Chapter 3 BEAUTIES AND POETS.

Nearly contemporary with Waller's Sacharissa lived several women of high rank, distinguished as munificent patronesses of poetry, and favourite themes of poets, for the time being. There was the Countess of Pembroke, celebrated by Ben Jonson,

The subject of all verse,

Sydney's sister, Pembroke's mother.

There was the famous Lucy Percy, Countess of Carlisle, very clever, and very fantastic, who aspired to be the Aspasia, the De Rambouillet of her day, and did not quite succeed. She was celebrated by almost all the contemporary poets, and even in French, by Voiture. There was Lucy Harrington, Countess of Bedford, who, notwithstanding the accusation of vanity and extravagance which has been brought against her, was an amiable woman, and munificently rewarded, in presents and pensions, the incense of the poets around her. I know not what her Ladyship may have paid for the following exquisite lines by Ben Jonson; but the reader will agree with me, that it could not have been too much.

ON LUCY COUNTESS OF BEDFORD.

This morning, timely rapt with holy fire,

I thought to form unto my zealous muse

What kind of creature I could most desire

To honour, serve, and love; as poets use:

I meant to make her fair, and free, and wise,

Of greatest blood, and yet more good than great.

I meant the day-star should not brighter rise,

Nor lend like influence from his ancient seat.

I meant she should be courteous, facile, sweet,

Hating that solemn vice of greatness, pride;

I meant each softest virtue there should meet,

Fit in that softer bosom to reside.

Only a learned, and a manly soul

I purpos'd her; that should, with even powers,

The rock, the spindle, and the sheers controul

Of destiny, and spin her own free hours.

Such when I meant to feign, and wished to see,

My muse bade Bedford write,-and that was she.

There was also the "beautiful and every way excellent" Lady Anne Rich,[11] the daughter-in-law of her who was so loved by Sir Philip Sydney; and the memorable and magnificent-but somewhat masculine-Anne Clifford, Countess of Cumberland, Pembroke, and Dorset, who erected monuments to Spenser, Drayton, and Daniel; and above them all, though living a little later, the Queen herself, Henrietta Maria, whose feminine caprices, French graces, and brilliant eyes, rendered her a very splendid and fruitful theme for the poets of the time.[12]

There was at this time a kind of traffic between rich beauties and poor poets. The ladies who, in earlier ages, were proud in proportion to the quantity of blood spilt in honour of their charms, were now seized with a passion for being berhymed. Surrey, and his Geraldine, began this taste in England by introducing the school of Petrarch: and Sir Philip Sydney had entreated women to listen to those poets who promised them immortality,-"For thus doing, ye shall be most fair, most wise, most rich, most every thing!-ye shall dwell upon superlatives:"[13] and women believed accordingly. In spite of the satirist, I do maintain, that the love of praise and the love of pleasing are paramount in our sex, both to the love of pleasure and the love of sway.

This connection between the high-born beauties and the poets was at first delightful, and honourable to both: but, in time, it became degraded and abused. The fees paid for dedications, odes, and sonnets, were any thing but sentimental:-can we wonder if, under such circumstances, the profession of a poet "was connected with personal abasement, which made it disreputable?"[14] or, that women, while they required the tribute, despised those who paid it,-and were paid for it?-not in sweet looks, soft smiles, and kind wishes, but with silver and gold, a cover at her ladyship's table "below the salt," or a bottle of sack from my lord's cellar. It followed, as a thing of course, that our amatory and lyric poetry declined, and instead of the genuine rapture of tenderness, the glow of imagination, and all "the purple light of love," we have too often only a heap of glittering and empty compliment and metaphysical conceits.-It was a miserable state of things.

It must be confessed that the aspiring loves of some of our poets have not proved auspicious even when successful. Dryden married Lady Elizabeth Howard, the daughter of the Earl of Berkshire: but not "all the blood of all the Howards" could make her either wise or amiable: he had better have married a milkmaid. She was weak in intellect, and violent in temper. Sir Walter Scott observes, very feelingly, that "The wife of one who is to gain his livelihood by poetry, or by any labour (if any there be,) equally exhausting, must either have taste enough to relish her husband's performances, or good nature sufficient to pardon his infirmities." It was Dryden's misfortune, that Lady Elizabeth had neither one nor the other.

Of all our really great poets, Dryden is the one least indebted to woman, and to whom, in return, women are least indebted: he is almost devoid of sentiment in the true meaning of the word.-"His idea of the female character was low;" his homage to beauty was not of that kind which beauty should be proud to receive.[15] When he attempted the praise of women, it was in a strain of fulsome, far-fetched, laboured adulation, which betrayed his insincerity; but his genius was at home when we were the subject of licentious tales and coarse satire.

It was through this inherent want of refinement and true respect for our sex, that he deformed Boccaccio's lovely tale of Gismunda; and as the Italian novelist has sins enough of his own to answer for, Dryden might have left him the beauties of this tender story, unsullied by the profane coarseness of his own taste. In his tragedies, his heroines on stilts, and his drawcansir heroes, whine, rant, strut and rage, and tear passion to tatters-to very rags; but love, such as it exists in gentle, pure, unselfish bosoms-love, such as it glows in the pages of Shakspeare and Spenser, Petrarch and Tasso,-such love

As doth become mortality

Glancing at heaven,

he could not imagine or appreciate, far less express or describe. He could pourtray a Cleopatra; but he could not conceive a Juliet. His ideas of our sex seem to have been formed from a profligate actress,[16] and a silly, wayward, provoking wife; and we have avenged ourselves,-for Dryden is not the poet of women; and, of all our English classics, is the least honoured in a lady's library.

Dryden was the original of the famous repartee to be found, I believe, in every jest book: shortly after his marriage, Lady Elizabeth, being rather annoyed at her husband's very studious habits, wished herself a book, that she might have a little more of his attention.-"Yes, my dear," replied Dryden, "an almanack."-"Why an almanack?" asked the wife innocently.-"Because then, my dear, I should change you once a year." The laugh, of course, is on the side of the wit; but Lady Elizabeth was a young spoiled beauty of rank, married to a man she loved; and her wish, methinks, was very feminine and natural: if it was spoken with petulance and bitterness, it deserved the repartee; if with tenderness and playfulness, the wit of the reply can scarcely excuse its ill-nature.

Addison married the Countess of Warwick. Poor man! I believe his patrician bride did every thing but beat him. His courtship had been long, timid, and anxious; and at length, the lady was persuaded to marry him, on terms much like those on which a Turkish Princess is espoused, to whom the Sultan is reported to pronounce, "Daughter, I give thee this man to be thy slave."[17] They were only three years married, and those were years of bitterness.

Young, the author of the Night Thoughts, married Lady Elizabeth Lee, the daughter of the Earl of Litchfield, and grand-daughter of the too famous, or more properly, infamous Duchess of Cleveland:-the marriage was not a happy one. I think, however, in the two last instances, the ladies were not entirely to blame.

But these, it will be said, are the wives of poets, not the loves of the poets; and the phrases are not synonymus,-au contraire. This is a question to be asked and examined; and I proceed to examine it accordingly. But as I am about to take the field on new ground, it will require a new chapter.

FOOTNOTES:

[11] Daughter of the first Earl of Devonshire, of the Cavendish family. She was celebrated by Sidney Godolphin in some very sweet lines, which contain a lovely female portrait. Waller's verses on her sudden death are remarkable for a signal instance of the Bathos,

That horrid word, at once like lightning spread,

Struck all our ears,-the Lady Rich is dead!

[12] See Waller, Carew, D'Avenant: the latter has paid her some exquisite compliments.

[13] Sir Philip Sydney's Works, "Defence of Poesie."

[14] Scott's Life of Dryden, p. 89.

[15] With the exception of the dedication of his Palamon and Arcite to the young and beautiful Duchess of Ormonde (Lady Anne Somerset, daughter of the Duke of Beaufort.)

[16] Mrs. Reeves, his mistress: she afterwards became a nun.

[17] Johnson's Life of Addison.

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