight all Selectees e Profanis, and Enfield's Speakers, bound in this manner ; and espe- cially all Ovids, and all Excerpta from the Greek. We 70 BOOKBINDING AND "HELIODORUS." would as lief see Ovid come to life in the dress of a Quaker, or Theocritus serving in a stationer's shop. (See the horrid, impossible dreams, which such inco- herencies excite !) Arithmetical books are not so bad in it ; and it does very well for the Ganger's Vade Mecum, or tall thin copies of Logarithms ; but for anything poetical, or of a handsome universality like the grass or the skies, we would as soon see a flower whitewashed, or an arbor fit for an angel converted into a pew. But to come to the book before us. See what an advantage the poor reader of modern times possesses over the royal collector of those ages, who doubtless got his manuscript of Heliodorus's romance at a cost and trouble proportionate to the splendor he bestowed on its binding. An " argosie" brought it him from Greece or Italy, at a price rated by some Jew of Malta : or else his father got it with battle and murder out of some Greek ransom of a Turk ; whereas we bought our copy at a bookstall in Little Chelsea for tenpence! To be sure it is not in the original lan- guage ; nor did we ever read it in that language ; neither is the translation, for the most part, a good one ; and it is execrably printed. It is " done," half by a " person of quality," and half by JNahum Tate. There are symptoms of its being translated from an Italian version ; and perhaps the good bits come out of an older English one, mentioned by Warton. The CEthiopics or (Ethiopian History of Heliodo- rus, otherwise called the Adventures of Theagenes and Chariclea, is a romance written in the decline of the Roman empire by an Asiatic Greek of that name, who boasted to be descended from the sun (Heliodorus is sun-given), and who afterwards became Christian BOOKBINDING AND " HELIODORU8." 71 bishop of Tricca in Thessaly. It is said (but the story is apocryphal) that a synod, thinking the danger of a love romance aggravated by this elevation of the mitre, required of the author that he should give up either his book or his bishopric ; and that he chose to do the latter ; a story so good, that it is a pity one must doubt it. The merits and defects of the work have been stated at length by Mr. Dunlop,* apparently with great judgment. They may be briefly summed up, as consisting, the defects, in want of character and probability, sameness of vicissitude, and inartifi- ciality of ordonnance ; the merits, in an interesting and gradual development of the story, variety and vivacity of description, elegance of style, and one good charac- ter, that of the heroine, who is indeed very charm- ing, being endued with great strength of mind, united to a delicacy of feeling, and an address which turns every situation to the best advantage." The work also abounds in curious local accounts of Egypt, and of the customs of the time, interesting to an antiquary. The impression produced upon our own mind after reading the version before us, accorded with Mr. Dun- lop's criticism, and was a feeling betwixt confusion and delight, as if we had been witnessing the adventures of a sort of Grecian Harlequin and Columbine, per- petually running in and out of the stage, accompanied by an old gentleman, and pursued by thieves and murderers. The incidents are most gratuitous, but often beautifully described, and so are the persons ; and the work has been such a general favorite, that the subsequent Greek romancers copied it: the old French school of romance arose of it ; it has been used by Spenser, Tasso, and Guarini ; imitated by Sydney * " History of Fiction." Second edition. Vol. L p. 30. 72 BOOKBINDING AND " HELIOCORUS." in his Arcadia ; painted from by Raphael ; and succeed- ing romancers, with Sir Walter Scott for the climax, have adopted from it the striking and picturesque nature of their exordiums. The following is one of the two subjects chosen by Raphael, a description of a love at first sight, painted with equal force and delicacy. A sacrificial rite is being performed, at which the hero of the story first meets with the heroine : " This he said, and began to make the offering ; while Theagenes took the torch from the hands of Chariclea. Sure, Knemon, that the soul is a divine thing, and allied to the superior nature, we know by its operations and functions. As soon as these two beheld each other, their souls, as if acquainted at first sight, pressed to meet their equals in worth and beauty. At first they remained amazed and without motion ; at length, though slowly, Chariclea gave, and he received the torch ; so fixing their eyes on one another, as if they had been calling to remembrance where they had met before, then they smiled, but so stealingly, as it could hardly be perceived, but a little in their eyes, and as ashamed, they hid away the motions of joy with blushes ; and again, when affection (as I imagine) had engaged their hearts, they grew pale." p. 109. But what we chiefly wrote this article for, was to lay before the reader a most striking description of a witch raising the dead body of her son, to ask it un- lawful questions. The heroine and her guardian, who are resting in a cave to which the hag has conducted them while benighted, become involuntary witnesses of the scene, which is painted with a vigor worthy of Spenser or Julio Romano. The old wretch, bent on her unhallowed purposes, forcing the body to stand upright, and leaping about a pit and a fire with a naked sword in her hand and a bloody arm, presents a rare image of withered and feeble wickedness, made potent by will : " Chariclea sat down in another comer of the cell, the moon then rising and lightening all without. Calasiris fell into a fast sleep, being tired at BOOKBINDING AND " HELIODORUS." 73 once with age and the long journey. Chariclea, kept awake with care, became spectator of a most horrid scene, though usual among those people. For the woman, supposing herself to be alone, and not likely to be inter- rupted, nor so much as to be seen by any person, fell to her work. In the first place she digged a pit in the earth, and then made a fire on each side thereof, placing the body of her son between the two plains ; then taking a pitcher from off a three-legged stool that stood by, she poured honey into the pit, milk out of a second, and so out of a third, as if she had been doing sacrifice. Then taking a piece of dough, formed into the likeness of a man, crowned with laurel and bdellium, she cast it into the pit. After this, snatching a sword that lay in the field, ictih more than Bacchanal fury (addressing herself to the moon in many strange terms) she launched her arm, and with a branch of laurel bedewed with her blood, she besprinkled the fire: with many other prodigious ceremonies. Then bowing herself to the body of her son, whispering in his ear, she awakened him, and by the force of her charms, made him to stand upright. Chariclea, who had hitherto looked on with sufficient fear, was now aston- ished ; wherefore she waked Calasiris to be likewise spectator of what was done. They stood unseen themselves, but plainly beheld, by the light of the moon and fire, where the business was performed ; and by reason of the little distance, heard the discourse, the beldam now bespeaking her son in a louder voice. The question which she asked him was, if her son, who was yet living, should return safe home 1 To this he answered nothing; only nodding his head, gave her doubtful conjectures of his success ; and therewith fell flat upon his face. She turned the body with the face upwards, and again repeating her question, but with much greater violence, uttering many incantations ; and leaping up and down wltii, the sword in her hand, turning sometimes to the fire, and then to the pit, she once more awakened him, and setting him upright, urged him to answer her in plain words, and not in doubtful signs. In the meantime Chariclea desired Calasiris, that they might go nearer, and inquire of the old woman about Theagenes ; but he refused , affirming that the spectacle was impious ; that it was not decent for any person of priestly office to be present, much less delighted with such performances ; that prayers and lawful sacrifices were their business ; and not with impure rites and inquiries of death, as that Egyptian did, of which mischance had made us spectators. While he was thus speaking, the dead person made answer, with a hollow and dreadful tone : At first I spared you, mother, (said he,) and suffered your transgressing against human nature and the laws of destiny, and by charms and witchcraft disturbing those things which should rest invio- lated : for even the dead retain a reverence towards their parents, as much as is possible for them; but since you exceed all bounds, being not con- tent with the wicked action you began, nor satisfied with raising me up to give you signs, but also force me, a dead body, to speak, neglecting my VOL. II. 4 74 BOOKBINDING AND " HELIODORU8." sepulture, and keeping me from the mansion of departed souls : hear those things ichich atjirst I was afraid to acquaint you untiial. Neither your son shall return alive, nor shall yourself escape that death by the sword, which is due to your crimes ; but conclude that life in a short time, which you have spent in wicked practices : forasmuch as you have not only done these things alone, but made other persons spectators of these dreadful mysteries that were so concealed in outward silence, acquainting them with the affairs and fortunes of the dead. One of them is a priest, which makes it more tolerable; who knows, by his wisdom, that such things are not to be divulged ; a person dear to the gods, who shall with his arrival prevent the duel of his sons prepared for combat, and com- pose their difference. But that which is more grievous is, that a virgin has been a spectator of all that has been done, and heard what was said: a virgin and lover, that has wandered through countries in search of her betrothed ; with whom, after infinite labors and dangers, she shall arrive at the outmost part of the earth, and live in royal state. Having thus said, he again fell prostrate. The hag being sensible who were the spectators, armed as slie was with, a sward, in a rage sought them amongst the dead bodies where she thought they lay concealed, to kill them, as persons who had invaded her, and crossed the operation of her charms. While she was thus employed, she struck her groin upon the splinter of a spear that stuck in the ground, by which she died ; immediately fulfilling the proph- ecy of her son." This surely is a very striking fiction. We recom- mend the whole work to the lovers of old books ; and must not forget to notice the pleasant surprise ex- pressed by Warton at the supposed difference of for- tune between its author who lost a bishopric by wri- ting it, and Amyot, the Frenchman, who was rewarded with an abbey for translating it. Amyot himself after- wards became a bishop. We may add, as a pleasant coincidence, that it was one of Amyot's pupils and benefactors, Henry the Second, who gave a bish- opric to the lively Italian novelist, Bandello. Books were books in those days, not batches, by the baker's dozen, turned out every morning ; and the gayest of writers were held in serious estimation accordingly. VER-VERT;* OR, THE PARROT OF THE NUNS, (FROM THE FRENCH OF CRESSET.) " What words have passed thy lips !" MILTON. INTRODUCTION. THIS story is the subject of one of the most agree- able poems in the French language, and has the ad- ditional piquancy of having been written by the author when he was a Jesuit. The delicate moral which is insinuated against the waste of time in nunneries, and the perversion of go6d and useful feeling into trifling channels, promised to have an effect (and most likely had) which startled some feeble minds. Our author did not remain a Jesuit long, but he was allowed to retire from his order without scandal. He was a man of so much integrity as well as wit, that his brethren regretted his loss, as much as the world was pleased with the acquisition. After having undergone the admiration of the cirdes in Paris, Gresset married, and lived in retirement. He died in 1777, beloved by everybody but the critics. * Sometimes written Vert- Vert (Green-green.) 76 VER-VERT ; OR, Critics were not the good-natured people in those times which they have lately become; and they worried him as a matter of course, because he was original. He was intimate with Jean Jacques Rousseau. The self-tormenting and somewhat affected philosopher came to see him in his retreat ; and being interrogated respecting his misfortunes, said to him, " You have made a parrot speak ; but you will find it a harder task with a bear." Gresset wrote other poems and a comedy, which are admired ; but the Parrot is the feather in his cap. It was an addition to the stock of originality, and has greater right perhaps than the Lutrin to challenge a comparison with the Rape of the Lock. This is spoken with deference to better French scholars ; but there is at least more of Pope's delicacy and invention in the Ver-Vert than in the Lutrin; and it does not depend so much as the latter upon a mimicry of the classics. It is less made up of what preceded it. I am afraid this is but a bad preface to a prose translation. I would willingly have done it in verse, but other things demanded my time ; and after wist- fully looking at a page or two with which I indulged myself, I renounced the temptation. Readers not bitten with the love of verse, will hardly conceive how much philosophy was requisite to do this ; but they may guess, if they have a turn for good eating, and give up dining with an epicure. I must mention, that a subject of this nature is of necessity more piquant in a Catholic country than a Protestant. But the loss of poor Ver- Vert's purity of speech comes home to all Christendom ; and it is hard if the tender imaginations of the fair sex do not sympathize everywhere both with parrot and with THE PARROT OP THE NUNS. 77 nuns. When the poem appeared in France, it touched the fibres of the whole polite world, male and female. A minister of state made the author a present of a coffee-service in porcelain, on which was painted, in the most delicate colors, the whole history of the " im- mortal bird." If I had the leisure and the means of Mr. Rogers, nothing should hinder me from trying to outdo (in one respect) the delicacy of his publications, in versifying a subject so worthy of vellum and morocco. The paper should be as soft as the novices' lips, the register as rose-colored ; every canto should have vignettes from the hand of Stothard ; and the binding should be green and gold, the colors of the hero. Alas ! and must all this end in a prose abstract, and an anti-climax ! Weep all ye little Loves and Graces, ye "Veneres Cupidinesque ! Et quantum eat hominum venustiorum." But first enable us, for our good-will, to relate the story, albeit we cannot do it justice.* * There are two English poetical versions of the Ver-Vert; one by Dr. Geddes, which I have never seen ; the other by John Gilbert Cooper, au- thor of the Song to Winifreda. The latter is written on the false prin- ciple of naturalizing 1 French versification ; and it is not immodest in a prose translator to say that it failed altogether. The following is a sam- ple of the commencement: " At Nevers, but few years ago, Among the Nuns o' the Visitation, There dwelt a Parrot, though a beau, For sense of wondrous reputation; Whose virtues and genteel address, Whose figure and whose noble soul, Would have secured him from distress, Could wit and beauty fate control. Ver-Vert (for so the nuns agreed To call this noble personage') The hopes of an illustrious breed, To India owed his parentage." 78 VER-VERT ; OB, CHAPTER I. Character and manners of Ver- Vert. His popularity in the Convent, and the life he led with the Nuns, Toilets and looking-glasses not unknown among those ladies. Four canary birds and two cats die of rage and jealousy. AT Nevers, in the Convent of the Visitation, lived, not long ago, a famous parrot. His talents and good temper, nay, the virtues he possessed, besides his more earthly graces, would have rendered his whole life as happy as a portion of it, if happiness had been made for hearts like his. Ver- Vert (for such was his name) was brought early from his native country ; and while yet in his tender years, and ignorant of everything, was shut up in this convent for his good. He was a handsome creature, brilliant, spruce, and full of spirits, with all the candor and amiableness natural to his time of life ; innocent withal as could be : in short, a bird worthy of such a blessed cage. His very prattle showed him born for a convent. When we say that nuns undertake to look after a thing, we say all. No need to enter into the delicacy of their attentions. Nobody could rival the affection which was borne our hero by every mother in the convent, except the confessor ; and even with respect to him, a sincere MS. has left it on record, that in more than one heart the bird had the advantage of the holy Father. He partook, at any rate, of all the THE PARROT OF THE NUNS. 79 pretty sops and syrups with which the dear Father in God (thanks to the kindness of the sweet nuns) con- soled his reverend stomach. Nuns have leisure : they have also loving hearts. Ver-Vert was a legitimate object of attachment, and he became the soul of the place. All the house loved him, except a few old nuns whom time and the toothache rendered jealous surveyors of the young ones. Not having arrived at years of discretion, too much judgment was not ex- pected of him. He said and did what he pleased, and everything was found charming. He lightened the labors of the good sisters by his engaging ways, pulling their veils, and pecking their stomachers. No party could be pleasant if he was not there to shine and to sidle about ; to flutter and to whistle, and play the nightingale. Sport he did, that is certain ; and yet he had all the modesty, all the prudent daring and submission in the midst of his pretensions, which became a novice, even in sporting. Twenty tongues were incessantly asking him questions, and he an- swered with propriety to every one. It was thus, of old, that Caesar dictated to four persons at once in four different styles, j Our favorite had the whole range of the house. He preferred dining in the refectory, where he ate as he pleased. In the intervals of the table, being of an in- defatigable stomach, he amused his palate with pocket- loads of sweetmeats which the nuns always carried about for him. Delicate attentions, ingenious and pre- venting cares, were born, they say, among the nuns of the Visitation. The happy Ver-Vert had reason to think so. He had a better place of it than a parrot at court. He lay, lapped up. as it were, in the very glove of contentment. 80 VER-VERT; OR, At bed-time he repaired to whatever cell he chose ; and happy, too happy was the blessed sister, whose retreat at the return of nightfall it pleased him to honor with his presence. He seldom lodged with the old ones. The novices, with their simple beds, were more to his taste ; which, you must observe, had always a peculiar turn for propriety. Ver-Vert used to take his station on the agnus-box,* and remain there till the star of Venus rose in the morning. He had then the pleasure of witnessing the toilet of the fresh little nun ; for between ourselves (and I say it in a whisper) nuns have toilets. I have read somewhere, that they even like good ones. Plain veils require to be put on properly, as well as lace and diamonds. Furthermore, they have their fashions and modes. There is &n art, a gusto in these things, inseparable from their natures. Sackcloth itself may sit well. Huckaback may have an air. The swarm of the little loves who meddle in all directions, and who know how to whisk through the grates of convents, take a pleasure in giving a profane turn to a bandeau, a piquancy to a nun's tucker. In short, before one goes to the parlor, it is as well to give a glance or two at the looking-glass. But let that rest. I say all in confi- dence ; so now to return to our hero. In this blissful state of indolence Ver-Vert passed his time without a care, without a moment of en- nui, lord, undisputed, of all hearts. For him sister Agatha forgot her sparrows : for him, or because of him, four canary birds died out of rage and spite ; for him, a couple of tom-cats, once in favor, took to their cushions, and never afterwards held up their heads. * A box containing a religious figure of a Lamb. THE PABROT OP THE NUNS. 81 Who could have foreboded, in the course of a life so charming, that the morals of our hero were taken care of, only to be ruined ! that a day should arise, a day full of guilt and astonishment, when Ver- Vert, the idol of so many hearts, should be nothing but an object of pity and horror ! Let us husband our tears as long as possible, for come they must : sad fruit of the over-tender care of our dear little sisters ! 4* 82 VER-VERT J OR, CHAPTER II. Further details respecting the piety and accomplishments of our hero. Sister Melanie in the habit of exhibiting them. A visit from him i requested by the Nuns of the Visitation at Nantes. Consternation in the Convent. The visit conceded. Agonies at his departure. You may guess, that, in a school like this, a bird of our hero's parts of speech could want nothing to com- plete his education. Like a nun, he never ceased talk- ing except at meals ; but at the same time, he always spoke like a book. His style was pickled and preserved in the very sauce and sugar of good behavior. He was none of your flashy parrots, puffed up with airs of fashion and learned only in vanities. Ver-Vert was a devout fowl ; a beautiful soul, led by the hand of innocence. He had no notion of evil ; never uttered an improper word ; but then to be even with those who knew how to talk, he was deep in canticles, Ore- muses, and mystical colloquies. His Pax vobiscum was edifying. His Hail, sister! was not to be lightly thought of. He knew even a " Meditation" or so, and some of the delicatest touches out of " Marie Ala- coque."* Doubtless he had every help to edification. There were many learned sisters in the convent who knew by heart all the Christmas carols, ancient and modern. Formed under their auspices, our parrot soon equalled his instructors. He acquired even their very tone, giving it all the pious lengthiness, the * A famous devotee. THE PARROT OF THE NUNS. 83 holy sighs, and languishing cadences, of the singing of the dear sisters, groaning little doves. The renown of merit like this was not to be con- fined to a cloister. In all Nevers, from morning till night, nothing was talked of but the darling scenes exhibited by the parrot of the blessed nuns. People came as far as from Moulins to see him. Ver-Vert never budged out of the parlor. Sister Melanie, in her best stomacher, held him, and made the spectators remark his tints, his beauties, his infantine sweetness. The bird sat at the receipt of victory. And yet even these attractions were forgotten when he spoke. Pol- ished, rounded, brimful of the pious gentilities which the younger aspirants had taught him, our illustrious parrot commenced his recitation. Every instant a new charm developed itself; and what was remark- able, nobody fell asleep. His hearers listened ; they hummed, they applauded. He, nevertheless, trained to perfection, and convinced of the nothingness of glory, always withdrew into the recesses of his heart, and triumphed with modesty. Closing his beak, and dropping into a low tone of voice, he bowed himself with sanctity, and so left his world edified. He uttered nothing under a gentility or a dulcitude ; that is to say, with the exception of a few words of scandal or so, which crept from the convent-grate into the parlor. Thus lived, in this delectable nest, like a master, a saint, and a true sage as he was, Father Ver-Vert, dear to more than one Hebe ; fat as a monk, and not less reverend ; handsome as a sweetheart ; knowing as an abbe ; always loved, and always worthy to be loved ; polished, perfumed, cockered up, the very pink of perfection ; happy, in short, if he had never trav- elled. 84 VER-VEET J OR, But now comes the time of miserable memory, the critical minute in which his glory is to be eclipsed. O guilt ! O shame ! O cruel recollection ! Fatal jour- ney, why must we see thy calamities beforehand? Alas ! a great name is a perilous thing. Your retired lot is by much the safest. Let this example, my friends, show you that too many talents, and too flattering a success, often bring in their train the ruin of one's virtue. The renown of thy brilliant achievements, Ver-Vert, spread itself abroad on every side, even as far as Nantes. There, as everybody knows, is another meek fold of the reverend Mothers of the Visitation, ladies, who, as elsewhere in this country of ours, are by no means the last to know everything. To hear of our parrot was to desire to see him ; and desire at all times and in everybody, is a devouring flame. Judge what it must be in a nun. Behold, then, at one blow, twenty heads turned for a parrot. The ladies of Nantes wrote to Nevers, to beg that this bewitching bird might be allowed to come down to the Loire, and pay them a visit. The letter is sent off; but when, ah, when will come the answer? In something less than a fortnight. What an age ! Letter upon letter is dispatched, entreaty on entreaty. There is no more sleep in the house. Sister Cecilie will die of it At length the epistle arrives at Nevers. Tremen- dous event ! A chapter is held upon it. Dismay fol- lows the consultation. " What ! lose Ver-Vert !. O heavens ! What are we to do in these desolate holes and corners without the darling bird ! Better to die at once !" Thus spoke one of the younger sisters, whose heart, tired of having nothing to do, still lay THE PARROT OP THE NUNS. 85 open to a little innocent pleasure. To say the truth, it was no great matter to wish to keep a parrot, in a place where no other bird was to be had. Never- theless, the older nuns determined upon letting the charmer go ; for a fortnight. Their prudent heads didn't choose to embroil themselves with their sisters of Nantes. This bill, on the part of their ladyships, produced great disorder in the commons. What a sacrifice ! Is it in human nature to consent to it ? " Is it true ?" quoth sister Seraphine : " What ! live, and Ver-Vert away !" In another quarter of the room thrice did the vestry-nun turn pale ; four times did she sigh ; she wept, she groaned, she fainted, she lost her voice. The whole place is in mourning. I know not what pro- phetic finger traced the journey in black colors ; but the dreams of the night redoubled the horrors of the day. In vain. The fatal moment arrives ; everything is ready ; courage must be summoned to bid adieu. Not a sister but groaned like a turtle ; so long was the widowhood she anticipated. How many kisses did not Ver-Vert receive on going out ! They retain him ; they bathe him with tears ; his attractions redouble at every step. Nevertheless, he is at length outside the walls ; he is gone ; and out of the monastery, with him, flies love ! 86 VER-VERT; OR, CHAPTER III. Lamentable stale of manners in the boat which carries our hero down the Loire. He becomes corrupted. His biting the nun that came to meet him Ecstacy of the other nuns on hearing of his arrival. THE same vagabond of a boat which contained the sacred bird, contained also a couple of giggling dam- sels, three dragoons, a wet nurse, a monk, and two garcons ; pretty society for a young thing just out of a monastery ! Ver-Vert thought himself in another world. It was no longer texts and orisons with which he was treated, but words which he never heard before, and those words none of the most Christian. The dragoons, a race not eminent for devotion, spoke no language but that of the ale-house. All their hymns to beguile the road were in honor of Bacchus ; all their movable feasts consisted only in those of the ordinary. The garons and the three new graces kept up a concert in the taste of the allies. The boatmen cursed and swore, and made horrible rhymes ; taking care, by a masculine articulation, that not a syllable should lose its vigor. Ver-Vert, melancholy and frightened, sat dumb in a corner. He knew not what to say or think. In the course of the voyage, the company resolved to "fetch out" our hero. The task fell on Brother Lubin the monk, who in a tone very unlike his profes- sion, put some questions to the handsome forlorn. The benign bird answered in his best manner. He sighed THE PARROT OF THE NUNS. with a formality the most finished, and said in a pedan- tic tone, "Hail, Sister!" At this "Hail," you may judge whether the hearers shouted with laughter. Every tongue fell on poor Father Parrot. Our novice bethought within him, that he must have spoken amiss. He began to consider, that if he would be well with the fair portion of the company, he must adopt the style of their friends. Being naturally of a daring soul, and having been hitherto well fumed with incense, his modesty was not proof against so much contempt. Ver-Vert lost his patience ; and in losing his patience, alas ! poor fellow, he lost his innocence. He even began, inwardly, to mutter ungracious curses against the good sisters, his instructors, for not having taught him the true refinements of the French lan- guage, its nerve and its delicacy. He accordingly set himself to learn them with all his might ; not speaking much, it is true, but not the less inwardly studying for all that. In two days (such is the progress of evil in young minds) he forgot all that had been taught him, and in less than three was as off-hand a swearer as any in the boat. He swore worse than an old devil at the bottom of a holy- water box. It has been said, that nobody becomes abandoned at once. Ver-Vert scorned the saying. He had a contempt for any more novitiates. He became a blackguard in the twinkling of an eye. In short, on one of the boatmen exclaiming, " Go to the devil," Ver-Vert echoed the wretch ! The company applauded, and he swore again. Nay, he swore other oaths. A new vanity seized him ; and degrading his generous organ, he now felt no other ambition but that of pleasing the wicked. During these melancholy scenes, what were you about, chaste nuns of the convent of Nevers ? Doubt- 88 VER-VERT J OR, less you were putting up vows for the safe return of the vilest of ingrates, a vagabond unworthy of your anxiety, who holds his former loves in contempt. Anxious affection is in your hearts, melancholy in your dwelling. Cease your prayers, dear deluded ones ; dry up your tears. Ver-Vert is no longer worthy of you ; he is a raf, an apostate, a common swearer. The winds and the water-nymphs have spoilt the fruit of your labors. Genius he may be still ; but what is genius without virtue ? Meanwhile, the boat was approaching the town of Nantes, where the new sisters of the Visitation ex- pected it with impatience. The days and nights had never been so long. During all their torments, how- ever, they had the image of the coming angel before them, the polished soul, the bird of noble breeding, the tender, sincere, and edifying voice behavior, sentiments, distinguished merit oh grief ! what is it all to come to ? The boat arrives; the passengers disembark. A lay-sister of the turning-box* was waiting in the dock, where she had been over and over again at stated times, ever since the letters were dispatched. Her looks, darting over the water, seemed to hasten the vessel that conveyed our hero. The rascal guessed her business at first sight. Her prudish eyes, letting a look out at the corner, her great coif, white gloves, dying voice, and little pendant cross, were not to be mistaken. Ver-Vert ruffled his feathers with disgust. There is reason to believe that he gave her internally to the devil. He was now all for the army, and could not bear the thought of new ceremonies and litanies. However, my gentleman was obliged to submit. The * A box at the convent-gate, by which things are received. THE PARROT OP THE NUNS. 89 lay-sister carried him off in spite of his vociferations. They say, he bit her in going ; some say in the neck, others on the arm. I believe it is not well known where he bit her ; but the circumstance is of no con- sequence. Off he went. The devotee was soon within the convent, and the visitor's arrival was an- nounced. Here 's a noise ! At the first sound of the news, the bell was set ringing. The nuns were at prayers, but up they all jump. They shriek, they clap their hands, they fly. " 'T is he, sister ! 'T is he ! He is in the great parlor!" The great parlor is filled in a twinkling. Even the old nuns, marching in order, forget the weight of their years. The whole house was grown young again. It is said to have been on this occasion, that Mother Angelica ran for the first time. 90 VER-VERT ; OR, CHAPTER THE LAST. Admiration of the parr of s new friends converted into astonishment and horror. Ver- Vert keeps no measures with his shocking acquirements. T/te nuns fly from him in terror, and determine upon instantly sending him back, not, however, without pity. His return, and astonishment of his old friends. He is sentenced to solitary confinement, which restores his virtue. Transport of the nuns, who kill him with kindness. AT length the blessed spectacle burst upon the good sisters. They cannot satiate their eyes with admiring : and in truth, the rascal was not the less handsome for being less virtuous. His military look and petit maitre airs gave him even a new charm. All mouths burst out in his praise ; all at once. He, however, does not deign to utter one pious word, but stands rolling his eyes like a young Carmelite. Grief the first. There was a scandal in this air of effrontery. In the second place, when the Prioress, with an august air, and like an inward-hearted creature as she was, wished to in- terchange a few sentiments with the bird, the first words my gentleman uttered, the only answer he con- descended to give, and that too with an air of noncha- lance, or rather contempt, and like an unfeeling villain, was, " What a pack of fools these nuns are !" History says he learned these words on the road. At this debut, Sister Augustin, with an air of the greatest sweetness, hoping to make their visitor cau- tious, said to him, " For shame, my dear brother." The dear brother, not to be corrected, rhymed her a word or two, too audacious to be repeated. THE PARROT OP THE NUNS. 91 " Holy Jesus !" exclaimed the sister ; " he is a sor- cerer, my dear mother ! Just Heaven ! what a wretch ! Is this the divine parrot ?" Ver-Vert, like a reprobate at the gallows, made no other answer than by setting up a dance, and singing, " Here we go up, up, up ;" which, to improve, he com- menced with an " O d mme." The nuns would have stopped his mouth ; but he was not to be hindered. He gave a buffoon imitation of the prattle of the young sisters ; and then shutting his beak, and dropping into a palsied imbecility, mim- icked the nasal drawl of his old enemies, the antiques ! But it was still worse, when, tired and worn out with the stale sentences of his reprovers, Ver-Vert foamed and raged like a corsair, thundering out all the terrible words he had learned aboard the vessel. Heavens ! how he swore, and what things he said ! His dissolute voice knew no bounds. The lower regions themselves appeared to open before them. Words not to be thought of danced upon his beak. The young sisters thought he was talking Hebrew. Oh! blood and 'ouns ! Whew! D m n! Here's a h 11 of a storm !" At these tremendous utterances, all the place trem- bled with horror. The nuns, without more ado, ed a thousand ways, making as many signs of the cross. They thought it was the end of the world. Poor Mother Cicely, falling on her nose, was the ruin of her last tooth. " Eternal Father !" exclaimed Sister Vivian, opening with difficulty a sepulchral voice ; " Lord have mercy on us ! who has sent us this anti- christ ? Sweet Saviour ! What a conscience can it be, which swears in this manner, like one of the damned ? Is this the famous wit, the sage Ver-Vert, 92 VER-VERT ; OR, who is so beloved and extolled ? For Heaven's sake, let him depart from among us without more ado." " O God of love !" cried sister Ursula, taking up the lamentation ; " what horrors ! Is this the way they talk among our sisters at Nevers ? This their perverse language! This the manner in which they form youth ! What a heretic ! O divine wisdom, let us get rid of him, or we shall all go to the wicked place to- gether !" In short, Ver-Vert is fairly put in his cage, and sent on his travels back again. They pronounce him de- testable, abominable, a condemned criminal, convicted of having endeavored to pollute the virtue of the holy sisters. All the convent sign his decree of banish- ment, but they shed tears in doing it. It was impossi- ble not to pity a reprobate in the flower of his age, who was unfortunate enough to hide such a depraved heart under an exterior so beautiful. For his part, Ver-Vert desired nothing better than to be off. He was carried back to the river side in a box, and did not bite the lay-sister again. But what was the despair, when he returned home, and would fain have given his old instructors a like serenade ! Nine venerable sisters, their eyes in tears, their senses confused with horror, their veils two deep, condemned him in full conclave. The younger ones, who might have spoken for him, were not al- lowed to be present. One or two were for sending him back to the vessel ; but the majority resolved upon keeping and chastising him. He was sentenced to two months' abstinence, three of imprisonment, and four of silence. No garden, no toilet, no bed-room, no little cakes. Nor was this all. The sisters chose for his jailer the very Alecto of the convent, a hideous old THE PARROT OF THE NUNS. fury, a veiled ape, an octogenary skeleton, a spectacle made on purpose for the eye of a penitent. In spite of the cares of this inflexible Argus, some amiable nuns would often come with their sympathy to relieve the horrors of the bird's imprisonment. Sister Rosalie, more than once, brought him almonds before breakfast. But what are almonds in a room cut off from the rest of the world ! What are sweet- meats in captivity but bitter herbs ? Covered with shame and instructed by misfortune, or weary of the eternal old hag his companion, our hero at last found himself contrite. He forgot the dragoons and the monk, arid once more in unison with the holy sisters both in matter and manner, be- came more devout than a canon. When they were sure of his conversion, the divan re-assembled, and agreed to shorten the term of his penitence. Judge if the day of his deliverance was a day of joy ! All his future moments, consecrated to gratitude, were to be spun by the hands of love and security. O faith- less pleasure ! O vain expectation of mortal delight ! All the dormitories were dressed with flowers. Ex- quisite coffee, songs, lively exercise, an amiable tu- mult of pleasure, a plenary indulgence of liberty, all breathed of love and delight ; nothing announced the coming adversity. But, O indiscreet liberality ! O fatal overflowingness of the hearts of nuns ! Passing too quickly from abstinence to abundance, from the hard bosom of misfortune to whole seas of sweetness, saturated with sugar and set on fire with liqueurs, Ver- Vert fell one day on a box of sweetmeats, and lay on his death-bed. His roses were all changed to cypress. In vain the sisters endeavored to recall his fleeting spirit. The sweet excess had hastened his 94 VER-VERT. destiny, and the fortunate victim of love expired in the bosom of pleasure. His last words were much admired, but history has not recorded them. Venus herself, closing his eyelids, took him with her into the little Elysium described by the lover of Corinna, where Ver-Vert assumed his station among the heroes of the parrot-race, close to the one that was the sub- ject of the poet's elegy.* To describe how his death was lamented is impos- sible. The present history was taken from one of the circulars composed by the nuns on the occasion. His portrait was painted after nature. More than one hand gave him a new life in colors and embroidery ; and Grief, taking up the stitches in her turn, drew his effigies in the midst of a border of tears of white silk. All the funeral honors were paid him, which Helicon is accustomed to pay to illustrious birds. His mausoleum was built at the foot of a myrtle ; and on a piece of porphyry environed with flowers, the tender Artemisias placed the following epitaph, in- scribed in letters of gold : O, ye who come to tattle in this wood, Unknown to us, the graver sisterhood, Hold for one moment (if ye can) your tongues, Ye novices, and hear how fortune wrongs. Hush : or, if hushing be too hard a task, Hear but one little speech ; 't is all we ask One word will pierce ye with a thousand darts : Here lies Ver-Vert, and with him lie all hearts. They say, nevertheless, that the shade of the bird is not in the tomb. The immortal parrot, according to good authority, survives in the nuns themselves ; and is destined through all ages, to transfer, from sister to sister, his soul and his tattle. * See Ovid, Liber Amorum. Book II. Elegy 6. SPECIMENS OF BRITISH POETESSES. No. I. Paucity of collections of our female poetry. Specimens of Anne Sullen, Queen Elizabeth, Lady Elizabeth Carew, Lady Mary Worth, Katha- rine Philips, the Duchess of Newcastle, Anne KiUigrew, the Marchioness of Wharton, Mrs. Taylor, Aphra Dehn, and the Countess of Win- chelsea. ABOUT a hundred years ago, a collection of the poetry of our fair countrywomen was made under the title of " Poems by Eminent Ladies ;" and twenty years ago, a second appeared, under the title at the head of this paper. These, we believe, are the only two publications of the kind ever known in England ; a circumstance hardly to the credit of the public, when it is considered what stuff it has put up with in col- lections of " British Poets," and how far superior such verse writers as Lady Winchelsea, Mrs. Barbauld, and Charlotte Smith were to the Sprats, and Halifaxes, and Stepneys, and Wattses that were re-edited by Chalmers, Anderson, and Dr. Johnson ; to say no- thing of the women of genius that have since ap- peared. The French and Italians have behaved with more respect to their Deshoulieres and Colonnas. It is not pretended (with the exception of what is reported of Corinna, and what really appears to have been the case with Sappho), that women have ever written poetry equal to that of men, any more than they have 96 SPECIMENS OF been their equals in painting and music. Content with conquering them in other respects, with furnishing them the most charming of their inspirations, and divi- ding with them the sweet praise of singing, they have left to the more practical sex the glories of pen and pencil. They have been the muses who set the poets writing ; the goddesses to whom their altars flamed. When they did write, they condescended, in return, to put on the earthly feminine likeness of some favorite of the other sex. Lady Winchelsea formed herself on Cowley and Dryden ; Vittoria Colonna, on Petrarch and Michael Angelo. Sappho is the exception that proves the rule (if she was an exception). Even Miss Barrett, whom we take to be the most imaginative poetess that has appeared in England, perhaps in Eu- rope, and who will attain to great eminence if the fine- ness of her vein can but outgrow a certain morbidity, reminds her readers of the peculiarities of contemporary genius. She is like an ultra-sensitive sister of Alfred Tennyson. We are the more desirous to mention the name of this lady, as the following remarks on the poetesses were made before she was known. Its omission, together with that of the names of Mrs. Howitt, Mrs. Norton, Lady Dufferin, and other charm- ing people, of whom we then knew as little, might otherwise have been thought unjust by the reader, however unimportant to themselves. Mr. Dyce's collection is the one from which our extracts are chiefly made. The other commences no earlier than the time of Pope and Swift. Mr. Dyce begins, as he ought to do, with the ancientest poetical lady he can find, which is the famous Abbess, Juliana Berners, who leads the fair train in a manner singu- larly masculine and discordant, blowing a. horn, in- BRITISH POETESSES. 97 stead of playing on a lute ; for the reverend dame was a hunting parson in petticoats. She is the author of three tracts, well known to antiquaries, on Hawk- ing, Huming, and Armory (heraldry) ; and her verses, as might be expected, are more curious than bewitch- ing. Next to her comes poor Anne Bullen, some verses attributed to whom are very touching, especially the second and last stanzas, and the burden : death ! rocke me on slepe, Bring me on quiet reste ; Let passe my verye guiltless goste Out of my careful brest. Toll on the passing-bell, Ring out the doleful knell, Let the sound my deth tell, For I must dye ; There is no remedy ; For now I dye. Farewell, my pleasures past, Wellcum, my present payne ; 1 feel my torments so increse That lyfe cannot remayne. Cease now the passing-bell", Rong is my doleful knell, For the sound my dethe doth tell, Deth doth draw nye ; Sound my end dolefully, For now I dye. But our attention is drawn off by the stately bluntness of QUEEN ELIZABETH, who writes in N the same high style that she acted, and seems ready to knock us on the head if we do not admire ; which, luckily, we do. The conclusion of her verses on Mary Queen of Scots (whom Mr. Dyce has well designated as " that lovely, unfortunate, but surely not guiltless woman") are very characteristic : VOL. n. 5 98 SPECIMENS OF " No foreign banish'd wight Shall anchor in this port ; Our realm it brooks no stranger's force ; Let them elsewhere resort. Our rusty sword with rest Shall first his edge employ, And poll their tops that seek Such change, and gape for joy." A politician thoughtlessly gaping for joy, and having his head shaved off like a turnip by the sword of the Maiden Queen, presents an example considerably to be eschewed. Hear, however, the same woman in love ; " I grieve, and dare not show my discontent ; I love, and yet am forc'd to seem to hate j I do, yet dare not say, I ever meant ; I seem stark mute, yet inwardly do prate : I am, and not ; I freeze, and yet am burn'd, Since from myself my other self I turn'd. " My care is like my shadow in the sun, Follows me flying, flies when I pursue it ; Stands and lies by me ; does what I have done ; This too familiar care does make me rue it ; No means I find to rid him from my breast, Till by the end of things it be supprest. " Some gentler passions slide into my mind, For I am soft and made of melting snow ; Or be mpre cruel, Love, and so be kind ; Let me or float or sink, be high or low : Or let me live with some more sweet content, Or die, and so forget what love e'er meant." Signed " Finis, Eliza. Regina, upon Moun . . . . 's departure," Ashmol. Mus. MSS. 6969. (781) p. 142. Moun is probably Blount, Lord " Mountjoy," of whose family was the late Earl of Blessington. Eliza beth pinched his cheek when he first knelt to her ,' court, and made him blush. BRITISH POETESSES. 99 LADY ELIZABETH CAREW, " who is understood to be the authoress of The Tragedy of Mariam, the fair Queen of Jewry, written by that learned, virtuous, and truly noble lady, E. C. 1613," was truly noble indeed, if she wrote the following stanzas in one of the choruses of that work : " We say our hearts are great, and cannot yield ; Because they cannot yield, it proves them poor : Great hearts are task'd beyond their pow'r but seld ; The weakest lion will the loudest roar. Truth's school for certain doth this same allow, High-heartedness doth sometimes teach to bow. " A noble heart doth teach a virtuous scorn ; To scorn to owe a duty over long ; To scorn to be for benefits forborne ; To scorn to lie ; to scorn to do a wrong ; To scorn to bear an injury in mind ; To scorn a free-born heart slave-like to bind." LADY MARY WROTH, a Sidney, niece of Sir Philip, has the following beautiful passages in a song with a pretty burden to it : " Love in chaos did appear ; When nothing was, yet he seem'd clear ; Nor when light could be descried, To his crown a light was tied. Who can blame me 1 " Could I my past time begin I would not commit such sin To live an hour and not to love, Since Love makes us perfect prove. Who can blame me ?" If the reader wishes to know what sort of a thing the shadow of an angel is, he cannot learn it better than from the verses of an anonyrhous Authoress to her Husband, published in the year 1652. She bids him not to wear mourning for her, not even a black ring : 100 SPECIMENS OF " But this bright diamond, let it be Worn in rememberance of me, And when it sparkles in your eye, Think 't is my shadow passeth by : For why 1 More bright you shall me see, Than that, or any gem can be." Some of the verses of KATHERINE PHILIPS, who was praised by the poets of her time under the title of " the matchless Orinda," and who called her husband, a plain country gentleman, " Antenor," have an easy though antithetical style, like the lighter ones of Cow- ley, or the verses of Sheffield and his French contem- poraries. One might suppose the following to have been written in order to assist the addresses of some young courtier : TO LADY ELIZABETH BOYLE, SINGING A SONG OP WHICH ORINDA WAS THE AUTHOR. " Subduing fair ! what will you win, To use a needless dart ? Why then so many to take in One undefended heart 1 " I came exposed to all your charms, 'Gainst which, ike first half hour, I had no will to take -up arms, And in the next, no power. " How can you choose but win the day 1 Who can resist the siege 1 Who in one action know the way To vanquish and oblige 1" And so on, for four more stanzas. " To vanquish and obleege" has a very dandy tone.* * Chesterfield, in this word, is for using the English pronunciation of the letter i ; which we believe is now the general custom. The late Mr. Kemble, in the course of an affable conversation with which George IV. indulged him, when Prince of Wales, is said to have begged as a favor that his illustrious interlocutor " would be pleased to extend BRITISH POETESSES. 101 The following are in the same epigrammatical taste, and very pleasing. They are part of a poem " On a Country Life :" " Then welcome, dearest solitude, My great felicity ; Though some are pleased to call thee rude, Thou art not so, but we. " Opinion is the rate of things ; . From hence our peace doth flow ; I have a better fate than kings, Because I think it so. " Silence and innocence are safe : A heart that's nobly true At all these little arts can laugh, That do the world subdue." MARGARET, DUCHESS of NEWCASTLE, with all the fantastic state she took upon her, and other absurdities arising from her want of judgment, was a woman of genius, and could show a great deal of good sense, where other people were concerned. The following apostrophe on " the Theme of Love" has something in it extremely agreeable, between gayety and gravity. " O Love, how thou art tired out with rhyme ! Thou art a tree whereon all poets climb ; And from thy branches every one takes some Of thy sweet fruit, which Fancy feeds upon." Her grace wrote an Allegro and Penseroso, as well as Milton ; and very good lines they contain. Her Euphrosyne does not mince the matter. She talks like a Nell Gwynne, and looks like her too, though all within bounds. his royal jaws, and say oblige, instead of oblcege." Nevertheless all authority is in favor of the latter pronunciation French, Italian, and Latin. But it is a pity to lose the noble sound of our /, one of the finest in the language. 102 SPECIMENS OF " Mirth laughing came ; and, running to me, flung Her fat white arms about my neck : there hung, Embrac'd and kiss'd me oft, and stroked my cheek, Saying, she would no other lover seek. I'll sing you songs, and please you ev'ry day, Invent new sports to pass the time away : I'll keep your heart, and guard it from that thief Dull Melancholy, Care, or sadder Grief, And make your eyes with Mirth to overflow : With springing blood your cheeks soon fat shall grow ; Your legs shall nimble be, your body light, And all your spirits like to birds inflight. Mirth shall digest your meat, and make you strong, &c. But Melancholy ! She will make you lean ; Your cheeks shall hollow grow, your jaws be seen. She'll make you start at every voice you hear, And visions strange shall to your eyes appear. Her voice is low, and gives a hollow sound ; She hates the light, and is in darkness found ; Or sits with blinking lamps, or tapers small, Which various shadows make against the watt." On the other hand, Melancholy says of Mirth, that she is only happy " just at her birth ;" and that she " Like weeds doth grow, Or such plants as cause madness, reason's foe. Her face with laughter crumples on a heap, Which makes great wrinkles, and ploughs furrows deep : Her eyes do water, and her chin turns red, Her mouth doth gape, teeth-bare, like one that's dead : She fulsome is, and gluts the senses all, Offers herself, and comes before a call:" And then, in a finer strain " Her house is built upon the golden sands, Yet no foundation has, whereon it stands ; A palace 'tis, and of a great resor , It makes a noise, and gives a loud report, Yet underneath the roof disasters lie, Beat down the house, and many kitt'd thereby : I dwell in groves that gilt are with the sun, Sit on the banks by which clear waters run ; BRITISH POETESSES. 103 In summers hot, down in a shade I lie ; My music is the buzzing of a fly ; I walk in meadows, where grows fresh green grass ; In fields, where corn is high, I often pass ; Walk up the hills, where round I prospects see, Some brushy woods, and some all champaigns be ; Returning back, I in fresh pastures go, To hear how sheep do bleat, and cows do low ; In winter cold, when nipping frosts come on, Then I do live in a small house alone ; Altho' 'tis plain, yet cleanly 't is within, Like to a soul that's pure and clean from sin ; And there I dwell in quiet and still peace, Not fill'd with cares how riches to increase; I wish nor seek for vain and fruitless pleasures : No riches are, but what the mind intreasures." Dryden's young favorite, ANNE KILLEGREW, who comes next in the list (she was a niece of the famous wit), has no verses so unequal as these, and perhaps none so strong as some of them ; but she is very clever, and promised to do honor to her master. She was accused of being helped by him in her writing, and repels the charge with spirit and sweetness. The lines '" Advanc'd her height," and " Every laurel to her laurel bow'd," will remind the reader of her great friend. The concluding couplet is excellent. " My laurels thus another's brow adorn'd, My numbers they admir'd, but me they scorn'd : Another's brow that had so rich a store Of sacred wreaths that circled it before j While mine, quite lost (like a small .stream that ran Into a vast and boundless ocean) Was swallow'd up with what it join'd, and drown'd, And that abyss yet no accession found. " Orinda (Albion's and her sex's grace) Owed not her glory to a beauteous face, It was her radiant soul that shone within, Which struck a lustre through her outward skin ; 104 .SPECIMENS OF That did her lips and cheeks with roses dye, Advanc'd her height, and sparkled in her eye. Nor did her sex at all obstruct her fame, But higher 'mong the stars it fix'd her name ; What she did write, not only all allow'd, But ev'ry laurel to her laurel bow'd. " The envious age, only to me alone, Will not allow what I do write my own ; But let them rage, and 'gainst a maid conspire, So deathless numbers from my tuneful lyre Do ever flow ; so Phasbus, I by thee Divinely inspired, and possessed may be. I willingly accept Cassandra's fate, To speak the truth although believ'd too late." ANNE, MARCHIONESS of WHARTON, who follows, has an agreeable song, worthy of repetition : " How hardly I conceal'd my tears, How oft did I complain, When many tedious days, my fears Told me I lov'd in vain ! " But now my joys as wild are grown, And hard to be conceal'd ; Sorrow may make a silent moan, But joy will be reveal'd. " I tell it to the bleating flocks, To every stream and tree, And bless the hollow murmuring rocks For echoing back to me. " Then you may see with how much joy We want, we wish, believe : "Tis hard such passion to destroy, But easy to deceive.'' This lady was daughter of Sir Henry Lee, or Ditch- ley, ancestor of the present Dillon family. She was a cousin of Lord Rochester, and wrote an elegy on his death, in which she represents him as an angel. We have the pleasure of possessing a copy of Waller's BRITISH POETESSES. 105 Poems, on the blank leaf of which is written " Anne Wharton, given her by the Authore." Her husband was at that time not possessed of his title. A " MRS. TAYLOR," who appears to have been an acquaintance ot APHRA BEHV, has a song with the fol- lowing beautiful termination. It is upon a rake whose person she admired, and whom, on account of his in- discriminate want of feeling, she is handsomely re- solved not to love. " My wearied heart, like Noah's dove, In vain may seek for rest ; Finding no hope to fix, my love Returns into my breast." Next comes APHRA herself; and, we must say, affects and makes us admire her, beyond what we looted for. Her verses are natural and cordial, writ- ten in a masculine style, and yet womanly withal. If she had given us nothing but such poetry as this, she would have been as much admired, and known among us all, to this day, as she consented to be among the rakes of her time. Her comedies indeed are alarm- ing, and justly incurred the censure of Pope : though it is probable, that a thoughtless good-humor made her pen run over, rather than real licentiousness ; and that, although free enough in her life, she was not so " extravagant and erring" as persons with less mind. LOVE ARMED. Song in Abdelazer ; or, the Moor's Revenge. " Love in fantastic triumph sat, Whilst bleeding hearts around himflmtfd, For whom fresh pains he did create, And strange tyrannic pow'r he show'd. 5* 106 SPECIMENS OF From thy bright eyes he took his fires, Which round about in sport he hurl'd; But 't was from mine he took desires, Enough f undo the amorous world, " From me he took his sighs and tears, From thee his pride and cruelty ; From me his languishment and fears, And every killing dart from thee :" How musical is that ! " Thus thou, and I, the God have arm'd, And set him up a deity ;" And how fine that ! " But my poor heart alone is harm'd, Whilst thine the victor is, and free." ' -> LOVE BEYOND SENSE. Song in the iMcky Chance; or, an Alderman's Bargain. " O Love ! that stronger art than wine, Pleasing delusion, witchery divine, Wont to be prized above all wealth, Disease that has more joys than health ; Tho' we blaspheme thee in our pain, And of thy tyranny complain, We all are better 'd by thy reign. " When full brute Appetite is fed, And chok'd the glutton-lies, and dead, Thou new spirits dost dispense, And fin'st the gross delights of sense. Virtue's unconquerable aid, That against nature can persuade ; And makes a roving mind retire Within the bounds of just desire ; Cheerer of age, youth's kind unrest, And half the heaven of the blest." This "Half the heaven of the blest," is a beautiful variation on a beautiful couplet in Waller : " What know we of the blest above, But that they sing, and that they love 1" BRITISH POETESSES. 107 LOVE AND HYMEN. " In vain does Hymen, with religious vows, Oblige his slaves to wear his chains with ease, A privilege alone that Love allows ; 'Tis Love alone can make our fetters please. The angry tyrant lays his yoke on all, Yet in his fiercest rage is charming still : Officious Hymen comes whene'er we call, But haughty Love comes only when he witt." Aphra Behn is said to have been in love with Creech. It should be borne in mind by those who give an esti- mate of her character, that she passed her childhood among the planters of Surinam ; no very good school for restraining or refining a lively temperament. Her relations are said to have been careful of her ; but they died there, and she returned to England, her own mistress. We now come to one of the numerous loves we possess among our grandmothers of old, or rather not numerous, but select and such as keep fresh with us forever, like the miniature of his ancestress, whom the Sultan took for a living beauty. This is ANNE, COUNTESS of WINCHELSEA (now written Winchilsea), daughter of Sir William Kingsmill, of Sidmonton, in the county of Southampton. " It is remarkable," says Mr. Wordsworth, as quoted by Mr. Dyce, " that ex- cepting a passage or two in the Windsor Forest of Pope, and some delightful pictures in the poems of Lady Winchelsea, the poetry of the period intervening between the publication of the ' Paradise Lost,' and the ' Seasons,' does not contain a single new image of ex- ternal nature." This is a mistake ; for Allan Ramsay preceded Thomson : but some of Lady Winchelsea's " delightful pictures" are indeed very fresh and natural. 108 SPECIMENS OF In the poem entitled A Nocturnal Reverie, she thus speaks of a summer night " When freshened grass now bears itself upright, And makes cool banks to pleasing rest invite, Whence springs the woodbine, and the bramble-rose, And where the sleepy cowslip shelter'd grows ; Whilst now a paler hue the fox-glove takes, Yet checkers still with red the dusky brakes} When scattered glowworms, but in twilight fine, Show trivial beauties watch their hour to shine ; Whilst Salisb'ry* stands the test of every light, In perfect charms, and perfect virtue bright : When odore which declin'd repelling day, Thro 1 temperate air uninterrupted stray ; When darken'd groves their softest shadows wear, And falling waters we distinctly hear ; When thro' the gloom more venerable shows Some ancient fabric, awful in repose ; While sun-burnt hills their swarthy looks conceal, And swelling hay-cocks thicken up the vale : When the loos' d horse now, as his pasture leads, Comes slowly grazing thro' the adjoining meads, Whose stealing pace, and lengthen' d shade we fear, Till torn^up forage in his teeth we hear ; When nibbling sheep at large pursue their food, And unmolested kine rechew the cud ; When curlews cry beneath the village walls, And to her straggling brood the partridge calls ; Then- short-liv'd jubilee the creatures keep, Which but endures whilst tyrant man does sleep ; When a sedate content the spirit feels, And no fierce light disturbs, whilst it reveals ; But silent musings urge the mind to seek Something too high for syllables to speak ; Till the free soul to a composedness charm'd, Finding the elements of rage disarm'd, O'er all below a solemn quiet grown, Joys in th' inferior world, and thinks it like her own ; * Prances Bennett, daughter of a gentleman in Buckinghamshire, and wife to James, fourth Earl of Salisbury. BRITISH POETESSES. 109 In such a night let me abroad remain, Till morning breaks, and all's confus'd again ; Our cares, our toils, our clamors are renew'd, Or pleasures seldom reach'd, again pursu'd." Mr. Dyce has not omitted the celebrated poem of the " Spleen," which attracted considerable attention in its day. It still deserves a place on every toilet, male and female. '.' What art thou, Spleen, which everything dost ape 7 Thou Proteus to abus'd mankind, Who never yet thy real cause could find, Or fix them to remain in one continu'd shape. '*** In the imperious wife thou vapors* art, Which from o'er-heated passions rise In clouds to the attractive brain ; Until descending thence again Through the o'er-cast and showering eyes Upon her husband's softened heart, He the disputed point must yield, Something resign of the contested field, Till lordly man, born to imperial sway, Compounds for peace to make that right aw.ay, And woman, arm'd with spleen, does servilely obey. " Patron thou art to every gross abuse, The sullen husband's feigned excuse, When the ill-humor with his wife he spends, And bears recruited wit and spirits to his friends. The son of Bacchus pleads thy pow'r, As to the glass he still repairs ; Pretends but to remove thy cares, Snatch from thy shade one gay and smiling hour, And drown thy kingdom in a purple shower." That is a fine couplet. Dryden, whom it is very like, would not have wished it better. 11 When the coquette, whom every fool admires, Would in variety be fair, * At present called " nerves," or " headache." 110 SPECIMENS, ETC. And changing hastily the scene Prom light, impertinent and vain, Assumes a soft and melancholy air, And of her eyes rebates the wandering fires : The careless posture and the head reclin'd, The thoughtful and composed face, Proclaiming the withdrawn, the absent mind, Allows the fop more liberty to .gaze, Who gently for the tender cause inquires : The cause indeed is a defect of sense, Yet is the spleen alleged, and still the dull pretence." Lady Winchelsea is mentioned by Gay as one of the congratulators of Pope, when his Homer was fin- ished : '-: ' ':' -* :: No. II. Miss Vauhomrigh, Lady Russett, Mrs. Manly, Mrs. Brereton, Mrs. Gre- ville, Lady Henrietta O'NeU, Duchess of Devonshire, Miss Carter, Charlotte Smith, Miss Seward, and Mrs. Tighe. THE verses of poor Miss VANHOMRIGH, who was in love with Swift, are not very good ; but they serve to show the truth of her passion, which was that of an in- experienced girl of eighteen for a wit of forty-four. Swift had conversation enough to make a dozen sprightly young gentlemen ; and, besides his wit and his admiration of her, she loved him for what she thought his love of truth. In her favor, also, he ap- pears to have laid aside his brusquerie and fits of ill temper, till he found the matter too serious for his con- venience. " Still listening to his tuneful tongue, The truths which angels might have sung Divine imprest their gentle sway, And sweetly stole my soul away. My guide, instructor, lover, friend, Dear names, in one idea blend ; Oh ! still conjoin'd your incense rise, And waft sweet odors to the skies." Swift, who was already engaged, and with a woman too whom he loved, should have told her so. She dis- covered it, and died in a fit of indignation and despair. 112 SPECIMENS OF The volume, a little farther, contains some verses of the other lady (Miss JOHNSON) On Jealousy, probably occasioned by the rival who was jealous of her. Poor Stella ! She died also, after a longer, a closer, and more awful experience of Swift's extraordinary con- duct ; which, to this day, remains a mystery. The LADY RUSSELL, who wrote the verses at p. 149, to the memory of her husband, was most probably Elizabeth, one of the learned daughters of Sir Anthony Cook, and widow of John, Lord Russell, who was called up to the House of Lords in the lifetime of his father, Francis, Earl of Bedford, who died in 1585. The singular applicability of the last line to the mourn- ing widowhood of a subsequent and more famous Lady Russell, has led commentators to mistake one husband for another. The concluding couplet is remarkable for showing the effect to which real feeling turns the baldest commonplaces. Not that the words just al- luded to are a commonplace. They are the quin- tessence of pathos : " Right noble twice, by virtue and by birth, Of Heaven lov'd, and honor'd on the earth, His country's hope, his kindred's chief delight, My husband dear, more than this world his light, Death hath me reft. But I from death will take His memory, to whom this tomb I make. John was his name (ah was ! wretch, must I say), Lord Russell once, now my tear-thirsty day." Gay MRS. CENTLIVRE follows Lady Russell, like a sprightly chambermaid after a gentlewoman. She is all for " the soldiers ;" and talks of the pleasure of surrendering, like a hungry citadel. The specimen consists of her prologue to the Bold Stroke for a Wife. It is very good of its kind ; gallant, and to the purpose ; BRITISH POETESSES. 113 with that sort of air about it, as if it had been spoken by Madame Vestris, or by the fair authoress herself, in regimentals. But partial extracts would be awk- ward ; and we have not place for more. MRS. DE LA RIVIERE MANLY, who wrote the " Ata- lantis," and alternately " loved" and lampooned Sir Richard Steele (which was not so generous of her as her surrendering herself to the law to save her printer), has two copies of verses, in which we may observe the usual tendency of female writers to break through conventional commonplaces with some touches of na- ture. The least of them have an instinct of this sort, which does them honor, and sets them above the same class of writers in the other sex. The mixture, how- ever, sometimes has a ludicrous effect. Mrs. Manly, panegyrizing a certain " J. M e, Esq., of Worcester College," begins with this fervid and conversational apostrophe : " Oxford, for all thy fops and smarts, Let this prodigious youth atone ; While others frisk and dress at hearts, He makes thy better part his own." The concluding stanza is better, and indeed contains a noble image. Others, she says, advance in their knowledge by slow degrees, " But his vast mind completely form'd, Was thoroughly finish'd when begun ; So all at once the world was warm'd On the great birth-day of the sun" Mrs. Manly is supposed to have been the Sappho of the Tatler. She wrote political papers in the Ex- aminer of that day, and courageously shared in its re- sponsibilities to the law. 114 SPECIMENS OF A MRS. BRERETON, daughter of a Welsh gentleman, was author, it seems, of a well-known epigram on Beau Nash's picture " at full length," between the busts of Newton and Pope. It forms the conclusion of a poem of six stanzas, the whole of which are very prop- erly given by Mr. Dyce, but from which it has usually been separated, and with some difference in the read- ing. The stanza is as follows : " The picture, plac'd the busts between, Adds to the thought much strength ; Wisdom and Wit are little seen. But Folly 's at full length." MRS. PILKINGTON, well known for departures not in the best taste, from the ordinary modes of her sex, tells us that , " Lying is an occupation Used by all who mean to rise." Poor soul ! We fear she practised a good deal of it to little purpose. She had a foolish husband, and was beset by very untoward circumstances, to which she fell a worse prey than she would have us think. But the weakest of women are so unequally treated by the existing modes of society, that we hate to think anything unhandsome of them. Not so of my LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU, who was at once so clever, so bold, so well off, and so full of sense of every sort but the sense of delicacy, that she provokes us to speak as plainly as herself. But we have said enough of her ladyship in another place. The verses of MRS. SHERIDAN, mother of the famous Sheridan, and author of " Sidney Bidulph," are not so BRITISH POETESSES. 115 good as her novels. Miss JONES has a compliment to Pope, which Pope himself may have admired for its own sake : "Alas ! I 'd live unknown, uncnvied too ; 'T is more than Pope, with all his wit, can do." " Miss Jones," says a note in Boswell, quoted by Mr. Dyce, " lived at Oxford, and was often of our parties. She was a very ingenious poetess, and pub- lished a volume of poems ; and on the whole, was a most sensible, agreeable, and amiable woman. She was sister to the Rev. River Jones, Chanter of Christ- church Cathedral, at Oxford, and Johnson used to call her the Chantress. I have heard him often address her in this passage from II Penseroso, ' Thee, chant- ress, oft the woods among, I woof &c." This puts in a pleasant light both Johnson and the poetess ; but in the earlier collection of ladies' verses, alluded to at the commencement of this paper, there are poems attributed to her of astounding coarseness. FRANCES BROOKE, author of Rosina, of Lady Julia Mandeville, &c., was a better poetess in her prose than her verse. Her Ode to Health, given by Mr. Dyce, is not much. We should have preferred a song out of Rosina. But we will venture to affirm, that she must have written a capital love-letter. These clergymen's daughters (her father was a Rev. Mr. Moore) contrive somehow to have a double zest in those matters. Mrs. Brooke had once a public dis- pute with Garrick, in which she had the rare and de- lightful candor to confess herself in the wrong. In the well-known Prayer for Indifference, by MRS. 116 SPECIMENS OF GREVILLE, is a stanza, which has the point of an epi- gram with all the softness of a gentle truth : " Nor peace, nor ease, the heart can know, That, like the needle true, Turns at the touch of joy or woe, But turning, trembles too." There is a good deal about MRS. GREVILLE in the Memoirs of Madame D'Arblay. She was married to a man of fortune, and of much intellectual pretension, but not happily. Two poems by LADY HENRIETTA O'NEIL, daughter of Viscount Dungarvon, and wife of O'Neil, of Slane's Castle, are taken out of her friend MRS. CHARLOTTE SMITH'S novel of Desmond, a work, by the way, from which Sir Walter Scott borrowed the founda- tion of his character of Waverley, and the name be- sides. In a novel by the same lady, we forget which, is the first sketch of the sea-side incident in the Antiquary, where the hero saves the life of Miss Wardour. Lady Henrietta's verses do her credit, but imply a good deal of suffering. One " To the Poppy," begins with the following melodious piece of melan- choly : " Not for the promise of the labored field, Not for the good the yellow harvests yield, I bend at Ceres' shrine ; For dull to humid eyes appear The golden glories of the year: Alas ! a melancholy worship's mine ; " I hail the Goddess for her scarlet flower," &c. In other words, the flourishing lady of quality took opium; which, we suspect, was the case with her poorer friend. We believe the world would be aston- BRITISH POETESSES. 117 ished, if they knew the names of all the people of genius, and of all the rich people, as well as poor, who have had recourse to the same consolatory drug. Thousands take it, of whose practice the world have no suspicion ; and yet many of those 1 persons, able to endure perhaps, on that very account, what requires all the patience of those who abstain from it, have quarrelled with such writers as the fair novelist, for trying to amend the evils which tempted them to its use. GEORGIANA, Duchess of Devonshire, who was " made," according to Gibbon, " for something better than a Duchess,'' is justly celebrated for her poem on the Passage of Mount St. Gothard, which awakened the enthusiasm of Coleridge. There are fine lines in it, and a vital liberality of sentiment. The writer seems to breathe out her fervent words like a young Muse, her lips glowing with health and the morning dew. " Yet let not these rude paths be coldly traced, Let not these wilds with listless steps be trod ; Here fragrance scorns not to perfume the waste, Here charity uplifts the mind to God." -At stanza twenty, it is said with beautiful truth and freshness, "The torrent pours, and breathes its glittering spray." Stanza twenty-four was the one that excited the rap- tures of Coleridge. " And hail the chapel ! hail the platform wild ! Where Tell directed the avenging dart, With well-strung arm that first preserv'd his child, Then wing'd the arrow to the tyrant's heart." 118 SPECIMENS OP " Oh, lady !" cried the poet, on hearing this animated apostrophe : " Oh lady ! nursed in pomp and pleasure, Where learnt you that heroic measure?" This .is the burden of an ode addressed to her by Coleridge. The Duchess of Devonshire, mother of the present Duke, who has proved himself a worthy son by his love of the beauties of nature and his sym- pathies with his fellow-creatures, may well have been a glorious being to look at, writing such verses as those, and being handsome besides. It was she of whom it is said, that a man at an election once ex- claimed, astonished at her loveliness, " Well, if I were God Almighty, I'd make her Queen of Heaven." Exit the Duchess ; and enter, in this curious alter- nation of grave and gay, the staid solemnity of Miss CAETER, a stoic philosopher, who died at the age of eighty-nine. The volume contains her Ode to Wis- dom, somewhat bitter against " The coxcomb sneer, the stupid lie Of ignorance and spite :" and some Lines to a Gentleman on his intending to cut down a Grove, which are pleasanter. A Hama- dryad who is made to remonstrate on the occasion, says " ' '*- ' . " Reflect, before the fatal axe My threatened doom has wrought; Nor sacrifice to sensual taste The nobler growth qf thought." This line, by which thoughts are made to grow in the mind like a solemn grove of trees, is very striking. And the next stanza is good : BRITISH POETESSES. 119 " Not all the glowing fruits that blush On India's sunny coast, Can recompense thee for the worth Of one idea lost." Miss Carter translated Epictetus ; and was much, and we believe deservedly, admired for the soundness of her acquirements. We were startled at reading somewhere the other day that, in her youth, she had not only the wisdom of a Pallas, but the look of a Hebe. Heallhy no doubt she was, and possessed of a fine constitution. She was probably also handsome ; but Hebe and a hook nose are in our minds impossible associations. CHARLOTTE SMITH has been mentioned before. Some of her novels will last, and her sonnets with them, each perhaps aided by the other. There is nothing great in her ; but she is natural and touching, and has hit, in the music of her sorrows, upon some of those chords which have been awakened equally, though not so well, in all human bosoms. , "SONNET. Written at the Close of Spring. " The garlands fade that Spring so lately wove, Each simple flower, which she had nurs'd in dew, Anemones that spangled every grove, The primrose wan, and harebell mildly blue. No more shall violets linger in the dell, Or purple orchis variegate the plain, Till Spring again shall call forth every bell, And dress with humid hands her wreaths again. Ah, poor humanity ! so frail, so fair, Are the fond visions of thy early day, Till tyrant passion, and corrosive care, Bid all thy fairy colors fade away ! Another May new buds and flowers shall bring ; Ah! why has happiness no second Spring?" 120 SPECIMENS OF "SONNET; . To the Moan. " Queen of the silver bow ! by thy pale beam, Alone and pensive, I delight to stray, And watch thy shadow trembling in the stream, Or mark the floating clouds that cross thy way. And while I gaze, thy mild and placid light Sheds a soft calm upon my troubled breast ; And oil I think, fair planet of the night, That in thy orb the wretched may have rest; The sufferers of the earth perhaps may go, Released by death, to thy benignant sphere, And the sad children of despair and woe Forget in thee their cup of sorrow here. Oh ! that I soon may reach thy world serene, Poor wearied pilgrim in this toiling scene!" " SONNET. " Sighing I see yon little troop at play, By sorrow yet untouch'd, unhurt by care, While free and sportive they enjoy to-day, ' Content and careless of to-morrow's fare.' O happy age ! when Hope's unclouded ray Lights their green path, and prompts their simple mirth, Ere yet they feel the thorns that lurking lay To wound the wretched pilgrims of the earth, Making them rue the hour that gave them birth, And threw them on a world so full of pain, Where prosperous folly treads on patient worth, And to deaf pride misfortune pleads in vain ! Ah ! for their future fate how many fears " t Oppress my heart, and Jill mine eyes with tears!" Mrs. Smith's love of botany, as Mr. Dyce observes, " has led her, in several of her pieces, to paint a vari- ety of flowers with a minuteness and delicacy rarely equalled." This is very true. No young lady, fond of books and flowers, would be without Charlotte Smith's poems, if once acquainted with them. The following couplet, from the piece entitled " Saint Monica," shows her tendency to this agreeable miniature painting : BRITISH POETESSES. 121 " From the mapp'd lichen, to the plumbed weed ; From thready mosses to the veined flower." Mrs. Smith suffered bitterly from the failure of her husband's mercantile speculations, and the consequent troubles they both incurred from the law ; which, ac- cording to her representations, were aggravated in a scandalous manner by guardians and executors. Law- yers cut a remarkable figure in her novels ; and her complaints upon these her domestic grievances, over- flow, in a singular, though not unpardonable or un- moving manner, in her prefaces. To one of the later editions of her poems, published when she was alive, is prefixed a portrait of her, under which, with a pretty feminine pathos, which a generous reader would be loth to call vanity, she has quoted the following lines from Shakspeare: " Oh, Grief has chang'd me since you saw me last ; And heavy hours, with Time's deforming hand, Have written strange defeatures on my face." Miss SEWARD is affected and superfluous ; but now and then she writes a good line ; for example : " And sultry silence brooded o'er the hills." And she can paint a natural picture. We can testify to the strange, unheard-of luxury, which she describes, of rising to her books before day on a winter's morn- ing. " SONNET. December momiug, 1782. " I love to rise ere gleams the tardy light, Winter's pale dawn, and as warm fires illume And cheerful tapers shine around the room, Thro' misty windows bend my musing sight, Where round the dusky lawn, the mansions white, With shutters clos'd peer faintly thro' the gloom, VOL. II. 6 122 SPECIMENS OF That slow recedes ; while yon gray spires assume, Rising from their dark pile, an added height By indistinctness given. Then to decree , The grateful thoughts to God, ere they unfold To Friendship, or the Muse, or seek with glee Wisdom's rich page O hours ! more worth than gold, By whose blest use, we lengthen life, and, free From drear decays of age, outlive the old!" Miss Seward ought to have married, and had a per- son superior to herself for her husband. She would have lost her affectation; doubled her good things; and, we doubt not, have made an entertaining com- panion for all hours, grave or gay. The daughter of the Editor of "Beaumont and Fletcher" was not a mean person, though lost among the egotisms of her native town, and the praises of injudicious friends. Meanwhile, it is something too much to hear her talk of translating an Ode of Horace " while her hair is dressing !" The Psyche of MRS. TIGHE has a languid beauty, probably resembling that of her person. This lady, who was the daughter of the Rev. William Blachford, died in her 37th year, of consumption. The face pre- fixed to the volume containing her poem is very hand- some. The greater part of the poem itself is little worth, except as a strain of elegance ; but now and then we meet with a fancy not unworthy a pupil of Spenser. Cupid, as he lies sleeping, has a little suffus- ing light, stealing from between his eyelids. " The friendly curtain of indulgent sleep Disclos'd not yet his eyes' resistless sway, But from their silky veil there seemed to peep Some brilliant glances with a soften'd ray, Which o'er his features exquisitely play, And all his polished limbs suffuse with light. BRITISH POETESSES. 123 Thus through some narrow space the azure day, Sudden its cheerful rays diffusing bright, Wide darts its lucid beams to gild the brow of night." This is the prettiest " peep o' day boy," which has ap- peared in Ireland. SPECIMENS OF BRITISH POETESSES. No. III. Mrs. Hunter ; Mrs. Darbauld, Lady Ann Barnard, and Hannah More. MRS. HUNTER, wife of the celebrated John Hunter the surgeon, and sister of the late Sir Everard Home, published a volume of poems, in which were a number of songs that were set to music, some of them by Haydn, who was intimate with her. Among the latter is one extracted by Mr. Dyce, beginning " The season comes when first we met." It is one of the composer's most affecting melodies, and not too much loaded with science. It is to be found in an elegant selection of airs, trios, &c., in two volumes, worthy the attention, and not beyond the skill of the amateur, published by Mr. Sainsbury, and entitled the Vocal Anthology. Mrs. Hunter was author of the well-known Death Song of a Cherokee Indian. " The sun sets in night, and the stars shun the day." A simple and cordial energy, made up of feeling and good sense, is the characteristic of the better part of her writings. HESTER LYNCH PIOZZI, the friend and hostess of Johnson, was the daughter of John Salusbury, Esq. of BRITISH POETESSES. 125 Bodvel in Caernarvonshire. Her first husband was Johnson's friend, Thrale, an eminent brewer; her second, Signer Piozzi, a teacher of music. JFhe supe- riority of The Three Warnings to her other poetical pieces, excited a suspicion, as Mr. Dyce observes, that Johnson assisted her in its composition ; but there was no foundation for the suspicion. The style is a great deal too natural and lively for Johnson. If anything were to be suspected of the poem, it would be that Mrs. Thrale had found the original in some French author, the lax metre and versification resembling those of the second order of French tales in verse. MRS. RADCLIFFE'S verses are unworthy of her romances. In the latter she was what Mr. Mathias called her, " a mighty magician ;" or not to lose the fine sound of his whole phrase, " the mighty magician of Udolpho." In her verses, she is a tinselled nymph in a pantomime, calling up commonplaces with a wand. ANNA LJSTITIA BARBAULD is one of the best poet- esses in the book. It is curious, by the way, to ob- serve how the name of Anne predominates in this list of females. There are seventy-eight writers in all, be- sides anonymous ones, and two or three whose Chris- tian names are not known ; and out of these seventy- eight, eighteen have the name of Anne. The name that prevails next, is Mary ; and then Elizabeth. The popularity of Anne is perhaps of Protestant origin, and began with Anne Boleyn. It served at once to proclaim the new opinions, to eschew the reigning Catholic appellation of Mary, and, at the same time, to appear modestly Scriptural. But the sweet gentleness 126 SPECIMENS OP of the name of Mary was not to be put down, even by the help of the poor bigot of Smithfield. Mr. Dyce informs us that Mr. Fox used to speak with admiration of Mrs. Barbauld's talents, and had got her songs by heart. This was an applause worth having. We must extract the whole of her Summer Evening's Meditation, if it is only for the sake of some noble lines in it, and to present to the reader's imagi- nation the picture of a fine-minded female wrapt up in thought and devotion. She is like the goddess in Milton's Penseroso. The two lines marked in capitals are sublime. A SUMMER EVENING'S MEDITATION. " T is past! the sultry tyrant of the south Has spent his short-liv'd rage : more grateful hours Move silent on : the skies no more repel The dazzled sight, but, with mild maiden beams Of tempered light, invite the cherish'd eye To wander o'er their sphere ; where hung aloft Dian's bright crescent, ' like a silver bow New strung in heaven,' lifts high its beamy horns, Impatient for the night, and seems to push Her brother down the sky. Fair Venus shines, Even in the eye of day ; with sweetest beam Propitious shines, and shakes a trembling flood Of soften 'd radiance from her dewy locks. The shadows spread apace ; while meeken'd Eve, Her cheek yet warm with blushes, slow retires Thro' the Hesperian gardens of the west, And shuts the gates of day. 'T is now the hour When Contemplation from her sunless haunts, The cool damp grotto, or the lonely depth Of unpierc'd woods, where wrapt in solid shade She mus'd away the gaudy hours of noon, And, fed on thoughts unripen'd by the sun, Moves forward ; and with radiant ringer points To yon blue concave swell'd by breath divine, Where, one by one, the living eyes of heaven Awake, quick kindling o'er the face of ether BRITISH POETESSES. 127 One boundless blaze ; ten thousand trembling fires, And dancing lustres, where th' unsteady eye, Restless and dazzled, wanders unconfin'd O'er all this field of glories: spacious field, And worthy of the master : he whose hand, . i A 'CAUTION. " People are never so near playing the fool as when they think them- selves wise." Ib. p. 111. THE RIGHT SECOND CHILDHOOD. " Age, when it does not harden the heart and sour the temper, naturally returns to the milky disposition of infancy. Time has the same eflect on the mind as on the face. The predominant passion, the strongest feature, become more conspicuous from the others retiring ; the various views of life are abandoned, from want of ability to preserve them, as the fine complexion is lost in wrinkles: but as surely as a large nose grows large, and a wide mouth wider, the tender child in your nursery will be a tender old woman, though, perhaps, reason may have restrained the ap- pearance of it, till the mind, relaxed, is no longer capable of concealing its weakness." Ib. p. 143. PARENT AND CHILD. " I am so far persuaded of the goodness of yoar heart" (she is writing to her daughter), " I have often had a mind to write you a consolatory epistle on my own death, which I believe will be some affliction, though my life is wholly useless to you. That part of it which we passed to- gether you have reason to remember with gratitude, though I think you HER LIFE AND WRITINGS. 217 misplace it ; you are no more obliged to me for bringing you into the world, than I am to you for coming into it, and I never made use of that commonplace (and, like most commonplace, false) argument, as exacting any return of affection. There was a mutual necessity on us both to part at that time, and no obligation on either side. In the case of your infancy, there was so great a mixture of instinct, I can scarce even put that in the number of the proofs I have given you of my love ; but I confess I think it a great one, if you compare my after conduct towards you with that of other mothers, who generally look on children as devoted to their pleas- ures, and bound by duty to have no sentiments but what they please to give them ; playthings at first, and afterwards the objects on which they may exercise their spleen, tyranny, or ill-humour. I have always thought of you in a different manner. Your happiness was my first wish, and the pursuit of all my actions, divested of all selfish interests so far. I think you ought, and believe you do, remember me as your real friend." iii. p. 389. NOVEL READING. " Daughter ! daughter ! don't call names ; you are always abusing my pleasures, which is what no mortal will bear. Trash, lumber, sad stuff, are the titles you give to my favorite amusement. If I call a white staff a stick of wood, a gold key gilded brass, and the ensigns of illustrious orders colored strings, this may be philosophically true, but would be very ill received. We have all our playthings ; happy are those that can be contented with those they can obtain : those hours are spent in the wisest manner that can easiest shade the ills of life, and are the least productive of ill consequences. I think my time better employed in reading the adventures of imaginary people, than the Duchess of Marlborough, who passed the latter years of her life in paddling with her will, and contriv- ing schemes of plaguing some, and extracting praises from others, to no purpose, eternally disappointed, and eternally fretting. The active scenes are over at my age. I indulge, with all the art I can. my taste for read- ing. If I would confine it to valuable books, they are almost as rare as valuable men. I must be content with what I can find. As I approach a second childhood, I endeavor to enter into the pleasures of it. Your youngest son is perhaps at this very moment riding on a poker with great delight, not at all regretting that it is not a gold one, and much less wishing it an Arabian horse, which he could not know how to manage. I am reading an idle tale, not expecting wit or truth in it, and am very glad that it is not metaphysics to puzzle my judgment, or history to mis- lead my opinion. He fortifies his health with exercise ; I calm my carea by oblivion. The methods may appear low to busy people ; but, if he improves his strength, and I forget my infirmities, we both attain very desirable ends." Ib. p. 146. VOL. II. 10 218 LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU. And so farewell, poor, flourishing, disappointed, reconciled, wise, foolish, enchanting Lady Mary ! Fair English vision in Turk-land; Turkish vision in ours; the female wit of the days of Pope ; benefactress of the spe- cies ; irritating satirist of the circles. Thou didst err for want of a little more heart, perhaps for want of finding enough in others, or for loss of thy mother in infancy, but thy loss was our gain, for it gained us thy books, and thy inoculation. Thy poems are little, being but a little wit in rhyme, vers de socitte; but thy prose is much, admirable, better than acute, idiomat- ical, off-hand, conversational without inelegance, fresh as the laugh on the young cheek, and full of brain. The conventional shows of things could not deceive thee : pity was it that thou didst not see a little farther into the sweets of things unconventional, of faith in the heart, as well as in the blood and good sense ! Lova- ble, indeed, thou wert not, whatever thou mightst have been rendered ; but admirable thou wert, and ever wilt thou be thought so, as long as pen writeth straight- forward, and sense or Sultana hath a charm. LIFE AND AFRICAN VISIT OF PEPYS.* Cliaracteristics of Autobiograpy. Account ofPepys's " Diary," and sum- mary of his life. His voyage to Tangier, and business in that place. Character and behavior of its Governor, the "infamous Colonel Kirke." Pepys's return to England, Gibbon's ancestor, the herald. Pepys and Lord Sandwich, '* \ '**//* "Goon SIR, "August 27, 1675. "I pray pardon me; I am sorry I appeared so abruptly before you. I'll assure you, a paper of the same nature with the enclosed was left for you at the public office some ten days since, as likewise for every one of the Commissioners. But, sir, I am heartily glad of the miscarriage ; for now I have an opportunity to request a favor by writing, that I could hardly have had confidence by word of mouth to have done ; and in that I have much want of my friend Mr. . " Sir, a gentlewoman of my acquaintance told me, she had it for a great certainty from the family of the Montagus, that as you were one night playing late upon some musical instrument, together with your friends, there suddenly appeared a human feminine shape and vanished, and after that continued. " Walking in the garden you espied the appearing person, demanded of her if at such a time, she was not in such a place. She answered No; but she dreamed she was, and heard excellent music. " Sir, satisfaction is to you my humble request. And if it be so, it con- firms the opinions of the ancient Romans concerning their genii, and confutes those of the Sadducees and Epicures. Sir, your most humble servant, "JOHN GIBBON." There is no answer from Pepys. But that Mr. Gib- bon would have derived no great "satisfaction" from 244 LIFE AND AFRICAN one, appears by an item in the Tangier Diary : " At supper with my lord. Discourse about spirits Dr. Ken asserting there were such, and I, with the rest, denying it." The jolly materiality of which our sup- per-eater's nature was compounded, was not likely to find much ground for the sole of its feet in the world of spirits. The next letter in the collection, from " Mr. Daniel Skinner," determines a question among the curious, as to who the " Mr. Skinner was, to whom a manuscript parcel belonging to Milton had been directed, and how the parcel came into the hands of the State Paper Office. Anthony Wood assumed that it was Cyriack Skinner, to whom the poet has addressed two of his sonnets ; but it is now clear that it was the Mr. Daniel Skinner before us, and a very unworthy person he appears to have been for the honor of such a trust. The parcel consisted of Milton's unpublished Latin Treatise on Christian Doctrine ; and a complete and corrected copy of all the letters to foreign princes and states, written by him when he officiated as Latin Secretary. Skinner, who seems to have been one of the young men that Milton drew about him for purposes of train- ing, had evidently had both these works put into his hands for publication ; and after the poet's death he tried to make a penny of the Latin Letters with one of the Elzevirs, the well-known Dutch printers ; while, at the same time, he was obtaining favors from the new government. Sir Joseph Williamson, tfye busy Secretary of State, discerned the nature of the man through his fawning and protesting manners ; and after contriving to get possession of the Manuscript Trea- tise, and to quash the republication of the Letters, with- drew the favors of g jvernment, and left the double- VISIT OF PEPYS. 245 dealing Mr. Skinner to his fate. Skinner's letter to Pepys, now first published, is a canting but obvious enough account of the whole business ; including an apology for the " grand presumption" of having begged " his worship" for a loan of " ten pounds" (a petition which Pepys had granted), and a modest request, that the Navy Secretary would be pleased " instantly to repair" to the Secretary of State, and absolve Mr. Dan- iel Skinner from the guilt of having anything more to do with Elzevir, or with any manuscript paper what- soever. He says : " Though I happened to be ac- quainted with Milton in his lifetime (which out of mere love to learning, I procured, and no other concerns ever passed betwixt us but a great desire and ambition of some of his learning), I am, and ever was, so far from being in the least tainted with any of his princi- ples, that I may boldly say, none has greater honor and loyalty for his majesty, more veneration for the church of England, and love for his country, than I have. Once more, I beg your worship, and with tears, instead 6f ink that might supply my pen, I implore that you would prevail with Sir Joseph," &c. As if those who went to learn anything of the great poet and re- publican, had gone to him with letters of recommenda- tion from church and state, and would have made even a surreptitious profit of his works out of a love for Charles the Second ! This base fellow, " untainted" by Milton, was, probably, not unconnected with the more respectable Skinner whom the poet knew, and with the old puritan connections of Pepys himself. There are some respectful letters from Pepys, dated a few years afterwards, to a " Mrs. Skinner," and a sub- sequent letter to him from a " Mrs. Frances Skinner," respecting an ungracious son of hers who behaved ill 246 LIFE AND AFRICAN in his service ; and for whom, with a somewhat ener- getic maternity, she expresses a wish that his employer had " broken all his bones, limb from limb." There is nothing more worth extracting at any length ; and we shall not repeat letters which have appeared before such as the one from Dryden. The supplemental editor, however, who appears to have succeeded Mr. Rutt, might have known that Dryden and Pepys were acquainted long before the time he conjectures. Several well-known particulars might also have been omitted in the notes, and some new ones easily put in their place by an inquirer into bi- ography ; but it is due to the publication to state, that the materials are well arranged throughout, and the chronology studiously attended to. Nor will the lovers of official history, and of the growth of our public foun- dations, read without interest some of the correspond- ence of James's admiral, Lord Dartmouth, and the in- stances of Pepys' s anxiety to do everything he could for the advancement of the naval and grammar schools of that excellent institution, Christ Hospital ; of the former of which he may be said to have been the founder, though Charles got the honor of it. We shall extract a few more short passages, how- ever, before we take leave of Pepys. In his answer to the following letter, we grieve to say that we have caught him tripping ; but the Montagus, however proud he had once been of the relationship, and in spite of what the earl had done for him on his entrance into life, were lavish of their own means, and had become rather awkward neighbors. Lord Sandwich gambled, and was otherwise careless and expensive. VISIT OF PEPYS. 247 " LORD HINCHINGBROKE TO ME. PEPYS. "SiR, December 9, 1667. " There being a letter of exchange come, of about i 25Ql. 8s. payable to the Spanish ambassador within four or five days, my father having writ very earnestly (from Spain, where he was English ambassador) that it may be punctually paid, and Mr. Moore having not any way to procure it, makes me take the liberty of troubling you, to desire your assistance in it. If you can with any convenience do it, you will do a great kindness to my father and me, who am dear cousin, your most affectionate cousin, and humble servant, " HlNCHINGBROKE." "MR. PEPYS TO LORD HINCHINGBROKE. 'Mr LORD, " My condition is such, and hath been ever since the credit of the king's assignments was broke by the failure of the bankers, that I have not been able these six months to raise a farthing for answering my most urgent occasions. " I am heartily afflicted for this difficulty that is upon your lordship : and if upon my endeavors with the bankers I can procure any money, I will not fail to give your lordship it; being very desirous of the preserva- tion of my lordship's credit, as well as for all bis other concernments. Your lordship's obedient servant, " S. PEPYS." Now, though Pepys might not have been able to " raise a farthing" within these " six months" after any of the customary modes, he, not two months before, had raised nearly fourteen hundred pounds in gold out of the ground ; to- wit, dug up so much which he had buried during his " fright" about public affairs and the Dutch. Lord Hinchingbroke's letter, however, is endorsed by Pepys, "Dec. 19, 1667. 60/. this day lent my lord of Sandwich" (he pretended to be all that while getting it of the bankers), the next year he lends the noble earl six hundred pounds. These little pru- dent stratagems did not hinder him from being really generous. He might have died rich, but was not so ; and he was liberal of his aid to many during his life. 248 LIFE AND AFRICAN MR. JAMES HOUBLON TO PEPYS. * * * " Lawyers have labored to perplex titles (to estates) as much as some interested divines have our religion ; so that our title to heaven is mode out to be as difficult a matter as that we have to our lands." PEPYS (IN THE COUNTRY) TO MR. HEWER IN TOWN. * * * " There is also in the same drawer a collection of my lord of Rochester's poems, written before his penitence, in a style I thought unfit to mix with my other books. However, pray let it remain there ; for, as he is past writing any more so bad in one sense, so I despair of any man surviving him to write so good in another !" SIR ROBERT SOUTHWELL TO PEPYS. * * * "I am here among my children at least an innocent scene of life and I endeavor to explain to them the difference between right and wrong. My next care is to contrive for the health which I lost by sitting many years at the sack-bottle ; so that to keep myself in idleness and in motion is a great part of my discipline." DR. ROBERT WOOD TO PEPYS RESPECTING THE BUILDING OF SHIPS. * * * "I reckon that naval excels land architecture, in the same proportion as a living moving animal a dull plant ! Palaces themselves are only like better sorts of trees, which, how beautiful or stately soever, remain but as prisoners, chained during life to the spot they stand on ; whereas the very spirits that inform and move ships are of the highest de- gree of animals, viz. rational creatures; I mean seamen." SIR JOHN WYBORNE TO PEPYS, FROM BOMBAY. * * * " Sir, I have sent you a very grave walking-cane, which I beg you to accept, having nothing else I could venture to send." PEPYS TO SIR ANTHONY DEANE. " I am alive, too, I thank God ! and as serious, I fancy, as you can be, and not less alone. Yet, I thank God, too ! I have not within me one of those melancholy misgivings that you seem haunted with. The worse the world uses me, the better, I think, I am bound to use myself. With this most reasonable opinion we close our ac- counts with the amusing sage of the Admiralty. Many official patriots have, doubtless, existed since his time, and thousands, nay, millions of respectable men of all VISIT OF PEPYS. 249 sorts gone to their long account, more or less grave in public, and frail to their consciences ; but when shall we meet with such another as he was ; pleased, like a child, with his new coach, and candid about his hat ? Who will own, as he did, that, having made a present by way of douceur, he is glad, considering no harm is done, of having it back ? Who will acknowl- edge his superstitions, his " frights," his ignorances, his not liking to be seen in public with men out of favor ? or who so honestly divide his thoughts about the pub- lic good, and even his relations of the most tragical events, with mentions of a new coat from the tailor, and fond records of the beauty-spots on his wife's face. 11* LIFE AND LETTERS MADAME DE sviGN. Singular and fortunate reputation of Madame de Sevigne. Unsatisfac- tory biographies of her. Her parentage, education, and early life. Description of her person and manners. United with the Marquis de Sevigne. His frivolities and death. Unsuccessful love made to her by her cousin Bussy Rabutin, -who revenges himself by calumny. Character and conduct of Bussy. His correspondence with his cousin. His ac- count of the effect produced upon her by her dancing with the king. The young widow's mode of life. Her visits at court, and observations of public occurrences. Her life iij, the country. List and cliaracters of her associates. Account of the Marquis her son, and of her correspond- ence with her daughter, Madame de Grignan. Surviving descendants of the family. Specimens of Madame de Sevigne 's letters. Expected Marriage of Lauzan with Mademoiselle. Strange ways of Pomenars, and of Du Plessis. Story of the footman who couldn't make hay. Tragical terminations of gay campaigns. Brinvittiers and La Voisin, the poisoners. Striking catastrophe in a ball-room. A scene at court. Splendor of Madame de Montespan. Description of an iron-foundry ; of a gallop of coaches; of a great wedding; of a crowded assembly. Horace Walpole's account of Madame de Sevigne's house at Livry. Character of her writings by Sir James Mackintosh. Attempt to form their true estimate. MADAME DE S6viGNfi, in her combined and insepara- ble character as writer and woman, enjoys the singular and delightful reputation of having united, beyond all * From the Edinburgh Review. "Madame de Sevigne and her con- temporaries. 2 vols. 8vo. London, 1843. MADAME DE S&VIGNJS. 251 others of her class, the rare with the familiar, and the lively with the correct. The moment her name is mentioned, we think of the mother who loved her daughter ; of the most charming of letter-writers ; of the ornament of an age of license, who incurred none of its ill-repute ; of the female who has become one of the classics of her language, without effort and with- out intention. The sight of a name so attractive, in the title-page of the volumes before us, has made us renew an inter- course, never entirely broken, with her own. We have lived over again with her and her friends from her first letter to her last, including the new matter in the latest Paris edition. We have seen her writing in her cabinet, dancing at court, being the life of the company in her parlor, nursing her old uncle the Abbe ; bantering Mademoiselle du Plessis ; lecturing and then jesting with her son ; devouring the romances of Calprenede, and responding to the wit of Pascal and La Fontaine ; walking in her own green alleys by moonlight, enchanting cardinals, politicians, philoso- phers, beauties, poets, devotees, haymakers ; ready to " die with laughter" fifty times a day ; and idolizing her daughter forever. It is somewhat extraordinary, that of all the ad- mirers of a woman so interesting, not one has yet been found in these islands to give any reasonably good account of her any regular and comprehensive infor- mation respecting her life and writings. The notices in the biographical dictionaries are meagre to the last degree ; and " sketches" of greater pretension have seldom consisted of more than loose and brief memo- randums, picked out of others, their predecessors. The name which report has assigned to the compiler 252 LIFE AND LETTERS OP of the volumes before us, induced us to entertain san- guine hopes that something more satisfactory was about to be done for the queen of letter-writing ; and undoubtedly the portrait which has been given of her, is, on the whole, the best hitherto met with. But still it is a limited, hasty, and unfinished portrait, forming but one in a gallery of others ; many of which have little to do with her, and some, scarcely any connection even with her times. Proceeding therefore to sketch out, from our own ac- quaintance with her, what we conceive to be a better mode of supplying some account of Madame de Se- vigne and her writings, we shall, in the order of time, speak of her ancestors and other kindred, her friends and her daily habits, and give a few specimens of the best of her letters ; and we shall do all this with as hearty a relish of her genius as the warmest of her admirers, without thinking it necessary to blind ourselves to any weaknesses that may have accompanied it. With all her good nature, the " charming woman " had a sharp eye to a defect herself; and we have too great a re- spect for the truth that was in her, not to let her hon- estly suffer in its behalf, whenever that first cause of all that is great and good demands it. Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, Baroness de Chantal and Bourbilly, afterwards Marchioness de Sevigne, was born, in all probability, in Burgundy, in the old ances- tral ch&teau of Bourbilly, between Semur and Epoissis, on the fifth of February 1627. Her father, Celse Be- nigne de Rabutin, Baron as above mentioned, was of the elder branch of his name, and cousin to the famous Count Bussy-Rabutin ; her mother, Marie de Cou- langes, daughter of a secretary-of-state, was also of a family whose name afterwards became celebrated for MADAME DE svH,NK. 253 wit ; and her paternal grandmother, Jeanne Francoise Fremyot, afterwards known by the title of the Blessed Mother of Chantal, was a saint. The nuns of the Order of the Visitation, which was founded by the help of St. Francis de Sales, beatified her, with the subsequent approbation of Benedict XIV. ; and she was canonized by the help of Clement XIV. ; (Gan- ganelli) in 1767. There was a relation between the families of Rabutin and de Sales, names which would be still stranger than it is to see in conjunction, had not the good St. Francis been the liveliest and most tolerant of his class. We notice these matters because it is interesting to discover links between people of celebrity ; and because it would be but a sorry philos- ophy which should deny the probable effects produced in the minds and dispositions of a distinguished race by the intermixtures of blood and associations of ideas. Madame de Sevigne's father, for instance, gave a rough foretaste of her wit and sincerity, by a raillery amounting to the brusque, sometimes to the insolent. He wrote the following congratulatory epistle to a minister of finance, whom the King (Louis XIII.) had transformed into a marshal : " My Lord, " Birth ; black beard ; intimacy. " CHANTAL." Meaning that his new fortune had been owing to his quality, to his position near the royal person, and to his having a black beard like his master. Both the Chantals and the Fremyots, a race remarkable for their integrity, had been among the warmest adhe- rents of Henry IV. ; and, indeed, the whole united stock may be said to have been distinguished equally for worth, spirit, and ability, till it took a twist of in- 254 LIFE AND LETTERS OF trigue and worldliness in the solitary instance of the scapegrace Bussy. We may discern in the wit and integrity of Madame de Sevigne in her natural piety, in her cordial partisanship, and at the same time in that tact for universality which distinguished her in spite of it a portion of what was best in all her kindred, not excepting a spice of the satire of her superficial cousin, but without his malignity. She was truly the flower of the family tree ; and laughed at the top of it with a brilliancy as well as a softness, compared with which Bussy was but a thorn. The little heiress was only a few months old when the Baron de Chantal died, bravely fighting against the English in their descent on the Isle of Rhe. It was one of the figments of Gregorio Leti, that he re- ceived his death-wound from the hand of Cromwell. The Baron's widow survived her husband only five years ; and it seems to have been expected that the devout grandmother, Madame de Chantal the elder, would have been anxious to take the orphan under her care. But whether it was that the mother had chosen to keep the child too exclusively under her own, or that the future saint was too much occupied in the concerns of the other world and the formation of re- ligious houses, (of which she founded no less than eighty-seven ;) the old lady contented herself with re- commending her to the consideration of an Archbishop, and left her in the hands of her maternal relations. They did their part nobly by her. She was brought up with her fellow-wit and correspondent, Philippe- Emanuel de Coulanges ; and her uncle Christophej Abbe de Livry, became her second father in the strict- est and most enduring sense of the word. He took care that she should acquire graces at court, as well as MADAME DE SKVIGXK. 255 encouragements to learning from his friends ; saw her married, and helped to settle her children ; extricated her affairs from disorder, and taught her to surpass himself in knowledge of business ; in fine, spent a good remainder of his life with her, sometimes at his own house and sometimes at hers ; and when he died, repaid the tenderness with which she had rewarded his care, by leaving her all his property. The Abbe, with some little irritable peculiarities, and a love of extra-comfort and his bottle, appears to have been, as she was fond of calling him, bien bon, a right good creature ; and posterity is to be congratulated, that her faculties were allowed to expand under his honest and reasonable indulgence, instead of being cramped, and formalized, and made insincere, by the half-witted training of the convent. Young ladies at that time were taught little more than to read, write, dance, and embroider, with greater or less attention to books of religion. If the training was conventual, religion was predominant, (unless it was rivalled by comfit and flower-making, great pas- times of the good nuns ;) and in the devout case, the danger was, either that the people would be frightened into bigotry, or, what happened oftener, would be tired into a passion for pleasure and the world, and only stocked with a sufficient portion of fear and supersti- tion to return to the bigotry in old age, when the pas- sion was burnt out. When the education was more domestic, profane literature had its turn the poetry of Maynard and Malherbe, and the absurd but exalt- ing romances of Gomberville, Scudery, and Calpre- nede. Sometimes a little Latin was added ; and other tendencies to literature were caught from abbes and confessors. In all cases, somebody was in the habit 256 LIFE AND LETTERS OF of reading aloud while the ladies worked ; and a turn for politics and court gossip was given by the wars of the Fronde, and by the allusions to the heroes and heroines of the reigning gallantries, in the ideal per- sonages of the romances. The particulars of Madame de Sevigne's education have not transpired ; but as she was brought up at home, and we hear something of her male teachers, and nothing of her female, (whom, nevertheless, she could not have been with- out,) the probability is that she tasted something of all the different kinds of nurture, and helped herself with her own cleverness to the rest. She would hear of the example and reputation of her saintly grand- mother, if she was not much with her ; her other re- ligious acquaintances rendered her an admirer of the worth and talents of the devotees of Port-Royal ; her political ones interested her in behalf of the Frondeurs; but, above all, she had the wholesome run of her good uncle's books, and the society of his friends, Chapelain, Menage, and other professors of polite literature ; the effect of which is to fuse particular knowledge into general, and to distil from it the spirit of a wise hu- manity. She seems to have been not unacquainted with Latin and Spanish ; and both Chapelain and Menage were great lovers of Italian, which became part of her favorite reading. To these fortunate accidents of birth and breeding were joined health, animal spirits, a natural flow of wit, and a face and shape which, if not perfectly handsome, were allowed by everybody to produce a most agreeable impression. Her cousin Bussy Rabu- tin has drawn a portrait of her when a young woman ; and though he did it half in malice and resentment, like the vagabond he was, he could not but make the MADAME DE sfiviGN^. 257 same concession. He afterwards withdrew the worst part of his words, and heaped her with panegyric ; and from a comparison of his different accounts we prob- ably obtain a truer idea of her manners and personal appearance, than has been furnished either by the wholesale eulogist or the artist. It is, indeed, corrob- orated by herself in her letters. She was somewhat tall for a woman ; had a good shape, a pleasing voice, a fine complexion, brilliant eyes, and a profusion of light hair ; but her eyes, though brilliant, were small, and, together with the eyelashes, were of different tints ; her lips, though well-colored, were too flat ; and the end of her nose too " square." The jawbone, ac- cording to Bussy, had the same fault. He says that she had more shape than grace, yet danced well ; and she had a taste for singing. He makes the coxcomb- ical objection to her at that time of life, that she was too playful " for a woman of quality ;" as if the live- liest genius and the staidest conventionalities could be reasonably expected to go together ; or, as if she could have written her unique letters, had she resem- bled everybody else. Let us call to mind the play- fulness of those letters, which have charmed all the world ; let us add the most cordial manners, a face full of expression, in which the blood came and went, and a general sensibility, which, if too quick perhaps to shed tears, was no less ready to " die with laughter" at every sally of pleasantry and we shall see before us the not beautiful but still engaging and ever-lively creature, in whose countenance, if it contained nothing else, the power to write those letters must have been visible ; for, though people do not always seem what they are, it is seldom they do not look what they can do. 258 LIFE AND LETTERS OF The good uncle, the Abbe de, Coulanges, doubtless thought he had made a happy match of it, and joined like with like, when, at the age of eighteen, his charm- ing niece married a man of as joyous a character as herself, and one of the first houses in Brittany. The Marquis de Sevigne, or Sevigny, (the old spelling,) was related to the Duguesclins and the Rohans, and also to Cardinal de Retz. But joyousness, unfortu- nately, was the sum-total of his character. He had none of the reflection of his bride. He was a mere laugher and jester, fond of expense and gallantry ; and, though he became the father of two children, seems to have given his wife but little of his attention. He fell in a duel about some female, seven years after his marriage. The poor man was a braggart in his amours. Bussy says, that he boasted to him of the approbation of Ninon de 1'Enclos ; a circumstance which, like a great number of others told in connection with the *' modern Leontium," is by no means to be taken for granted. Ninon was a person of a singular repute, owing to as singular an education ; and while, in con- sequence of that education, a license was given her, which, to say the truth, most people secretly took, the graces and good qualities which she retained in spite of it, ultimately rendered her house a sort of academy of good-breeding, which it was thought not incompatible with sober views in life to countenance. Now, it is probable, from the great reputation which she had for good sense, that she always possessed discern- ment enough to see through such a character as that of Monsieur de Sevigne. The wife, it is true, many years afterwards, accused her, to the young Marquis, of hav- ing "spoilt (or hurt) his father," (gdte,) and it may have been true to a certain extent ; for a false theory MADAME DE SKV1UNK. 259 of love would leave a nature like his nothing to fall back upon in regard to right feeling ; but people of the Marquis's sort generally come ready spoilt into society, and it is only an indulgent motive that would palm off their faults upon the acquaintances they make there. Be this as it may, Bussy-Rabutin, who had always made love to his cousin after his fashion, and who had found it met with as constant rejection, though not perhaps till he had been imprudently suffered to go the whole length of his talk about it, avows that he took occasion, from the Marquis's boast about Ninon, to make her the gross and insulting proposal, that she should take her " revenge." Again she repulsed him. A letter of Bussy's fell into her husband's hands, who forbade her to see him more ; a prohibition of which she doubtless gladly availed herself. The Marquis perished shortly afterwards : and again her cousin made his coxcombical and successless love, which, how- ever, he accuses her of receiving with so much pleasure as to show herself jealous when he transferred it to another ; a weakness, alas ! not impossible to very re- spectable representatives of poor human nature. But all which he says to her disadvantage must be received with caution ; for, besides his having no right to say anything, he had the mean and uncandid effrontery to pretend that he was angry with her solely because she was not generous in money matters. He tells us, that after all he had done for her arid her friends, (what his favors were, God knows,) she refused him the assist- ance of her purse at a moment when his whole pros- pects in life were in danger. The real amount of this charge appears to have been that Bussy, who, besides being a man of pleasure and expense, was a distin- guished cavalry officer, once needed money for a cam- LIFE AND LETTERS OF paign ; and that, applying to his cousin to help him, her uncle the Abbe, who had the charge of her affairs, thought proper to ask him for securities. The cynical and disgusting, though well-written book, in wich the Count libelled his cousin, (for as somebody said of Petronius, he was an author purissimce impuritatis,) brought him afterwards into such trouble at court, that it cost him many years of exile to his estates, and a world of servile trouble and adulation to get back to the presence of Louis the Fourteenth, who could never heartily like him. He had ridiculed, among others, the kind-hearted La Valliere. Madame de Sevigne, in consequence of these troubles, forgave him ; and their correspondence, both personally and by letter, was renewed pleasantly enough on his part, and in a con- stant strain of regard and admiration. He tells her, among other pretty speeches, that she would certainly have been " goddess of something or other," had she lived in ancient times. But Madame de S6vigne writes to him with evident constraint, as to a sort of evil genius who is to be propitiated ; and the least hand- some incident in her life was the apparently warm interest she took in a scandalous process instituted by him against a gentleman whom his daughter had mar- ried, and whose crime consisted in being of inferior birth ; for Count Bussy-Rabutin was as proud as he was profligate.* Bussy tried to sustain his cause by forged letters, and had the felicity of losing it by their assistance. It is to be hoped that his cousin had been the dupe of the forgeries ; but we have no doubt that * See a strange, painful, and vehement letter, written by her on the subject, to the Count de Guitaut. Vol. xiii. of the doudecimo Paris edi- tion of 1823-4, p. 103. MADAME DE SK\ K;\K. 261 she was somewhat afraid of him. She dreaded his writing another book. We know not whether it was during her married life, or afterwards, that Bussy relates a little incident of her behavior at court, to which his malignity gives one of its most ingenious turns. They were both there together at a ball, and the King took her out to dance. On returning to her seat, according to the Count's nar- rative, " ' It must be owned,' said she, ' that the King possesses great qualities: he will certainly obscure the lustre of all his predecessors.' I could not help laughing in her face," observes Bussy, " seeing what had produced this panegyric. I replied, ' There can be no doubt of it, madam, after what he has done for yourself.' I really thought she was going to testify her gratitude by crying Vive le Roi"* This is amusing enough ; but the spirit which induces a man to make charges of this nature, is apt to be the one most liable to them itself. Men at the court of Louis used to weep, if he turned his face from them. The bravest behaved like little boys before him, vying for his favor as children might do for an apple. Racine is said to have died of the fear of having offended him ; and Bussy, as we have before intimated, was not a whit behind the most pathetic of the servile, when he was again permitted to prostrate himself in the court circle. Madame de Sevign6 probably felt on this oc- casion as every other woman would have felt, and was candid enough not to hide her emotion; but whether, instead of pretending to feel less, she might not have pleasantly affected still more, in order to regain her self-possession, and so carry it off with a grace, Bussy * " Histoire Amoureuse des Gaules;" torn, i., p. 158. Cologne, 1709. 262 LIFE AND LETTERS OF was not the man to tell us, even if his wit had had good-nature enough to discern it. The young widow devoted herself to her children, and would never again hear of marriage. She had already become celebrated for her letters ; continued to go occasionally to court ; and frequented the reign- ing literary circles, then famous for their pedantry, without being carried away by it. Several wits and men of fashion made love to her, besides Bussy. Among them were the learned Menage, who courted her in madrigals compiled from the Italian ; the su- perintendent of the finances, Fouquet, who, except in her instance and that of La Valliere, is said to have made Danaes wherever he chose to shower his gold ; and the Prince of Conti, brother of the great Conde, who, with the self-sufficient airs of a royal lover, de- clared that he found her charming, and that he had " a word or two to say to her next winter." Even the great Turenne is said to have loved her. On none of them did she take pity but the superintendent ; and not on his heart, poor man; but on his neck; when it was threatened with the axe for doing as his predecessors had done, and squandering the public money. Fouquet was magnificent and popular in his dishonesty, and hence the envious conspired to pull him down. Some of the earliest letters of Madame de S6 vigne are on the subject of his trial, and show an interest in it so genuine, that fault has been found with them for not being so witty as the rest ! It was probably from this time that she began to visit the court less frequently, and to confine herself to those domestic and accomplished circles, in which, without suspecting it, she cultivated an immortal rep- utation for letter-writing. Her political and religious MADAME DE stivir.Nfc. 263 friends, the De Retzes and the Jansenists, grew out of favor, or rather into discredit, and she perhaps suffered herself to grow out of favor with them. She always manifested, however, great respect for the King ; and Louis was a man of too genuine a gallantry not to be courteous to the lady whenever they met, and address to her a few gracious words. On one occasion she gazed upon the magnificent gaming-tables at court, and courtesied to his Majesty, " after the fashion which her daughter," she says, " had taught her ;" upon which the monarch was pleased to bow, and look very acknowledging. And, another time, when Madame de Maintenon, the Pamela of royalty, then queen in secret, presided over the religious amusements of the King, she went to see Racine's play of Esther per- formed by the young ladies of St. Cyr ; when Louis politely expressed his hope that she was satisfied, and interchanged a word with her in honor of the poet and the performers. She was not indeed at any time an uninterested observer of what took place in the world. She has other piquant, though not always very lucid notices of the court was deeply interested in the death of Turenne listens with emotion to the eloquence of the favorite preachers records the atrocities of the poisoners, and is compelled by her good sense to leave off wasting her pity on the devout dulness of King James II. But the proper idea of her, for the greater part of her life, is that of a seques- tered domestic woman, the delight of her friends, the constant reader, talker, laugher, and writer, and the passionate admirer of the daughter to whom she ad- dressed the chief part of her correspondence. Some- times she resided in Brittany, at an estate on the sea- coast, called the Rocks, which had belonged to her 264 LIFE AND LETTERS OF husband ; sometimes she was at Livry, near Paris, where the good uncle possessed his abbey ; sometimes at her own estate of Bourbilly, in Burgundy ; and at others in her house in town, where the Hotel Carna- valet (now a school) has become celebrated as her latest and best known residence. In all these abodes, not excepting the town-house, she made a point of having the enjoyment of a garden, delighting to be as much in the open air as possible, haunting her green alleys and her orangeries with a book in her hand, or a song upon her lips, (for she sang as she went about, like a child,) and walking out late by moonlight in all seasons, to the hazard of colds and rheumatisms, from which she ultimately suffered severely. She was a most kind mistress to her tenants. She planted trees, made labyrinths, built chapels, (inscribing them " to God,") watched the peasants dancing, sometimes played at chess, (she did not like cards ;) and at almost all other times, when not talking with her friends, she was reading or hearing others read, or writing letters. The chief books and authors we hear of are Tasso, Ariosto, La Fontaine, Pascal, Nicole, Tacitus, the huge old romances, Rabelais, Rochefoucauld, the novels of her friend Madame de la Fayette, Cornell le, Bourdaloue and Bossuet, Montaigne, Lucian, Don Quixote, and St. Augustin ; a goodly collection surely, a " circle of humanity." She reads the ro- mances three times over ; and when she is not sure that her correspondent will approve a book, says that her son has " brought her into it," or that he reads out " passages." Sometimes her household get up a little surprise or masquerade ; at others, her cousin Coul- anges brings his " song-book," and they are " the happiest people in the world ;" that is to say, provided MADAME DE sviGN. 265 her daughter is with her. Otherwise the tears rush into her eyes at the thought of her absence, and she is always making " dragons" or " cooking," viz. having the blue-devils and fretting. But, when they all are comfortable, what they are most addicted to is " dying with laughter." They die with laughter if seeing a grimace ; if told a bon-mot ; if witnessing a rustic dance ; if listening to Monsieur de Pomenars, who has always " some criminal affair on his hands ;" if getting drenched with rain ; if having a sore finger pinched instead of relieved. Here lounges the young Marquis on the sofa with his book ; there sits the old Abbe in his arm-chair, fed with something nice ; the ladies chat, and embroider, and banter Mademoiselle du Plessis ; in comes Monsieur de Pomenars, with the news of some forgery that is charged against him, or livelier offence, but always so perilous to his neck that he and they " die with laughter." Enter, with his friend Madame de la Fayette, the celebrated Duke de la Rochefoucauld, gouty, but still graceful, and he and the lady " die with laughter ;" enter the learned Corbinelli, and he dies ; enter Madame de Coulanges, the sprightly mixture of airiness and witty malice, and she dies of course ; and the happy mortality is completed by her husband, the singing cousin afore- said a little round fat oily man," who was always " in" with some duke or cardinal, admiring his fine house and feasting at his table. These were among the most prominent friends or associates of Madame de Sevigne" ; but there were also great lords and ladies, and neighbors in abundance, sometimes coming in when they were not wanted, but always welcomed with true French politeness, except when they had been heard to say anything against the " daughter ;" VOL. n. 12 266 LIFE AND LETTERS OF and then Madame told them roundly to their faces that she was " not at home." There was Segrais, and Saint Pavin, and Corneille, and Bossuet, and Treville, who talked like a book ; and the great Turenne, and the Duke de Vivonne, (brother of Montespan,) who called her " darling mamma ;" and Madame Scarron, till she was Maintenon ; and Madame de Fiesque, who did not know how to be afflicted ; and D'Hacqueville, whose good offices it was impossible to tire ; and fat Barillon, who said good things though he was a bad ambassador ; and the Abbe Tetu, thin and lively ; and Benserade, who was the life of the company where- ever he went ; and Brancas, who liked to choose his own rivals ; and Cardinal de Retz, in retirement feed- ing his trout, and talking metaphysics. She had known the Cardinal for thirty years ; and, during his last illness, used to get Corneille, Boileau, and Moliere to come and read to him their new pieces. Perhaps there is no man of whom she speaks with such un- deviating respect and regard as this once turbulent statesman, unless it be Rochefoucauld, who, to judge from most of her accounts of him, was a pattern of all that was the reverse of his " Maxims." With her son the Marquis, who was " a man of wit and pleasure about town," till he settled into sobriety with a wife who is said to have made him devout, Madame de Sevigne lived in a state of confidence and unreserve, to an excess that would not be deemed very delicate in these days, and of which, indeed, she herself sometimes expresses, her dislike. There is a well-known collection of letters, professing to have passed between him and Ninon de 1'Enclos, which is spurious ; but we gather some remarkable particulars of their intimacy from the letters of the mother to her MADAME DE SjfOVIGNlJ. 267 daughter ; and, among others, Ninon's sayings of him, that he had " a soul of pap," and " the heart of a cucumber fried in snow." The little Marquis's friends (for he was small in his person) did not think him a man of very impassioned temperament. He was, however, very pleasant and kind, and an attentive son. He had a strong contempt too, for " the character of jEneas,' and the merit of never having treated Bussy Rabutin with any great civility. Rochefoucauld said of him, that his greatest ambition would have been to die for a love which he did not feel. He was at first in the army, but not be- ing on the favorite side either in politics or religion, nor probably very active, could get no preferment worth having ; so he ended in living unambitiously in a devout corner of Paris, and cultivating his taste for literature. He maintained a contest of some repute with Dacier, on the disputable meaning of the famous passage in Horace, Difficile est proprie communia dicere. His treatise on the subject may be found in the later Paris editions of his mother's letters ; but the juxtaposition is not favorable to its perusal. But sons, dukes, cardinals, friends, the whole uni- verse, come to nothing in these famous letters, com- pared with the daughter to whom they owe their ex- istence. She had not the good spirits of her mother, but she had wit and observation ; and appears to have been so liberally brought up, that she sometimes startled her more acquiescent teacher with the hardi- hood of her speculations. It is supposed to have been owing to a scruple of conscience in her descend- ants, that her part of the correspondence was de- stroyed. She professed herself, partly in jest and partly in earnest, a zealous follower of Descartes. It 268 LIFE AND LETTERS OF is curious that the circumstance which gave rise to the letters, was the very one to which Madame de Sevigne had looked for saving her the necessity of correspondence. The young lady became the wife of a great lord, the Count de Grignan, who, being a man of the court, was expected to continue to reside in Paris ; so that the mother trusted she should always have her daughter at hand. The Count, however, who was lieutenant-governor of Provence, received orders, shortly afterwards, to betake himself to that distant region ; the continued non-residence of the Duke de Vendome, the Governor, conspired to keep him there, on and off, for the remainder of the mother's existence a space of six-and-twenty years ; and though she contrived to visit and be visited by Ma- dame de Grignan so often that they spent nearly half the time with each other, yet the remaining years were a torment to Madame de Sevigne, which nothing could assuage but an almost incessant correspondence. One letter was no sooner received than another was anx- iously desired; and the daughter echoed the anxiety. Hours were counted, post-boys watched for, obstacles imagined, all the torments experienced, and not sel- dom manifested, of the most jealous and exacting pas- sion, and at the same time all the delights and ecstacies vented of one the most confiding. But what we have to say of this excess of maternal love will be better kept for our concluding remarks. Suffice it to observe, in hastening to give our specimens of the letters, that these graver points of the correspondence, though nu- merous, occupy but a small portion of it ; that the let- ters, generally speaking, consist of the amusing gossip and conversation which the mother would have had with the daughter, had the latter remained near her ; MADAME DE SEVIGNK!. 269 and that Madame de Sevigne, after living, as it were, for no other purpose than to write them, and to straiten herself in her circumstances for both her children, died at her daughter's house in Provence, of an illness caused by the fatigue of nursing her through one of her owri. Her decease took place in April 1696, in the seventieth year of her age. Her body, it is said, long after, was found dressed in ribbons, after a Pro- vencal fashion, at which she had expressed great dis- gust. Madame de Grignan did not survive many years. She died in the summer of 1705, of grief, it has been thought, for the loss of her only child, the Mar- quis de Grignan, in whom the male descendants of the family became extinct. It is a somewhat unpleasant evidence of the triumph of Ninon de 1'Enclos over the mortality of her contemporaries, that, in one of the letters of the correspondence, this youth, the grandson of Madame de Sevigne's husband, and nephew of her son, is found studying good-breeding at the table of that " grandmother of the Loves." The Count de Grignan, his father, does not appear to have been a very agreeable personage. Mademoiselle de Se- vigne was his third wife. He was therefore not very young; he was pompous and fond of expense, and brought duns about her ; and his face was plain, and it is said that he did not make up for his ill looks by the virtue of constancy. Madame de Sevigne seems to have been laudably anxious to make the best of her son-in-law. She accordingly compliments him on his "fine tenor voice ;" and, because he has an uncomely face, is al- ways admiring his " figure." One cannot help sus- pecting sometimes that there, is a little malice in her intimations of the contrast, and that she admires his figure most when he will not let her daughter come to 270 LIFE AND LETTERS OF see her. The Count's only surviving child, Pauline, became the wife of Louis de Simiene, Marquis d'Es- parron, who seems to have been connected on the mother's side with our family of the Hays, and was lieutenant of the Scottish horse-guards in the service of the French king. Madame de Simiane inherited a portion both of the look and wit of her grandmother; but more resembled her mother in gravity of disposi- tion. A daughter of hers married the Marquis de Vence ; and of this family there are descendants now living ; but the names of Grignan, Rabutin, and Se- vigne, have long been extinct in the body. In spirit they are now before us, more real than myriads of existing families ; and we proceed to enjoy their death- less company. We shall not waste the reader's time with the his- tory of editions, and telling how the collection first partially transpired " against the consent of friends." Friends or families are too often afraid, or ashamed, or jealous, of what afterwards constitutes their renown ; and we can only rejoice that the sweet " winged words" of the most flowing of pens, escaped, in this instance, out of their grudging boxes. We give the letters in English instead of French, not being by any means of opinion that " all who read and appreciate Madame de Sevigne, may be supposed to understand that language nearly as well as their own." Undoubtedly, people of the best natural understandings are glad, when, in ad- dition to what nature has given them, they possess, in the knowledge of a foreign language, the best means of appreciating the wit that has adorned it. But it is not impossible that some such people, nay, many, in this age of "diffusion of knowledge," may have missed the advantages of a good education, and yet be able to MADAME DE gfiviGN^. 271 appreciate the imperfectly conveyed wit of another, better than some who are acquainted With its own ve- hicle. Besides, we have known very distinguished people confess, that all who read, or even speak French, do not always read it with the same ready result and comfort to the eyes of their understandings as they do their own language ; and as to the " impossibility" of translating such letters as those of Madame de Sevigne, though the specimens hitherto published have not been very successful, we do not believe it. Phrases here and there may be so ; difference of manners may ren- der some few untranslatable in so many words, or even unintelligible ; but for the most part the sentences will find their equivalents, if the translator is not destitute of the spirits that suggested them. We ourselves have been often given to understand, that we have been too much in the habit of assuming that French, however widely known, was still more known than it is ; and we shall endeavor, on the present occasion, to make an attempt to include the whole of our readers in the par- ticipation of a rare, intellectual pleasure. The first letter in the Collection, written when Ma- dame de Sevigne was a young and happy mother, gives a delightful foretaste of what its readers have to ex- pect. She was then in her twentieth year, with a baby in her arms, and nothing but brightness in her eyes. TO THE COUNT DE BUSSY-RABUTIN. "March 15th, (1647.)* " You are a pretty fellow, are you not 1 to have written me nothing for these two months. Have you forgotten who I am, and the rank I hold * Madame de Sevigne never, in dating her letters, gave the years. They were added by one of her editors. 272 LIFE AND LETTERS OF in the family 1 ? 'Faith, little cadet, I will make you remember it. If you put me out of sorts, I will reduce you to the ranks. You knew 1 was about to be confined, and yet took no more trouble to ask after my health than if I had remained a spinster. Very well : be informed, to your con- fusion, that I have got a boy, who shall suck hatred of you into his veins with his mother's milk, and that I mean to have a great many more, purely to supply you with enemies. You have not the wit to do as much, you with your feminine productions. "After all, my dear cousin, my regard for you is not to be concealed. Nature will proclaim it in spite of art. I thought to scold you for your laziness through the whole of this letter; but I do my heart too great a violence, and must conclude by telling you that M. de Sevigne and myself love you very much, and often talk of the pleasure we should have in your company." Bussy writes very pleasantly in return ; but it will be so impossible to make half the extracts we desire from Madame de Sevigne's own letters, that we must not be tempted to look again into those of others. The next that we shall give is the famous one on the Duke de Lauzun's intended marriage with the Princess Hen- rietta of Bourbon ; one of the most striking, though not the most engaging, in the collection. We might have kept it for a climax, were it not desirable -to preserve a chronological order. It was written nearly four and twenty years after the letter we have just given ; which we mention to show how she had retained her animal spirits. The person to whom it is addressed is her jovial cousin De Coulanges. The apparent tautologies in the exordium are not really such. They only repre- sent a continued astonishment, wanting words to ex- press itself, and fetching its breath at every comma. TO MONS. DE COULANGES. "Paris, Monday, 15th December (1670). " I am going to tell you a thing, which of all things in the world is the most astonishing, the most surprising, the most marvellous, the most mi- raculous, the most triumphant, the most bewildering, the most unheard-of, the most singular, the most extraordinary, the most incredible, the most MADAME DE sfiviGNfe. 273 unexpected, the most exalting, the most humbling, the most rare, the most common, the most public, the most private (till this moment), the most brilliant, the most enviable in short, a thing of which no example is to be found in past times; at least nothing quite like it; a thing which we know not how to believe in Paris; how then are you to be- lieve it at Lyons 1 a thing which makes all the world cry out, ' Lord have mercy on us ! ' a thing which has transported Madame de Rohan and Madame d'Hauterive; a thing which is to be done on Sunday, when those who see it will not believe their own eyes ; a thing which is to be done on Sunday, and yet perhaps will not be finished on Monday. I cannot expect you to guess it at once. I give you a trial of three times; do you give it up? Well, then, I must tell you. M. de Lauzun is to marry, next Sunday, at the Louvre, guess whom? I give you four times to guess it in: I give you six: I give you a hundred. 'Truly,' cries Madame de Coulanges, ' it must be a very difficult thing to guess ; 'tis Madame de la Valliere.' No, it isn't, Madame. ' 'Tis Mademoiselle de Retz, then? No, it isn't, Madame: you are terribly provincial. "Oh, we are very stupid, no doubt !' say you : ' 'tis Mademoiselle Colbert.' Further off than ever. ' Well, then, it must be Mademoiselle da Crequi V You are not a bit nearer. Come, I see I must tell you at last. Well, M. de Lauzun marries, next Sunday, at the Louvre, with the king's permis- sion, Mademoiselle, Mademoiselle de Mademoiselle guess the name; he marries 'MADEMOISELLE' the great Mademoiselle ! Ma- demoiselle, the daughter of the late MONSIEUR; Mademoiselle, grand- Daughter of Henry the Fourth ; Mademoiselle d'Eu, Mademoiselle de Dombes, Mademoiselle de Montpensier, Mademoiselle d'Orleans, Made- moiselle, cousin-german of the king, Mademoiselle destined to the throne, Mademoiselle, the only woman in France fit to marry Monsieur. Here's pretty news for your coteries. Exclaim about it as much as you will ; let it turn your heads; say we 'lie' if you please; that it's a pretty joke; that it's 'tiresome;' that we are a 'parcel of ninnies.' We give you leave; we have done just the, same to others. Adieu ! The letters that come by the post will show whether we have been speaking truth or not." Never was French vivacity more gay, more spirited, more triumphant, than in this letter. There is a regu- lar siege laid to the reader's astonishment ; and the titles of the bride come like the pomp of victory. Or, to use a humbler image, the reader is thrown into the state of a child, who is told to open his mouth and shut his eyes, and wait for what God will send him. The 12* 274 LIFE AND LETTERS OF holder of the secret hovers in front of the expectant, touching his lips and giving him nothing ; and all is a merry flutter of laughter, guessing, and final transport. And yet this will not suit the charming misgiving that follows. Alas, for the poor subject of the wonder ! The marriage was stopped ; it was supposed to have taken place secretly ; and Mademoiselle, who was then forty-five years of age, and had rejected kings, is said to have found her husband so brutal, that he one day called to her, " Henrietta of Bourbon, pull offmy boots." The boots were left on, and the savage discarded. The letter we give next or rather, of which we give passages is a good specimen of the way in which the writer goes from subject to subject ; from church to the fair, and from the fair to court, and to mad dogs, and Ninon de 1'Enclos, and sermons on death, and so round again to royalty and " a scene." It is addressed to her daughter. . ; .. --.-'. f*-- i ..'??. \ic( .. -"::." *>;<%.?*>. **' -M^z-v'-N TO M*P*MC DE GRIGN-AN. "Paris, Friday, March 13 (1671). " Behold me, to the delight of my heart, all alone in my chamber, writing to you in tranquillity. Nothing gives me comfort like being seated thus. I dined to-day at Madame de Lavardin's, after having been to hear Bourdaloue, where I saw the Mothers of the Church ; for so I call the Princess de Conti and Longueville.* All the world was at the ser- mon, and the sermon was worthy of all that heard it I thought of yon twenty times, and wished you as often beside me. You would have been enchanted to be a listener, and I should have been tenfold enchanted to see you listen. ***** We have been to the fair, to see a great fright of a woman, bigger than Riberpre by a whole head. She lay-in the other day of two vast infants, who came into the world abreast, with their arms a-kimbo. You never beheld such a tout-ensemble! * * * And now, if you fancy all the maids of honor run mad, you will not fancy amiss. Eight days ago, Madame de Ludre, Coetlogon, and little De Rouvroi, were bitten by a puppy belonging to Theobon, and the puppy * Great sinners, who had become great saint*. MADAME DE SKVI<;\K. 275 has died mad ; so Ludre, Coetlogon, and De Rouvroi set off tnis morning for the coast, to be dipped three times in the sea. 'Tis a dismal journey : Benserade is in despair about it. Theobon does not choose to go, though she had a little bite too. The queen, however, objects to her being in waiting till the issue of the adventure is known. Don't you think Ludre resembles Andromeda 1 ? For my part, I see her fastened to the rock, and Treville coming, on a winged horse, to deliver her from the monster. ' Ah, Zeezus ! Madame de Grignan, vat a sing to pe trown all naket into tcsea!"'t * * * " Your brother is under the jurisdiction of Ninon. I can- not think it will do him much good. There are people to whom it does no good at all. She hurt his father. Heaven help him, say I ! It is impossible for Christian people, or at least for such as would fain be Christian, to look on such disorders without concern. Ah, Bourdaloue ! what divine truths you told us to-day about death. Madame de la Fay- ette heard him for the first time in her life, and was transported with admiration. She is enchanted with your remembrances. * * * A scene took place yesterday at Mademoiselle's which I enjoyed extremely. In cornea Madame de Gevres, full of her airs and graces. She looked as if she expected I should give her my post ; but, faith, I owed her an affront for her behavior the other day, so I didn't budge. Mademoiselle was in bed ; Madame de Gevres was therefore obliged to go lower down : no very pleasant thing that. Mademoiselle calls for drink; somebody must present the napkin ; Madame de Gevres. begins to draw off the glove from her skinny hand; I give a nudge to Madame d'Arpajon, who was above me; she understands me, draws off her own glove, and advancing a step with a very good grace, cuts short the duchess, and takes and pre- sents the napkin. The duchess was quite confounded ; she had made her way up, and got off her gloves, and all to see the napkin presented before her by Madame d'Arpajon. My dear, I'm a wicked creature ; I was in a state of delight; and, indeed, what could have been better donel Would any one but Madame de Gevres have thought of depriving Madame d'Arpajon of an honor which fell so naturally to her share, standing, as she did, by the bedside 7 It was as good as a cordial to Madame de Puisieux. Mademoiselle did not dare to lift up her eyes; and, as for myself, I had the most good-for-nothing face." t " Ah, Zesu ! Madame de Grignan, Vetrange sose I'etre zettee toute nue tans la mer." Madame de Ludre, by her pronunciation, was either a very affected speaker, or seems to have come from the "borders." Ma- dame de Sevigne, by the tone of her narration, could hardly have believed there was anything serious in the accident. 276 Had Madame de Gevres seen the following passage in a letter of the 10th of June, in the same year, it might have tempted her to exclaim, "Ah, you see what sort of people it is that treat me with malice !" It must have found an echo in thousands of bosoms; and the conclusion of the extract is charming. * ^" ',; * * * " My dear, I wish very much I could be religious. I plague La Mousse about it every day. I belong at present neither to God nor devil, and I find this condition very uncomfortable ; though, between you and me, I think it the most natural in the world. One does not belong to the devil, because one fears God, and has at bottom a principle of re- ligion; but then, on the other hand, one does not belong to God, because his laws appear hard, and self-denial is not pleasant. Hence the great number of the lukewarm, which does not surprise me at all. I enter perfectly into their reasons ; only God, you know, hates them, and that must not be. But there lies the difficulty. Why must I torment you, however, with these endless rhapsodies? My dear child, I ask your par- don, as they say in these parts. I rattle on in your company, and forget everything else in the pleasure of it. Don't make me any answer. Send me only news of your health, with a spice of what you feel at Grignan, that I may know you are happy : that is all. Love me. We have turned the phrase into ridicule ; but it is natural, it is good." The Abbe de la Mousse here mentioned was a con- nection of the Coulangeses, and was on a visit to Ma- dame de Sevigne at her house in Brittany, reading poetry and romance. The weather was so rainy and cold, that we of this island are pleased to see one of her letters dated from her " fireside," on the 24th of June. Pomenars, the criminal gentleman who was al- ways afraid of losing his head, was one of her neigh- bors ; and another was the before-mentioned Made- moiselle du Plessis, whom the daughter's aversion and her own absurdities conspired to render the butt of the mother. It is said of Pomenars, who was a marquis, that having been tried for uttering false money, and cleared of the charge, he paid the expenses of the ac- MADAME DE B&V1GX&. 277 tion in the same coin. It must have been some very counteracting good quality, however, in addition to his animal spirits, that kept his friends in good heart with him ; for Madame de Sevigne never mentions him but with an air of delight. He was, at this moment, under a charge of abduction ; not, apparently, to any very great horror on the part of the ladies. Madame de Sevigne, however, tells her daughter that she talked to him about it very seriously, adding the jest, neverthe- less, that the state of the dispute between him and his accuser was, that the latter wanted to " have his head," and Pomenars would not let him take it. " The Mar- quis," she says, in another letter, " declined shaving till he knew to whom his head was to belong." The last thing we remember of him is his undergoing a painful surgical operation ; after which he rattled on as if noth- ing had happened. But then he had been the day be- fore to Bourdaloue, to confess, for the first time during eight years. Here is the beginning of a letter, in which he and Du Plessis are brought delightfully together. TO MADAME DE GRIGNAN. " The Rocks, Sunday, 26th July (1671.) " You must know, that as I was sitting all alone in my chamber yester- day, intent upon a book, I saw the door opened by a tall lady-like woman, who was ready to choke herself with laughing. Behind her came a man, who laughed louder still, and the man was followed by a very well- shaped woman, who laughed also. As for me, I began to laugh before 1 knew who they were, or what had set them a laughing ; and though I was expecting Madame de Chaulnes to spend a day or two with me here, I looked a long time before I could think it was she. She it was, how- ever ; and with her she had brought Pomenars, who had put it in her head to surprise me. The fair Murinttte* was of the party ; and Pome- nars was in such excessive spirits that he would have gladdened melan- choly itself. They fell to playing baltledoor and shuttlecock Madame * Mademoiselle de Murinaie. 278 LIFE AND LETTERS OF de Chaulnes plays it like you; and then came a lunch, and then we took one of our nice little walks, and the talk was of you throughout. I told Pomenars how you took all his affairs to heart, and what relief you would experience had he nothing to answer to but the matter in hand ; but that such repeated attacks on his innocence quite overwhelmed you. We kept up this joke till the long walk reminded us of the fall you got there one day, the thought of which made me as red as fire. We talked a long time of that, and then of the dialogue with the gipsies, and at last of Mademoi- selle du Plessis, and the nonsensical atuff she uttered ; and how, one day, having treated you with some of it, and her ugly face being close to yours, you made no more ado, but gave her such a box on the ear as staggered ker ; upon which I, to soften matters, exclaimed, " How rudely these young people do play !" and then turning to her mother, said, " Madam, do you know they were so wild this morning, they absolutely fought. Mademoiselle du Plessis provoked my daughter, and my daughter beat her: it was one of the merriest scenes in the world ;" and with this turn Madame du Plessis was so delighted, that she expressed her satisfaction at seeing the young ladies so happy together. This trait of good fellow- ship between you and Mademoiselle du Plessis, whom I lumped together to make the box on the ear go down, made my visitors die with laughter. Ma- demoiselle de Murinais, in particular, approved your proceedings mightily, and vows that the first time Du Plessis thrusts her nose in her face, as she always does when she speaks to anybody, she will follow your ex- ample, and give her a good slap on the chaps. I expect them all to meet before long ; Pomenars is to set the matter on foot Mademoiselle is sure to fall in with it ; a letter from Paris is to be produced, showing how the ladies there give boxes on the ears to one another, and this will sanction the custom in the provinces, and even make us desire them, in order to be in the fashion. In short, I never saw a man so mad as Pomenars : his spirits increase in the ratio of his criminalities ; and if he is charged with another, he will certainly die for joy." These practical mystifications of poor Mademoiselle du Plessis are a little strong. They would assuredly not take place now-a-days in society equal to that of Madame de Sevigne ; but ages profit by their pre- decessors, and the highest breeding of one often be- comes but second-rate in the next. If anything, how- ever, could warrant such rough admission to the free- dom of a superior circle, it was the coarse platitudes and affections of an uncouth neighbor like this ; prob- MADAME DE SlflVIGNfi. 279 ably of a family as vulgar as it was rich, and which had made its way into a society unfit for it. Made- moiselle du Plessis seems to have assumed all charac- ters in turn, and to have suited none, except that of an avowed, yet incorrigible teller of fibs. Madame Sevigne spoke to her plainly one day about these peccadilloes, and Mademoiselle cast down her eyes and said with an air of penitence, " Ah, yes, Madam, it js very true ; I am indeed the greatest Kar in the world : I am very much obliged to you for telling me of it !" " It was exactly," says her reprover, " like Tartuffe quite in his tone Yes, brother, I am a miserable sinner, a vessel of iniquity." Yet a week or two afterwards, giving an account of a family wedding-dinner, she said that the first course, for one day, included twelve hundred dishes. " We all sate petrified," says Madame de Sevigne. "At length I took courage and said, 'Consider a little, Mademoiselle, you must mean twelve, not twelve hundred. One sometimes has slips of the tongue.' ' Oh, no, Madam ! it was twelve hundred, or eleven hundred, I am quite sure ; I cannot say which, for fear of telling a false- hood, but one or the other I know it was ;' and she repeated it twenty times, and would not bate us a single chicken. We found, upon calculation, that there must have been at least three hundred people to lard the fowls ; that the dinner must have been served up in a great meadow, in tents pitched for the occasion ; and that, supposing them only fifty, preparations must have been made a month beforehand. It is pleasant to bid adieu to Mademoiselle du Plessis, and breathe the air of truth, wit, and nature, in what has been justly called by the compiler of the work at the head of this article, one of "Madame de Sevigne's 280 LIFE AND LETTERS OF most charming letters."* The crime of the fine- gentleman-servant who would not make hay, is set forth with admiral calmness and astonishment ; and never before was the art of haymaking taught, or rather exemplified, in words so simple and so few. It is as if the pen itself had become a hay-fork, and tossed up a sample of the sweet grass. The pre- tended self-banter also, at the close, respecting long- winded narrations, is exquisite. TO M. DE COOLANGES. The Rocks, 32d July (1671.) "I write, my dear cousin, over and above the stipulated fortnight com- munications, to advertise you that you will soon have the honor of see- ing Picard ; and, as he is brother to the lacquey of Madame de Coulan- ges, I must tell you the reason why. You know that Madame the Duchess de Chaulnes is at Vitre : she expects the duke there, in ten or twelve days, with the States of Brittany .f Well, and what then 1 say you. I say, that the duchess is expecting the duke with all the states, and that meanwhile she is at Vitre all alone, dying with ennui. And what, return you, has this to do with Picard 1 Why, look ; she is dy- ing with ennui, and I am her only consolation, and so you may readily conceive that I carry it with a high hand over Mademoiselle de Kerbunne and de Kerqueoison. A pretty roundabout way of telling my story, I must confess ; but it will bring us to the point. Well, then, as I am her only consolation, it follows that, after I have been to see her, she will come to see me, when, of course, I shall wish her to find my garden in good order, and my walks in good order those fine walks, of which you are so fond. Still you are at a loss to conceive whither they are leading you now. Attend then, if you please, to a little suggestion by the way. You are aware that haymaking is going forward 7 Well, I have no haymakers : I send into the neighboring fields to press them into my service ; there are none to be found ; and so all my own people are summoned to make hay instead. But do you know what haymak- ing is 7 I will tell you. Haymaking is the prettiest thing in the world. You play at turning the grass over in a meadow ; and, as soon as you know how to do that, you know how to make hay. The whole house * The original appears in the " Lettres Choisies," edited by Girault. f He was governor of the province. MADAME DE B&VIGH&. 281 went merrily to the task, all but Picard : he said he would not go ; that he was not engaged for such work ; that it was none of his business and that he would sooner betake himself to Paris. 'Faith ! did'nt I get angry 1 It was the hundredth disservice the silly fellow had done me : I saw he had neither heart nor zeal ; in short the measure of his of- fence was full. I took him at his word ; was deaf as a rock to all en- treaties in his behalf: and he has set off. It is fit that people should be treated as they deserve. If you see him, don't welcome him ; don't protect him ; and don't blame me. Only look upon him as, of all ser- vants in the world, the one the least addicted to haymaking, and there- fore the most unworthy of good treatment. This is the sum total of the affair. As for me, I am fond of straightforward histories, that contain not a word too much ; that never go wandering about, and beginning again from remote points ; and accordingly, I think I may say, without vanity, that I hereby present you with the model of an agreeable nar- ration. In the course of the winter following this haymaking, Madame de Sevigne goes to Paris; and with the ex- ception of an occasional visit to the house at Livry, to refresh herself with the spring-blossoms and the night- ingales, remains there till July, when she visits her daughter in Provence, where she stayed upwards of a year, and then returned to the metropolis. It is not our intention to notice these particulars in future ; but we mention them in passing, to give the reader an idea of the round of her life between her town and country houses, and the visits to Madame de Grignan, who sometimes came from Provence to her. In the coun- try, she does nothing but read, write, and walk, and occasionally see her neighbors. In town, she visits friends, theatres, churches, nunneries, and the court ; is now at the Coulangeses, now dining with Roche- foucauld, now paying her respects to some branch of royalty ; and is delighted and delighting wherever she goes, except when she is weeping for her daughter's absence, or condoling with the family disasters result- ing from campaigns. In the summer of 1672 was the 282 LIFE AND LETTERS OF famous passage of the Rhine, at which Rochefoucauld lost a son, whose death he bore with affecting patience. The once intriguing but now devout princess, the Duchess de Longueville, had the like misfortune, which she could not endure so well. Her grief nevertheless was very affecting too, and Madame de Sevigne's plain and passionate account of it has been justly ad- mired. In general, at the court of Louis XIV. all was apparently ease, luxury, and delight, (with the excep- tion of the jealousies of the courtiers and the squabble of the mistresses ;) but every now and then there is a campaign and then all is glory, and finery, and lovers' tears, when the warriors are setting out ; and fright, and trepidation, and distracting suspense, when the news arrives of a bloody battle. The suspense is removed by undoubted intelligence ; and then, while some are in paroxysms of pride and rapture at escapes, and exploits, and lucky wounds, others are plunged into misery by deaths. EXTRACT FROM A LETTER TO MADAME DB GRIGNAN. " You never saw Paris in such a state as it is now ; everybody is in tears, or fears to be so : poor Madame de Nogent is beside herself: Ma- dame de Longueville, with her lamentations, cuts people to the heart. I have not seen her ; but you may rely on what follows. * * * * They sent to Port-Royal for M. Arnauld and Mademoiselle Vertus to break the news to her. The sight of the latter was sufficient. As soon as the duchess saw her ' Ah ! Mademoiselle, how is my brother 1' (the great Conde.) She did not dare to ask further. ' Madame, his wound is going on well; there has been a battle.' 'And my son V No answer. 'Ah! Mademoiselle, my son, my dear child answer me is he deadl' 'Ma- dame, I have not words to answer you.' ' Ah ! my dear son ; did he die instantly 1 had he not one little moment 1 Oh! great God, what a sacri- fice!' And with that she fell upon her bed; and all which could express the most terrible anguish, convulsions, and faintings, and a mortal silence, and stifled cries, and the bitterest tears, and hands clasped towards heaven, and complaints the most tender and heart-rending all this did she go through. She sees a few friends, and keeps herself barely alive, in sub- MADAME DE SKVIGN&. 283 mission to (Joel's will ; but has no rest ; and her health, which waa bad already, is visibly worse. For my part, I cannot help wishing her dead outright, not conceiving it possible that she can survive such a loss." We have taken no notice of the strange death of Vatel, steward to the Prince de Conde, who killed himself out of a point of honor, because a dinner had not been served up to his satisfaction. It is a very curious relation, but more characteristic of the poor man than of the writer. For a like reason, we omit the interesting though horrible accounts of Brinvilliers and La Voisin, the poisoners. But we cannot help giving a tragedy told in a few words, both because Madame de Sevigne was herself highly struck with it, and for another reason which will appear in a note. " The other day, on his coming into a ball-room, a gentleman of Brit- tany was assassinated by two men in women's clothes. One held him while the other deliberately struck a poniard to his heart. Little Harouis, who was there, was shocked at beholding this person, whom he knew well, stretched out upon the ground, full-dressed, bloody, and dead. His account (adds Madame de Sevigne) forcibly struck my imagination." * The following letter contains a most graphic descrip- tion of the French court, in all its voluptuous gayety ; and the glimpses which it furnishes of the actors on the brilliant scene, from the king and the favorite to Dan- geau, the skilful gamester cool, collected, and calcu- lating amidst the gallant prattle around him, give to its details a degree of life and animation not to be sur- passed : TO MADAME DE GRIGNAN. " Paris, Wednesday, 29th July (1676). " We have a change of the scene here, which will gratify you as much * We have taken the words in Italics from the version of the letters published in 1765, often a very meritorious one, probably " by various hands," some passages exhibiting an ignorance of the commonest terms, hardly possible to be reconciled with a knowledge of the rest. 284 LIFE AND LETTERS OF as all the world. I was at Versailles last Saturday with the Villarses. You know the Queen's toilet, the mass, and the dinner 1 Well, there is no need any longer of suffocating ourselves in the crowd to get a glimpse of their majesties at table. At three the .King, the Queen, Monsieur, Madame, Mademoiselle, and everything else which is royal, together with Madame de Montespan and train, and all the courtiers, and all the ladies all, in short, which constitutes the court of France is assembled in that beautiful apartment of the king's, which you remember. All is fur- nished divinely, all is magnificent. Such a thing as heat is unknown; you pass from one place to another without the slightest pressure. A game at reversis gives the company a form, and a settlement The king and Madame de Montespan keep a bank together: different tables are occupied by Monsieur, the Queen, and Madame de Soubise, Dangeau* and party, Langlee and party : everywhere you see heaps of louis d'ors, they have no other counters. I saw Dangeau play, and thought what fools we all were beside him. He dreams of nothing but what concerns the game; he Wins where others lose; he neglects nothing, profits by everything, never has his attention diverted ; in short, his science bids defiance to chance. Two hundred thousand francs in ten days, a hun- dred thousand crowns in a month these are the pretty memorandums he puts down in his pocket-book. He was kind enough to say that I was partners with him, so that I got an excellent seat. I made my obeisance to the King, as you told me ; and he returned it, as if I had been young and handsome. The Queen talked as long to me about my illness, as if it had been a lying-in. The Duke said a thousand kind things without minding a word he uttered. Marshal de Lorges attacked me in the name of the Chevalier de Grignan ; in short, tutti quanti (the whole company). You know what it is to get a word from everybody you meet. Madame de Montespan talked to me of Bourbon, and asked me how I liked Yichi, and whether the place did me good, She said that Bourbon, instead of curing a pain in one of her knees, did mischief to both. Her size is reduced by a good half, and yet her complexion, her eyes, and her lips, are as fine as ever. She was dressed all in French point, her hair hi a thousand ringlets, the two side ones hanging low on her cheeks, black ribbons on her head, pearls (the same that belonged to Madame de 1'Hopital), the loveliest diamond ear-rings, three or four bod- kins nothing else on the head ; in short, a triumphant beauty worthy the admiration of all the foreign ambassadors. She was accused of pre- venting the whole French nation from seeing the king ; she has restored him, you see, to their eyes ; and you cannot conceive the joy it has given all the world, and the splendor it has thrown upon the court. This * The writer of the well-known Court-Diary. MADAME DE S&VIGNK. 285 charming confusion, without confusion, of all which is the most select, continues from three till six. If couriers arrive, the king retires a mo- ment to read the dispatches, and returns. There is always some music going on to which he listens, and which has an excellent effect. He talks with such of the ladies as are accustomed to enjoy that honor. In short, they leave play at six ; there is no trouble in counting, for there is no sort of counters ; the pools consist of at least five, perhaps six or seven Hundred louis ; the bigger ones of a thousand or twelve hundred. At first each person pools twenty, which is a hundred ; and the dealer after- wards pools ten. The person who holds the knave is entitled to four louis ; they pass ; and when they play before the pool is taken, they for- feit sixteen, which teaches them not to play out of turn. Talking is in- cessantly going on, and there is no end of hearts. How many hearts have you 1 I have two, I have three, I have one, I have four ; he has only three then, he has only four ; and Dangeau is delighted with all this chatter : he sees through the game he draws his conclusions he discovers which is the person he wants ; truly he is your only man for holding the cards. At six, the carriages are at the door. The king is in one of them with Madame de Montespan, Monsieur and Madame de Thianges, and honest d'Heudicourt in a fool's paradise on the stool. You know how these open carriages are made ; they do not sit face to face, but all looking the same way. The Queen occupies another with the Princess ; and the rest come flocking after as it may happen. There are then the gondolas on the. canal, and music ; and at ten they come back, and then there is a play ; and twelve strikes, and they go to supper ; and thus rolls round the Saturday. If I were to tett you how often you were asked after how many questions were put to me without waiting for an- swers how often I neglected to answer how little they cared, and how much less I did you would see the iniqua corte (wicked court) before you in all its perfection. However, it never was so pleasant before, and everybody wishes it may last." Not a word of the morale of the spectacle ! Madame de Sevigne, who had one of the correctest reputations in France, wishes even it may last. Iniqua corte is a mere jesting phrase, applied to any court. Montespan was a friend of the family, though it knew Maintenon also, who was then preparing the downfall of the fa- vorite. The latter, meantime, was a sort of vice- queen, reigning over the real one. When she jour- neyed, it was with a train of forty people ; governors 286 LIFE AND LETTERS OP of provinces offered to meet her with addresses ; and intendants presented her with boats like those of Cleopatra, painted and gilt, luxurious with crimson damask, and streaming with the colors of France and Navarre. Louis was such a god at that time he shook his "ambrosial curls" over so veritable an Olympus, where his praises were hymned by loving goddesses, consenting heroes, and incense-bearing priests that if marriage had been a less consecrated institution in the Catholic Church, and the Jesuits with their accommo- dating philosophy would have stood by him, one is al- most tempted to believe he might have crowned half a dozen queens at a time, and made the French pulpits hold forth with Milton on the merits of the patriarchal polygamies. But, to say the truth, except when she chose to be in the humor for it, great part of Madame de Sevigne's enjoyment, wherever she was, looked as little to the morale of the thing as need be. It arose from her powers of discernment and description. No matter what kind of scenes she beheld, whether exalted or humble, brilliant or gloomy, crowded or solitary, her sensibility turned all to account. She saw well for herself; and she knew, that what she saw she should enjoy over again, in telling it to her daughter. In the autumn of next year she is in the country, and pays a visit to an iron-foundry, where they made anchors. The scene is equally well felt with that at court. It is as good, in its way, as the blacksmith's in Spenser's " House of Care," where the sound was heard "Of many iron hammers, beating rank And answering their weary turns around ;" and where the visitor is so glad to get away from the MADAME DE SfeviGNfi. 287 giant and his "strong grooms," all over smoke and horror. EXTRACT OP A LETTER TO MADAME DE CRFGNAN. "Friday, 1st October 1677. * * * * " Yesterday evening at Gone we descended into a veri- table hell, the true forges of Vulcan. Eight or ten Cyclops were at work, forging, not arms for J2neas, but anchors for ships. You never saw strokes redoubled so justly, nor with so admirable a cadence. We stood in the middle of four furnaces, and the demons came passing about us, all melting in sweat, with pale faces, wild-staring eyes, savage mustaches, and hair long and black ; a sight enough to frighten less well-bred folks than ourselves. As to me, I could not comprehend the possibility of re- fusing anything which these gentlemen, in their hell, might have chosen to exact. We got out at last, by the help of a shower of silver, with which we took care to refresh their souls and facilitate our exit." This description is immediately followed by one as lively, of another sort. " We had a taste, the evening before, at Nevers, of the most daring race you ever beheld. Four fair ladies, in a carriage, having seen us pass them in ours, had such a desire to behold our faces a second time, that they must needs get before us again, on a causeway made only for one coach. My dear, their coachman brushed our very whiskers; it was a mercy they were not pitched into the river ; we all cried out, ' for God r s sake !' they, for their parts, were dying with laughter ; and they kept galloping on above us and before us, in so tremendous and unaccount- able a manner, that we have not got rid of the fright to this moment." There is a little repetition in the following, because truth required it ; otherwise it is all as good as new, fresh from the same mint that throws forth everything at a heat whether anchors, or diamond ear-rings, or a coach in a gallop. " Paris, 29th November (1679.) * * * "I have been to this wedding of Madame de Louvois. How shall I describe it! Magnificence, illuminations, all France, dresses all gold and brocade, jewels, braziers full of fire, and stands full of flowers, confusions of carriages, cries out of doors, flambeaus, push- ings back, people knocked up; in short, a whirlwind, a distraction; questions without answers, compliments without knowing what is said, 288 LIFE AND LETTERS OF civilities without knowing who is spoken to, feet entangled in trains. From the middle of all this, issue inquiries after your health ; which, not being answered as quick as lightning, the inquiries pass on, contented to remain in the state of ignorance and indifference in which they were made. O vanity of vanities! Pretty little De Mouchy has had the smallpox. O vanity, et cetera 1" In Boswell's " Life of Johnson" is a reference by the great and gloomy moralist to a passage in Madame de Sevigne, in which she speaks of existence having been imposed upon her without her consent ; but the con- clusion he draws from it as to her opinion of life in general, is worthy of the critic who " never read books through." The momentary effusion of spleen is con- tradicted by the whole correspondence. She occa- sionally vents her dissatisfaction at a rainy day, or the perplexity produced in her mind by a sermon; and when her tears begin flowing for a pain in her daugh- ter's little finger, it is certainly no easy matter to stop them ; but there was a luxury at the heart of this woe. Her ordinary notions of life were no more like John- son's, than rose-color is like black, or health like dis- ease. She repeatedly proclaims, and almost always shows, her delight in existence ; and has disputes with her daughter, in which she laments that she does not possess the same turn of mind. There is a passage, we grant, on the subject of old age, which contains a reflection similar to the one alluded to by Johnson, and which has been deservedly admired for its force and honesty. But even in this passage, the germ of the thought was suggested by the melancholy of another person, not by her own. Madame de la Fayette had written her a letter urging her to retrieve her affairs, and secure her health, by accepting some money from her friends, and quitting the Rocks for Paris; offers which, however handsomely meant, she declined with MADAME DE SifiVIGNK. 289 many thanks, and not a little secret indignation ; 'fo* she was very jealous of her independence. In the course of this letter, Madame de la Fayette, who her- self was irritable with disease, and who did not write it in a style much calculated to prevent the uneasiness it caused, made abrupt use of the words, " You are old." The little hard sentence came like a blow upon the lively, elderly lady. She did not like it at all; and thus wrote of it to her daughter : " So you were struck with the expression of Madame de la Fayette, blended with so much friendship. 'Twas a truth, I own, which I ought to have borne in mind ; and yet I must confess it astonished me, for I do not yet perceive in myself any such decay. Nevertheless I cannot help making many reflections and calculations, and I find the conditions of of Jife hard enough. It seems to me that I have been dragged, against my will, to the fatal period when old age must be endured; I see it; I have come to it ; and I would fain if I could help it, not go any further ; not advance a step more in the road of infirmities, of pains, of losses of memory, of disfigurements ready to do me outrage ; and I hear a voice which says, You must go on in spite of yourself; or, if you will not go on, you must die ; and this is another extremity, from which nature re- volts. Such is the lot, however, of all who advance beyond middle life. What is their resource? To think of the will of God and of the universal law ; and so restore reason to its place, and be patient. Be you then pa- tient, accordingly, my dear child, and let not your affections soften into such tears as reason must condemn." The whole heart and good sense of humanity seem to speak in passages like these, equally removed from the frights of the superstitious, and the flimsiness or falsehood of levity. The ordinary comfort and good prospects of Madame de Sevigne's existence, made her write with double force on these graver subjects, when they presented themselves to her mind. So, in her famous notice of the death of Louvois the minister never, in a few words, were past ascendency and sud- den nothingness more impressively contrasted. VOL. ir. 11 290 LIFE AND LETTERS OF " I am so astonished at the news of the sudden death of M. de Louvois, that I am at a loss how to speak of it. Dead, however, he is, this great minister, this potent being, who occupied so great a place ; whose me (le moi), as M. Nicole says, had so wide a dominion ; who was the centre of so many orbs. What affairs had he not to manage 1 what designs, what projects, what secrets ! what interests to unravel, what wars to undertake, what intrigues, what noble games at chess to play and to direct ! Ah ! my God, give me a little time : I want to give check to the Duke of Savoy checkmate to the Prince of Orange. No, no, you shall not have a mo- ment not a single moment. Are events like these to be talked of 1 Not they. We must reflect upon them in our closets." This is part of a letter to her cousin Coulanges^ written in the year 1691. Five years afterwards she died. The two English writers who have shown the great- est admiration of Madame de Sevigne, are Horace Walpole and Sir James Mackintosh. The enthusiasm of Walpole, who was himself a distinguished letter- writer and wit, is mixed up with a good deal of self- love. He bows to his own image in the mirror beside her. During one of his excursions to Paris, he visits the Hotel de Carnavalet and the house at Livry ; and has thus described his impressions, after his half-good half- affected fashion : " Madame de Chabot I called on last night. She was not at home, but tb^i Hotel de Carnavalet was ; and I stopped on purpose to say an Ave- Maria before it." (This pun is suggested by one in Bussy-Rabutin.) " It is a very singular building, not at all in the French style, and looks liko an ex vote, raised to her honor by some of her foreign votaries. I don't think her half- honored enough in her own country."* His visit to Livry is recorded in a letter to his friend Montague : "One must be just to all the world. Madame Roland, I find, has been in the country, and at Versailles, and was so obliging as to call on me this morning ; but I was so disobliging as not to be awake. I was * Letters, &c., vol. V. p. 74, edit. 1840. MADAME DE B&VIGH&. 291 dreaming dreams ; in short, I had dined at Livry ; yes, yes, at Livry, with a Langlade and De la Rochefoucauld. The abbey is now pos- sessed by an Abbe de Malherbe, with whom I am acquainted, and who had given me a general invitation. I put it off to the last moment, that the bois and attees might set off the scene a little, and contribute to the vision ; but it did not want it. Livry is situate in the Forct de Bondi, very agreeably on a flat, but with hills near it, and in prospect. There is a great air of simplicity and rural about it, more regular than our taste, but with an old-fashioned tranquillity, and nothing of colifaket (frippery). Not a tree exists that remembers the charming woman, because in this country an old tree is a traitor, and forfeits his head to the crown ; but the plantations are not young, and might very well be as they were in her time. The Abbe's house is decent and snug; a few paces from it is the sacred pavillion built for Madame de Sevigne by her uncle, and much as it was in her day ; a small saloon below for dinner, then an arcade, but the niche, now closed, and painted in fresco with medallions of her, the Grignan, the Payette, and the Rochefoucauld. Above, a handsome large room, with a chimney-piece in the best taste of Louis the Fourteenth's time ; a Holy Family in good relief over it, and the cipher of her uncle Coulanges ; a neat little bedchamber within, and two or three clean little chambers over them. On one side of the garden, leading to the great road, is a little bridge of wood, on which the dear woman used to wait for the courier that brought her daughter's letters. Judge with what veneration and satisfaction I set my foot upon it ! If you, will come to France with me next year, we will go and sacrifice on that sacred spot together." Id. p. 142. Sir James Mackintosh became intimate with the letters of Madame de Sevigne during his voyage to India, and has left some remarks upon them in the Diary published in his Life. " The great charm," he says, "of her character seems to me a natural virtue. In what she does, as well as in what she says, she is unforced and unstudied ; nobody, I think, had so much morality without con- straint, and played so much with amiable feelings without falling into vice. Her ingenious, lively, social disposition, gave the direction to her mental power. She has so filled my heart with affectionate interest in her as a living friend, that I can scarcely bring myself to think of her as a writer, or as having a style ; but she has become a celebrated, perhaps an immortal writer, without expecting it : she is the only classical writer who never conceived the possibility of acquiring fame. Without a great force of style, she could not have communicated those feelings. In what 292 LIFE AND LETTERS OF does that talent consist 1 It seems mainly to consist in the power of working bold metaphors, and unexpected turns of expression, out of the most familiar part of conversational language."* Sir James proceeds to give an interesting analysis of this kind of style, and the way in which it obtains ascendency in the most polished circles ; and all that he says of it is very true. But it seems to us, that the main secret of the "charm" of Madame de Sevigne is to be found neither in her ' natural virtue," nor in the style in which it expressed itself, but in something which interests us still more for our own sakes than the writer's, and which instinctively compelled her to adopt that style as its natural language. We doubt extremely, in the first place, whether any great "charm" is ever felt in the virtue, natural or other- wise, however it may be respected. Readers are glad, certainly, that the correctness of her reputation enabled her to write with so much gayety and bald- ness; and perhaps (without at all taking for granted what Bussy-Rabutin intimates about secret lovers) it gives a zest to certain freedoms in her conversation, which are by no means rare ; for she was anything but a prude. We are not sure that her character for personal correctness does not sometimes produce even an awkward impression, in connection with her rela- tions to the court and the mistresses ; though the man- ners of the day, and her superiority to sermonizing and hypocrisy, relieve it from one of a more painful nature. Certain, we are, however, that we should have liked her still better, had she manifested a power to love some- body else besides her children ; had she married again, for instance, instead of passing a long widowhood from * Memoirs of the Life of the Right Hon. Sir James Mackintosh. Sec. edit. vol. II. p. 217. MADAME DE SEVION&. 293 from her five-and-twentieth year, not, assuredly, out of devotion to her husband's memory. Such a mar- riage, we think, would have been quite as natural as any virtue she possessed. The only mention of her husband that we can recollect in all her correspond- ence, with the exception of the allusion to Ninon, is in the following date of a letter : " Paris, Friday, Feb. 5, 1672. This day thousand years I was married." We do not accuse her of heartlessness. We believe she had a very good heart. Probably, she liked to be her own mistress ; but this does not quite explain the matter in so loving a person. There were people in her own time who doubted the love for her daughter surely with great want of justice. But natural as that virtue was, and delightful as it is to see it, was the excess of it quite so natural ? or does a thorough intimacy with the letters confirm our belief in that excess ? It does not. The love was real and great ; but the secret of what appears to be its extravagance is, perhaps, to be found in the love of power ; or, not to speak harshly, in the inability of a fond mother to leave off her habits of guidance and dictation, and the sense of her importance to her child. Hence a fidgeti- ness on one side, which was too much allied to exac- tion and self-will, and a proportionate tendency to ill-concealed, and at last open impatience on the other. The demand for letters was not only incessant and avowed ; it was to be met with as zealous a desire, on the daughter's part, to supply them. If little is writ- ten, pray write more: if much, don't write so much for fear of headaches. If the headaches are complained of, what misery ! if not complained of, something worse and more cruel has taken place it is a con- 294 LIFE AND LETTERS OF cealment. Friends must take care how they speak of the daughter as too well and happy. The mother then brings to our mind the Falkland of Sheridan, and expresses her disgust at these " perfect-health folks." Even lovers tire under such surveillance: and as affections between mother and child, however beauti- ful, are not, in the nature of things, of a like measure of reciprocity, a similar result would have been looked for by the discerning eyes of Madame de Sevigne, had the case been any other than her own. But the tears of self-love mingle with those of love, and blind the kindest natures to the difference. It is too certain or, rather it is a fact which reduces the love to a good honest natural size, and therefore ought not, so far, to be lamented, that this fond mother and daughter, fond though they were, jangled sometimes, like their in- feriors, both when absent and present, leaving never- theless a large measure of affection to diffuse itself in joy and comfort over the rest of their intercourse. It is a common case, and we like neither of them a jot the less for it. We may only be allowed to repeat our wish (as Madame de Grignan must often have done) that the " dear Maria de Rabutin," as Sir James Mackintosh calls her, had had a second husband, to divert some of the responsibilities of affection from her daughter's head. Let us recollect, after all, that we should not have heard of the distress but for the affec- tion ; that millions who might think fit to throw stones at it, would in reality have no right to throw a pebble ; and that the wit which has rendered it immortal, is beautiful for every species of truth, but this single deficiency in self-knowledge. That is the great charm of Madame de Sevigne truth. Truth, wit, and animal spirits compose the se- MADAME DE sfiviGNfi. 295 cret of her delightfulness ; but truth above all, for it is that which shows all the rest to be true. If she had not more natural virtues than most other good people, she had more natural manners ; and the universality of her taste, and the vivacity of her spirits, giving her the widest range of enjoyment, she expressed herself naturally on all subjects, and did not disdain the sim- plest and most familiar phraseology, when the truth required it. Familiarities of style, taken by them- selves, have been common more or less to all wits, from the days of Aristophanes to those of Byron; and, in general, so have animal spirits. Rabelais was full of both. The followers of Pulci and Berni, in Italy, abound in them. What distinguishes Madame de Sevigne is, first, that she Was a woman so writing, which till her time had been a thing unknown, and has not been since witnessed in any such charming de- gree ; and second, and above all, that she writes " the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth ;" never giving us falsehood of any kind, not even a sin- gle false metaphor, or only half-true simile or descrip- tion ; nor writing for any purpose on earth, but to say what she felt, and please those who could feel with her. If we consider how few writers there are, even among the best, to whom this praise, in its integrity, can apply, we shall be struck, perhaps, with a little surprise and sorrow for the craft of authors in general ; but certainly with double admiration for Madame de Sevigne. We do not mean to say that she is always right in opinion, or that she had no party or conven- tional feelings. She entertained, for many years, some strong prejudices. She was bred up in so exclusive an admiration for the poetry of Corneille, that she thought Racine would go out of fashion. Her loyalty 296 LIFE AND LETTERS OF made her astonished to find that Louis was not invin- cible, and her connection with the Count de Grignan, who was employed in the dragonades against the Huguenots, led her but negatively to disapprove those inhuman absurdities. But these were accidents of friendship or education : her understanding outlived them ; nor did they hinder her, meantime, from de- scribing truthfully what she felt, and from being right as well as true in nine-tenths of it all. Her sincerity made even her errors a part of her truth. She never pretended to be above what she felt ; never assumed a profound knowledge ; never disguised an ignorance. Her mirth, and her descriptions, may sometimes ap- pear exaggerated ; but the spirit of truth, not of con- tradiction, is in them ; and excess in such cases is not falsehood but enjoyment not the wine adulterated, but the cup running over. All her wit is healthy ; all its images entire and applicable throughout not palsy- stricken with irrelevance ; not forced in, and then found wanting, like Walpole's conceit about the trees, in the passage above quoted. Madame de Sevigne never wrote such a passage in her life. All her lightest and most fanciful images, all her most daring expres- sions, have the strictest propriety, the most genuine feeling, a home in the heart of truth ; as when, for example, she says, amidst continual feasting, that she is " famished for want of hunger ;" that there were no " interlineations," in the conversation of a lady who spoke from the heart ; that she went to vespers one evening out of pure opposition, which taught her to comprehend the " sacred obstinacy of martyrdom ;" that she did not keep a " philosopher's shop ;" that it is difficult for people in trouble to " bear thunder- claps of bliss in others." It is the same thing from MADAME DE S^VIGNlS. 297 the first letter we have quoted to the last ; from the proud and merry boasting of the young mother with a boy, to the candid shudder about the approach of old age, and the refusal of death to grant a moment to the dying statesman- " no, not a single moment." 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