The Romance of Biography (Vol 2 of 2)

From the reign of Charles the First may be dated that revolution in the spirit and form of our lyric poetry, which led to its subsequent degradation. The first Italian school of poetry, to which we owed our Surreys, our Spensers, and our Miltons, had now declined. The high contemplative tone of passion, the magnanimous and chivalrous homage paid to women, gradually gave way before the French taste and French gallantry, introduced, or at least encouraged and rendered fashionable, by Henrietta Maria and her gay household.

The muse of amatory poetry (I presume there is such a Muse, though I know not to which of the Nine the title properly applies,) no longer walked the earth star-crowned and vestal-robed, "col dir pien d'intelletti, dolci ed alti,"-"with love upon her lips, and looks commercing with the skies;"-she suited her garb to the fashion of the times, and tripped along in guise of an Arcadian princess, half regal, half pastoral, trailing a sheep-hook crowned with flowers, and sparkling with foreign ornaments,

Pale glistering pearls and rainbow-coloured gems.

Then in the "brisk and giddy paced times" of Charles the Second, she flaunted an airy coquette, or an unblushing courtezan, ("unveiled her eyes-unclasped her zone;") and when these sinful doings were banished, she took the hue of the new morals-new fashions-new manners,-and we find her a court prude, swimming in a hoop and red-heeled shoes, "conscious of the rich brocade," and ogling behind her fan; or else in the opposite extreme, like a bergère in a French ballet, stuck over with sentimental common-places and artificial flowers.

This, in general terms, was the progress of the lyric muse, from the poets of Queen Elizabeth's days down to the wits of Queen Anne's. Of course, there are modifications and exceptions, which will suggest themselves to the poetical reader; but it does not enter into the plan of this sketch to treat matters thus critically and profoundly. To return then to the days of Charles the First.

It must be confessed that the union of Italian sentiment and imagination with French vivacity and gallantry, was, in the commencement, exceedingly graceful, before all poetry was lost in wit, and gallantry sunk into licentiousness.

Carew, one of the first who distinguished himself in this style, has been most unaccountably eclipsed by the reputation of Waller, and deserved better than to have had his name hitched into line between Sprat and Sedley;

Sprat, Carew, Sedley, and a hundred more.[1]

As an amatory poet, he is far superior to Waller: he had equal smoothness and fancy, and much more variety, tenderness, and earnestness; if his love was less ambitiously, and even less honourably placed, it was, at least, more deep seated, and far more fervent. The real name of the lady he has celebrated under the poetical appellation of Celia, is not known-it is only certain that she was no "fabled fair,"-and that his love was repaid with falsehood.

Hard fate! to have been once possessed

As victor of a heart,

Achieved with labour and unrest,

And then forced to depart!

From the irregular habits of Carew, it is possible he might have set the example of inconstancy; and yet this is but a poor excuse for her.

Carew spent his life in the Court of Charles the First, who admired and loved him for his wit and amiable manners, though he reproved his libertinage. In the midst of that dissipation, which has polluted some of his poems, he was full of high poetic feeling, and a truly generous lover: for even while he wooes his fair one in the most soul-moving terms of flowery adulation and tender entreaty, he puts her on her guard against his own arts, and thus sweetly pleads against himself;

Rather let the lover pine,

Than his pale cheek should assign

A perpetual blush to thine!

And his admiration of female chastity is elsewhere frequently, as well as forcibly, expressed.-With all his elegance and tenderness, Carew is never feeble; and in his laments there is nothing whining or unmanly. After lavishing at the feet of his mistress the most passionate devotion, and the most exquisite flattery, hear him rebuke her pride with all the spirit of an offended poet!

Know, Celia! since thou art so proud,

'Twas I that gave thee thy renown;

Thou hadst in the forgotten crowd

Of common beauties, lived unknown,

Had not my verse exhaled thy name,

And with it impt the wings of fame.

That killing power is none of thine,

I gave it to thy voice and eyes,

Thy sweets, thy graces, all are mine.

Thou art my star-shin'st in my skies;

Then dart not from thy borrowed sphere

Light'ning on him, who fixed thee there.

The identity of his Celia is now lost in a name,-and she deserves it: perhaps had she appreciated the love she inspired, and been true to that she professed, she might have won her elegant lover back to virtue, and wreathed her fame with his for ever. Disappointed in the object of his idolatry, Carew plunged madly into pleasure, and thus hastened his end. He died, as Clarendon tells us, with "deep remorse for his past excesses, and every manifestation of Christianity his best friends could desire."

Besides his Celia, Carew has celebrated several other ladies of the Court, and particularly Lady Mary Villars; the Countess of Anglesea; Lady Carlisle, the theme of all the poets of her age, and her lovely daughter, Lady Anne Hay, on whom he wrote an elegy, which begins with some lines never surpassed in harmony and tenderness.

I heard the virgin's sigh! I saw the sleek

And polish'd courtier channel his fresh cheek

With real tears; the new betrothed maid

Smil'd not that day; the graver senate laid

Their business by; of all the courtly throng

Grief seal'd the heart, and silence bound the tongue!

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

We will not bathe thy corpse with a forc'd tear,

Nor shall thy train borrow the blacks they wear;

Such vulgar spice and gums embalm not thee,

That art the theme of Truth, not Poetry.

Here Carew has fallen into the vulgar error, that poetry and fiction are synonymous.

Lady Anne Wentworth,[2] daughter of the first Earl of Cleveland, who, after making terrible havoc in the heart of the Lord Chief Justice Finch, married Lord Lovelace, is another of Carew's fair heroines. For her marriage he wrote the epithalamium,

Break not the slumbers of the bride, &c.

As Carew is not a popular poet, nor often found in a lady's library, I add a few extracts of peculiar beauty.

TO CELIA.

Ask me no more where Jove bestows,

When June is past, the fading rose;

For in your beauties orient dee

Those flowers as in their causes sleep.

Ask me no more, whither do stray

The golden atoms of the day;

For in pure love, Heaven did prepare

Those powders to enrich your hair.

Ask me no more, whither doth haste

The nightingale, when May is past;

For in your sweet dividing throat

She winters, and keeps warm her note.

Ask me no more, where those stars light

That downwards fall in dead of night;

For in your eyes they sit-and there

Fix'd become, as in their sphere.

Ask me no more, if east or west,

The ph?nix builds her spicy nest;

For unto you at last she flies,

And in your fragrant bosom dies.

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

Ladies, fly from Love's smooth tale,

Oaths steep'd in tears do oft prevail;

Grief is infectious, and the air,

Inflam'd with sighs, will blast the fair:

Then stop your ears when lovers cry,

Lest yourself weep, when no soft eye

Shall with a sorrowing tear repay

That pity which you cast away.

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

And when thou breath'st, the winds are ready straight

To filch it from thee; and do therefore wait

Close at thy lips, and snatching it from thence,

Bear it to heaven, where 'tis Jove's frankincense.

Fair goddess, since thy feature makes thee one,

Yet be not such for these respects alone;

But as you are divine in outward view,

So be within as fair, as good, as true.

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

Hark! how the bashful morn in vain

Courts the amorous marigold

With sighing blasts and weeping vain;

Yet she refuses to unfold.

But when the planet of the day

Approacheth with his powerful ray,

Then she spreads, then she receives,

His warmer beams into her virgin leaves.

So shalt thou thrive in love, fond boy;

If thy tears and sighs discover

Thy grief, thou never shalt enjoy

The just reward of a bold lover:

But when with moving accents thou

Shall constant faith and service vow,

Thy Celia shall receive those charms

With open ears, and with unfolded arms.

The gallant and accomplished Colonel Lovelace was, I believe, a relation of the Lord Lovelace who married Lady Anne Wentworth, and the friend and contemporary of Carew. His fate and history would form the groundwork of a romance; and in his person and character he was formed to be the hero of one. He was as fearlessly brave as a knight-errant; so handsome in person, that he could not appear without inspiring admiration; a polished courtier; an elegant scholar; and to crown all, a lover and a poet. He wrote a volume of poems, dedicated to the praises of Lucy Sacheverel, with whom he had exchanged vows of everlasting love. Her poetical appellation, according to the affected taste of the day, was Lucasta. When the civil wars broke out, Lovelace devoted his life and fortunes to the service of the King; and on joining the army, he wrote that beautiful song to his mistress, which has been so often quoted,-

Tell me not, sweet, I am unkind,

That from the nunnery

Of thy chaste breast and quiet mind

To war and arms I fly.

True, a new mistress now I chase,

The first foe in the field;

And with a stronger faith embrace

A sword, a horse, a shield.

Yet this inconstancy is such

As you too shall adore;

I could not love thee, dear! so much,

Lov'd I not honour more.

The rest of his life was a series of the most cruel misfortunes. He was imprisoned on account of his enthusiastic and chivalrous loyalty; but no dungeon could subdue his buoyant spirit. His song "to Althea from Prison," is full of grace and animation, and breathes the very soul of love and honour.

When Love, with unconfined wings,

Hovers within my gates,

And my divine Althea brings

To whisper at the grates;

When I lie tangled in her hair,

And fettered to her eye,

The birds that wanton in the air,

Know no such liberty.

Stone walls do not a prison make,

Nor iron bars a cage;

Minds innocent and quiet take

That for a hermitage.

If I have freedom in my love,

And in my soul am free,-

Angels alone that soar above

Enjoy such liberty.

Lovelace afterwards commanded a regiment at the siege of Dunkirk, where he was severely, and, as it was supposed, mortally wounded. False tidings of his death were brought to England; and when he returned, he found his Lucy ("O most wicked haste!") married to another; it was a blow he never recovered. He had spent nearly his whole patrimony in the King's service, and now became utterly reckless. After wandering about London in obscurity and penury, dissipating his scanty resources in riot with his brother cavaliers, and in drinking the health of the exiled King and confusion to Cromwell, this idol of women and envy of men,-the beautiful, brave, high-born, and accomplished Lovelace, died miserably in a little lodging in Shoe Lane. He was only in his thirty-ninth year.

The mother of Lucy Sacheverel was Lucy, daughter of Sir Henry Hastings, ancestor to the present Marquis of Hastings. How could she so belie her noble blood? I would excuse her were it possible, for she must have been a fine creature to have inspired and appreciated such a sentiment as that contained in the first song; but facts cry aloud against her. Her plighted hand was not transferred to another, when time had sanctified and mellowed regret; but with a cruel and unfeminine precipitancy. Since then her lover has bequeathed her name to immortality, he is sufficiently avenged. Let her stand forth condemned and scorned for ever, as faithless, heartless,-light as air, false as water, and rash as fire.-I abjure her.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Pope.

[2] The only daughter of this Lady Anne Wentworth, married Sir W. Noel, and was the ancestress of Lady Byron, the widow of the poet.

* * *

The courtly Waller, like the lady in the Maids' Tragedy, loved with his ambition,-not with his eyes; still less with his heart. A critic, in designating the poets of that time, says truly that "Waller still lives in Sacharissa:" he lives in her name more than she does in his poetry; he gave that name a charm and a celebrity which has survived the admiration his verses inspired, and which has assisted to preserve them and himself from oblivion. If Sacharissa had not been a real and an interesting object, Waller's poetical praises had died with her, and she with them.

He wants earnestness; his lines were not inspired by love, and they give "no echo to the seat where love is throned." Instead of passion and poetry, we have gallantry and flattery; gallantry, which was beneath the dignity of its object; and flattery, which was yet more superfluous,-it was painting the lily and throwing perfume on the violet.

Waller's Sacharissa was the Lady Dorothea Sydney, the eldest daughter of the Earl of Leicester, and born in 1620. At the time he thought fit to make her the object of his homage, she was about eighteen, beautiful, accomplished, and admired. Waller was handsome, rich, a wit, and five-and-twenty. He had ever an excellent opinion of himself, and a prudent care of his worldly interests. He was a great poet, in days when Spenser was forgotten, Milton neglected, and Pope unborn. He began by addressing to her the lines on her picture,

Such was Philoclea and such Dorus' flame.[3]

Then we have the poems written at Penshurst,-in this strain,-

Ye lofty beeches! tell this matchless dame,

That if together ye fed all one flame,

It could not equalise the hundredth part

Of what her eyes have kindled in my heart, &c.

The lady was content to be the theme of a fashionable poet: but when he presumed farther, she crushed all hopes with the most undisguised aversion and disdain: thereupon he rails,-thus-

To thee a wild and cruel soul is given,

More deaf than trees, and prouder than the heaven;

Love's foe profest! why dost thou falsely feign

Thyself a Sydney? From which noble strain

He sprung that could so far exalt the name

Of love, and warm a nation with his flame.[4]

His mortified vanity turned for consolation to Amoret, (Lady Sophia Murray,) the intimate companion of Sacharissa. He describes the friendship between these two beautiful girls very gracefully.

Tell me, lovely, loving pair!

Why so kind, and so severe?

Why so careless of our care

Only to yourselves so dear?

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

Not the silver doves that fly

Yoked to Cytherea's car;

Not the wings that lift so high,

And convey her son so far,

Are so lovely, sweet and fair,

Or do more ennoble love,

Are so choicely matched a pair,

Or with more consent do move.

And they are very beautifully contrasted in the lines to Amoret-

If sweet Amoret complains,

I have sense of all her pains;

But for Sacharissa, I

Do not only grieve, but die!

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

'Tis amazement more than love,

Which her radiant eyes do move;

If less splendour wait on thine,

Yet they so benignly shine,

I would turn my dazzled sight

To behold their milder light.

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

Amoret! as sweet and good

As the most delicious food,

Which but tasted does impart

Life and gladness to the heart.

Sacharissa's beauty's wine,

Which to madness doth incline,

Such a liquor as no brain

That is mortal, can sustain.

But Lady Sophia, though of a softer disposition, and not carrying in her mild eyes the scornful and destructive light which sparkled in those of Sacharissa, was not to be "berhymed" into love any more than her fair friend. She applauded, but she repelled; she smiled, but she was cold. Waller consoled himself by marrying a city widow, worth thirty thousand pounds.

The truth is, that with all his wit and his elegance of fancy, of which there are some inimitable examples,-as the application of the story of Daphne, and of the fable of the wounded eagle; the lines on Sacharissa's girdle; the graceful little song, "Go, lovely Rose," to which I need only allude, and many others,-Waller has failed in convincing us of his sincerity. As Rosalind says, "Cupid might have clapped him on the shoulder, but we could warrant him heart-whole." All along our sympathy is rather with the proud beauty, than with the irritable self-complacent poet. Sacharissa might have been proud, but she was not arrogant; her manners were gentle and retiring; and her disposition rather led her to shun than to seek publicity and admiration.

Such cheerful modesty, such humble state,

Moves certain love, but with as doubtful fate;

As when beyond our greedy reach, we see

Inviting fruit on too sublime a tree.[5]

The address to Sacharissa's femme-de-chambre, beginning, "Fair fellow-servant," is not to be compared with Tasso's ode to the Countess of Scandiano's maid, but contains some most elegant lines.

You the soft season know, when best her mind

May be to pity, or to love inclined:

In some well-chosen hour supply his fear,

Whose hopeless love durst never tempt the ear

Of that stern goddess; you, her priest, declare

What offerings may propitiate the fair:

Rich orient pearl, bright stones that ne'er decay,

Or polished lines, that longer last than they.

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

But since her eyes, her teeth, her lip excels

All that is found in mines or fishes' shells,

Her nobler part as far exceeding these,

None but immortal gifts her mind should please.

These lines impress us with the image of a very imperious and disdainful beauty; yet such was not the character of Sacharissa's person or mind.[6] Nor is it necessary to imagine her such, to account for her rejection of Waller, and her indifference to his flattery. There was a meanness about the man: he wanted not birth alone, but all the high and generous qualities which must have been required to recommend him to a woman, who, with the blood and the pride of the Sydneys, inherited their large heart and noble spirit. We are not surprised when she turned from the poet to give her hand to Henry Spencer, Earl of Sunderland, one of the most interesting and heroic characters of that time. He was then only nineteen, and she was about the same age. This marriage was celebrated with great splendour at Penshurst, July 30, 1639.

Waller, who had professed that his hope

Should ne'er rise higher

Than for a pardon that he dared admire,

pressed forward with his congratulations in verse and prose, and wrote the following letter, full of pleasant imprecations, to Lady Lucy Sydney, the younger sister of Sacharissa. It will be allowed that it argues more wit and good nature than love or sorrow; and that he was resolved that the willow should sit as gracefully and lightly on his brow, as the myrtle or the bays.

"To my Lady Lucy Sydney, on the marriage of my Lady Dorothea, her Sister.

"Madam.-In this common joy, at Penshurst, I know none to whom complaints may come less unseasonable than to your Ladyship,-the loss of a bedfellow being almost equal to that of a mistress; and therefore you ought, at least, to pardon, if you consent not to the imprecations of the deserted, which just Heaven, no doubt, will hear.

"May my Lady Dorothea, if we may yet call her so, suffer as much, and have the like passion, for this young Lord, whom she has preferred to the rest of mankind, as others have had for her; and may this love, before the year come about, make her taste of the first curse imposed on womankind-the pains of becoming a mother. May her first-born be none of her own sex, nor so like her, but that he may resemble her Lord as much as herself.

"May she, that always affected silence and retiredness, have the house filled with the noise and number of her children, and hereafter of her grand-children, and then may she arrive at that great curse, so much declined by fair ladies,-old age. May she live to be very old, and yet seem young-be told so by her glass-and have no aches to inform her of the truth: and when she shall appear to be mortal, may her Lord not mourn for her, but go hand-in-hand with her to that place, where, we are told, there is neither marrying nor giving in marriage, that being there divorced, we may all have an equal interest in her again. My revenge being immortal, I wish that all this may also befall their posterity to the world's end and afterwards.

"To you, Madam, I wish all good things, and that this loss may, in good time, be happily supplied with a more constant bedfellow of the other sex.

"Madam, I humbly kiss your hands, and beg pardon for this trouble from your Ladyship's most humble Servant,

E. WALLER."

Lady Sunderland had been married about three years; she and her youthful husband lived in the tenderest union, and she was already the happy mother of two fair infants, a son and a daughter,-when the civil wars broke out, and Lord Sunderland followed the King to the field. In the Sydney papers are some beautiful letters to his wife, written from the camp before Oxford. The last of these, which is in a strain of playful and affectionate gaiety, thus concludes,-"Pray bless Poppet for me![7] and tell her I would have wrote to her, but that, upon mature deliberation, I found it uncivil to return an answer to a lady in another character than her own, which I am not yet learned enough to do.-I beseech you to present his service to my Lady,[8] who is most passionately and perfectly yours, &c.

"SUNDERLAND."

Three days afterwards this tender and gallant heart had ceased to beat: he was killed in the battle of Newbury, at the age of three-and-twenty. His unhappy wife, on hearing the news of his death, was prematurely taken ill, and delivered of an infant, which died almost immediately after its birth. She recovered, however, from a dangerous and protracted illness, through the affectionate and unceasing attentions of her mother, Lady Leicester, who never quitted her for several months. Her father wrote her a letter of condolence, which would serve as a model for all letters on similar occasions. "I know," he says, "that it is to no purpose to advise you not to grieve; that is not my intention: for such a loss as yours, cannot be received indifferently by a nature so tender and sensible as yours," &c. After touching lightly and delicately on the obvious sources of consolation, he reminds her, that her duty to the dead requires her to be careful of herself, and not hazard her very existence by the indulgence of grief. "You offend him whom you loved, if you hurt that person whom he loved; remember how apprehensive he was of your danger, how grieved for any thing that troubled you! I know you lived happily together, so as nobody but yourself could measure the contentment of it. I rejoiced at it, and did thank God for making me one of the means to procure it for you," &c.[9]

Those who have known deep sorrow, and felt what it is to shrink with shattered nerves and a wounded spirit from the busy hand of consolation, fretting where it cannot heal, will appreciate such a letter as this.

Lady Sunderland, on her recovery, retired from the world, and centering all her affections in her children, seemed to live only for them. She resided, after her widowhood, at Althorpe, where she occupied herself with improving the house and gardens. The fine hall and staircase of that noble seat, which are deservedly admired for their architectural beauty, were planned and erected by her. After the lapse of about thirteen years, her father, Lord Leicester, prevailed on her to choose one from among the numerous suitors who sought her hand: he dreaded, lest on his death, she should be left unprotected, with her infant children, in those evil times; and she married, in obedience to his wish, Sir Robert Smythe, of Sutton, who was her second cousin, and had long been attached to her. She lived to see her eldest son, the second Earl of Sunderland, a man of transcendant talents, but versatile principles, at the head of the government, and had the happiness to close her eyes before he had abused his admirable abilities, to the vilest purposes of party and court intrigue. The Earl was appointed principal Secretary of State in 1682: his mother died in 1683.

There is a fine portrait of Sacharissa at Blenheim, of which there are many engravings. It must have been painted by Vandyke, shortly after her marriage, and before the death of her husband. If the withered branch, to which she is pointing, be supposed to allude to her widowhood, it must have been added afterwards, as Vandyke died in 1641, and Lord Sunderland in 1643. In the gallery at Althorpe, there are three pictures of this celebrated woman. One represents her in a hat, and at the age of fifteen or sixteen, gay, girlish, and blooming: the second, far more interesting, was painted about the time of her first marriage: it is exceedingly sweet and lady-like. The features are delicate, with redundant light brown air, and eyes and eyebrows of a darker hue; the bust and hands very exquisite: on the whole, however, the high breeding of the face and air is more conspicuous than the beauty of the person. These two portraits are by Vandyke; nor ought I to forget to mention that the painter himself was supposed to have indulged a respectful but ardent passion for Lady Sunderland, and to have painted her portrait literally con amore.[10]

A third picture represents her about the time of her second marriage: the expression wholly changed,-cold, faded, sad, but still sweet-looking and delicate. One might fancy her contemplating with a sick heart, the portrait of Lord Sunderland, the lover and husband of her early youth, and that of her unfortunate but celebrated brother, Algernon Sydney; both which hang on the opposite side of the gallery.

The present Duke of Marlborough, and the present Earl Spencer, are the lineal descendants of Waller's Sacharissa.

One little incident, somewhat prosaic indeed, proves how little heart there was in Waller's poetical attachment to this beautiful and admirable woman. When Lady Sunderland, after a retirement of thirty years, re-appeared in the court she had once adorned, she met Waller at Lady Wharton's, and addressing him with a smiling courtesy, she reminded him of their youthful days:-"When," said she, "will you write such fine verses on me again?"-"Madam," replied Waller, "when your Ladyship is young and handsome again." This was contemptible and coarse,-the sentiment was not that of a well-bred or a feeling man, far less that of a lover or a poet,-no!

Love is not love,

That alters where it alteration finds.

One would think that the sight of a woman, whom he had last seen in the full bloom of youth and glow of happiness,-who had endured, since they parted, such extremity of affliction, as far more than avenged his wounded vanity, might have awakened some tender thoughts, and called forth a gentler reply. When some one expressed surprise to Petrarch, that Laura, no longer young, had still power to charm and inspire him, he answered, "Piaga per allentar d'arco non sana,"-"The wound is not healed though the bow be unbent." This was in a finer spirit.

Something in the same character, as his reply to Lady Sunderland, was Waller's famous repartee, when Charles the Second told him that his lines on Oliver Cromwell were better than those written on his royal self. "Please your Majesty, we poets succeed better in fiction than in truth." Nothing could be more admirably apropos, more witty, more courtier-like: it was only false, and in a poor, time-serving spirit. It showed as much meanness of soul as presence of mind. What true poet, who felt as a poet, would have said this?

FOOTNOTES:

[3] Alluding to the two heroines of Sir Philip Sydney's Arcadia; Sacharissa was the grandniece of that preux chevalier, and hence the frequent allusions to his name and fame.

[4] Alluding to Sir Philip Sydney.

[5] Lines on her picture.

[6] Sacharissa, the poetical name Waller himself gave her, signifies sweetness.

[7] His infant daughter, then about two years old, afterwards Marchioness of Halifax.

[8] The Countess's mother, Lady Leicester, who was then with her at Althorpe.

[9] Sydney's Memorials, vol. ii. p. 271.

[10] See State Poems, vol. iii. p. 396.

* * *

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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