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+Project Gutenberg's The Romance of Biography (Vol 1 of 2), by Anna Jameson
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Romance of Biography (Vol 1 of 2)
+       or Memoirs of Women Loved and Celebrated by Poets, from
+       the Days of the Troubadours to the Present Age. 3rd ed.
+       2 Vols.
+
+Author: Anna Jameson
+
+Release Date: February 24, 2011 [EBook #35382]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ROMANCE OF BIOGRAPHY (VOL 1 OF 2) ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Julia Miller, Josephine Paolucci and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net. (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: _T. Wright. sc._
+
+ARIOSTO READING HIS VERSES TO ALESSANDRA STROZZI.]
+
+
+_London, Published by H. Colburn, 1829._
+
+
+
+
+THE LOVES OF THE POETS.
+
+VOL. I.
+
+
+LONDON:
+PRINTED BY S. AND R. BENTLEY,
+Dorset Street, Fleet Street.
+
+
+
+
+THE ROMANCE OF BIOGRAPHY;
+
+OR
+
+MEMOIRS OF WOMEN LOVED AND CELEBRATED BY POETS,
+
+FROM
+
+THE DAYS OF THE TROUBADOURS TO THE PRESENT AGE;
+
+A SERIES OF ANECDOTES INTENDED TO ILLUSTRATE THE INFLUENCE WHICH FEMALE
+BEAUTY AND VIRTUE HAVE EXERCISED OVER THE CHARACTERS AND WRITINGS OF MEN
+OF GENIUS.
+
+BY MRS. JAMESON,
+
+_Authoress of the Diary of an Ennuyée; Lives of Celebrated Female
+Sovereigns; Female Characters of Shakspeare's Plays; Beauties of the
+Court of Charles the Second, &c._
+
+THIRD EDITION,
+IN TWO VOLUMES.
+VOL. I.
+
+LONDON:
+SAUNDERS AND OTLEY.
+
+MDCCCXXXVII.
+
+
+Enfin, relevons-nous sous le poids de l'existence; ne donnons pas à nos
+injustes ennemis, à nos amis ingrats, le triomphe d'avoir abattu nos
+facultés intellectuelles. Ils reduisent à chercher la celèbrité ceux qui
+se seraient contentés des affections: eh bien! il faut l'atteindre. Ces
+essais ambitieux ne porteront point remède aux peines de l'âme; mais ils
+honoreront la vie. La consacrer à l'espoir toujours trompé du bonheur,
+c'est la rendre encore plus infortunée. Il vaut mieux réunir tous ses
+efforts pour descendre avec quelque noblesse, avec quelque réputation,
+la route qui conduit de la jeunesse à la mort.
+
+                    MADAME DE STAËL.
+
+
+
+
+THE AUTHOR TO THE READER.
+
+
+These little sketches (they can pretend to no higher title,) are
+submitted to the public with a feeling of timidity almost painful.
+
+They are absolutely without any other pretension than that of
+exhibiting, in a small compass and under one point of view, many
+anecdotes of biography and criticism, and many beautiful poetical
+portraits, scattered through a variety of works, and all tending to
+illustrate a subject in itself full of interest,--the influence which
+the beauty and virtue of women have exercised over the characters and
+writings of men of genius. But little praise or reputation attends the
+mere compiler, but the pleasure of the task has compensated its
+difficulty;--"song, beauty, youth, love, virtue, joy," these "flowers of
+Paradise," whose growth is not of earth, were all around me; I had but
+to gather them from the intermingling weeds and briars, and to bind them
+into one sparkling wreath, consecrated to the glory of women and the
+gallantry of men.
+
+The design which unfolded itself before me, as these little sketches
+extended gradually from a few memoranda into volumes, is not completed;
+much has been omitted, much suppressed. If I have paused midway in my
+task, it is not for want of materials, which offer themselves in almost
+exhaustless profusion--nor from want of interest in the subject--the
+most delightful in which the imagination ever revelled! but because I
+desponded over my own power to do it justice. I know, I feel that it
+required more extensive knowledge of languages, more matured judgment,
+more critical power, more eloquence;--only Madame de Staël could have
+fulfilled my conception of the style in which it ought to have been
+treated. It was enthusiasm, not presumption, which induced me to attempt
+it. I have touched on matters, on which there are a variety of tastes
+and opinions, and lightly passed over questions on which there are
+volumes of grave "historic doubts;" but I have ventured on no
+discussion, still less on any decision. I have been satisfied merely to
+quote my authorities; and where these exhibited many opposing facts and
+opinions, it seemed to me that there was far more propriety and much
+less egotism in simply expressing, in the first person, what I thought
+and felt, than in asserting absolutely that a thing _is so_, or _is said
+to be so_. Every one has a right to have an opinion, and deliver it with
+modesty; but no one has a right to clothe such opinions in general
+assertions, and in terms which seem to insinuate that they are or ought
+to be universal. I know I am open to criticism and contradiction on a
+thousand points; but I have adhered strictly to what appeared to me the
+truth, and examined conscientiously all the sources of information that
+were open to me.
+
+The history of this little book, were it worth revealing, would be the
+history, in miniature, of most human undertakings: it was begun with
+enthusiasm; it has been interrupted by intervals of illness, idleness,
+or more serious cares; it has been pursued through difficulties so
+great, that they would perhaps excuse its many deficiencies; and now I
+see its conclusion with a languor almost approaching to despair;--at
+least with a feeling which, while it renders me doubly sensitive to
+criticism, and apprehensive of failure, has rendered me almost
+indifferent to success, and careless of praise.
+
+I owe four beautiful translations from the Italian (which are noticed in
+their proper places,) to the kindness of a living poet, whose justly
+celebrated name, were I allowed to mention it, would be subject of pride
+to myself, and double the value of this little book. I have no other
+assistance of any kind to acknowledge.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Will it be thought unfeminine or obtrusive, if I add yet a few words?
+
+I think it due to truth and to myself to seize this opportunity of
+saying, that a little book published three years ago, and now perhaps
+forgotten, was not written for publication, nor would ever have been
+printed but for accidental circumstances.
+
+That the title under which it appeared was not given by the writer, but
+the publisher, who at the time knew nothing of the author.
+
+And that several false dates, and unimportant circumstances and
+characters were interpolated, to conceal, if possible, the real purport
+and origin of the work. Thus the intention was not to create an
+illusion, by giving to fiction the appearance of truth, but, in fact, to
+give to truth the air of fiction. I was not _then_ prepared for all that
+a woman must meet and endure, who once suffers herself to be betrayed
+into authorship. She may repent at leisure, like a condemned spirit; but
+she has passed that barrier from which there is no return.
+
+C'est assez,--I will not add a word more, lest it should be said that I
+have only disclaimed the title of the _Ennuyée_, to assume that of the
+_Ennuyeuse_.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+OF THE FIRST VOLUME.
+
+
+                                                                  Page
+
+CHAPTER I.
+A POET'S LOVE                                                        1
+
+CHAPTER II.
+LOVES OF THE CLASSIC POETS                                           7
+
+CHAPTER III.
+THE LOVES OF THE TROUBADOURS                                        14
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+THE LOVES OF THE TROUBADOURS (continued)                            34
+
+CHAPTER V.
+GUIDO CAVALCANTI AND MANDETTA.--CINO DA PISTOJA AND SELVAGGIA       55
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+LAURA                                                               64
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+LAURA AND PETRARCH (continued)                                      85
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+DANTE AND BEATRICE PORTINARI                                       105
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+DANTE AND BEATRICE (continued)                                     125
+
+CHAPTER X.
+CHAUCER AND PHILIPPA PICARD.--KING JAMES AND LADY JANE BEAUFORT    133
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+LORENZO DE' MEDICI AND LUCRETIA DONATI                             161
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+THE FAIR GERALDINE                                                 185
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+ARIOSTO, GINEVRA, AND ALESSANDRA STROZZI                           198
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+SPENSER'S ROSALIND. SPENSER'S ELIZABETH                            219
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+ON THE LOVE OF SHAKSPEARE                                          237
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+SYDNEY'S STELLA (LADY RICH)                                        249
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+COURT AND AGE OF ELIZABETH.
+
+DRAYTON, DANIEL, DRUMMOND, MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS, CLEMENT
+MAROT AND DIANA DE POICTIER, RONSARD'S CASSANDRE,
+RONSARD'S MARIE, RONSARD'S HELÈNE                                  263
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+LEONORA D'ESTE                                                     288
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+MILTON AND LEONORA BARONI                                          330
+
+
+
+
+THE LOVES OF THE POETS.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+A POET'S LOVE.
+
+    Io ti cinsi de gloria, e fatta ho dea!--GUIDI.
+
+
+Of all the heaven-bestowed privileges of the poet, the highest, the
+dearest, the most enviable, is the power of immortalising the object of
+his love; of dividing with her his amaranthine wreath of glory, and
+repaying the inspiration caught from her eyes with a crown of
+everlasting fame. It is not enough that in his imagination he has
+deified her--that he has consecrated his faculties to her honour--that
+he has burned his heart in incense upon the altar of her perfections:
+the divinity thus decked out in richest and loveliest hues, he places on
+high, and calls upon all ages and all nations to bow down before her,
+and all ages and all nations obey! worshipping the beauty thus enshrined
+in imperishable verse, when others, perhaps as fair, and not less
+worthy, have gone down, unsung, "to dust and an endless darkness." How
+many women who would otherwise have stolen through the shades of
+domestic life, their charms, virtues, and affections buried with them,
+have become objects of eternal interest and admiration, because their
+memory is linked with the brightest monuments of human genius? While
+many a high-born dame, who once moved, goddess-like, upon the earth, and
+bestowed kingdoms with her hand, lives a mere name in some musty
+chronicle. Though her love was sought by princes, though with her dower
+she might have enriched an emperor,--what availed it?
+
+    "She had no poet--and she died!"
+
+And how have women repaid this gift of immortality? O believe it, when
+the garland was such as woman is proud to wear, she amply and deeply
+rewarded him who placed it on her brow. If in return for being made
+illustrious, she made her lover happy,--if for glory she gave a heart,
+was it not a rich equivalent? and if not--if the lover was unsuccessful,
+still the poet had his reward. Whence came the generous feelings, the
+high imaginations, the glorious fancies, the heavenward inspirations,
+which raised him above the herd of vulgar men--but from the ennobling
+influence of her he loved? Through _her_, the world opened upon him with
+a diviner beauty, and all nature became in his sight but a transcript of
+the charms of his mistress. He saw her eyes in the stars of heaven, her
+lips in the half-blown rose. The perfume of the opening flowers was but
+her breath, that "wafted sweetness round about the world:" the lily was
+"a sweet thief" that had stolen its purity from her breast. The violet
+was dipped in the azure of her veins; the aurorean dews, "dropt from the
+opening eyelids of the morn," were not so pure as her tears; the last
+rose-tint of the dying day was not so bright or so delicate as her
+cheek. Her's was the freshness and the bloom of the Spring; she consumed
+him to languor as the Summer sun; she was kind as the bounteous Autumn,
+or she froze him with her wintry disdain. There was nothing in the
+wonders, the splendours, or the treasures of the created universe,--in
+heaven or in earth,--in the seasons or their change, that did not borrow
+from her some charm, some glory beyond its own. Was it not just that the
+beauty she dispensed should be consecrated to her adornment, and that
+the inspiration she bestowed should be repaid to her in fame?
+
+    For what of thee thy poet doth invent,
+    He robs thee of, and pays it thee again.
+    He lends thee virtue, and he stole that word
+    From thy behaviour; beauty doth he give,
+    But found it in thy cheek; he can afford
+    No praise to thee but what in thee doth live.
+
+       _Then thank him not for that which he doth say,
+       Since what he owes thee, thou thyself dost pay!_
+
+                     SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS.
+
+The theory, then, which I wish to illustrate, as far as my limited
+powers permit, is this: that where a woman has been exalted above the
+rest of her sex by the talents of a lover, and consigned to enduring
+fame and perpetuity of praise, the passion was real, and was merited;
+that no deep or lasting interest was ever founded in fancy or in
+fiction; that truth, in short, is the basis of all excellence in amatory
+poetry, as in every thing else; for where truth is, there is good of
+some sort, and where there is truth and good, there must be beauty,
+there must be durability of fame. Truth is the golden chain which links
+the terrestrial with the celestial, which sets the seal of heaven on the
+things of this earth, and stamps them to immortality. Poets have risen
+up and been the mere fashion of a day, and have set up idols which have
+been the idols of a day: if the worship be out of date and the idols
+cast down, it is because these adorers wanted sincerity of purpose and
+feeling; their raptures were feigned; their incense was bought or
+adulterate. In the brain or in the fancy, one beauty may eclipse
+another--one coquette may drive out another, and tricked off in airy
+verse, they float away unregarded like morning vapours, which the beam
+of genius has tinged with a transient brightness: but let the heart once
+be touched, and it is not only wakened but inspired; the lover kindled
+into the poet, presents to her he loves, his cup of ambrosial praise:
+she tastes--and the woman is transmuted into a divinity. When the
+Grecian sculptor carved out his deities in marble, and left us wondrous
+and god-like shapes, impersonations of ideal grace unapproachable by
+modern skill, was it through mere mechanical superiority? No;--it was
+the spirit of faith within which shadowed to his imagination what he
+would represent. In the same manner, no woman has ever been truly,
+lastingly deified in poetry, but in the spirit of truth and of love!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+LOVES OF THE CLASSIC POETS.
+
+
+I am not sufficiently an antiquarian or scholar, to trace the muses
+"upward to their spring," neither is there occasion to seek our first
+examples of poetical loves in the days of fables and of demi-gods; or in
+those pastoral ages when shepherds were kings and poets: the loves of
+Orpheus and Eurydice are a little too shadowy, and those of the royal
+Solomon rather too mixed and too mystical for our purpose.--To descend
+then at once to the _classical_ ages of antiquity.
+
+It must be allowed, that as far as women are concerned, we have not much
+reason to regard them with reverence. The fragments of the amatory
+poetry of the Greeks, which have been preserved to our times, show too
+plainly in what light we were then regarded; and graceful and exquisite
+as many of them are, they bear about them the taint of degraded morals
+and manners, and are utterly destitute of that exalted sentiment of
+respect and tenderness for woman, either individually or as a sex, which
+alone can give them value in our eyes.
+
+I must leave it then to learned commentators to explore and elucidate
+the loves of Sappho and Anacreon. To us unlearned women, they shine out
+through the long lapse of ages, bright _names_, and little else; a kind
+of half-real,--half-ideal impersonations of love and song; the one
+enveloped in "a fair luminous cloud," the other "veiled in shadowing
+roses;" and thus veiled and thus shadowed, by all accounts, they had
+better remain.
+
+The same remark, with the same reservation, applies to the Latin poets.
+They wrote beautiful verses, admirable for their harmony, elegance and
+perspicuity of expression; and are studied as models of style in a
+language, the knowledge of which, as far as these poets are concerned,
+were best confined to the other sex. They lived in a corrupted age, and
+their pages are deeply stained with its licentiousness; they inspire no
+sympathy for their love, no interest, no respect for the objects of it.
+How, indeed, should that be possible, when their mistresses, even
+according to the lover's painting, were all either perfectly insipid, or
+utterly abandoned and odious?[1] Ovid, he who has revealed to mortal
+ears "all the soft scandal of the laughing sky," and whose gallantry has
+become proverbial, represents himself as so incensed by the public and
+shameless infidelities of his Corinna, that he treats her with the
+unmanly brutality of some street ruffian;--in plain language, he beats
+her. They are then reconciled, and again there are quarrels, coarse
+reproaches, and mutual blows. At length the lady, as might be expected
+from such tuition, becoming more and more abandoned, this delicate and
+poetical lover requests, as a last favour, that she will, for the
+future, take some trouble to deceive him more effectually; and the fair
+one, can she do less? kindly consents!
+
+Cynthia, the mistress of Propertius, gets tipsey, overturns the
+supper-table, and throws the cups at her lover's head; he is delighted
+with her _playfulness_: she leaves him to follow the camp with a
+soldier; he weeps and laments: she returns to him again, and he is
+enchanted with her amiable condescension. Her excesses are such, that he
+is reduced to blush for her and for himself; and he confesses that he is
+become, for her sake, the laughing-stock of all Rome. Cynthia is the
+only one of these classical loves who seems to have possessed any mental
+accomplishments. The poet praises, incidentally, her talents for music
+and poetry; but not as if they added to her charms or enhanced her value
+in his estimation. The Lesbia[2] of Catullus, whose eyes were red with
+weeping the loss of her favourite sparrow, crowned a life of the most
+flagitious excesses by poisoning her husband. Of the various ladies
+celebrated by Horace and Tibullus, it would really be difficult to
+discover which was most worthless, venal, and profligate. These were the
+refined loves of the classic poets!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The passion they celebrated never seems to have inspired one ennobling
+or generous sentiment, nor to have lifted them for one moment above the
+grossest selfishness. They had no scruple in exhibiting their mistresses
+to our eyes, as doubtless they appeared in their own, degraded by every
+vice, and in every sense contemptible; beings, not only beyond the pale
+of our sympathy, but of our toleration. Throughout their works, virtue
+appears a mere jest: Love stript of his divinity, even by those who
+first deified him, is what we disdain to call by that name; _sentiment_,
+as we now understand the word,--that is, the union of fervent love with
+reverence and delicacy towards its object,--a thing unknown and unheard
+of,--and all is "of the earth, earthy."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It is for women I write; the fair, pure-hearted, delicate-minded, and
+unclassical reader will recollect that I do not presume to speak of
+these poets critically, being neither critic nor scholar; but merely
+with a reference to my subject, and with a reference to my sex. As
+monuments of the language and literature of a great and polished people,
+rich with a thousand beauties of thought and style, doubtless they have
+their value and their merit: but as monuments also of a state of morals
+inconceivably gross and corrupt; of the condition of women degraded by
+their own vices, the vices and tyranny of the other sex, and the
+prevalence of the Epicurean philosophy, the tendency of which, (however
+disguised by rhetoric,) was ever to lower the tone of the mind;
+considered in this point of view, they might as well have all burned
+together in that vast bonfire of love-poetry which the Doctors of the
+Church raised at Constantinople:--what a flame it must have made![3]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] I need scarcely observe, that the following sketch of the lyrical
+poets of Rome is abridged from the analysis of their works, in
+Ginguené's Histoire Littéraire, vol. 3.
+
+[2] Clodia, the wife of Quintus Metellus Celer.
+
+[3] "J'ai oui dire dans mon enfance à Demetrius Chalcondyle, homme très
+instruit de tout ce qui regarde la Grèce, qui les Prétres avaient eu
+assez d'influence sur les Empereurs de Constantinople, pour les engager
+à brûler les ouvrages de plusieurs anciens poëtes Grecs, et en
+particulier de ceux qui parlaient des amours, &c. * * * Ces prètres,
+sans doute, montrèrent une malveillance honteuse envers les anciens
+poëtes; mais ils donnèrent une grande preuve d'intégrité, de probité, et
+de religion."--ALCYONIUS.
+
+This sentiment is put into the mouth of Leo X. at a time when the mania
+of classical learning was at its height.--See Roscoe, (Leo X.) and
+Ginguené.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+THE LOVES OF THE TROUBADOURS.
+
+    Gente, che d'amor givan ragionando.--PETRARCA.
+
+
+The irruptions of the northern nations, among whom our sex was far
+better appreciated than among the polished Greeks and Romans; the rise
+of Christianity, and the institution of chivalry, by changing the moral
+condition of women, gave also a totally different character to the
+homage addressed to them. It was in the ages called gothic and
+barbarous,--in that era of high feelings and fierce passions,--of love,
+war, and wild adventure, that the sex began to take their true station
+in society. From the midst of ignorance, superstition, and ferocity,
+sprung up that enthusiasm, that exaggeration of sentiment, that
+serious, passionate, and imaginative adoration of women, which has
+since, indeed, degenerated into mere gallantry, but was the very
+fountain of all that is most elevated and elegant in modern poetry, and
+most graceful and refined in modern manners.
+
+The amatory poetry of Provence had the same source with the national
+poetry of Spain; both were derived from the Arabians. To them we trace
+not only the use of rhyme, and the various forms of stanzas, employed by
+the early lyric poets, but by a strange revolution, it was from the
+East, where women are now held in seclusion, as mere soulless slaves of
+the passions and caprices of their masters, that the sentimental
+devotion paid to our sex in the chivalrous ages was derived.[4] The
+poetry of the Troubadours kept alive and enhanced the tone of feeling on
+which it was founded; it was cause and effect re-acting on each other;
+and though their songs exist only in the collections of the antiquarian,
+and the very language in which they wrote has passed away, and may be
+accounted _dead_,--so is not the spirit they left behind: as the
+founders of a new school of amatory poetry, we are under obligations to
+their memory, which throw a strong interest around their personal
+adventures, and the women they celebrated.
+
+The tenderness of feeling and delicacy of expression in some of these
+old Provençal poets, are the more touching, when we recollect that the
+writers were sometimes kings and princes, and often knights and
+warriors, famed for their hardihood and exploits. William, Count of
+Poitou, our Richard the First, two Kings of Arragon, a King of Sicily,
+the Dauphin of Auvergne, the Count de Foix, and a Prince of Orange, were
+professors of the "gaye science." Thibault,[5] Count of Provence and
+King of Navarre, was another of these royal and chivalrous Troubadours,
+and his _lais_ and his virelais were generally devoted to the praises of
+Blanche of Castile, the mother of Louis the Ninth--the same Blanche whom
+Shakspeare has introduced into King John, and decked out in panegyric
+far transcending all that her favoured poet and lover could have offered
+at her feet.[6]
+
+Thibault did, however, surpass all his contemporaries in refinement of
+style: he usually concludes his _chansons_ with an _envoi_, or address,
+to the Virgin, worded with such equivocal ingenuity, that it is equally
+applicable to the Queen of Heaven, or the queen of his earthly
+thoughts,--"La Blanche couronnée." There is much simplicity and elegance
+in the following little song, in which the French has been modernised.
+
+    "Las! si j'avais pouvoir d'oublier
+      Sa beauté,--son bien dire,
+    Et son très doux regarder
+      Finirait mon martyre!
+
+    Mais las! mon coeur je n'en puis ôter;
+    Et grand affolage
+    M'est d'espérer;
+    Mais tel servage
+    Donne courage
+    A tout endurer.
+
+    Et puis comment oublier
+      Sa beauté, son bien dire,
+    Et son très doux regarder?
+      Mieux aime mon martyre!"
+
+Princesses and ladies of rank entered the lists of poesy, and
+vanquished, on almost every occasion, the Troubadours of the other sex.
+For instance, that Countess of Champagne, who presided with such éclat
+in one of the courts of love; Beatrice, Countess of Provence, the mother
+of four queens, among whom was Berengaria of England; Clara d'Anduse,
+one of whose songs is translated by Sismondi; a certain Dame
+Castellosa, who in a pathetic remonstrance to some ungrateful lover,
+assures him that if he forsakes her for another, and leaves her to die,
+he will commit a heinous sin before the face of God and man; that
+charming Comtesse de Die, of whom more presently, and others
+innumerable, "tout hommes que femmes, la pluspart gentilshommes et
+Seigneurs de Places, amoureux des Roynes, Imperatrices, Duchesses,
+Marquises, Comtesses, et gentils-femmes; desquelles les maris
+s'estimaient grandement heureux quand nos poëtes leurs addressaient
+quelque chant nouveau en notre langue Provençal." The said poets being
+rewarded by these debonnaire husbands with rich dresses, horses, armour,
+and gold;[7] and by the ladies with praise, thanks, courteous words, and
+sweet smiles, and very often, "altra cosa più cara." The biography of
+these Troubadours generally commences with the same phrase--Such a one
+was "gentilhomme et chevalier," and was "pris d'amour" for such a lady,
+always named, who was the wife of such a lord, and in whose honour and
+praise he composed "maintes belles et doctes chansons." In these
+"chansons,"--for all the amatory poetry of those times was sung to
+music,--we have love and romantic adventure oddly enough mixed up with
+piety and devotion, such as were the mode in an age when religion ruled
+the imagination and opinions of men, without in any degree restraining
+the passions, or influencing the conduct. One Troubadour tells us, that
+when he beholds the face of his mistress, he crosses himself with
+delight and gratitude; another pathetically entreats a priest to
+dispense him from his vows of love to a certain lady, whom he loved no
+longer; the lady being the wife of another, one would imagine that the
+dispensation should rather have been required in the first instance.
+Arnaldo de Daniel, unable to soften the obdurate heart of his mistress,
+performs penance, and celebrates six (or as some say, a thousand) masses
+a day, "en priant Dieu de pouvoir acquerir la grace de sa dame," and
+burns lamps before the Virgin, and consecrates tapers for the same
+purpose: the lady with whom he is thus piously in love, was Cyberna, the
+wife of Guillaume de Bouille. This was something like the incantations
+and sacrifices of the classic poets, who familiarly mixed up their
+mythology with their amours; but in a spirit as different as the
+allegorical cupid of these chivalrous poets is from the winged and
+wanton deity of the Greeks and Romans. Pierre Vidal sees a vision of
+Love, whom he describes as a young knight, fair and fresh as the day,
+crowned with a wreath of flowers instead of a helmet; and mounted on a
+palfrey as white as snow, with a saddle of jasper, and spurs of
+chalcedony; his squires and attendants are "_Mercy_, _Pudeur_, and
+_Loyauté_." _Sir Cupid_ on horseback, with his saddle and his spurs,
+attended by Gentleness, Modesty, and Good Faith, is a novel
+divinity.--Thus, among the Greeks, Love was attended by the Graces, and
+among the Troubadours by the Virtues. In the same spirit of allegory,
+but touched with a more classic elegance, we have Petrarch's Cupid,
+driving his fiery car in triumph, followed by a shadowy host of captives
+to his power,--the heroes who had confessed and the poets who had sung
+his might.
+
+    Vidi un vittorioso e sommo duce,
+    Pur com' un di color ch' in Campidoglio
+    Trïonfal carro a gran gloria conduce.
+
+    ....*....*....*....*
+
+    Quattro destrier via più che neve bianchi:
+    Sopr' un carro di foco un garzon crudo
+    Con arco in mano, e con säette a' fianchi.
+
+And yet more finished is Spenser's "Masque of Cupid," in the third book
+of the Fairy Queen, where Love, as in the antique gem, is mounted on a
+lion, preceded by minstrels carolling
+
+    A lay of love's delight with sweet concent,
+
+attended by Fancy, Desire, Hope, Fear, and Doubt; and followed by Care,
+Repentance, Shame, Strife, Sorrow, &c.--The vivid colours in which these
+imaginary personages are depicted, the image of the God "uprearing
+himself," and looking round with disdain on the troop of victims and
+slaves who surround him, the rattling of his darts, as he shakes them in
+defiance and in triumph, and "claps on high his coloured wings twain,"
+forms altogether a most finished and gorgeous picture; such as Rubens
+should have painted, as far as his pencil, rainbow-dipt, could have
+reflected the animated pageant to the eye.
+
+The extravagance of passion and boundless devotion to the fair sex,
+which the Troubadours sang in their lays, they not unfrequently
+illustrated by their actions; and while the knowledge of the first is
+confined to a few antiquarians, the latter still survive in the history
+and the traditions of their province. One of these (Guillaume de la
+Tour) having lost the object of his love, underwent, during a whole
+year, the most cruel and unheard-of penances, in the hope that heaven
+might be won to perform a miracle in his favour, and restore her to his
+arms; at length he died broken-hearted on her tomb.[8] Another,[9]
+beloved by a certain princess, in some unfortunate moment breaks his vow
+of fidelity, and unable to appease the indignation of his mistress, he
+retires to a forest, builds himself a cabin of boughs, and turns hermit,
+having first made a solemn vow that he will never leave his solitude
+till he is received into favour by his offended love. Being one of the
+most celebrated and popular Troubadours of his province, all the knights
+and the ladies sympathise with his misfortunes: they find themselves
+terribly _ennuyés_ in the absence of the poet who was accustomed to
+vaunt their charms and their deeds of prowess; and at the end of two
+years they send a deputation, entreating him to return,--but in vain:
+they then address themselves to the lady, and humbly solicit the pardon
+of the offender, whose disgrace in her sight, has thrown a whole
+province into mourning. The princess at length relents, but upon
+conditions which appear in these unromantic times equally extraordinary
+and difficult to fulfil. She requires that a hundred brave knights, and
+a hundred fair dames, pledged in love to each other, (s'aimant d'amour)
+should appear before her on their knees, and with joined hands
+supplicate for mercy: the conditions are fulfilled: the fifty pair of
+lovers are found to go through the ceremony, and the Troubadour receives
+his pardon.[10]
+
+The story of Peyre de Ruer, "gentilhomme et Troubadour," might be termed
+a satirical romance, did we not know that it is a plain fact, related
+with perfect simplicity. He devotes himself to a lady of the noble
+Italian family of Carraccioli, and in her praise he composes, as usual,
+"maintes belles et doctes chansons:"--but the lady seems to have had a
+taste for magnificence and pleasure; and the poet, in order to find
+favour in her eyes, expends his patrimony in rich apparel, banquets, and
+_joustes_ in her honour. The lady, however, continues inexorable; and
+Peyre de Ruer takes the habit of a pilgrim and wanders about the
+country. He arrives in the holy week at a certain church, and desires of
+the curé permission to preach to his congregation of penitents:--he
+ascends the pulpit, and recites with infinite fervour and grace one of
+his own chansons d'amour,--for, says the chronicle, "_autre chose ne
+sçavait_," "he knew nothing better." The people mistaking it for an
+invocation to the Virgin Mary or the Saints, are deeply affected and
+edified; eyes are seen to weep that never wept before; the most
+impenitent hearts are suddenly softened: he concludes with an
+exhortation in the same strain--and then descending from the pulpit,
+places himself at the door, and holding out his hat for the customary
+alms, his delighted congregation fill it to overflowing with pieces of
+silver. Peyre de Ruer forthwith casts off his pilgrim's gown, and in a
+new and splendid dress, and with a new song in his hand, he presents
+himself before the ladye of his love, who charmed by his gay attire not
+less than by his return, receives him most graciously, and bestows on
+him "maintes caresses."
+
+I must observe that the biographer of this Peyre de Ruer, himself a
+churchman, does not appear in the least scandalised or surprised at
+this very novel mode of recruiting his finances and obtaining the favour
+of the lady; but gives us fairly to understand, that after such a proof
+of _loyauté_ he should have thought it quite contrary to all rule if she
+had still rejected the addresses of this _gentil Troubadour_.
+
+Jauffred (or Geffrey) de Rudel is yet more famous, and his story will
+strikingly illustrate the manners of those times. Rudel was the
+favourite minstrel of Geffrey Plantagenet de Bretagne, the elder brother
+of our Richard Coeur de Lion, and like the royal Richard, a patron of
+music and poetry. During the residence of Rudel at the court of England,
+where he resided in great honour and splendour, caressed for his talents
+and loved for the gentleness of his manners, he heard continually the
+praises of a certain Countess of Tripoli; famed throughout Europe for
+her munificent hospitality to the poor Crusaders. The pilgrims and
+soldiers of the Cross, who were returning wayworn, sick and disabled,
+from the burning plains of Asia, were relieved and entertained by this
+devout and benevolent Countess; and they repaid her generosity, with all
+the enthusiasm of gratitude, by spreading her fame throughout
+Christendom.
+
+These reports of her beauty and her beneficence, constantly repeated,
+fired the susceptible fancy of Rudel: without having seen her, he fell
+passionately in love with her, and unable to bear any longer the
+torments of absence, he undertook a pilgrimage to visit this unknown
+lady of his love, in company with Bertrand d'Allamanon, another
+celebrated Troubadour of those days. He quitted the English court in
+spite of the entreaties and expostulations of Prince Geffrey
+Plantagenet, and sailed for the Levant. But so it chanced, that falling
+grievously sick on the voyage, he lived only till his vessel reached the
+shores of Tripoli. The Countess being told that a celebrated poet had
+just arrived in her harbour, who was dying for her love, immediately
+hastened on board, and taking his hand, entreated him to live for her
+sake. Rudel, already speechless, and almost in the agonies of death,
+revived for a moment at this unexpected grace; he was just able to
+express, by a last effort, the excess of his gratitude and love, and
+expired in her arms: thereupon the Countess wept bitterly, and vowed
+herself to a life of penance for the loss she had caused to the
+world.[11] She commanded that the last song which Rudel had composed in
+her honour, should be transcribed in letters of gold, and carried it
+always in her bosom; and his remains were inclosed in a magnificent
+mausoleum of porphyry, with an Arabic inscription, commemorating his
+genius and his love for her.
+
+It is in allusion to this well-known story, that Petrarch has introduced
+Rudel into the Trionfo d'Amore.
+
+    Gianfré Rudel ch' uso la vela e 'l remo,
+    A cercar la suo morte.
+
+The song which the minstrel composed when he fell sick on this romantic
+expedition, and found his strength begin to fail, and which the Countess
+wore, folded within her vest, to the end of her life, is extant, and has
+been translated into most of the languages of Europe; of these
+translations, Sismondi's is the best, preserving the original and
+curious arrangement of the rhymes, as well as the piety, naïveté, and
+tenderness of the sentiment.
+
+    Irrité, dolent partirai
+    Si ne vois cet amour de loin,
+    Et ne sais quand je le verrai
+    Car sont par trop nos terres loin.
+    Dieu, qui toutes choses as fait
+    Et formas cet amour si loin,
+    Donne force à mon coeur, car ai
+    L'espoir de voir m'amour au loin.
+    Ah, Seigneur, tenez pour bien vrai
+    L'amour qu'ai pour elle de loin.
+    Car pour un bien que j'en aurai
+    J'ai mille maux, tant je suis loin.
+    Ja d'autr'amour ne jouirai
+    Sinon de cet amour de loin--
+    Qu'une plus belle je n'en sçais
+    En lieu qui soit ni près ni loin!
+
+Mrs. Piozzi and others have paraphrased this little song, but in a
+spirit so different from the antique simplicity of the original, that I
+shall venture to give a version, which has at least the merit of being
+as faithful as the different idioms of the two languages will allow; I
+am afraid, however, that it will not appear worthy of the honour which
+the Countess conferred on it.
+
+    "Grieved and troubled shall I die,
+      If I meet not my love afar;
+    Alas! I know not that I e'er
+      Shall see her--for she dwells afar.
+    O God! that didst all things create,
+      And formed my sweet love now afar;
+    Strengthen my heart, that I may hope
+      To behold her face, who is afar.
+    O Lord! believe how very true
+      Is my love for her, alas! afar,
+    Tho' for each joy a thousand pains
+      I bear, because I am so far.
+    Another love I'll never have,
+      Save only she who is afar,
+    For fairer one I never knew
+      In places near, nor yet afar."
+
+Bertrand d'Allamanon, whom I have mentioned as the companion of Rudel on
+his romantic expedition, has left us a little ballad, remarkable for the
+extreme refinement of the sentiment, which is quite à la Petrarque: he
+gives it the fantastic title of a _demi chanson_, for a very fantastic
+reason: it is thus translated in Millot. (vol. i. 390).
+
+"On veut savoir pourquoi je fais une _demi chanson_? c'est parceque je
+n'ai qu'un demi sujet de chanter. Il n'y a d'amour que de ma part; la
+dame que j'aime ne veut pas m'aimer! mais au défaut des _oui_ qu'elle me
+refuse, je prendrai les _non_ qu'elle me prodigue:--_espérer auprès
+d'elle vaut mieux que jouir avec tout autre!_"
+
+This is exactly the sentiment of Petrarch:
+
+    Pur mi consola, che morir per lei
+    Meglio è che gioir d'altra--
+
+But it is one of those thoughts which spring in the heart, and might
+often be repeated without once being borrowed.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[4] Sismondi--Littérature du Midi.
+
+[5]
+    Thibault fût Roi galant et valoureux,
+      Ses hâuts faits et son rang n'ont rien fait pour sa gloire;
+    Mais il fût chansonnier--et ses couplets heureux,
+      Nous ont conservé sa mémoire.
+
+                     ANTHOLOGIE DE MONET.
+
+[6]
+    If lusty Love should go in quest of beauty,
+    Where should he find it fairer than in Blanche?
+    If zealous Love should go in search of virtue,
+    Where should he find it purer than in Blanche?
+    If Love, ambitious, sought a match of birth,
+    Whose veins bound richer blood than Lady Blanche?
+
+[7] La plus honorable recompence qu'on pouvait faire aux dits poëtes,
+était qu'on leur fournissait de draps, chevaux, armure, et argent.
+
+[8] Millot, vol. ii. p. 148.
+
+[9] Richard de Barbesieu.
+
+[10] Millot, vol. iii. p. 86.--Ginguené, vol. i. p. 280.
+
+[11] "Depuis ne fut jamais veue faire bonne chère," says the old
+chronicle.--I am tempted to add the description of the first and last
+interview of the Countess and her lover in the exquisite old French, of
+which the antique simplicity and naïveté are untranslateable.
+
+"En cet estat fut conduit au port de Trypolly, et là arrivé, son
+compagnon feist (_fit_) entendre à la Comtesse la venue du Pelerin
+malade. La Comtesse estant venue en la nef, prit le poête par la main;
+et lui, sachant que c'éstait la Comtesse, incontinent après le doult et
+gracieux accueil, recouvra ses esprits, la remercia de ce qu'elle lui
+avait recouvré la vie, et lui dict: 'Très illustre et vertueuse
+princesse, je ne plaindrai point la mort oresque'--et ne pouvant achever
+son propos, sa maladie s'aigrissant et augmentant, rendit l'esprit entre
+les mains de la Comtesse."--_Vies des plus célèbres Poëtes Provençaux_,
+p. 24.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+THE LOVES OF THE TROUBADOURS CONTINUED.
+
+
+In striking contrast to the tender and gentle Rudel, we have the
+ferocious Bertrand de Born: he, too, was one of the most celebrated
+Troubadours of his time. As a petty feudal sovereign, he was, partly by
+the events of the age, more by his own fierce and headlong passions,
+plunged in continual wars. Nature however had made him a poet of the
+first order. In these days he would have been another Lord Byron; but he
+lived in a terrible and convulsed state of society, and it was only in
+the intervals snatched from his usual pursuits,--that is, from burning
+the castles, and ravaging the lands of his neighbours, and stirring up
+rebellion, discord, and bloodshed all around him,--that he composed a
+vast number of _lays_, _sirventes_, and _chansons_; some breathing the
+most martial, and even merciless spirit; others devoted to the praise
+and honour of his love, or rather loves, as full of submissive
+tenderness and chivalrous gallantry.
+
+He first celebrated Elinor Plantagenet, the sister of his friend and
+brother in arms and song, Richard Coeur de Lion; and we are expressly
+told that Richard was proud of the poetical homage rendered to the
+charms of his sister by this knightly Troubadour, and that the Princess
+was far from being insensible to his admiration. Only one of the many
+songs addressed to Elinor has been preserved; from which we gather, that
+it was composed by Bertrand in the field, at a time when his army was
+threatened with famine, and the poet himself was suffering from the
+pangs of hunger. Elinor married the Duke of Saxony, and Bertrand chose
+for his next love the beautiful Maenz de Montagnac, daughter of the
+Viscount of Turenne, and wife of Talleyrand de Perigord. The lady
+accepted his service, and acknowledged him as her Knight; but evil
+tongues having attempted to sow dissension between the lovers, Bertrand
+addressed to her a song, in which he defends himself from the imputation
+of inconstancy, in a style altogether characteristic and original. The
+warrior poet, borrowing from the objects of his daily cares, ambition
+and pleasures, phrases to illustrate and enhance the expression of his
+love, wishes "that he may lose his favourite hawk in her first flight;
+that a falcon may stoop and bear her off, as she sits upon his wrist,
+and tear her in his sight, if the sound of his lady's voice be not
+dearer to him than all the gifts of love from another."--"That he may
+stumble with his shield about his neck; that his helmet may gall his
+brow; that his bridle may be too long, his stirrups too short; that he
+may be forced to ride a hard trotting horse, and find his groom drunk
+when he arrives at his gate, if there be a word of truth in the
+accusations of his enemies:--that he may not have a _denier_ to stake at
+the gaming-table, and that the dice may never more be favourable to
+him, if ever he had swerved from his faith:--that he may look on like a
+dastard, and see his lady wooed and won by another;--that the winds may
+fail him at sea;--that in the battle he may be the first to fly, if he
+who has slandered him does not lie in his throat," &c. and so on through
+seven or eight stanzas.
+
+Bertrand de Born exercised in his time a fatal influence on the counsels
+and politics of England. A close and ardent friendship existed between
+him and young Henry Plantagenet, the eldest son of our Henry the Second;
+and the family dissensions which distracted the English Court, and the
+unnatural rebellion of Henry and Richard against their father, were his
+work. It happened some time after the death of Prince Henry, that the
+King of England besieged Bertrand de Born in one of his castles: the
+resistance was long and obstinate, but at length the warlike Troubadour
+was taken prisoner and brought before the King, so justly incensed
+against him, and from whom he had certainly no mercy to expect. The
+heart of Henry was still bleeding with the wounds inflicted by his
+ungrateful children, and he saw before him, and in his power, the
+primary cause of their misdeeds and his own bitter sufferings. Bertrand
+was on the point of being led out to death, when by a single word he
+reminded the King of his lost son, and the tender friendship which had
+existed between them.[12] The chord was struck which never ceased to
+vibrate in the parental heart of Henry; bursting into tears, he turned
+aside, and commanded Bertrand and his followers to be immediately set at
+liberty: he even restored to Bertrand his castle and his lands, "_in the
+name of his dead son_." It is such traits as these, occurring at every
+page, which lend to the chronicles of this stormy period an interest
+overpowering the horror they would otherwise excite: for then all the
+best, as well as the worst of human passions were called into play. In
+this tempestuous commingling of all the jarring elements of society, we
+have those strange approximations of the most opposite
+sentiments,--implacable revenge and sublime forgiveness;--gross
+licentiousness and delicate tenderness;--barbarism and
+refinement;--treachery and fidelity--which remind one of that
+heterogeneous mass tossed up by a stormy ocean; heaps of pearls,
+unvalued gems, wedges of gold, mingled with dead men's bones, and all
+the slimy, loathsome, and monstrous productions of the deep, which
+during a calm remain together concealed and unknown in its unfathomed
+abysses.
+
+To return from this long similitude to Bertrand de Born: he concluded
+his stormy career in a manner very characteristic of the times; for he
+turned monk, and died in the odour of sanctity. But neither his late
+devotion, nor his warlike heroism, nor his poetic fame, could rescue him
+from the severe justice of Dante, who has visited his crimes and his
+violence with so terrible a judgment, that we forget, while we thrill
+with horror, that the crimes were real, the penance only imaginary.
+Dante, in one of the circles of the Inferno, meets Bertrand de Born
+carrying his severed head, _lantern wise_, in his hand;--the phantom
+lifts it up by the hair, and the ghastly lips unclose to confess the
+cause and the justice of this horrible and unheard-of penance.
+
+      ----Or vedi la pena molesta
+    Tu che spirando vai veggendo i morti;
+    Vedi s'alcuna è grande come questa.
+      E perchè tu di me novella porti,
+    Sappi ch' i' son Bertram dal Bornio, quelli
+    Che diedi al Re giovane i ma' conforti.
+      I' feci 'l padre e 'l figlio in se ribelli:
+
+    ....*....*....*....*
+
+      Perch'io partii così giunte persone,
+    Partito porto il mio cerebro, lasso!
+    Dal suo principio ch 'è 'n questo troncone.
+      Così s'osserva in me lo contrappasso.[13]
+
+                Now behold
+    This grievous torment, thou, who breathing goest
+    To spy the dead: behold, if any else
+    Be terrible as this,--and that on earth
+    Thou mayst bear tidings of me, know that I
+    Am Bertrand, he of Born, who gave King John
+    The counsel mischievous. Father and son
+    I set at mutual war:----
+    Spurring them on maliciously to strife.
+    For parting those so closely knit, my brain
+    Parted, alas! I carry from its source
+    That in this trunk inhabits. Thus the law
+    Of retribution fiercely works in me.[14]
+
+Pierre Vidal, whose description of love I have quoted before, was one of
+the most extraordinary characters of his time, a kind of poetical Don
+Quixotte:--his brain was turned with love, poetry, and vanity: he
+believed himself the beloved of all the fair, the mirror of knighthood,
+and the prince of Troubadours. Yet in the midst of all his
+extravagances, he possessed exquisite skill in his art, and was not
+surpassed by any of the poets of those days, for the harmony, delicacy,
+and tenderness of his amatory effusions. He chose for his first love
+the beautiful wife of the Vicomte de Marseilles: the lady, unlike some
+of the Princesses of her time, distinguished between the poet and the
+man, and as he presumed too far on the encouragement bestowed on him in
+the former capacity, he was banished: he then followed Richard the First
+to the crusade. The verses he addressed to the lady from the Island of
+Cyprus are still preserved. The folly of Vidal, or rather the
+derangement of his imagination, subjected him to some of those
+mystifications which remind us of Don Quixote and Sancho, in the court
+of the laughter-loving Duchess. For instance, Richard and his followers
+amused themselves at Cyprus, by marrying Vidal to a beautiful Greek girl
+of no immaculate reputation, whom they introduced to him as the niece of
+the Greek Emperor. Vidal, in right of his wife, immediately took the
+title of Emperor, assumed the purple, ordered a throne to be carried
+before him, and played the most fantastic antics of authority. Nor was
+this the greatest of his extravagances: on his return to Provence, he
+chose for the second object of his amorous and poetical devotion, a
+lady whose name happened to be Louve de Penautier: in her honour he
+assumed the name of _Loup_, and farther to merit the good graces of his
+"_Dame_," and to do honour to the name he had adopted, he dressed
+himself in the hide of a wolf, and caused himself to be hunted in good
+earnest by a pack of dogs: he was brought back exhausted and half dead
+to the feet of his mistress, who appears to have been more moved to
+merriment than to love by this new and ridiculous exploit.
+
+In general, however, the Troubadours had seldom reason to complain of
+the cruelty of the ladies to whom they devoted their service and their
+songs. The most virtuous and illustrious women thought themselves
+justified in repaying, with smiles and favours, the poetical adoration
+of their lovers; and this lasted until the profession of Troubadour was
+dishonoured by the indiscretions, follies, and vices of those who
+assumed it. Thus Peyrols, a famous Provençal poet, who was distinguished
+in the court of the Dauphin d'Auvergne, fell passionately in love with
+the sister of that Prince, (the Baronne de Mercoeur) and the Dauphin,
+(himself a Troubadour) proud of the genius of his minstrel and of the
+poetical devotion paid to his sister, desired her to bestow on her lover
+all the encouragement and favour which was consistent with her dignity.
+The lady, however, either misunderstood her instructions, or found it
+too difficult to obey them: the seducing talents and tender verses of
+this _gentil Troubadour_ prevailed over her dignity:--Peyrols was
+beloved; but he was not sufficiently discreet. The sudden change in the
+tone and style of his songs betrayed him, and he was banished. A great
+number of his verses, celebrating the Dame de Mercoeur, are preserved
+by St. Palaye, and translated by Millot.
+
+Bernard de Ventadour was beloved by Elinor de Guienne, afterwards the
+wife of our Henry the Second, and the mother of Richard the First:--I
+have before observed the poetical penchants of all Elinor's children,
+which they seem to have inherited from their mother.
+
+Sordello of Mantua, whose name is familiar to all the readers of Dante,
+as occurring in one of the finest passages of his great poem,[15] was an
+Italian, but like all the best poets of his day, wrote in the Provençal
+tongue: he is said to have carried off the sister of that modern
+Phalaris, the tyrant Ezzelino of Padua. There is a very elegant ballad
+(ballata) by Sordello, translated in Millot's collection; it is properly
+a kind of rondeau, the first line being repeated at the end of every
+stanza; "Helas! à quoi me servent mes yeux?"--"Alas! wherefore have I
+eyes?"--It describes the pleasures of the Spring, which are to him as
+nothing, in the absence of the only object on which his eyes can dwell
+with delight. The arrangement of the rhymes in this pastoral song is
+singularly elegant and musical.
+
+Lastly, as illustrating the history of the amatory poetry of this age, I
+extract from Nostradamus[16] the story of the young Countess de Die; she
+loved and was beloved by the Chevalier d'Adhèmar: (ancestor I presume to
+that Chevalier d'Adhèmar who figures in the letters of Madame de
+Sevigné.) It was not in this case the lover who celebrated the charms of
+his mistress, but the lady, who, being an illustrious female Troubadour,
+"docte en poësie," celebrated the exploits and magnanimity of her lover.
+The Chevalier, proud of such a distinction, caused the verses of his
+mistress to be beautifully copied, and always carried them in his bosom;
+and whenever he was in the company of knights and ladies, he enchanted
+them by singing a couplet in his own praise out of his lady's book. The
+publicity thus given to their love, was quite in the spirit of the
+times, and does not appear to have injured the reputation of the
+Countess for immaculate virtue,[17] which Adhèmar would probably have
+defended with lance and spear, against any slanderous tongue which had
+dared to defame her.
+
+The conclusion of this romantic story is melancholy. Adhèmar heard a
+false report, that the Countess, whose purity and constancy he had so
+proudly maintained, had cast away her smiles on a rival: he fell sick
+with grief and bitterness of heart: the Countess, being informed of his
+state, set out, accompanied by her _mother_, and a long train of knights
+and ladies, to visit and comfort him with assurances of her fidelity;
+but when she appeared at his bed-side, and drew the curtain, it was
+already too late: Adhèmar expired in her arms. The Countess took the
+veil in the convent of St. Honoré, and died the same year _of grief_,
+says the chronicle;--and to conclude the tragedy characteristically, the
+mother of the young Countess buried her in the same grave with her
+lover, and raised a superb monument to the memory of both. The Countess
+de Die was one of the ten ladies who formed the _Court of Love_, held at
+Pierrefeu, (about 1194) and in which Estifanie de Baux presided.
+
+These Courts of Love, and the scenes they gave rise to, were certainly
+open to ridicule; the "belles et subtiles questions d'amour" which were
+there solemnly discussed, and decided by ladies of rank, were often
+absurd, and the decisions something worse: still the fanciful influence
+they gave to women on these subjects, and the gallantry they introduced
+into the intercourse between the sexes, had a tendency to soften the
+manners, to refine the language, and to tinge the sentiments and
+passions with a kind of philosophical mysticism. But these gay and
+gallant Courts of Love, the Provençal Troubadours, their lays, which for
+two centuries had been the delight of all ranks of people, and had
+spread music, love, and poetry through the land;--their language, which
+had been the chosen dialect of gallantry in every court of Europe,--were
+at once swept from the earth.
+
+The glory of the Provençal literature began when Provence was raised to
+an independent Fief, under Count Berenger I. about the year 1100; it
+lasted two entire centuries, and ended when that fine and fertile
+country became the scene of the horrible crusade against the Albigenses;
+when the Inquisition sent forth its exterminating fiends to scatter
+horror and devastation through the land, and the wars and rapacity of
+Charles of Anjou, its new possessor, almost depopulated the country. The
+language which had once celebrated deeds of love and heroism, now sang
+only of desolation and despair. The Troubadours, in a strain worthy of
+their gentle and noble calling, generally advocated the part of the
+Albigenses, and the oppressed of whatever faith; and in many provinces,
+in Lombardy especially, their language was interdicted, lest it might
+introduce heretical or rebellious principles; gradually it fell into
+disuse, and at length into total oblivion. The Troubadours, no longer
+welcomed in castle or in hall, where once
+
+    They poured to lords and ladies gay,
+    The unpremeditated lay,
+
+were degraded to wandering minstrels and itinerant jugglers. An attempt
+was made, about a century later, (1324) by the institution of the
+Floral Games at Thoulouse, to keep alive this high strain of poetical
+gallantry. They were formerly celebrated with great splendour, and a
+shadow of this institution is, I believe, still kept up, but it has
+degenerated into a mere school of affectation. The original race of the
+Troubadours was extinct long before Clemence d'Isaure and her golden
+violet were thought of.
+
+I cannot quit the subject of the Troubadours without one or two
+concluding observations. To these rude bards we owe some new notions of
+poetical justice, which never seem to have occurred to Horace or
+Longinus, and are certainly more magnanimous, as well as more true to
+moral feeling, than those which prevailed among the polished Greeks and
+Romans. For instance, the generous Hector and the constant Troilus are
+invariably exalted above the subtle Ulysses and the savage Achilles.
+Theseus, Jason, and Æneas, instead of being represented as classical
+heroes and pious favourites of the gods, are denounced as recreant
+knights and false traitors to love and beauty. In the estimation of
+these chivalrous bards, a woman's tears outweighed the exploits of
+demi-gods; all the glory of Theseus is forgotten in sympathy for
+Ariadne; and Æneas, in the old ballads and romances, is not, after all
+his perfidy, dismissed to happiness and victory, but is plagued by the
+fiends, haunted by poor Dido's "grimly ghost," and, finally, doomed to
+perish miserably.[18] Nor does Jason fare better at their hands; in all
+the old poets he is consigned to just execration. In Dante, we have a
+magnificent and a terrible picture of him, doomed to one of the lowest
+circles of hell, amid a herd of vile seducers, who betrayed the trusting
+faith, or bartered the charms of women. Demons scourge him up and down,
+without mercy or respite, in vengeance for the wrongs of Hypsipyle and
+Medea.
+
+    Guarda quel grande che viene
+    E per dolor, non par lagrima spanda;
+    Quanto aspetto reale ancor ritiene!
+    Quelli è Giasone--
+
+    --Con segni e con parole ornate
+      Isifile inganno----
+    Tal colpa a tal martiro lui condanna,
+      Ed anche di MEDEA si fa vendetta.
+
+                     INFERNO, C. 18.
+
+    "Behold that lofty shade, who this way tends,
+    And seems too woe-begone to drop a tear;
+    How yet the regal aspect he retains!
+    'Tis Jason--
+    --He who with tokens and fair witching words
+    Hypsipyle beguil'd--
+    Such is the guilt condemns him to this pain;
+    Here too Medea's injuries are aveng'd!"--
+
+                     CAREY.
+
+And Chaucer, in relating the same story, begins with a burst of generous
+indignation:
+
+    Thou root[19] of false lovers, Duke Jason,
+    Thou slayer, devourer, and confusion
+    Of gentil women, gentil creatures!
+
+The story of his double perfidy is told and commented on in the same
+chivalrous feeling: and the old poet concludes with characteristic
+tenderness and simplicity--
+
+    This was the mede of loving, and guerdon
+    That Medea received of Duke Jason,
+    Right for her truth and for her kindnesse,
+    That loved him better than herself I guesse!
+    And lefte her father and her heritage:
+    And of Jason this is the vassalage
+    That in his dayes was never none yfound
+    So false a lover going on the ground.
+
+It is in the same beautiful spirit of reverence to the best virtues of
+our sex, that Alcestis, the wife of Admetus, who sacrificed her life to
+prolong that of her husband, is honoured above all other heroines of
+classical story. She has even been elevated into a kind of presiding
+divinity,--a second Venus, with nobler attributes,--and in her new
+existence is feigned to be the consort and companion of Love himself.
+
+Another peculiarity of the poetry of the middle ages, was the worship
+paid to the daisy, (la Marguerite) as symbolical of all that is lovely
+in women. Why so lowly a flower should take precedence of the queenly
+lily and the sumptuous rose, is not very clear; but it seems to have
+originated with one of the old Provençal poets, whose mistress bore the
+name of Marguerite; and afterwards it became a fashion and a kind of
+poetical mythology.[20]
+
+Thus in the "Flower and the Leafe" of Chaucer, the ladies and knights of
+the flower approach singing a chorus in honour of the Daisy, of which
+the burthen is, "si douce est la Marguerite."
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[12] Le Roi lui demande, "S'il a perdu raison?" il lui répond, "Helas,
+oui! c'est depuis la mort du Prince Henri, votre fils!"
+
+[13] Inferno, c. xxviii.
+
+[14] Carey's translation of Dante. Mr. Carey reads Re Giovanni, instead
+of Re giovane:--King John, instead of Prince Henry.
+
+[15] Purgatorio, c. vi.
+
+[16] Vies des plus célèbres poëtes Provençaux.
+
+[17] Agnes de Navarre, Comtesse de Foix, was beloved by Guillaume de
+Machaut, a French poet; he became jealous, and she sent her own
+confessor to him to complain of the injustice of his suspicions, and to
+swear that she was still faithful to him. She required, also, of her
+lover, to write and to publish in verse the history of their love; and
+she preserved, at the same time, in the eyes of her husband and of the
+world, the character of a virtuous Princess.--_See Foscolo_--_Essays on
+Petrarch._
+
+[18] Percy's Reliques.
+
+[19] _Root_, i. e. example or beginner.
+
+[20] See the notes to Chaucer, the works of Froissart, and Mémoires sur
+les Troubadours.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+GUIDO CAVALCANTI AND MANDETTA,
+
+CINO DA PISTOJA AND SELVAGGIA.
+
+
+Amatory poetry was transmitted from the Provençals to the Italians and
+Sicilians, among whom the language of the Troubadours had long been
+cultivated, and their songs imitated, but in style yet more affected and
+_recherché_. Few of the Italian poets who preceded Dante, are
+interesting even in a mere literary point of view: of these only one or
+two have shed a reflected splendour round the object of their adoration.
+Guido Cavalcanti, the Florentine, was the early and favourite friend of
+Dante: being engaged in the factions of his native city, he was forced
+on some emergency to quit it; and to escape the vengeance of the
+prevailing party, he undertook a pilgrimage to Sant Jago. Passing
+through Tolosa, he fell in love with a beautiful Spanish girl, whom he
+has celebrated under the name of _Mandetta_:
+
+    In un boschetto trovai pastorella
+    Più che la stella bella al mio parere,
+    Capegli avea biondetti e ricciutelli.
+
+Some of his songs and ballads have considerable grace and nature; but
+they were considered by himself as mere trifles. His grand work on which
+his fame long rested, is a "Canzone sopra l'Amore," in which the subject
+is so profoundly and so philosophically treated, that seven voluminous
+commentaries in Latin and Italian have not yet enabled the world to
+understand it.
+
+The following Sonnet is deservedly celebrated for the consummate beauty
+of the picture it resents, and will give a fair idea of the platonic
+extravagance of the time.
+
+    Chi è questa che vien ch' ogni uom la mira!
+      Che fa tremar di caritate l' a're?
+      E mena seco amor, sì che parlare
+      Null' uom ne puote; ma ciascun sospira?
+    Ahi dio! che sembra quando gli occhi gira!
+      Dicalo Amor, ch'io nol saprei contare;
+      Cotanto d' umiltà donna mi pare
+      Che ciascun' altra inver di lei chiam' ira.
+    Non si porria contar la sua piacenza;
+      Che a lei s'inchina ogni gentil virtute,
+      E la beltate per sua Dea la mostra.
+    Non è si alta già la mente nostra
+      E non s'è posta in noi tanta salute
+      Che propriamente n' abbian conoscenza!
+
+
+LITERAL TRANSLATION.
+
+     "Who is this, on whom all men gaze as she approacheth!--who
+     causeth the very air to tremble around her with
+     tenderness?--who leadeth Love by her side--in whose presence
+     men are dumb; and can only sigh? Ah! Heaven! what power in
+     every glance of those eyes! Love alone can tell; for I have
+     neither words nor skill! She alone is the Lady of
+     gentleness--beside her, all others seem ungracious and
+     unkind. Who can describe her sweetness, her loveliness? to
+     her every virtue bows, and beauty points to her as her own
+     divinity. The mind of man cannot soar so high, nor is it
+     sufficiently purified by divine grace to understand and
+     appreciate all her perfections!"
+
+The vagueness of this portrait is a part of its beauty:--it is like a
+lovely dream--and probably never had any existence, but in the fancy of
+the Poet.
+
+Cino da Pistoia enjoyed the double reputation of being the greatest
+doctor and teacher of the civil law, and most famous poet of his time.
+He was also remarkable for his personal accomplishments and his love of
+pleasure. There is a sonnet which Dante addressed to Cino, reproaching
+him with being inconstant and volatile in love.[21] Apparently, this was
+after the death of the beautiful Ricciarda dei Selvaggi; or, as he calls
+her, his Selvaggia: she was of a noble family of Pistoia, her father
+having been gonfaliere, and leader of the faction of the Bianchi; and
+she was also celebrated for her poetical talents. It appears from a
+little madrigal of hers, which has been preserved, that though she
+tenderly returned the affection of her lover, it was without the
+knowledge of her haughty family. It is not distinguished for poetic
+power, but has at least the charm of perfect frankness and simplicity,
+and a kind of _abandon_ that is quite bewitching.
+
+
+A MESSER CINO DA PISTOJA.
+
+    Gentil mio sir, lo parlare amoroso
+      Di voi sì in allegranza mi mantene,
+      Che dirvel non poria, ben lo sacciate;
+        Perchè del mio amor sete giojoso,
+      Di ciò grand' allegria e gio' mi vene,
+      Ed altro mai non haggio in volontate,
+      Fuor del vostro piacere;
+      Tutt' hora fate la vostra voglienza:
+      Haggiate previdenza
+      Voi, di celar la nostra desienza.
+
+    "My gentle love and lord! those tender words
+    Of thine so fill my conscious heart with joy,
+    --I cannot speak it--but thou know'st it well;
+    Wherefore do thou rejoice in that deep love
+    I bear thee, knowing that I have no thought
+    But to fulfil thy will and crown thy wish:
+    --Watch thou--and hide our mutual hope from all!"
+
+Meantime the parents of Ricciarda were exiled from Pistoia, by the
+faction of the Neri. They took refuge from their enemies in a little
+fortress among the Appenines, whither Cino followed them, and was
+received as a comforter amid their distresses. Probably the days passed
+in this dreary abode, among the wild and solitary hills, when he
+assisted Ricciarda in her household duties, and in aiding and consoling
+her parents, were among the happiest of his life; but the winter came,
+and with it many privations and many hardships. Their mountain retreat
+was ill calculated to defend them against the fury of the elements:
+Ricciarda drooped under the pressure of misery and want, and her parents
+and her lover watched the gradual extinction of life--saw the rose-hue
+fade from her cheek, and the light from her eye, till she melted from
+their arms into death; then they buried her with tears, in a nook among
+the mountains.
+
+Many years afterwards, when Cino had reached the height of his fame, and
+had been crowned with wealth and honours by his native city, he had
+occasion to cross the Appenines on an embassy, and causing his suite to
+travel by another road, he made a pilgrimage alone to the tomb of his
+lost Selvaggia. This incident gave rise to the most striking of all his
+compositions, which with great pathos and sweetness describes his
+feelings, when he flung himself down on her humble grave, to weep over
+the recollection of their past happiness:
+
+    Io fu' in sull'alto e in sul beato monte,
+      Ove adorai baciando il santo sasso,
+      E caddi in su quella pietra, oimè lasso!
+      Ove l' onestà pose la sua fronte;
+    E ch' ella chiuse d' ogni virtù il fonte
+      Quel giorno che di morte acerbo passo
+      Fece la donna dello mio cor,--lasso!--
+      Già piena tutta d' adornezze conte.
+    Quivi chiamai a questa guisa Amore:
+      "Dolce mio Dio, fa che quinci mi traggia
+      La morte a se, che qui giace il mio cor!"
+    Ma poi che non m'intese il mio signore,
+      Mi disparti, pur chiamando, Selvaggia!
+      L'alpe passai, con voce di dolore.
+
+The circumstance in the last stanza, "I rose up and went on my way, and
+passed the mountain summits, crying aloud 'Selvaggia!' in accents of
+despair," has a strong reality about it, and no doubt _was_ real. Her
+death took place about 1316.
+
+In the history of Italian poetry, Selvaggia is distinguished as the
+"_bel numer' una_,"--"the fair number one"--of the four celebrated
+women of that century--The others were Dante's Beatrice, Petrarch's
+Laura, and Boccaccio's Fiammetta.
+
+Every one who reads and admires Petrarch, will remember his beautiful
+Sonnet on the Death of Cino, beginning "Piangete Donne"
+
+    Perchè 'l nostro amoroso messer Cino
+    Novellamente s'è da noi partito.
+
+In the venerable Cathedral at Pistoia, there is an ancient half-effaced
+bas-relief, representing Cino, surrounded by his disciples, to whom he
+is explaining the code of civil law: a little behind stands the figure
+of a female veiled, and in a pensive attitude, which is supposed to
+represent Ricciarda de' Selvaggi.
+
+All these are alluded to by Petrarch in the Trionfo d'Amore.
+
+                    Ecco Selvaggia,
+    Ecco Cin da Pistoja; Guitton d'Arezzo;
+    Ecco i due Guidi che già furo in prezzo.
+
+The two Guidi are, Guido Guizzinello, and Guido Cavalcanti. Guitone was
+a famous monk, who is said to have invented the present form of the
+sonnet: to him also is attributed the discovery of counterpoint, and the
+present system of musical notation.
+
+Of Conti's mistress nothing is known, but that she had the most
+beautiful hand in the world, whence the volume of poems written by her
+lover in her praise, is entitled, _La Bella Mano_, the fair hand. Conti
+lived some years later than Petrarch. I mention him merely to fill up
+the list of those ancient minor poets of Italy, whose names and loves
+are still celebrated.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[21]
+    Chi s' innamora, siccome voi fate
+    Ed ad ogni piacer si lega e scioglie
+    Mostra ch'amor leggermente il saetti--SON. 44.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+LAURA.
+
+
+There are some who doubt the reality of Petrarch's love, because it is
+expressed in numbers; and others, refining on this doubt, profess even
+to question whether his Laura ever existed, except in the imagination
+and the poetry of her lover. The first objection could only be made by
+the most prosaic of commentators--some true "black-letter dog"[22]--who
+had dustified and mistified his faculties among old parchments. The most
+real and most fervent passion that ever fell under my own knowledge, was
+revealed in verse, and very exquisite verse too, and has inspired many
+an effusion, full of beauty, fancy, and poetry; but it has not,
+therefore, been counted less sincere; and Heaven forbid it should prove
+less lasting than if it had been told in the homeliest prose, and had
+never inspired one beautiful idea or one rapturous verse!
+
+To study Petrarch in his own works, and in his own delightful language;
+to follow him line by line, through all the vicissitudes and
+contradictions of passion; to listen to his self-reproaches, his
+terrors, his regrets, his conflicts; to dwell on his exquisite
+delineations of individual character and peculiar beauty, his simple
+touches of profound pathos and melancholy tenderness:--and then believe
+all to be mere invention,--the coinage of the brain,--a tissue of
+visionary fancies, in which the heart had no share; to confound him with
+the cold metaphysical rhymesters of a later age,--seems to argue not
+only a strange want of judgment, but an extraordinary obtuseness of
+feeling.[23]
+
+The faults of taste of which Petrarch has been accused over and over
+again, by those who seem to have studied him as Voltaire studied
+Shakspeare,--his _concetti_--his fanciful adoration of the laurel, as
+the emblem of Laura--his playing on the words _Laura_, _L'aura_, and
+_Lauro_, his _freezing flames_ and _burning ice_,--I abandon to critics,
+and let them make the best of them, as defects in what were else
+perfection.
+
+These were the fashion of the day: a great genius may outrun his times,
+but not without bearing about him some ineffaceable impressions of the
+manners and character of the age in which he lived. He is too witty--"Il
+a trop d'esprit," to be sincere, say the critics,--"he has a conceit
+left him in his misery,--a miserable conceit;" but we know--at least
+_I_ know--how in the very extremity of passion the soul can mock at
+itself--how the fancy can with a bitter and exaggerated gaiety sport
+with the heart!--These are faults of composition in the writer, and
+admitted to be such; but they prove nothing against the man, the poet,
+or the lover. The reproach of monotony, I confess I never could
+understand. It is rather matter of astonishment, how in a collection of
+nearly four hundred poems, all, with one or two exceptions, turning upon
+the same subject and sentiment, the poet has poured forth such an
+endless and redundant variety both of thought and feeling--how from the
+wide universe, the changeful face of all beautiful nature, the treasures
+of antique learning, and, above all, from his own overflowing heart, he
+has drawn those lovely pictures, allusions, situations, sentiments and
+reflections, which have, indeed, been stolen, borrowed, imitated, worn
+threadbare by succeeding poets, but in him were the fresh and
+spontaneous effusions of profound feeling and luxuriant fancy. Schlegel
+very justly observes, that the impression of monotony may arise from
+our considering at one view, and bound up in one volume, a long series
+of poems, which were written in the course of many years, at different
+times, and on different occasions. Laura herself, he avers, would
+certainly have been _ennuyée_ to death with her own praises, if she had
+been obliged to read over, at one sitting, all the verses which her
+lover composed on her charms; and I agree with him.
+
+It appears to me that the very impression of Petrarch's individual
+character, and the circumstances of his life, on the whole mass of his
+poetry, are evidence of the truth of his attachment, and the reality of
+its object. He was by nature a poet; his love was, therefore, poetical:
+he loved "in numbers, for the numbers came." He was an accomplished
+scholar in a pedantic age,--and his love is, therefore, illustrated by
+such comparisons and turns of thought as were allied to his habitual
+studies. He had a fertile and playful fancy, and his love is adorned by
+all the luxuriance of his imagination. He had been educated for the
+profession of the Civil Law, "per vender parole anzi mensogne,"--to
+sell words and lies, as he disdainfully expressed it,--and his love is
+mixed up with subtile reasonings on his own hapless state. He was a
+philosopher, and it is tinged with the mystic reveries of Platonism, the
+favourite and fashionable philosophy of the age. He was deeply
+religious, and the strain of devotional and moral feeling which mingles
+with that of passion, or of grief,--his fears lest the excess of his
+earthly affections should interfere with his eternal salvation,--his
+continual allusions to his faith, to a future existence, and the
+nothingness and vanity of the world,--are not so many proofs of his
+profaneness, but of his sincerity. He was suspicious, irritable, and
+susceptible; subject to quick transitions of feeling; raised by a word
+to hope--plunged by a glance into despair; just such a finely-toned
+instrument as a woman loves to play on;--and all this we have set forth
+in the contradictions, the self-reproaches, the little daily
+vicissitudes which are events and revolutions in a life of passion; a
+life, which when exhibited in the rich and softening tints of poetry,
+has all the power of strong interest, united to the charm of harmony and
+expression; but in the reality, and in plain prose, cannot be
+contemplated without a painful compassion. "The day may perhaps come,"
+says Petrarch in one of his familiar letters,[24] "when I shall have
+calmness enough to contemplate all the misery of my soul, to examine my
+passion, not however, that I may continue to love her--but that I may
+love thee alone, O my God! But at this day, how many obstacles have I
+yet to surmount, how many efforts have I yet to make! I no longer love
+as I did love, but still I love; I love in spite of myself--in
+lamentations and in tears. I will hate her--No!--I must still love her!"
+Seven years afterwards he writes,--"my love is extreme, but it is
+exclusive and virtuous--virtuous!--no!--this disquietude, these
+suspicions, these transports, this watchfulness, this utter weariness of
+every thing, are not signs of a virtuous love!" What a picture of an
+impassioned and distracted heart!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And who was this Laura, the illustrious object of a passion which has
+filled the wide universe from side to side with her name and fame? What
+was her station, her birth, her lineage? What were her transcendant
+qualities of person, heart, and mind, that she should have swayed, with
+such despotic and distracting power, one of the sovereign spirits of the
+age? Is it not enough that we acknowledge her to have been Petrarch's
+love--as chaste as fair?
+
+    And whether coldness, pride, or virtue, dignify
+    A woman, so she is good, what does it signify?
+
+In the present case, it signifies much:--we are not to be put off with a
+witty or satirical couplet:--the insatiable curiosity which Laura has
+excited from age to age--the volumes which have been written on the
+subject--are a proof of the sincerity of her lover; for nothing but
+truth could ever inspire this lasting and universal interest. But
+without diving into these dry disputations, let us take Laura's portrait
+from Petrarch himself, drawn, it will be said, by the partial hand of a
+poetic lover:--true; but since Laura is interesting to us from the
+charms she possessed in his eyes, it were unfair to seek her portraiture
+elsewhere.
+
+Laura was of high birth and station, though her life was spent in
+retirement and domestic cares;
+
+    In nobil sangue, vita umile e quete.
+
+Her father, Audibert de Noves, was of the _haute noblesse_ of Avignon,
+and died in her infancy, leaving her a dowry of 1000 gold crowns, (about
+10,000 pounds)--a magnificent portion for those times. She was married
+at the age of eighteen to Hugh de Sade, a man of rank equal to her own,
+and of corresponding age, but not distinguished by any advantages either
+of person or mind. The marriage contract is dated in January, 1325, two
+years before her first meeting with Petrarch: and in it, her mother, the
+Lady Ermessende, and brother John de Noves, stipulate to pay the dower
+left by her father; and also to bestow on the bride two magnificent
+dresses for state occasions; one of green, embroidered with violets; the
+other of crimson, trimmed with feathers. In all the portraits of Laura
+now extant, she is represented in one of these two dresses, and they are
+frequently alluded to by Petrarch. He tells us expressly, that when he
+first met her at matins in the Church of St. Claire, she was habited in
+a robe of green, spotted with violets.[25] Mention is also made of a
+coronal of silver, with which she wreathed her hair; of her necklaces
+and ornaments of pearl. Diamonds are not once alluded to, because the
+art of cutting them had not then been invented. From all which, it
+appears that Laura was opulent, and moved in the first class of society.
+It was customary for the women of rank, in those times, to dress with
+extreme simplicity on ordinary occasions, but with the most gorgeous
+splendour when they appeared in public. There are some beautiful
+descriptions of Laura surrounded by her young female companions,
+divested of all her splendid apparel, in a simple white robe and a few
+flowers in her hair; but still pre-eminent over all by her superior
+loveliness. From the frequent allusions to her dress, and Petrarch's
+angry apostrophes to her mirror, because it assisted to heighten charms
+already too destructive,[26] we may infer that Laura was not unmindful
+of the cares of the toilette.
+
+She was in person a fair Madonna-like beauty with soft dark eyes, and a
+profusion of pale golden hair parted on her brow, and falling in rich
+curls over her neck. He dwells on the celestial grace of her figure and
+movements, "l' andar celeste."
+
+    Non era l' andar suo cosa mortale
+    Ma d' angelica forma.
+
+He describes the beauty of her hand in the 166th sonnet,--
+
+    O bella man che mi distringi il core.
+
+And the loveliness of her mouth,--
+
+    La bella bocca angelica.
+
+The general character of her beauty must have been pensive, soft,
+unobtrusive, and even somewhat languid:
+
+    L' angelica sembianza umile e piana--
+    L' atto mansueto, umile e tardo--
+
+the last line is exquisitely characteristic. This extreme softness and
+repose must have been far removed from insipidity; for he dwells also on
+the rare and varying expression of her loveliness, "Leggiadria singolare
+e pellegrina;"--the lightning of her smile, "Il lampeggiar dell'
+angelico riso;"--and the tender magic of her voice, which was felt in
+the inmost heart, "Il cantar che nell' anima si sente." She had a habit
+of veiling her eyes with her hand, and her looks were generally bent on
+the earth, "o per umiltade o per orgoglio." In the portrait of Laura,
+which I saw at the Laurentian Library at Florence, the eyes have this
+characteristic downcast look. Her lover complains also of a veil, which
+she was fond of wearing. Wandering in the country, one summer's day, he
+sees a young peasant-girl washing a veil in the running stream; he
+recognises the very texture which had so often intervened between him
+and the heaven of Laura's beauty, and he trembles as if he had been in
+the presence of Laura herself. This little incident is the subject of
+the first Madrigal.
+
+He describes her dignified humility, "l' umiltà superba;"--her beautiful
+silence, "il bel tacere;"--her frequent sighs, "i sospir soavemente
+rotti;"--her sweet disdain and gentle repulses, "dolci sdegni, placide
+repulse;"--the gesture which spoke without the aid of words, "l'atto che
+parla con silenzio." The picture, it must be confessed, is most
+finished, most delicate, most beautiful;--supposing only half to be
+true, it is still beautiful. But far more flattering, and more
+honourable to Laura, is her lover's confession of the influence which
+her charming character possessed over him; for it is certain that we owe
+to Laura's exquisite purity of mind and manners, the polished delicacy
+of the homage addressed to her. Passing over, of course, the
+circumstance of her being a married woman, and therefore not a proper
+object of amorous verse,--there is not in all the poetry she inspired, a
+line or sentiment which angels might not hear and approve. Petrarch
+represents her as expressing neither surprise nor admiration at the
+self-sacrifice of Lucretia, but only wondering that shame and grief had
+not anticipated the dagger of the Roman matron. He describes her
+conversation, "pien d'intelletti dolci ed alti," and her mind ever
+serene, though her countenance was pensive, "in aspetto pensoso, anima
+lieta." He tells us that she had raised him above all low-thoughted
+cares, and purified his heart from all base desires. "I bless the place,
+the time, the hour, when I presumed to lift my eyes upon her,--I say, O
+my soul, thankful shouldst thou be that hast been deemed worthy of such
+high honour--for from her spring those gentle thoughts which shall lead
+thee to aspire to the highest good, and to disdain all that the vulgar
+mind desires."
+
+    I' benedico il loco e 'l tempo e l'ora
+    Che si alti miraron gli occhi mici;
+    E dico: anima, assai ringraziar dei
+    Che fosti a tanto onor degnata allora.
+
+    ....*....*....*....*
+
+    Da lei ti vien l' amoroso pensiero
+    Che, mentre 'l segui all' Sommo ben t'invia
+    Poco prezzando quel ch' ogni uom desia.
+
+Every generous feeling, every noble and elevated sentiment, every desire
+for improvement, he refers to her, and to her only:
+
+                  S' alcun bel frutto
+    Nasce di me, da voi vien prima il seme.
+    Io per me son quasi un terreno asciutto
+    Colto da voi; e 'l pregio è vostro in tutto.
+
+                     CANZONE 8.
+
+He gives us in a single line the very _beau idéal_ of a female
+character, when he tells us that Laura united the highest intellect with
+the purest heart, "In alto intelletto un puro core." He dwells with
+rapture on her angelic modesty, which excited at once his reverence and
+his despair; but he confesses that he still hopes something from the
+pitying tenderness of her disposition.--
+
+    Non è sì duro cor, che lagrimando,
+    Pregando, amando, talor non si smova
+    Nè sì freddo voler, che non si scalde.
+
+The attachment inspired by such a woman was not likely to be lessened by
+absence, or removed by death itself; and it is certain that the second
+part of the Canzonière of Petrarch, written after the death of Laura, is
+more beautiful than the first part: in a more impassioned style, a
+higher tone of feeling, with far fewer faults, both of taste and style.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It will be said perhaps that "the picture of such a mind as Petrarch's,
+enslaved and distracted by a dreaming passion, employed even in his
+declining years, in writing and polishing love verses, is a pitiable
+subject of contemplation; that if he had not left us his Canzonière, he
+would probably have performed some other excelling work of genius, which
+would have crowned him with equal or superior glory; and that if he had
+never been the lover of Laura, he would have been no less that
+master-spirit who gave the leading impulse to the age in which he
+lived, by consecrating his life, his energies, all his splendid talents,
+to the cultivation of philosophy and the fine arts, the extension of
+learning and liberty, and the general improvement of mankind."
+
+I doubt this, and I appeal to Petrarch himself.
+
+I believe there is no version into English of the 48th Canzone. If Lady
+Dacre had executed it--and in the same spirit as the "Chiare, fresche e
+dolce acque," and the "Italia mia," the reader had been spared my
+abortive prose sketch, which will give as just an idea of the original
+as a hasty penciled outline of one of Titian's or Domenichino's
+masterpieces would give us of all the magic colouring and effect of
+their glorious and half-breathing creations.
+
+In this Canzone, Petrarch, in a high strain of poetic imagery, which
+takes nothing from the truth or pathos of the sentiment, allegorises his
+own situation and feelings: he represents himself as citing the Lord of
+Love, "Suo empio e dolce Signore," before the throne of Reason, and
+accusing him as the cause of all his sufferings, sorrows, errors, and
+misspent time. "Through _him_ (Love) I have endured, even from the
+moment I was first beguiled into his power, such various and such
+exquisite pain, that my patience has at length been exhausted, and I
+have abhorred my existence. I have not only forsaken the path of
+ambition and useful exertion, but even of pleasure and of happiness: I,
+who was born, if I do not deceive myself, for far higher purposes than
+to be a mere amorous slave! Through _him_ I have been careless of my
+duty to Heaven,--negligent of myself:--for the sake of one woman I
+forgot all else!--me miserable! What have availed me all the high and
+precious gifts of Heaven, the talents, the genius which raised me above
+other men? My hairs are changed to grey, but still my heart changeth
+not. Hath he not sent me wandering over the earth in search of repose?
+hath he not driven me from city to city, and through forests, and woods,
+and wild solitudes?[27] hath he not deprived me of peace, and of that
+sleep which no herbs nor chaunted spells have power to restore? Through
+him, I have become a bye-word in the world, which I have filled with my
+lamentations, till by their repetition I have wearied myself, and
+perhaps all others."
+
+To this long tirade, Love with indignation replies: "Hearest thou the
+falsehood of this ungrateful man? This is he who in his youth devoted
+himself to the despicable traffic of words and lies, and now he blushes
+not to reproach me with having raised him from obscurity, to know the
+delights of an honourable and virtuous life. I gave him power to attain
+a height of fame and virtue to which of himself he had never dared to
+aspire. If he has obtained a name among men, to me he owes it. Let him
+remember the great heroes and poets of antiquity, whose evil stars
+condemned them to lavish their love upon unworthy objects, whose
+mistresses were courtezans and slaves; while for him, I chose from the
+whole world one lovely woman, so gifted by Heaven with all female
+excellence, that her likeness is not to be found beneath the moon,--one
+whose melodious voice and gentle accents had power to banish from his
+heart every vain, and dark, and vicious thought. These were the wrongs
+of which he complains: such is my reward for all I have done for
+him,--ungrateful man! Upon my wings hath he soared upwards, till his
+name is placed among the greatest of the sons of song, and fair ladies
+and gentle knights listen with delight to his strains:--had it not been
+for me, what had he become before now? Perhaps a vain flatterer, seeking
+preferment in a Court, confounded among the herd of vulgar men! I have
+so chastened, so purified his heart through the heavenly image impressed
+upon it, that even in his youth, and in the age of the passions, I
+preserved him pure in thought and in action;[28] whatever of good or
+great ever stirred within his breast, he derives from her and from me.
+From the contemplation of virtue, sweetness, and beauty, in the
+gracious countenance of her he loved, I led him upwards to the adoration
+of the first Great Cause, the fountain of all that is beautiful and
+excellent;--hath he not himself confessed it? And this fair creature,
+whom I gave him to be the honour, and delight, and prop of his frail
+life"--
+
+Here the sense is suddenly broken off in the middle of a line. Petrarch
+utters a cry of horror, and exclaims--"Yes, you gave her to me, but you
+have also taken her from me!"
+
+Love replies with sweet austerity--"Not I--but HE--the eternal One--who
+hath willed it so!"
+
+After this, it will be allowed, I think, that it is to Laura we owe
+Petrarch; and that if the recompense she bestowed on him was not exactly
+that which he sought,--yet in fame, in greatness, in virtue, and in
+happiness, she well and richly repaid the adoration he lavished at her
+feet, and the glorious wreath of song with which he has circled her
+brows!
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[22] See Pursuits of Literature.
+
+[23] In a private letter of Petrarch to the Bishop of Lombes, occurs the
+following passage--(the Bishop, it appears, had rallied him on the
+subject of his attachment.) "Would to God that my Laura were indeed but
+an imaginary person, and my passion for her but sport!--Alas! it is
+rather a madness!--hard would it have been, and painful, to feign so
+long a time--and what extravagance to play such a farce in the world!
+No! we may counterfeit the action and voice of a sick man, but not the
+paleness and wasted looks of the sufferer; and how often have you
+witnessed both in me!"--SADE, vol. i. p. 281.
+
+[24] Quoted by Foscolo.
+
+[25] Canz. xv. Son. 10.
+
+[26] See Son. 37, 38, &c.
+
+[27] Foscolo remarks the restless spirit which all his life drove
+Petrarch, like a perturbed spirit, from one residence to another.
+
+[28] Here Petrarch seems to have forgotten himself; he was not _always_
+immaculate.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+LAURA AND PETRARCH CONTINUED.
+
+
+Much power of lively ridicule, much coarse wit,--principally French
+wit,--has been expended on the subject of Laura's virtue; by those, I
+presume, who under similar circumstances would have found such virtue
+"too painful an endeavour."[29] Much depraved ingenuity has been
+exerted to twist certain lines and passages in the Canzonière into a
+sense which shall blot with frailty the memory of this beautiful and
+far-famed being: once believe these interpretations, and all the
+peculiar and graceful charm which now hangs round her intercourse with
+Petrarch vanishes,--the reverential delicacy of the poet's homage
+becomes a mockery, and all his exalted praises of her unequalled virtue,
+and her invincible chastity, are turned to satire, and insult our moral
+feeling.
+
+But the question, I believe, is finally set at rest, and it were idle
+to war with epigrams. All the evidence that has been collected, external
+and internal, prose and poetry, critical and traditional, tends to
+prove, first, that Laura preserved her virtue to the last; and,
+secondly, that she did not preserve it unassailed; that Petrarch, true
+to his sex,--a very man, (as Laura has been called a _very woman_,) used
+at first every art, every effort, every advantage, which his diversified
+accomplishments of mind and person lent him, to destroy the very virtue
+he adored. He only _hints_ this in his poetry, just sufficiently to
+enhance the glory which he has thrown round his divinity; but he speaks
+more plainly in prose.
+
+"Untouched by my prayers, unvanquished by my arguments, unmoved by my
+flattery, she remained faithful to her sex's honour; she resisted her
+own young heart, and mine, and a thousand, thousand, thousand things,
+which must have conquered any other. She remained unshaken. A woman
+taught me the duty of a man! to persuade me to keep the path of virtue,
+her conduct was at once an example and a reproach; and when she beheld
+me break through all bounds, and rush blindly to the precipice, she had
+the courage to abandon me, rather than follow me."[30]
+
+But whether, in this long conflict, Laura preserved her heart untouched,
+as well as her virtue immaculate; whether she shared the love she
+inspired; or whether she escaped from the captivating assiduities and
+intoxicating homage of her lover, "_fancy-free_;"--whether coldness, or
+prudence, or pride, or virtue, or the mere heartless love of admiration,
+or a mixture of all together, dictated her conduct, is at least as well
+worth inquiry, as the exact colour of her eyes, or the form of her nose,
+upon which we have pages of grave discussion. She might have been
+_coquette par instinct_, if not _par calcul_; she might have felt, with
+feminine _tacte_, that to preserve her influence over Petrarch, it was
+necessary to preserve his respect. She was evidently proud of her
+conquest: she had else been more or less than woman; and at every
+hazard, but that of self-respect, she was resolved to retain him. If
+Petrarch absented himself for a few days, he was generally better
+treated on his return.[31] If he avoided her, then her eye followed him
+with a softer expression. When he looked pale from sickness of heart and
+agitation of spirits, Laura would address him with a few words of
+pitying tenderness. He thanks her in those exquisite lines, which seem
+to glow with all the renovation of hope,
+
+      Volgendo gli occhi al mio novo colore
+    Che fa di morte rimembrar le gente
+    Pietà vi mosse, onde benignamente
+    Salutando teneste in vita il core.
+
+      La frale vita ch'ancor meco alberga,
+    Fu de' begli occhi vostri aperto dono,
+    E della voce angelica soave![32]
+
+He presumes upon this benignity, and is again dashed back with frowns.
+He flies to solitude,--solitude!--Never let the proud and torn heart,
+wrung with the sense of injury, and sick with unrequited passion, seek
+that worst resource against pain, for there grief grows by contemplation
+of itself, and every feeling is sharpened by collision. Petrarch sought
+to "mitigate the fever of his heart" amid the shades of Vaucluse, a spot
+so gloomy and so solitary, that his very servants forsook him; and
+Vaucluse, its fountains, its forests, and its hanging cliffs, reflected
+only the image of Laura.
+
+      L'acque parlan d'amore, e l'aura, e i rami
+    E gli augeletti, e i pesci e i fiori e l'erba;
+      Tutti insieme pregando ch' io sempr'ami![33]
+
+He is driven again to her feet by his own insupportable thoughts--and in
+terror of himself;--
+
+    Tal paura ho di ritrovarmi solo!
+
+He endeavours to maintain in her presence that self-constraint she had
+enjoined. He assumes a cold and calm deportment, and Laura, as she
+passes him, whispers in a tone of gentle reproach, "Petrarch! are you so
+soon weary of loving me?" (ten or eleven years of adoration were, in
+truth, nothing--_to signify_!) At length, he resolved to leave Laura and
+Avignon for ever; and instead of plunging into solitude, to seek the
+wiser resource of travel and society. He announced this intention to
+Laura, and bade her a long farewell; either through surprise, or grief,
+or the fear of losing her glorious captive, she turned exceedingly pale,
+a cloud overspread her beautiful countenance, and she fixed her eyes on
+the ground. This was to her lover an intoxicating moment; in the
+exultation of sudden delight, he interpreted these symptoms of
+relenting, this "vago impallidir," too favourably to himself. "She bent
+those gentle eyes upon the earth, which in their sweet silence said,--to
+me at least they seemed to say,--'who takes my faithful friend so far
+from me?'"
+
+      Chinava a terra il bel guardo gentile,
+    E tacendo dicea, com' a me parve--
+      "Chi m'allontana il mio fedele amico?"
+
+On his return to Avignon, a few months afterwards, Laura received him
+with evident pleasure; but he is not, therefore, more _avançé_; all this
+was probably the refined coquetterie of a woman of calm passions; but
+not heartless, not really indifferent to the devotion she inspired, nor
+ungrateful for it.
+
+Petrarch has himself left us a most minute and interesting description
+of the whole course of Laura's conduct towards him, which by a beautiful
+figure of poetry he has placed in her own mouth. The passage occurs in
+the TRIONFO DI MORTE, beginning, "La notte che segui l'orribil caso."
+
+The apparition of Laura descending on the morning dew, bright as the
+opening dawn, and crowned with Oriental gems,
+
+    Di gemme orientali incoronata,
+
+appears before her lover, and addresses him with compassionate
+tenderness. After a short dialogue, full of poetic beauty and noble
+thoughts,[34] Petrarch conjures her, in the name of heaven and of truth,
+to tell him whether the pity she sometimes expressed for him was allied
+to love? for that the sweetness she mingled with her disdain and
+reserve--the soft looks with which she tempered her anger, had left him
+for long years in doubt of her real sentiments, still doating, still
+suspecting, still hoping without end:
+
+    Creovvi amor pensier mai nella testa,
+    D' aver pietà del mio lungo martire
+    Non lasciando vostr' alta impresa onestà?
+
+    Che vostri dolci sdegni e le dolc' ire--
+    Le dolci paci ne' begli occhi scritte--
+    Tenner molt' anni in dubbio il mio desire.
+
+She replies evasively, with a smile and a sigh, that her heart was ever
+with him, but that to preserve her own fair fame, and the virtue of
+both, it was necessary to assume the guise of severity and disdain. She
+describes the arts with which she kept alive his passion, now checking
+his presumption with the most frigid reserve, and when she saw him
+drooping, as a man ready to die, "all fancy-sick and pale of cheer,"
+gently restoring him with soft looks and kind words:
+
+    "Salvando la tua vita e'l nostro onore."
+
+She confesses the delight she felt in being beloved, and the pride she
+took in being sung by so great a poet. She reminds him of one particular
+occasion, when seated by her side, and they were left alone, he sang to
+his lute a song composed to her praise, beginning, "Dir più non osa il
+nostro amore;" and she asks him whether he did not perceive that the
+veil had then nearly fallen from her heart?[35]
+
+She laments, in some exquisite lines, that she had not the happiness to
+be born in Italy, the native country of her lover, and yet allows that
+the land must needs be fair in which she first won his affection.
+
+    Duolmi ancor veramente, ch'io non nacqui
+    Almen più presso al tuo fiorito nido!--
+    Ma assai fu bel päese ov'io ti piacqui.
+
+In another passage we have a sentiment evidently taken from nature, and
+exquisitely graceful and feminine. "You," says Laura, "proclaimed to all
+men the passion you felt for me: you called aloud for pity: you kept not
+the tender secret for me alone, but took a pride and a pleasure in
+publishing it forth to the world; thus constraining me, by all a woman's
+fear and modesty, to be silent."--"But not less is the pain because we
+conceal it in the depths of the heart, nor the greater because we lament
+aloud: fiction and poetry can add nothing to truth, nor yet take from
+it."
+
+      Tu eri di mercè chiamar già roco
+    Quand'io tacea; perchè vergogna e tema
+    Facean molto desir, parer si poco;
+    Non è minor il duol perch' altri 'l prema,
+    Ne maggior per andarsi lamentando:
+    Per fizïon non cresce il ver, nè scema.
+
+Petrarch, then all trembling and in tears, exclaims, "that could he but
+believe he had been dear to her eyes as to her heart, he were
+sufficiently recompensed for all his sufferings;" and she replies, "that
+will I never reveal!" ('_quello mi taccio._') By this coquettish and
+characteristic answer, we are still left in the dark. Such was the
+sacred respect in which Petrarch held her he so loved, that though he
+evidently wishes to believe--perhaps _did_ believe, that he had touched
+her heart, he would not presume to insinuate what Laura had never
+avowed. The whole scene, though less polished in the versification than
+some of his sonnets, is written throughout with all the flow and fervour
+of real feeling. It received the poet's last corrections twenty-six
+years after Laura's death, and but a few weeks previous to his own.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When at Milan, I was taken, as a matter of course, to visit the
+Ambrosian library. At the time I was ill in health, dejected and
+indifferent; and I only remember being led in passive resignation from
+room to room, and called upon to admire a vast variety of objects, at
+the moment when I was pining for rest; when to look, think, speak, or
+move, was pain,--when to sit motionless and gaze out upon the sunshine,
+seemed to me the only supreme blessedness. In such moments as these, we
+can have sympathies with nature, but not with old books and antiquities.
+I have a most confused recollection both of the locality and the
+contents of this famous collection; but there were two objects which
+roused me from this sullen stupor, and indelibly impressed my
+imagination and my memory; and one of these was the celebrated copy of
+Virgil, which had been the favourite companion and constant study of
+Petrarch, containing that memorandum of the death of Laura, in his own
+handwriting, which, after much expenditure of paper, and argument, and
+critical abuse, is at length admitted to be genuine. I knew little of
+the controversy this famous inscription had occasioned in Italy,--though
+I was aware that its authenticity had been disputed: but as a homely
+proverb saith, _seeing is believing_; to look upon the handwriting with
+my own eyes, would have made assurance double sure, if in that moment I
+needed such assurance. I do not remember reasoning or doubting on the
+subject;--but gushing up like the waters of an intermitting fountain,
+there was a sudden flow of feeling and memory came over my heart:--I
+stood for some moments silently contemplating the name of LAURA, in the
+pale, half-effaced characters traced by the hand of her lover; that name
+with which his genius and his love have filled the earth: confused
+thoughts of the mingling of vanity and glory,--of the "poco polvere che
+nulla sente," and the immortality of deified beauty, were crowded in my
+mind. When all were gone, I turned back, and gave the guide a small
+gratuity to be allowed to do homage to the name of Laura, by pressing my
+lips upon it. The reader smiles at this sentimental enthusiasm; so would
+I, if time had not taught me to respect, as well as regret, what it has
+taken from me, and never can restore.
+
+The memorandum has often been quoted; but this account of the love of
+Petrarch would not be complete were it omitted here. It runs literally
+thus:--
+
+"Laura, illustrious by her own virtues, and long celebrated by my
+verses, I beheld for the first time, in my early youth, on the 6th of
+April, 1327, about the first hour of the day, in the church of Saint
+Claire in Avignon: and in the same city, in the same month of April, the
+same day and hour, in the year 1348, this light of my life was withdrawn
+from the world while I was at Verona, ignorant, alas! of what had
+befallen me. The terrible intelligence was conveyed in a letter from
+Louis, and reached me at Parma the 19th of May, early in the morning.
+
+"Her chaste and beautiful remains were deposited the same day after
+vespers, in the Church of the Fratri Minori (Cordeliers). Her spirit, as
+Seneca said of Scipio Africanus,[36] has returned, doubtless, to that
+heaven whence it came.
+
+"To preserve the memory of this afflicting loss, it is with a bitter
+pleasure I record it here, in this book which is ever before my eyes,
+that nothing in this world may hereafter delight me: and that the chief
+tie which bound me to life being broken, I may, by frequently looking on
+these words, and thinking on this transitory existence, be prepared to
+quit this earthly Babylon, which, with the help of the divine grace, and
+the constant and manly recollection of those fruitless desires, and vain
+hopes, and sad vicissitudes which have so long agitated me, will be an
+easy task."
+
+Laura died of the plague, which then desolated Avignon, and terminated
+the life of the sufferer on the third day. The moment she was seized
+with the fatal symptoms, she dictated her will; and notwithstanding the
+pestilential nature of her disorder, she was surrounded to the last by
+her numerous relations and friends, who braved death rather than forsake
+her.
+
+Her tomb was discovered and opened in 1533, in the presence of Francis
+the First, whose celebrated stanzas on the occasion are well known.
+
+Of the fame, which even in her lifetime, the love and poetical adoration
+of Petrarch had thrown round his Laura, a curious instance is given
+which will characterise the manners of the age. When Charles of
+Luxemburgh (afterwards Emperor) was at Avignon, a grand fête was given,
+in his honour, at which all the noblesse were present. He desired that
+Petrarch's Laura should be pointed out to him; and when she was
+introduced, he made a sign with his hand that the other ladies present
+should fall back; then going up to Laura, and for a moment contemplating
+her with interest, he kissed her respectfully on the forehead and on the
+eyelids. Petrarch alludes to this incident in the 201st sonnet, the last
+line of which shows that this royal salutation was considered singular.
+
+    "M'empia d'invidia l'atto dolce e strano."
+
+Petrarch survived her twenty-six years, dying in 1374. He was found
+lifeless one morning in his study, his hand resting on a book.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The inferences I draw from this rapid sketch are, first, that Laura was
+virtuous, but not insensible;--for had she been facile, she would not
+have preserved her lover's respect; had she been a heartless trifler,
+she could not have retained his love, nor deserved his undying regrets:
+and secondly, that if Petrarch had not attached himself fervently to
+this beautiful and pure-hearted woman, he would have employed his
+splendid talents like other men of his time. He might then have left us
+theological treatises and Latin epics, which the worms would have eaten;
+he might have risen high in the church or state; have become a bold,
+intriguing priest; a politic archbishop,--a cardinal,--a pope;--most
+worthless and empty titles all, compared with that by which he has
+descended to us, as Petrarch, the poet and the lover of Laura![37]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[29] Madame Deshoulières speaks "avec connaissance de fait," and even
+points out the very spot in which Laura, "de l'amoureux Petrarque
+adoucit le martyre."--Another French lady, who piqued herself on being a
+descendant of the family of Laura, was extremely affronted and
+scandalised when the Chevalier Ramsay asserted that Petrarch's passion
+was purely poetical and platonic, and regarded it heresy to suppose that
+Laura could have been "_ungrateful_,"--such was her idea of feminine
+_gratitude_!--(Spence's Anecdotes.) Then comes another French woman,
+with the most anti-poetical soul that God ever placed within the form of
+a woman--"Le fade personage que votre Petrarque! que sa Laure était
+sotte et precieuse! que la Cour d'Amour était fastidieuse!" &c. exclaims
+the acute, amusing, profligate, heartless Madame du Deffand. It must be
+allowed that Petrarch and Laura would have been extremely _desplaçes_ in
+the Court of the Regent,--the only _Court of Love_ with which Madame du
+Deffand was acquainted, and which assuredly was not _fastidieuse_.
+
+[30] From the Dialogues with St. Augustin, as quoted in the "Pieces
+Justificatives," and by Ginguené (Hist. Litt. vol. iii. notes.) These
+imaginary dialogues are a series of Confessions not intended for
+publication by Petrarch, but now printed with his prose works.
+
+[31] Sonnet 39.
+
+[32] Ballata 5.
+
+[33] Petrarch withdrew to Vaucluse in 1337, and spent three years in
+entire solitude. He commenced his journey to Rome in 1341, about
+fourteen years after his first interview with Laura.
+
+[34] Petrarch asks her whether it was "pain to die?" she replies in
+those fine lines which have been quoted a thousand times:
+
+    La Morte è fin d' una prigion oscura
+    Agli animi gentili; agli altri è noia,
+    Ch' hanno posto nel fango ogni lor cura.
+
+[35]
+    Ma non si ruppe almen ogni vel quando
+    Sola i tuoi detti, te presente accolsi
+    "_Dir più non osa il nostro amor_," cantando.
+
+(The song here alluded to is not preserved in Petrarch's works, and the
+expression "_il nostro amore_," is very remarkable.)
+
+[36] This sounds at first pedantic; but it must be remembered that at
+this very time Petrarch was studying Seneca, and writing a Latin poem on
+the history of Scipio: thus the ideas were fresh in his mind.
+
+[37] The hypothesis I have assumed relative to Laura's character, her
+married state, and the authenticity of the MS. note in the Virgil, have
+not been lightly adopted, but from deep conviction and patient
+examination: but this is not the place to set arguments and authorities
+in array--Ginguené and Gibbon against Lord Byron and Fraser Tytler. I am
+surprised at the ground Lord Byron has taken on the question. As for his
+characteristic sneer on the assertion of M. de Bastie, who had said
+truly and beautifully--"qu'il n'y a que la vertu seule qui soit capable
+de faire des impressions que la mort n'efface pas," I disdain, in my
+feminine character, to reply to it; I will therefore borrow the
+eloquence of a more powerful pen:--"The love of a man like Petrarch,
+would have been less in character, if it had been less ideal. For the
+purposes of inspiration, a single interview was quite sufficient. The
+smile which sank into his heart the first time he ever beheld Laura,
+played round her lips ever after: the look with which her eyes first met
+his, never passed away. The image of his mistress still haunted his
+mind, and was recalled by every object in nature. Even death could not
+dissolve the fine illusion; for that which exists in the imagination is
+alone imperishable. As our feelings become more ideal, the impression of
+the moment indeed becomes less violent; but the effect is more general
+and permanent. The blow is felt only by reflection; it is the rebound
+that is fatal. We are not here standing up for this kind of Platonic
+attachment, but only endeavouring to explain the way in which the
+passions very commonly operate in minds accustomed to draw their
+strongest interests from constant contemplation."--_Edinburgh Review._
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+ON THE LOVE OF DANTE FOR BEATRICE PORTINARI.
+
+
+Had I taken chronology into due consideration, Dante ought to have
+preceded Petrarch, having been born some forty years before him,--but I
+forgot it. "Truth," says Wordsworth, "has her pleasure-grounds,
+
+                  Her haunts of ease
+    And easy contemplation;--gay parterres
+    And labyrinthine walks; her sunny glades
+    And shady groves for recreation framed."
+
+And such a haunted pleasure-ground of beautiful recollections, would I
+wish my subject to be to myself and to my readers; where we shall be
+priviledged to wander at will; to pause or turn back; to deviate to
+this side or to that, as memory may prompt, or imagination lead, or
+illustration require.
+
+Dante and his Beatrice are best exhibited in contrast to Petrarch and
+Laura. Petrarch was in his youth an amiable and accomplished courtier,
+whose ambition was to cultivate the arts, and please the fair. Dante
+early plunged into the factions which distracted his native city, was of
+a stern commanding temper, mingling study with action. Petrarch loved
+with all the vivacity of his temper; he took a pleasure in publishing,
+in exaggerating, in embellishing his passion in the eyes of the world.
+Dante, capable of strong and enthusiastic tenderness, and early
+concentrating all the affections of his heart on one object, sought no
+sympathy; and solemnly tells us of himself,--in contradistinction to
+those poets of his time who wrote of love from fashion or fancy, not
+from feeling,--that he wrote as love inspired, and as his heart
+dictated.
+
+          "Io mi son un che, quando
+    Amore spira, noto, ed in quel modo
+    Ch'ei detta dentro, vo significando."
+
+                        PURGATORIO, c. 24.
+
+A coquette would have triumphed in such a captive as Petrarch; and in
+truth, Laura seems to have "sounded him from the top to the bottom of
+his compass:"--a tender and impassioned woman would repose on such a
+heart as Dante's, even as his Beatrice did. Petrarch had a gay and
+captivating exterior; his complexion was fair, with sparkling blue eyes
+and a ready smile. He is very amusing on the subject of his own
+coxcombry, and tells us how cautiously he used to turn the corner of a
+street, lest the wind should disorder the elaborate curls of his fine
+hair! Dante, too, was in his youth eminently handsome, but in a style of
+beauty which was characteristic of his mind: his eyes, were large and
+intensely black, his nose aquiline, his complexion of a dark olive, his
+hair and beard very much curled, his step slow and measured, and the
+habitual expression of his countenance grave, with a tinge of melancholy
+abstraction. When Petrarch walked along the streets of Avignon, the
+women smiled, and said, "there goes the lover of Laura!" The impression
+which Dante left on those who beheld him, was far different. In allusion
+to his own personal appearance, he used to relate an incident that once
+occurred to him. When years of persecution and exile had added to the
+natural sternness of his countenance, the deep lines left by grief, and
+the brooding spirit of vengeance, he happened to be at Verona, where
+since the publication of the Inferno, he was well known. Passing one day
+by a portico, where several women were seated, one of them whispered,
+with a look of awe,--"Do you see that man? that is he who goes down to
+hell whenever he pleases, and brings us back tidings of the sinners
+below!" "Ay, indeed!" replied her companion,--"very likely; see how his
+face is scarred with fire and brimstone, and blackened with smoke, and
+how his hair and beard have been singed and curled in the flames!"
+
+Dante had not, however, this forbidding appearance when he won the young
+heart of Beatrice Portinari. They first met at a banquet given by her
+father, Folco de' Portinari, when Dante was only nine years old, and
+Beatrice a year younger. His childish attachment, as he tells us
+himself, commenced from that hour; it became a passion, which increased
+with his years, and did not perish even with its object.
+
+Beatrice has not fared better at the hands of commentators than Laura.
+Laura, with her golden hair scattered to the winds, "i capei d'oro al
+aura sporsi," her soft smiles, and her angel-like deportment, was to be
+Repentance; and the more majestic Beatrice, in whose eyes dwelt love,
+
+    E spiriti d'amore infiammati,
+
+was sublimated into _Theology_: with how much reason we shall examine.
+
+In one of his canzoni, called il Ritratto, (the Portrait) Dante has left
+us a most minute and finished picture of his Beatrice, "which," says Mr.
+Carey, "might well supply a painter with a far more exalted idea of
+female beauty, than he could form to himself from the celebrated Ode of
+Anacreon, on a similar subject." From this canzone and some lines
+scattered through his sonnets, I shall sketch the person and character
+of Beatrice. She was not in form like the slender, fragile-looking
+Laura, but on a larger scale of loveliness, tall and of a commanding
+figure;[38]--graceful in her gait as a peacock, upright as a crane,
+
+    Soava a guisa va di un bel pavone,
+    Diritta sopra se, come una grua.
+
+Her hair was fair and curling,
+
+    "Capegli crespi e biondi,"
+
+but not _golden_,--an epithet I do not find once applied to it: she had
+an ample forehead, "spaciosa fronte," a mouth that when it smiled
+surpassed all things in sweetness; so that her Poet would give the
+universe to hear it pronounce a kind "yes."
+
+    Mira che quando ride
+    Passa ben di dolcezza ogni altra cosa.
+    Così di quella bocca il pensier mio
+    Mi sprona, perchè io
+    Non ho nel mondo cosa che non desse
+    A tal ch'un si, con buon voler dicesse.
+
+Her neck was white and slender, springing gracefully from the bust--
+
+    Poi guarda la sua svelta e bianca gola
+    Commessa ben dalle spalle e dal petto.
+
+A small, round, dimpled chin,
+
+    Mento tondo, fesso e piccioletto:
+
+and thereupon the Poet breaks out into a rapture, any thing but
+theological,
+
+                      Il bel diletto
+    Aver quel collo fra le braccia stretto
+    E far in quella gola un picciol segno!
+
+Her arms were beautiful and round; her hand soft, white, and polished;
+
+    La bianca mano morbida e pulita:
+
+her fingers slender, and decorated with jewelled rings as became her
+birth; fair she was as a pearl;
+
+    Con un color angelica di perla:
+
+graceful and lovely to look upon, but disdainful where it was becoming:
+
+    Graziosa a vederla,
+    E disdegnosa dove si conviene.
+
+And as a corollary to these traits, I will quote the eleventh Sonnet as
+a more general picture of female loveliness, heightened by some tender
+touches of mental and moral beauty, such as never seem to have occurred
+to the debased imaginations of the classic poets:
+
+      Negli occhi porta la mia Donna Amore;
+    Perchè si fa gentil ciocch' ella mira:
+    Ov' ella passa, ogni uom ver lei si gira;
+    E cui saluta, fa tremar lo core,
+      Sicchè bassando 'l viso tutto smuore,
+    Ed ogni suo difetto allor sospira;
+    Fugge dinanzi a lei superbia ed ira.
+    Ajutatemi, donne, a farle onore!
+      Ogni dolcezza, ogni pensiero umile
+    Nasce nel core a chi parlar la sente;
+    Onde è laudato chi prima la vide.
+      Quel ch' ella par, quando un poco sorride
+    No si può dicer, nè tenera mente;
+    Si è nuovo miracolo e gentile.
+
+
+TRANSLATION.
+
+     "Love is throned in the eyes of my Beatrice! they ennoble
+     every thing she looks upon! As she passes, men turn and
+     gaze; and whomsoever she salutes, his heart trembles within
+     him; he bows his head, the colour forsakes his cheek, and he
+     sighs for his own unworthiness. Pride and anger fly before
+     her! Assist me, ladies, to do her honour! All sweet thoughts
+     of humble love and good-will spring in the hearts of those
+     who hear her speak, so that it is a blessedness first to
+     behold her, and when she faintly and softly smiles--ah! then
+     it passes all fancy, all expression, so wondrous is the
+     miracle, and so gracious!"
+
+The love of Dante for his Beatrice partook of the purity, tenderness,
+and elevated character of her who inspired it, and was also stamped with
+that stern and melancholy abstraction, that disposition to mysticism,
+which were such strong features in the character of her lover. He does
+not break out into fond and effeminate complaints, he does not sigh to
+the winds, nor swell the fountain with his tears; his love does not,
+like Petrarch's, alternately freeze and burn him, nor is it "un dolce
+amaro," "a bitter sweet," with which his fancy can sport in good set
+terms. No; it shakes his whole being like an earthquake; it beats in
+every pulse and artery; it has dwelt in his heart till it has become a
+part of his life, or rather his life itself.[39] Though we are not told
+so expressly, it is impossible to doubt, on a consideration of all those
+passages and poems which relate to Beatrice, that his love was approved
+and returned, and that his character was understood and appreciated by a
+woman too generous, too noble-minded, to make him the sport of her
+vanity. He complains, indeed, _poetically_, of her disdain, for which he
+excuses himself in another poem: "We know that the heavens shine on in
+eternal serenity, and that it is only our imperfect vision, and the
+rising vapours of the earth, that make the ever-beaming stars appear
+clouded at times to our eye." He expresses no fear of a rival in her
+affections; but the native jealousy as well as delicacy of his temper
+appears in those passages in which he addresses the eulogium of Beatrice
+to the Florentine ladies and her young companions.[40] Those of his own
+sex, as he assures us, were not worthy to listen to her praises; or must
+perforce have become enamoured of this picture of female excellence, the
+fear of which made a coward of him--
+
+    Ma tratterò del suo stato gentile
+    Donne e donzelle amorose, con vui;
+    Che non è cosa da parlarne altrui.
+
+Among the young companions of Beatrice, Dante particularly distinguishes
+one, who appears to have been her chosen friend, and who, on account of
+her singular and blooming beauty, was called, at Florence, Primavera,
+(the Spring.) Her real name was Giovanna. Dante frequently names them
+together, and in particular in that exquisitely fanciful sonnet to his
+friend Guido Cavalcanti; where he addresses them by those familiar and
+endearing diminutives, so peculiarly Italian--
+
+    E Monna Vanna e Monna Bice poi.[41]
+
+It appears from the 7th and 8th Sonnets of the Vita Nuova, that in the
+early part of their intercourse, Beatrice, indulging her girlish
+vivacity, smiled to see her lover utterly discountenanced in her
+presence, and pointed out her triumph to her companions. This offence
+seems to have deeply affected the proud, susceptible mind of Dante: it
+was under the influence of some such morose feeling, probably on this
+very occasion, that his dark passions burst forth in the bitter lines
+beginning,
+
+    Io maledico il dì ch' io vidi imprima
+    La luce de' vostri occhi traditori.
+
+"I curse the day in which I first beheld the splendour of those traitor
+eyes," &c. This angry sonnet forms a fine characteristic contrast with
+that eloquent and impassioned effusion of Petrarch, in which he
+multiplies blessings on the day, the hour, the minute, the season, and
+the spot, in which he first beheld Laura--
+
+    Benedetto sia l' giorno, e 'l mese, e l' anno, &c.
+
+This fit of indignation was, however, short-lived. Every tender emotion
+of Dante's feeling heart seems to have been called forth when Beatrice
+lost her excellent father. Folco Portinari died in 1289; and the
+description we have of the inconsolable grief of Beatrice and the
+sympathy of her young companions,--so poetically, so delicately touched
+by her lover,--impress us with a high idea both of her filial tenderness
+and the general amiability of her disposition, which rendered her thus
+beloved. In the 12th and 13th Sonnets, we have, perhaps, one of the most
+beautiful groups ever presented in poetry. Dante meets a company of
+young Florentine ladies, who were returning from paying Beatrice a visit
+of condolence on the death of her father. Their altered and dejected
+looks, their downcast eyes, and cheeks "colourless as marble," make his
+heart tremble within him; he asks after Beatrice--"_our_ gentle lady,"
+as he tenderly expresses it: the young girls raise their downcast eyes,
+and regard him with surprise. "Art thou he," they exclaim, "who hast so
+often sung to us the praises of our Beatrice? the voice, indeed, is his;
+but, oh! how changed the aspect! Thou weepest!--why shouldest _thou_
+weep?--thou hast not seen _her_ tears;--leave _us_ to weep and return to
+our home, refusing comfort; for we, indeed, have heard her speak, and
+seen her dissolved in grief; so changed is her lovely face by sorrow,
+that to look upon her is enough to make one die at her feet for
+pity."[42]
+
+It should seem that the extreme affliction of Beatrice for the loss of
+her father, acting on a delicate constitution, hastened her own end, for
+she died within a few months afterwards, in her 24th year. In the "Vita
+Nuova" there is a fragment of a canzone, which breaks off at the end of
+the first strophe; and annexed to it is the following affecting note,
+originally in the handwriting of Dante.
+
+"I was engaged in the composition of this Canzone, and had completed
+only the above stanza, when it pleased the God of justice to call unto
+himself this gentlest of human beings; that she might be glorified
+under the auspices of that blessed Queen, the Virgin Maria, whose name
+was ever held in especial reverence by my sainted Beatrice."
+
+Boccaccio, who knew Dante personally, tells us, that on the death of
+Beatrice, he was so changed by affliction that his best friends could
+scarcely recognise him. He scarcely eat or slept; he would not speak; he
+neglected his person, until he became "una cosa selvatica a vedere," _a
+savage thing to the eye_: to borrow his own strong expression, he seems
+to have been "grief-stung to madness." To the first Canzone, written
+after the death of Beatrice, Dante has prefixed a note, in which he
+tells us, that after he had long wept in silence the loss of her he
+loved, he thought to give utterance to his sorrow in words; and to
+compose a Canzone, in which he should write, (weeping as he wrote,) of
+the virtues of her who through much anguish had bowed his soul to the
+earth. "Then," he says, "I thus began:--gli occhi dolenti,"--which are
+the first words of this Canzone. It is addressed, like the others, to
+her female companions, whom alone he thought worthy to listen to her
+praises, and whose gentle hearts could alone sympathise in his grief.
+
+      Non vo parlare altrui
+    Se non a cor gentil, che 'n donna sia!
+
+One stanza of this Canzone is unequalled, I think, for a simplicity at
+once tender and sublime. The sentiment, or rather the meaning, in homely
+English phrase, would run thus:--
+
+"Ascended is our Beatrice to the highest Heaven, to those realms where
+angels dwell in peace; and you, her fair companions, and Love and me,
+she has left, alas! behind. It was not the frost of winter that chilled
+her, nor was it the heat of summer that withered her; it was the power
+of her virtue, her humility, and her truth, that ascending into Heaven
+moved the ETERNAL FATHER to call her to himself, seeing that this
+miserable life was not worthy of any thing so fair, so excellent!"
+
+On the anniversary of the death of Beatrice, Dante tells us that he was
+sitting alone, thinking upon her, and tracing, as he meditated, the
+figure of an angel on his tablets.[43] Can any one doubt that this
+little incident, so natural and so affecting,--his thinking on his lost
+Beatrice, and by association sketching the figure of an angel, while his
+mind dwelt upon her removal to a brighter and better world,--must have
+been real? It gave rise to the 18th Sonnet of the Vita Nuova, which he
+calls "Il doloroso annovale," (the mournful anniversary.)
+
+Another little circumstance, not less affecting, he has beautifully
+commemorated in two Sonnets which follow the one last mentioned. They
+are addressed to some kind and gentle creature, who from a window beheld
+Dante abandon himself, with fearful vehemence, to the agony of his
+feelings, when he believed no human eye was on him. "She turned pale,"
+he says, "with compassion; her eyes filled with tears, as if she had
+loved me: then did I remember my noble-hearted Beatrice, for even thus
+she often looked upon me," &c. And he confesses that the grateful, yet
+mournful pleasure with which he met the pitying look of this fair being,
+excited remorse in his heart, that he should be able to derive pleasure
+from anything.
+
+Dante concludes the collection of his _Rime_, (his miscellaneous poems
+on the subject of his early love) with this remarkable note:--
+
+"I beheld a marvellous vision, which has caused me to cease from writing
+in praise of my blessed Beatrice, until I can celebrate her more
+worthily; which that I may do, I devote my whole soul to study, as _she_
+knoweth well; in so much, that if it please the Great Disposer of all
+things to prolong my life for a few years upon this earth, I hope
+hereafter to sing of my Beatrice what never yet was said or sung of
+woman.'"
+
+And in this transport of enthusiasm, Dante conceived the idea of his
+great poem, of which Beatrice was destined to be the heroine. It was to
+no Muse, called by fancy from her fabled heights, and feigned at the
+poet's will; it was not to ambition of fame, nor literary leisure
+seeking a vent for overflowing thoughts; nor to the wish to aggrandise
+himself, or to flatter the pride of a patron;--but to the inspiration of
+a young, beautiful, and noble-minded woman, we owe one of the grandest
+efforts of human genius. And never did it enter into the imagination of
+any lover, before or since, to raise so mighty, so vast, so enduring, so
+glorious a monument to the worth and charms of a mistress. Other poets
+were satisfied if they conferred on the object of their love an
+immortality on earth: Dante was not content till he had placed _his_ on
+a throne in the Empyreum, above choirs of angels, in presence of the
+very fountain of glory; her brow wreathed with eternal beams, and
+clothed with the ineffable splendours of beatitude;--an apotheosis,
+compared to which, all others are earthly and poor indeed.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[38] "Membra formosi et grandi."
+
+[39] It borrows even the solemn language of Sacred Writ to express its
+intensity:
+
+    Nelle man vostre, o dolce donna mia!
+    Raccomando lo spirito che muore.
+
+                     SON. 34.
+
+[40] I refer particularly to that sublime Canzone addressed to the
+ladies of Florence, and beginning
+
+    "Donne ch' avete intelletto d' amore."
+
+[41] Monna Vanna, for _Madonna Giovanna_; and Monna Bice, _Madonna
+Beatrice_.
+
+This famous sonnet has been translated by Hayley and by Shelley. I
+subjoin the version of the latter, as truer to the spirit of the
+original.
+
+THE WISH.--TO GUIDO CAVALCANTI.
+
+    Guido! I would that Lapo, thou, and I,
+      Led by some strong enchantment, might ascend
+    A magic ship, whose charmed sails should fly
+      With winds at will, where'er our thoughts might wend:
+    And that no change, nor any evil chance
+      Should mar our joyous voyage; but it might be
+    That even satiety should still enhance
+      Between our hearts their strict community,
+    And that the bounteous wizard there would place
+      Vanna and Bice, and thy gentle love,
+    Companions of our wanderings, and would grace
+      With passionate talk, wherever we might rove
+    Our time!--and each were as content and free
+    As I believe that thou and I should be!
+
+[42] Sonnetto 13 (Poesie della Vita Nuova.)
+
+[43] Vita Nuova, p. 268.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+DANTE AND BEATRICE CONTINUED.
+
+
+Through the two first parts of the Divina Commedia, (Hell and
+Purgatory,) Beatrice is merely announced to the reader--she does not
+appear in person; for what should the sinless and sanctified spirit of
+Beatrice do in those abodes of eternal anguish and expiatory torment?
+Her appearance, however, in due time and place, is prepared and shadowed
+forth in many beautiful allusions: for instance, it is she, who
+descending from the empyreal height, sends Virgil to be the deliverer of
+Dante in the mysterious forest, and his guide through the abysses of
+torment.
+
+    Io son Beatrice che ti faccio andare;
+    Vegno di loco ove tornar disio:
+    Amor mi mosse che mi fa parlare.
+
+                  INFERNO, c. 2.
+
+    "I who now bid thee on this errand forth
+    Am Beatrice; from a place I come
+    Revisited with joy; love brought me thence,
+    Who prompts my speech."
+
+                    CAREY'S TRANS.
+
+And she is _indicated_, as it were, several times in the course of the
+poem, in a manner which prepares us for the sublimity with which she is
+at length introduced, in all the majesty of a superior nature, all the
+dreamy splendour of an ideal presence, and all the melancholy charm of a
+beloved and lamented reality. When Dante has left the confines of
+Purgatory, a wondrous chariot approaches from afar, surrounded by a
+flight of angelic beings, and veiled in a cloud of flowers ("un nuvola
+di fiori," is the beautiful expression.)--A female form is at length
+apparent in the midst of this angelic pomp, seated in the car, and
+"robed in hues of living flame:" she is veiled: he cannot discern her
+features, but there moves a hidden virtue from her,
+
+                At whose touch
+    The power of ancient love was strong within him.
+
+He recognises the influence which even in his childish days had smote
+him--
+
+        Che già m'avea trafitto
+    Prima ch' io fuor della puerizia fosse;
+
+and his failing heart and quivering frame confess the thrilling presence
+of his Beatrice--
+
+    Conosco i segni dell'antica fiamma!
+
+The whole passage is as beautifully wrought as it is feelingly and truly
+conceived.
+
+Beatrice,--no longer the soft, frail, and feminine being he had known
+and loved upon earth, but an admonishing spirit,--rises up in her
+chariot,
+
+              And with a mien
+    Of that stern majesty which doth surround
+    A mother's presence to her awe-struck child,
+    She looked--a flavour of such bitterness
+    Was mingled with her pity!
+
+                     CAREY'S TRANS.
+
+Dante then puts into her mouth the most severe yet eloquent accusation
+against himself: while he stands weeping by, bowed down by shame and
+anguish. She accuses him before the listening angels for his neglected
+time, his wasted talents, his forgetfulness of her, when she was no
+longer upon earth to lead him with the light of her "youthful eyes,"
+(gli occhi giovinetti.)
+
+          Soon as I had changed
+    My mortal for immortal, then he left me,
+    And gave himself to others; when from flesh
+    To spirit I had risen, and increase
+    Of beauty and of virtue circled me,
+    I was less dear to him and valued less!
+
+                  PURGATORY, C. 30.--CAREY'S TRANS.
+
+This praise of herself and stern upbraiding of her lover, would sound
+harsh from woman's lips, but have a solemnity, and even a sublimity, as
+uttered by a disembodied and angelic being. When Dante, weeping, falters
+out a faint excuse--
+
+                Thy fair looks withdrawn,
+    Things present with deceitful pleasures turned
+    My steps aside,--
+
+she answers by reproaching him with his inconstancy to her memory:--
+
+                  Never didst thou spy
+    In art or nature aught so passing sweet
+    As were the limbs that in their beauteous frame
+    Enclosed me, and are scattered now in dust.
+    If sweetest thing thus failed thee with my death,
+    What afterward of mortal should thy wish
+    Have tempted?
+
+                     PURGATORY, c. 31.
+
+And she rebukes him, for that he could stoop from the memory of her love
+to be the thrall of a _slight girl_. This last expression is supposed to
+allude either to Dante's unfortunate marriage with Gemma Donati,[44] or
+to the attachment he formed during his exile for a beautiful Lucchese
+named Gentucca, the subject of several of his poems. But,
+notwithstanding all this severity of censure, Dante, gazing on his
+divine monitress, is so rapt by her loveliness, his eyes so eager to
+recompence themselves for "their ten years' thirst," (Beatrice had been
+dead ten years) that not being yet freed from the stain of his earthly
+nature, he is warned not to gaze "too fixedly" on her charms. After a
+farther probation, Beatrice introduces him into the various spheres
+which compose the celestial paradise; and thenceforward she certainly
+assumes the characteristics of an allegorical being. The true
+distinction seems this, that Dante has not represented Divine Wisdom
+under the name and form of Beatrice, but the more to exalt his Beatrice,
+he has clothed her in the attributes of Divine Wisdom.
+
+She at length ascends with him into the Heaven of Heavens, to the source
+of eternal and uncreated light, without shadow and without bound; and
+when Dante looks round for her, he finds she has quitted his side, and
+has taken her place throned among the supremely blessed, "as far above
+him as the region of thunder is above the centre of the sea:" he gazes
+up at her in a rapture of love and devotion, and in a sublime apostrophe
+invokes her still to continue her favour towards him. She looks down
+upon him from her effulgent height, smiles on him with celestial
+sweetness, and then fixing her eyes on the eternal fountain of glory, is
+absorbed in ecstasy. Here we leave her: the poet had touched the limits
+of permitted thought; the seraph wings of imagination, borne upwards by
+the inspiration of deep love, could no higher soar,--the audacity of
+genius could dare no farther!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Dante died at Ravenna in 1321, and was sumptuously interred at the cost
+of Guido da Polenta, the father of that unfortunate Francesca di Rimini,
+whose story he has so exquisitely told in the fifth canto of the
+Inferno. He left several sons and an only daughter, whom he had named
+Beatrice, in remembrance of his early love: she became a nun at Ravenna.
+
+Now where, in the name of all truth and all feeling, were the heads, or
+rather the hearts, of those commentators, who could see nothing in the
+Beatrice thus beautifully pourtrayed, thus tenderly lamented, and thus
+sublimely commemorated, but a mere allegorical personage, the creation
+of a poet's fancy? Nothing can come of nothing; and it was no unreal or
+imaginary being who turned the course of Dante's ardent passions and
+active spirit, and burning enthusiasm, into one sweeping torrent of love
+and poetry, and gave to Italy and to the world the Divina Commedia!
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[44] This marriage was one of policy, and negociated by the friends of
+Dante and of Gemma Donati: her temper was violent and harsh, and their
+domestic peace was, probably, not increased by Dante's obstinate regret
+for his first love.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+CHAUCER AND PHILIPPA PICARD.
+
+
+After Italy, England,--who has ever trod in her footsteps, and at length
+outstript her in the race of intellect,--was the next to produce a great
+and prevailing genius in poetry, a master-spirit, whom no change of
+customs, manners, or language, can render wholly obsolete; and who was
+destined, like the rest of his tribe, to bow before the influence of
+woman, to toil in her praise, and soar by her inspiration.
+
+Seven years after the death of Dante, Chaucer was born, and he was
+twenty-four years younger than Petrarch, whom he met at Padua in 1373;
+this meeting between the two great poets was memorable in itself, and
+yet more interesting for having first introduced into the English
+language that beautiful monument to the virtue of women,--the story of
+Griselda.
+
+Boccaccio had lately sent to his friend the MS. of the Decamerone, of
+which it is the concluding tale: the tender fancy of Petrarch, refined
+by a forty years' attachment to a gentle and elegant female, passed over
+what was vicious and blameable, or only recommended by the wit and the
+style, and fixed with delight on the tale of Griselda; so beautiful in
+itself, and so honourable to the sex whom he had poetically deified in
+the person of one lovely woman. He amused his leisure hours in
+translating it into Latin, and having finished his version, he placed it
+in the hands of a citizen of Padua, and desired him to read it aloud.
+His friend accordingly began; but as he proceeded, the overpowering
+pathos of the story so affected him, that he was obliged to stop; he
+began again, but was unable to proceed; the gathering tears blinded
+him, and choked his voice, and he threw down the manuscript. This
+incident, which Petrarch himself relates in a letter to Boccaccio,
+occurred about the period when Chaucer passed from Genoa to Padua to
+visit the poet and lover of Laura--
+
+    Quel grande, alla cui fama angusto è il mondo.
+
+Petrarch must have regarded the English poet with that wondering,
+enthusiastic admiration with which we should now hail a Milton or a
+Shakspeare sprung from Otaheite or Nova Zembla; and his heart and soul
+being naturally occupied by his latest work, he repeated the experiment
+he had before tried on his Paduan friend. The impression which the
+Griselda produced upon the vivid, susceptible imagination of Chaucer,
+may be judged from his own beautiful version of it in the Canterbury
+Tales; where the barbarity and improbability of the incidents are so
+redeemed by the pervading truth and purity and tenderness of the
+sentiment, that I suppose it never was perused for the first time
+without tears. Chaucer, as if proud of his interview with Petrarch, and
+anxious to publish it, is careful to tell us that he did not derive the
+story from Boccaccio, but that it was
+
+    Learned at Padua of a worthy clerk,
+    As proved by his wordes and his work;
+    Francis Petrark, the Laureat Poete;
+
+which is also proved by internal evidence.
+
+Chaucer so far resembled Petrarch, that, like him, he was at once poet,
+scholar, courtier, statesman, philosopher, and man of the world; but
+considered merely as poets, they were the very antipodes of each other.
+The genius of Dante has been compared to a Gothic cathedral, vast and
+lofty, and dark and irregular. In the same spirit, Petrarch may be
+likened to a classical and elegant Greek temple, rising aloft in its
+fair and faultless proportions, and compacted of the purest Parian
+marble; while Chaucer is like the far-spreading and picturesque palace
+of the Alhambra, with its hundred chambers, all variously decorated,
+and rich with barbaric pomp and gold: he is famed rather as the animated
+painter of character, and manners, and external nature, than the poet of
+love and sentiment; and yet no writer, Shakspeare always excepted, (and
+perhaps Spenser) contains so many beautiful and tender passages relating
+to, or inspired by, women. He lived, it is true, in rude times, times
+strangely deficient in good taste and decorum; but when all the
+institutions of chivalry, under the most chivalrous of our kings and
+princes,[45] were at their height in England. As a poet, Chaucer was
+enlisted into the service of three of the most illustrious, most
+beautiful, and most accomplished women of that age--Philippa, the
+high-hearted and generous Queen of Edward the Third; the Lady Blanche of
+Lancaster, first wife of John of Gaunt; and the lovely Anne of Bohemia,
+the Queen of Richard the Second;[46] for whom, and at whose command, he
+wrote his "Legende of Gode Women," as some amends for the scandal he had
+spoken of us in other places. The Countess of Essex, the Countess of
+Pembroke, and that beautiful Lady Salisbury, the ancestress of the
+Montagu family, whose famous mischance gave rise to the Order of the
+Garter, were also among Chaucer's patronesses. But the most
+distinguished of all, and the favourite subject of his poetry, was the
+Duchess Blanche. The manner in which he has contrived to celebrate his
+own loves and individual feelings with those of Blanche and her royal
+suitor, has given additional interest to both, and has enabled his
+commentators to fix with tolerable certainty the name and rank of the
+object of his love, as well as the date and circumstances of his
+attachment.
+
+In the earliest of Chaucer's poems, "The COURT OF LOVE," he describes
+himself as enamoured of a fair mistress, whom in the style of the time,
+he calls Rosial, and himself Philogenet: the lady is described as
+"sprung of noble race and high," with "angel visage," "golden hair," and
+eyes orient and bright, with figure "sharply slender,"
+
+    So that from the head unto the foot all is sweet womanhead,
+
+and arrayed in a vest of green, with her tresses braided with silk and
+gold. She treats him at first with disdain, and the Poet swoons away at
+her feet: satisfied by this convincing proof of his sincerity, she is
+induced to accept his homage, and becomes his "liege ladye," and the
+sovereign of his thoughts. In this poem, which is extremely wild, and
+has come down to us in an imperfect state, Chaucer quaintly admonishes
+all lovers, that an absolute faith in the perfection of their
+mistresses, and obedience to her slightest caprice, are among the first
+of duties; that they must in all cases believe their ladye faultless;
+that,
+
+    In every thing she doth but as she should.
+    Construe the best, believe no tales new,
+    For many a lie is told that seem'th full true;
+    But think that she, so bounteous and so fair,
+    Could not be false; imagine this alway.
+
+    ....*....*....*....*
+
+    And tho' thou seest a fault right at thine eye,
+    Excuse it quick, and glose it prettily.[47]
+
+Nor are they to presume on their own worthiness, nor to imagine it
+possible they can earn
+
+    By right, her mercie, nor of equity,
+    But of her grace and womanly pitye.[47]
+
+There is, however, no authority for supposing that at the time this poem
+was written, Chaucer really aspired to the hand of any lady of superior
+birth, or was very seriously in love; he was then about nineteen, and
+had probably selected some fair one, according to the custom of his age,
+to be his "fancy's queen," and in the same spirit of poetical
+gallantry, he writes to do her honour; he says himself,
+
+    My intent and all my busie care
+    Is for to write this treatise as I can,
+    Unto my ladye, stable, true, and sure;
+    Faithful and kind sith firste that she began
+    Me to accept in service as her man;
+    To her be all the pleasures of this book,
+    That, when her like, she may it rede and look.[48]
+
+Mixed up with all this gallantry and refinement are some passages
+inconceivably absurd and gross; but such were those times,--at once rude
+and magnificent--an odd mixture of cloth of frieze and cloth of gold!
+
+The "Parliament of Birds," entitled in many editions, the "_Assembly of
+Fowls_," celebrates allegorically the courtship of John of Gaunt and
+Blanche of Lancaster.
+
+Blanche, as the greatest heiress of England, with a duchy for her
+portion, could not fail to be surrounded by pretenders to her hand; but,
+after a year of probation, she decided in favour of John of Gaunt, who
+thus became Duke of Lancaster in right of his bride. This youthful and
+princely pair were then about nineteen.
+
+The "Parliament of Birds" being written in 1358, when Blanche had
+postponed her choice for a year, has fixed the date of Chaucer's
+attachment to the lady he afterwards married; for, here he describes
+himself as one who had not yet felt the full power of love--
+
+    For albeit that I know not love indeed,
+    Ne wot how that he quitteth folks their hire,
+    Yet happeth me full oft in books to read
+    Of his miracles.----
+
+But the time was come when the poet, now in his thirty-second year, was
+destined to feel, that a strong attachment for a deserving object--for
+one who will not be obtained unsought, "was no sport," as he expresses
+it, but
+
+    Smart and sorrow, and great heavinesse.
+
+During the period of trial which Lady Blanche had inflicted on her
+lover, it was Chaucer's fate to fall in love in sad earnest.--The object
+of this passion, too beautifully and unaffectedly described not to be
+genuine, was Philippa Picard de Rouet, the daughter of a knight of
+Hainault, and a favourite attendant of Queen Philippa. Her elder sister
+Catherine, was at the same time maid of honour to the Duchess Blanche.
+Both these sisters were distinguished at Court for their beauty and
+accomplishments, and were the friends and companions of the Princesses
+they served: and both are singularly interesting from their connection,
+political and poetical, with English history and literature.
+
+Philippa Picard is one of the principal personages in the poem entitled
+"Chaucer's Dream," which is a kind of epithalamium celebrating the
+marriage of John of Gaunt with the Lady Blanche, which took place at
+Reading, May 19, 1359. It is a wild, fanciful vision of fairy-land and
+enchantments, of which I cannot attempt to give an analysis. In the
+opening lines, written about twelve months after the "Parliament of
+Birds," we find Chaucer in deep love according to all its forms. He is
+lying awake,
+
+    About such hour as lovers weep
+    And cry after their lady's grace,
+
+thinking on his mistress--all her goodness and all her sweetness, and
+marvelling how heaven had formed her so exceeding fair,
+
+              And in so litel space
+    Made such a body and such a face;
+    So great beauty, and such features,
+    More than be in other creatures!
+
+He falls into a dream as usual, and in the conclusion fancies himself
+present at the splendid festivities which took place at the marriage of
+his patron. The ladye of his affection is described as the beloved
+friend and companion of the bride. She is sent to grace the marriage
+ceremony with her presence; and Chaucer seizes the occasion to plead his
+suit for love and mercy. Then the Prince, the Queen, and all the rest of
+the Court, unite in conjuring the lady to have pity on his pain, and
+recompence his truth; she smiles, and with a pretty hesitation at last
+consents.
+
+    Sith his will and yours are one,
+    Contrary in me shall be none.
+
+They are married: the ladies and the knights wish them
+
+         ----Heart's pleasance,
+    In joy and health continuance!
+
+The minstrels strike up,--the multitude send forth a shout; and in the
+midst of these joyous and triumphant sounds, and in the troubled
+exultation of his own heart, the sleeper bounds from his couch,--
+
+    Wening to have been at the feast,
+
+and wakes to find it all a dream. He looks around for the gorgeous
+marriage-feast, and instead of the throng of knights and ladies gay, he
+sees nothing but the figures staring at him from the tapestry.
+
+    On the walls old portraiture
+    Of horsemen, of hawks and hounds,
+    And hurt deer all full of wounds;
+    Some like torn, some hurt with shot;
+    And as my dream was, _that_ was not![49]
+
+He is plunged in grief to find himself thus reft of all his visionary
+joys, and prays to sleep again, and dream thus for aye, or at least "a
+thousand years and ten."
+
+    Lo, here my bliss!--lo, here my pain!
+    Which to my ladye I complain,
+    And grace and mercy of her requere,
+    To end my woe and all my fear;
+    And me accept for her service--
+    That of my dream, the substance
+    Might turnen, once, to cognisance.[50]
+
+And the whole concludes with a very tender "envoi," expressly addressed
+to Philippa, although the poem was written in honour of his patrons, the
+Duke and Duchess. It has been well observed, that nothing can be more
+delicate and ingenious than the manner in which Chaucer has complimented
+his mistress, and ventured to shadow forth his own hopes and desires;
+confessing, at the same time, that they were built on air and ended in a
+dream: it may be added, that nothing can be more picturesque and
+beautiful, and vigorous, than some of the descriptive parts of this
+poem.
+
+There is no reason to suppose that Philippa was absolutely deaf to the
+suit, or insensible to the fame and talents of her poet-lover. The delay
+which took place was from a cause honourable to her character and her
+heart; it arose from the declining health of her royal mistress, to whom
+she was most strongly and gratefully attached, and whose noble qualities
+deserved all her affection. It appears, from a comparison of dates, that
+Chaucer endured a suspense of more than nine years, during which he was
+a constant and fervent suitor for his ladye's grace. In this interval he
+translated the Romaunt of the Rose, the most famous poetical work of the
+middle ages. He addressed it to his mistress; and it is remarkable that
+a very elaborate and cynical satire on women, which occurs in the
+original French, is entirely omitted by Chaucer in his version; perhaps
+because it would have been a profanation to her who then ruled his
+heart: on other occasions he showed no such forbearance.
+
+In the year 1369, Chaucer lost his amiable patroness, the Duchess
+Blanche; she died in her thirtieth year; he lamented her death in a long
+poem, entitled the "Booke of the Duchesse." The truth of the story, the
+virtues, the charms, and the youth of the Princess, the grief of her
+husband, and the simplicity and beauty of many passages, render this one
+of the most interesting and striking of all Chaucer's works.
+
+The description of Blanche, in the "Booke of the Duchesse," shows how
+trifling is the difference between a perfect female character in the
+thirteenth century, and what would now be considered as such. It is a
+very lively and animated picture. Her golden hair and laughing eyes; her
+skill in dancing, and her sweet carolling; her "goodly and friendly
+speech;" her debonair looks; her gaiety, that was still "so womanly;"
+her indifference to general admiration; her countenance, "that was so
+simple and so benigne," contrasted with her high-spirited modesty and
+consciousness of lofty birth,
+
+    No living wight might do her shame,
+    _She loved so well her own name_;
+
+her disdain of that coquetterie which holds men "in balance,"
+
+    By half-word or by countenance;
+
+her wit, "without malice, and ever set upon gladnesse;" and her
+goodness, which the Poet, with a nice discrimination of female virtue,
+distinguishes from mere ignorance of evil--for though in all her actions
+was perfect innocence, he adds,
+
+    I say not that she had no knowing
+    What harm was; for, else, she
+    Had known no good--so thinketh me;
+
+are all beautifully and happily set forth, and are charms so appropriate
+to woman, as _woman_, that no change of fashion or lapse of ages can
+alter their effect. Time
+
+    "Can draw no lines there with his antique pen."
+
+But afterwards follows a trait peculiarly characteristic of the women of
+that chivalrous period. She was not, says Chaucer, one of those ladies
+who send their lovers off
+
+                  To Walachie,
+    To Prussia, and to Tartary,
+    To Alexandria, ne Turkie;
+
+and on other bootless errands, by way of displaying their power.
+
+    She used no such _knacks small_.
+
+That is, she was superior to such frivolous tricks.
+
+John of Gaunt, who is the principal speaker and chief mourner in the
+poem, gives a history of his courtship, and tells with what mixture of
+fear and awe, he then "right young," approached the lovely heiress of
+Lancaster: but bethinking him that Heaven could never have formed in any
+creature so great beauty and bounty "withouten mercie,"--in that hope he
+makes his confession of love; and he goes on to tell us, with exquisite
+_naïveté_,--
+
+    I wot not well how I began,
+    Full evil rehearse it, I can:
+
+    ....*....*....*....*
+
+    For many a word I overskipt
+    In telling my tale--for pure fear,
+    Lest that my words misconstrued were.
+    Softly, and quaking for pure dred,
+    And shame,--
+    Full oft I wax'd both pale and red;
+    I durst not once look her on,
+    For wit, manner, and all was gone;
+    I said, "Mercie, sweet!"--and no more.
+
+Then his anguish at her first rejection, and his rapture when, at last,
+he wins from his ladye
+
+    The noble gift of her mercie;
+
+his domestic happiness--his loss, and his regrets, are all told with the
+same truth, simplicity, and profound feeling. For such passages and such
+pictures as these, Chaucer will still be read, triumphant as the poet of
+nature, over the rust and dust of ages, and all the difficulties of
+antique style and obsolete spelling; which last, however, though
+repulsive, is only a difficulty to the eye, and easily overcome.
+
+To return to Chaucer's own love.--In the opening lines of the "Booke of
+the Duchesse," he describes himself as wasted with his "eight years'
+sicknesse," alluding to his long courtship of the coy Philippa:
+
+    I have great wonder, by this light,
+    How that I live!--for day nor night
+    I may not sleepen well-nigh nought:
+    I have so many an idle thought
+    Purely for the default of sleep;
+    That, by my troth, I take no keep
+    Of nothing--how it com'th or go'th,
+    To me is nothing liefe or lothe;[51]
+    All is equal good to me,
+    Joy or sorrow--whereso it be;
+    For I have feeling in no thing,
+    But am, as 'twere, a mazed[52] thing,
+    All day in point to fall adown
+    For sorrowful imagination, &c.
+
+In the same year with the Duchess died the good Queen of Edward the
+Third; and Philippa Picard being thus sadly released from her attendance
+on her mistress, a few months afterwards married Chaucer, then in his
+forty-second year.
+
+In consequence of her good service, Philippa had a pension for her life;
+and I regret that little more is known concerning her: but it should
+seem that she was a good and tender wife, and that long years of wedded
+life did not weaken her husband's attachment for her; for she
+accompanied Chaucer when he was exiled, about fifteen years after his
+marriage, though every motive of prudence and selfishness, on both
+sides, would then have induced a separation.[53] Neither was the poet
+likely to be easily satisfied on the score of conjugal obedience; he was
+rather _exigeant_ and despotic, if we may trust his own description of a
+perfect wife. The chivalrous and poetical lover was the slave of his
+mistress; but once married, it is all _vice versa_.
+
+    She saith not once _nay_, when he saith _yea_
+    "Do this," saith he, "all ready, Sir," saith she!
+
+The precise date of Philippa's death is not known, but it took place
+some years before that of her husband. Their residence at the time of
+their marriage, was a small stone building, near the entrance of
+Woodstock Park; it had been given to Chaucer by Edward the Third;
+afterwards they resided principally at Donnington Castle, that fine and
+striking ruin, which must be remembered by all who have travelled the
+Newberry road. In the domain attached to this castle were three oaks of
+remarkable size and beauty, to which Chaucer gave the names of the
+Queen's oak, the King's oak, and Chaucer's oak; these venerable trees
+were felled in Evelyn's time, and are commemorated in his Sylva, as
+among the noblest of their species.
+
+Philippa's eldest son, Thomas Chaucer, had a daughter, Alice, who became
+the wife of William de la Pole, Duke of Suffolk, the famous favourite of
+Margaret of Anjou. The grandson of Alice Chaucer, by the Duke of
+Suffolk, John Earl of Lincoln, was declared heir to the crown by Richard
+the Third;[54] and had the issue of the battle of Bosworth been
+different, would undoubtedly have ascended the throne of England;--as it
+was, the lineage of Chaucer was extinguished on a scaffold.
+
+The fate of Catherine Picard de Rouet, the sister of Chaucer's wife, was
+still more remarkable,--she was destined to be the mother of a line of
+kings.
+
+She had been _domicella_, or maid of honour to the Duchess Blanche,
+after whose death, the infant children of the Princess were committed to
+her care.[55] In this situation she won the heart of their father, the
+Duke of Lancaster, who on the death of his second wife, Constance of
+Castile, married Catherine, and his children by her were solemnly
+legitimatized. The conduct of Catherine, except in one instance, had
+been irreproachable: her humility, her prudence, and her various
+accomplishments, not only reconciled the royal family and the people to
+her marriage, but added lustre to her rank: and when Richard the Second
+married Isabella of France, the young Queen, then only nine years old,
+was placed under the especial care and tuition of the Duchess of
+Lancaster.
+
+One of the grand-daughters of Catherine, Lady Jane Beaufort, had the
+singular fortune of becoming at once the inspiration and the love of a
+great poet, the queen of an accomplished monarch, and the common
+ancestress of all the sovereigns of England since the days of
+Elizabeth.[56]
+
+Never, perhaps, was the influence of woman on a poetic temperament more
+beautifully illustrated, than in the story of James the First of
+Scotland, and Lady Jane Beaufort. It has been so elegantly told by
+Washington Irving in the Sketch-Book, that it is only necessary to refer
+to it.--James, while a prisoner, was confined in Windsor Castle, and
+immediately under his window there was a fair garden, in which the Lady
+Jane was accustomed to walk with her attendants, distinguished above
+them all by her beauty and dignity, even more than by her state and the
+richness of her attire. The young monarch beheld her accidentally, his
+imagination was fired, his heart captivated, and from that moment his
+prison was no longer a dungeon, but a palace of light and love. As he
+was the best poet and musician of his time, he composed songs in her
+praise, set them to music, and sang them to his lute. He also wrote the
+history of his love, with all its circumstances, in a long poem[57]
+still extant; and though the language be now obsolete, it is described,
+by those who have studied it, as not only full of beauties both of
+sentiment and expression, but unpolluted by a single thought or allusion
+which the most refined age, or the most fastidious delicacy, could
+reject;--a singular distinction, when we consider that James's only
+models must have been Gower and Chaucer, to whom no such praise is due:
+we must rather suppose that he was no imitator, but that he owed his
+inspiration to modest and queenly beauty, and to the genuine tenderness
+of his own heart. His description of the fair apparition who came to
+bless his solitary hours, is so minute and peculiar, that it must have
+been drawn from the life:--the net of pearls, in which her light tresses
+were gathered up; the chain of fine-wrought gold about her neck; the
+heart-shaped ruby suspended from it, which glowed on her snowy bosom
+like a spark of fire; her white vest looped up to facilitate her
+movements; her graceful damsels who followed at a respectful distance;
+and her little dog gambolling round her with its collar of silver
+bells,--these, and other picturesque circumstances, were all noted in
+the lover's memory, and have been recorded by the poet's verse. And he
+sums up her perfections thus:
+
+    In her was youth, beauty, and numble port,
+      Bountee, richesse, and womanly feature.
+    God better knows than my pen can report,
+      Wisdom, largesse,[58] estate,[59] and cunning[60] sure:
+    In every point so guided her measure,
+    In word, in deed, in shape, in countenance,
+    That nature could no more her child advance.
+
+The account of his own feelings as she disappears from his charmed
+gaze,--his lingering at the window of his tower, till Phoebus
+
+    Had bid farewell to every leaf and flower,--
+
+then resting his head pensively on the cold stone, and the vision which
+steals upon his half-waking, half-dreaming fancy, and shadows forth the
+happy issue of his love,--are all conceived in the most lively manner.
+It is judged from internal evidence, that this poem must have been
+finished after his marriage, since he intimates that he is blessed in
+the possession of her he loved, and that the fair vision of his solitary
+dungeon is realised.
+
+When the King of Scots was released, he wooed and won openly, and as a
+monarch, the woman he had adored in secret. The marriage was solemnized
+in 1423, and he carried Lady Jane to Scotland where she was crowned soon
+after his bride and queen.
+
+How well she merited, and how deeply she repaid the love of her devoted
+and all-accomplished husband, is told in history. When James was
+surprised and murdered by some of his factious barons, his queen threw
+herself between him and the daggers of the assassins, received many of
+the wounds aimed at his heart, nor could they complete their purpose
+till they had dragged her by force from his arms. She deserved to be a
+poet's queen and love! These are the souls, the deeds which inspire
+poetry,--or rather which are themselves poetry, its principle and its
+essence. It was on this occasion that Catherine Douglas, one of the
+queen's attendants, thrust her arm into the stanchion of the door to
+serve the purpose of a bolt, and held it there till the savage
+assailants forced their way by shattering the frail defence. What times
+were those!--alas! the love of women, and the barbarity of men!
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[45] Edward III. and the Black Prince.
+
+[46] She was popularly distinguished as the "_good_ Queen Anne," and as
+dear to her husband as to her people. Richard, who with many and fatal
+faults, really possessed sensibility and strong domestic affections with
+which Shakspeare has so finely pourtrayed him, was passionately devoted
+to his amiable wife. She died young, at the Palace of Sheen; and when
+Richard afterwards visited the scene of his loss, he solemnly cursed it
+in his anguish, and commanded it to be razed to the ground, which was
+done. One of our kings afterwards rebuilt it. I think Henry the VIIth.
+
+[47] Court of Love, v. 369-412.
+
+[48] Court of Love, v. 36-42.
+
+[49] _i. e._ the tapestry, like my dream, was a representation, not a
+reality.
+
+[50] Chaucer's Dreame, v. 2185. "Here also is showed Chaucer's match
+with a certain gentlewoman, who was so well liked and loved of the Lady
+Blanche and her Lord (as Chaucer himself also was), that gladly they
+concluded a marriage between them."--_Arguments to Chaucer's Works.
+Edit._ 1597.
+
+[51] To me there is nothing dear or hateful, every thing is indifferent.
+
+[52] _Mazed_,--distracted.
+
+[53] Godwin's Life of Chaucer, v. iii. p. 5.
+
+[54] In right of his mother, Elizabeth Plantagenet, eldest sister of
+Edward IV.
+
+[55] These were Henry of Lancaster, afterwards Henry IV. Philippa, Queen
+of Portugal, and Elizabeth, Duchess of Exeter.
+
+[56] Catherine, Duchess of Lancaster, had three sons: the second was the
+famous Cardinal Beaufort; the eldest (created Earl of Somerset,) was
+grandfather to Henry the Seventh, and consequently ancestor to the whole
+race of Tudor: thus from the sister of Chaucer's wife are descended all
+the English sovereigns, from the fifteenth century; and likewise the
+present family of Somerset, Dukes of Beaufort.
+
+[57] "The King's Quhair," (i.e. _cahier_ or book.)
+
+[58] Liberality.
+
+[59] Dignity.
+
+[60] Knowledge and discretion.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+LORENZO DE' MEDICI AND LUCRETIA DONATI.
+
+
+To Lorenzo de' Medici,--or rather to the preëminence his personal
+qualities, his family possessions, and his unequalled talents, gave him
+over his countrymen,--some late travellers and politicians have
+attributed the downfall of the liberties of Florence, and attacked his
+memory as the precursor of tyrants and the preparer of slaves. It may be
+so:--yet was it the fault of Lorenzo, if his collateral posterity
+afterwards became the oppressors of that State of which he was the
+father and the saviour? And since in this world some must command and
+some obey, what power is so legitimate as that derived from the
+influence of superior virtue and talent? from the employ of riches
+obtained by honourable industry, and expended with princely munificence,
+and subscribed to by the will and the affections of the people?
+
+But I forget:--these are questions foreign to our subject. Politics I
+never could understand in my life, and history I have forgotten,--or
+would wish to forget,--perplexed by its conflicting evidence, and
+shocked by its interminable tissue of horrors. Let others then scale the
+height while we gather flowers at the foot; let others explore the mazes
+of the forest; ours be rather
+
+    The gay parterre, the chequered shade,
+    The morning bower, the evening colonnade,
+    Those soft recesses of uneasy minds,
+
+whence the din of doleful war, the rumour of cruelty and suffering, and
+all the "fitful stir unprofitable" of the world are shut out, and only
+the beautiful and good, or the graceful and the gay, are admitted. There
+have been pens enough, Heaven knows, to chronicle the wrongs, the
+crimes, the sorrows of our sex: why should I add an echo to that voice,
+which from the beginning has cried aloud in the wilderness of this
+world, upon women betrayed, and betraying in self-defence? A nobler and
+more grateful task be mine, to show them how much of what is most fair,
+most excellent, most sublime among the productions of human genius, has
+been owing to their influence, direct or indirect; and call up the
+spirits of the dead,--those who from their silent urns still rule the
+pulses of our hearts--to bear witness to this truth.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It is not, then, Lorenzo the MAGNIFICENT, the statesman, and the chief
+of a great republic, who finds a place in these pages,--but Lorenzo the
+lover and the poet, round whose memory hover a thousand bright
+recollections connected with the revival of arts and literature, and the
+golden age of Italy. Let politicians say what they will, there is a
+spell of harmony, there is music in his very name! how softly the
+vowelled syllables drop from the lips--LORENZO DE' MEDICI!--it even
+looks elegant when written. Yes, there is something in the mere sound of
+a name. I remember once taking up a book, and a very celebrated book,
+in which, after turning over some of the pages with pleasure, I came to
+_Peter_ and _Laurence Medecis_,--I shut it hastily, as I would have
+covered my ears to protect them from a sudden discord in music.
+
+Between Petrarch and Lorenzo de' Medici, there occurs not a single great
+name in Italian poetry. The century seemed to lie fallow, as if
+preparing for the great birth of various genius which distinguished the
+succeeding age. The sciences and the classics were chiefly studied, and
+philosophy and Greek seemed to have banished love and poetry.
+
+In such a state of things, it is rather surprising to find in Lorenzo
+de' Medici the common case reversed; for by his own confession, it
+appears that it was not love which made him a poet, but poetry which
+made him a lover.
+
+Giuliano, the brother of Lorenzo,--he who was afterwards assassinated by
+the Pazzi, and was so beloved at Florence for his amiable character and
+personal accomplishments, had been seized with a passion for a lady
+named Simonetta, who was esteemed the most beautiful woman in Florence,
+and is scarcely ever mentioned but with the epithet, "La bella
+Simonetta."--She died in the bloom of early youth, and all the wit and
+eloquence of her native city were called forth in condolences addressed
+to Giuliano, or elegies to her memory, in prose and verse, Latin, Greek,
+and Italian. Among the rest, Lorenzo, who had already made several
+attempts in Italian poetry, pressed forward to celebrate the love and
+the loss of his amiable brother:--in his zeal to do justice to so dear a
+subject, he worked himself up into a fit of amorous and poetical
+enthusiasm which soon found a real and living beauty for its object. But
+to give this romantic tale its proper effect, it must be related in
+Lorenzo's own words. He has left us a most circumstantial and elegant as
+well as interesting and fanciful account of the birth and progress of
+his poetic passion, and I extract it at length from Mr. Roscoe's
+translation.
+
+"A young lady of great personal attractions happened to die at Florence;
+and as she had been very generally admired and beloved, so her death
+was as generally lamented. Nor was this to be much wondered at; for,
+independent of her beauty, her manners were so engaging, that almost
+every person who had any acquaintance with her flattered himself that he
+had obtained the chief place in her affections." (In other words, this
+beautiful Simonetta was an exquisite coquette.)
+
+"This fatal event excited the extreme regret of her admirers; and as she
+was carried to the place of burial, with her face uncovered, those who
+had known her when living, pressed for a last look at the object of
+their adoration, and accompanied her funeral with their tears.
+
+"On this occasion, all the eloquence, and all the wit of Florence were
+exerted in paying due honours to her memory, both in prose and verse.
+Amongst the rest, I also composed a few sonnets; and in order to give
+them greater effect, I endeavoured to convince myself, that I too had
+been deprived of the object of my love, and to excite in my own mind all
+those passions that might enable me to move the affections of
+others.--Under the influence of this delusion, I began to think how
+severe was the fate of those by whom she had been beloved; and from
+thence was led to consider, whether there was any other lady in this
+city deserving of such honour and praise, and to imagine the happiness
+that must be experienced by any one, whose good fortune could procure
+him such a subject for his pen. I accordingly sought for some time
+without having the satisfaction of finding any one, who in my judgment
+was deserving of a sincere and constant attachment. But when I had
+nearly resigned all expectations of success, chance threw in my way that
+which had been denied to my most diligent inquiry; as if the God of Love
+had selected this hopeless period, to give me a more decisive proof of
+his power.--A public festival was held in Florence, to which all that
+was noble and beautiful in the city resorted. To this I was brought by
+some of my companions (I suppose as my destiny led) against my will, for
+I had for some time past avoided such exhibitions; or if at times I
+attended them, it proceeded rather from a compliance with custom, than
+from any pleasure I experienced in them. Among the ladies there
+assembled, I saw one of such sweet and attractive manners, that while I
+regarded her, I could not help saying, 'If this person were possessed of
+the delicacy, the understanding, the accomplishments of her who is
+lately dead--most certainly she excels her in the charms of her
+person.--"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Resigning myself to my passion, I endeavoured to discover, if possible,
+how far her manners and her conversation agreed with her appearance; and
+here I found such an assemblage of extraordinary endowments, that it was
+difficult to say whether she excelled more in person or in mind. Her
+beauty was, as I have before mentioned, astonishing. She was of a just
+and proper height. Her complexion extremely fair, but not
+pale,--blooming but not ruddy. Her countenance was serious, without
+being severe,--mild and pleasant without levity or vulgarity. Her eyes
+were lively, without any indication of pride or conceit. Her whole
+shape was so finely proportioned, that amongst other women she appeared
+with superior dignity, yet free from the least degree of formality or
+affectation. In walking, in dancing, or in other exercises which display
+the person, every motion was elegant and appropriate. Her sentiments
+were always just and striking, and have furnished materials for some of
+my sonnets; she always spoke at the proper time, and always to the
+purpose, so that nothing could be added, nothing taken away. Though her
+remarks were often keen and pointed, yet they were so tempered as not to
+give offence. Her understanding was superior to her sex, but without the
+appearance of arrogance or presumption; and she avoided an error too
+common among women, who, when they think themselves sensible, become for
+the most part insupportable.[61] To recount all her excellencies would
+far exceed my present limits, and I shall therefore conclude with
+affirming, that there was nothing which could be desired in a beautiful
+and an accomplished woman, which was not in her most abundantly found.
+By these qualities I was so captivated, that not a power or faculty of
+my body or mind remained any longer at liberty, and I could not help
+considering the lady who had died, as the star of Venus, which at the
+approach of the sun is totally overpowered and extinguished."
+
+The real name of this beautiful and accomplished creature, Lorenzo was
+too discreet to reveal; but from contemporary authors, we learn that she
+was Lucretia Donati--a noble lady, distinguished at Florence for her
+virtue and beauty, and of the same illustrious family which had given a
+wife to Dante.
+
+When Lorenzo undertook to fall in love thus poetically, he was only
+twenty: the experiment was perilous; and it is not wonderful that this
+imaginary passion had at first in his ardent and susceptible mind all
+the effects of a real one: he neglected society--abandoned himself to
+musing and solitude--affected the rural shades, and gave up his time,
+and devoted all his powers, to celebrate, in the richest colouring of
+poetry, her whom he had selected to be the mistress of his heart, or
+rather the presiding goddess of his fancy.
+
+The result is exactly what may be imagined, and a proof of the theory on
+which I insist, that "nothing but what arises from the heart goes to the
+heart, and that the verse which never quickened a pulse in the bosom of
+the poet, never awakened a throb in that of his reader." If I were
+required to express in one word the distinguishing character of
+Lorenzo's amatory poems, I should say _grace_: they are full of refined
+sentiment, elegant simplicity, the most exquisite little touches of
+description, and illustrations, drawn either from external nature, or
+from the refined mysteries of platonism; but there is a want of passion,
+of power, and of pathos; there is no genuine emotion; no overflow of the
+heart, bursting with its own intense feeling; no voice that cries aloud
+for our sympathy, and echoes to our inmost bosom. What true lover ever
+thought of apologising for having given his time to celebrate the object
+of his love?
+
+"Persecuted as I have been from my youth," says Lorenzo, "some
+indulgence may perhaps be allowed me for having sought consolation in
+these pursuits."--And again, in allusion to his political
+situation,--"It is not to be wondered at if I endeavoured to alleviate
+my anxiety by turning to more agreeable subjects of meditation; and in
+celebrating the charms of my mistress, sought a temporary refuge from my
+cares."--Thus Lorenzo tells us that it was not in obedience to the
+dictates of his own overflowing heart, nor yet to celebrate the charms
+of his mistress, and win her favour, that he wrote in her praise, but to
+amuse himself and distract his mind from those cares and anxieties into
+which he was so early plunged. It has followed as a natural consequence,
+that elegant as are the amatory effusions of Lorenzo, they are less
+celebrated, less popular, than his descriptive and moral poems. His
+Ambra, La Nencia, and his songs for the carnival, have all in their
+respective style a higher stamp of excellence and originality than his
+love poetry. His forte seems to have been lively description,
+philosophical illustration, and brilliant and sportive fancy, combined
+with a classic taste and polished versification. Some of those sonnets,
+which, though addressed to Madonna Lucretia, turn chiefly on some
+beautiful thought or description, are finished like gems; as that on
+Solitude--
+
+    Cerchi chi vuol le pompe e gli alti onori;
+
+and that well known and charming one, "Sopra Violetti,"
+
+    Non di verdi giardin, ornati e colti, &c.
+
+both of which have been happily translated by Roscoe; and to these may
+be added the address to Cytherea--
+
+    Lascia l' isola tua tanta diletta!
+    Lascia il tuo regno delicato e bello
+    Ciprigna Dea! &c.
+
+There is another, not so well known, distinguished by its peculiar fancy
+and elegance--
+
+    Spesso mi torna a mente, anzi già mai, &c.
+
+In this he recalls to mind the time and the place, and even the vesture
+in which his gentle lady first appeared to him--
+
+    Quanto vaga, gentil, leggiadra, e pia
+    Non si può dir, ne imaginar assai;
+
+and he beautifully adds,
+
+    Quale sopra i nevosi, ed alti monti
+    Apollo spande il suo bel lume adorno,
+    Tal' i crin suoi sopra la bianca gonna!
+    Il tempo e 'l luogo non convien ch' io conti,
+    Che dov' è si bel sole è sempre giorno;
+    E Paradiso, ov' è si bella Donna!
+
+"As over the snowy summits of the high mountains Apollo sheds his golden
+beams, so flowed her golden tresses over her white vest.--But for the
+_time_ and the _place_, is it necessary that I should note them? Where
+shines so fair a sun, can it be other than day? Where dwells so
+excellent a beauty, can it be other than Paradise?"
+
+It happened in the midst of Lorenzo's visions of love and poetry, that
+he was called upon to give his hand to a wife chosen by his father for
+political reasons. His inclinations were not consulted, as is plain
+from the blunt amusing manner in which he has noted it down in his
+memoranda. "I, Lorenzo, took to wife Donna Clarice Orsini,--or rather
+she was given to me, (ovvero mi fu data) on such a day." Yet a union
+thus inauspiciously contracted, was rendered, by the affectionate
+disposition of Lorenzo, and the amiable qualities of his wife, rather
+happy than otherwise; it is true, we have no poetical compliments
+addressed by Lorenzo to Donna Clarice, but there is extant a little
+billet written to her a few months after their marriage, from the tone
+of which it is fair to suppose, that Lorenzo had exchanged his poetic
+flame for a real attachment to an amiable woman.[62]
+
+There is a very beautiful and elegant passage in the beginning of
+Lorenzo's commentary on his own poems, in which he enlarges on the
+theory of love. "The conditions (he says) which appear necessarily to
+belong to a true, exalted, and worthy love, are two. First,--_to love
+but one_: secondly,--_to love that one always_. Not many lovers have
+hearts so generous as to be capable of fulfilling these two conditions;
+and exceedingly few women display sufficient attractions to withhold men
+from the violation of them; yet without these there is no true love."
+And afterwards, enumerating those charms of person and mind which
+inspire affection, he adds, "and yet these estimable qualities are not
+enough, unless the lover possess sensibility of heart to discern them,
+and elevation and generosity of soul to appreciate them."
+
+This in the original is very elegantly expressed, and the sentiment is
+as true as it is exalted and graceful; but that Lorenzo was not always
+thus philosophically refined, that he could descend from these
+Platonics to be impassioned and in earnest, and that when touched to the
+heart, he could pour forth the language of the heart, we have a single
+instance, which it is impossible to allude to without feeling some
+emotion of curiosity, which can never now be gratified.
+
+We find among Lorenzo's poems, written later in life than those
+addressed to Lucretia Donati, one entitled simply "An Elegy;" the style
+is different from that of his earlier poetry, and has more of the
+terseness and energy of Dante than the sweetness and flow of Petrarch.
+It begins
+
+    "Vinto dagli amorosi, empi martiri."
+
+"Subdued by the fierce pangs of my love, a thousand times have I taken
+up the pen, to tell thee, O gentle lady mine, all the sighs of my sick
+heart. Then fearing thy displeasure, I have, on a second thought, flung
+it from me. * * * Yet must I speak, for if words were wanting, my pallid
+cheek would betray my suffering."
+
+He then tells her that he does not seek her dishonour, but only her kind
+thoughts, and that he may find a place within her gentle heart.
+
+    Perchè non cerco alcun tuo disonore,
+    Ma sol la grazia tua, e che piaci
+    Che'l mio albergo sia dentro al tuo core!
+
+He wishes that he might be once permitted to twine his fingers in her
+fair hair; to gaze into her eyes;--but he complains that she will not
+even meet his look,--that she resolutely turns her eyes another way at
+his approach.--"But do with me what thou wilt: while I live upon this
+earth, still I must love thee, since it so pleaseth Heaven--I swear it!
+and my hand writes it!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Come then! oh come, while yet thy gracious looks may avail me, for
+delay is death to one who loves likes me! Would I could send with this
+scroll all the torture of heart, the tears and sighs, the gesture and
+the look, that should accompany it!"
+
+    Ma s' egli avvien, che soletti ambo insieme,
+    Posso il braccio tenerti al collo avvolto,
+    Vedrai come d'amore alto arde e geme,
+    Vedrai cader dal mio pallido volto,
+    Nel tuo candido sen lagrime tante.
+
+(I leave these lines untranslated for the benefit of the Italian
+reader). After a few more stanzas, we have this very unequivocal
+passage:
+
+"O would to Heaven, lady, that marriage had made us one! ah, why didst
+thou not come into this world a little sooner?--or I a little later? Yet
+why these vain thoughts? since I am doomed to see thee the bride of
+another, and am myself fettered in these marriage bonds!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Thou knowest, Madonna, that these sighs, these burning words, are not
+feigned; for even as Love dictates does my hand write.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"My life and death are with thee;--grant me but a few words, and I am
+content to live;--if not, let me die! and let my poor remains be laid in
+some forlorn and sequestered spot. Let none whisper the cause of my
+death, lest it should grieve thee! enough if some kind hand engrave upon
+my tomb,--'_He perished through too much love and too much cruelty._'"
+
+I have given, literally, the leading sentiments of this little poem, but
+have left untranslated many of the stanzas. There are one or two
+concetti; but as Ginguené truly observes on a different occasion, "Dans
+les poëtes Italiens, souvent la passion est vraie, même quand
+l'expression ne l'est pas."
+
+The style is so natural, the transitions so abrupt, the expressions so
+energetic, and there are so few of those descriptive ornaments which are
+plentifully scattered through Lorenzo's other poems, that I should
+pronounce it the real effusion of a heart, touched,--and deeply touched.
+It is to be regretted that we know nothing of the name or real character
+of an object who, deserving or not, could call forth such strong lines
+as these; and in the plenitude of his power and fame, and in the midst
+of his great and serious avocations, deeply, though secretly, tyrannise
+over the peace of Lorenzo.
+
+He is accused,--I regret that I must allude to it,--of considerable
+licence of manners with regard to women;--a reproach from which Roscoe
+has fairly vindicated him. United, at the age of twenty-one, to a woman
+he had never seen; residing in a dissipated capital, surrounded by
+temptation, and from disposition peculiarly sensible to the influence of
+women, it is not matter of astonishment if Lorenzo's conjugal faith was
+not preserved immaculate,--if he occasionally became the thrall of
+beauty, and--(since he was not likely to be caught by vulgar
+charms,)--if he sighed, _par hazard_, for one who was not to be tempted
+by power or gold: such a one as his Elegy indicates. Two points are
+certain,--that his uniform respect and kindness to his wife Clarice,
+left her no reason to complain; while his discretion was such, that
+though historians have hazarded a general accusation against him in this
+one particular, there exists not in any contemporary writer one
+scandalous anecdote of his private life, nor the name of any woman to
+whom he was attached, except that of his poetical love, Lucretia Donati.
+
+Lorenzo de' Medici was not handsome in face, nor graceful in form; but
+he was captivating in his manners, and excelled in all manly exercises.
+The engraving prefixed to Roscoe's life of him, does not do justice to
+his countenance. I remember the original picture in the gallery of
+Florence, on which I have looked day after day for many minutes
+together, with an interest that can only be felt on the very spot where
+the memory of Lorenzo is "wherever we look, wherever we move." In spite
+of the stoop in the shoulders, the unbecoming dress, and the harsh
+features, I was struck by the grand simplicity of the head, and the
+mingled expression of acuteness, benevolence, and earnest thought in the
+countenance; the imagination filled with the splendid character of the
+man, might possibly have perceived more than the eye,--but such was my
+impression.
+
+Lorenzo died in his forty-fourth year, in 1492. He is not interred in
+that celebrated chapel of his family, rich with the sublimest
+productions of Michael Angelo's chisel: he lies at the opposite side of
+the church, in a magnificent sarcophagus of bronze, which contains also
+the ashes of his murdered brother, Giuliano.--Among the recollections,
+sweet and bitter, which I brought from Florence, is the remembrance of a
+day when retiring, from the glare of an Italian noontide, I stood in the
+church of San Lorenzo, sketching the tomb of Lorenzo and Giuliano de'
+Medici. The spot whence I viewed it was so obscure, that I could scarce
+see the lines traced by my pencil; but immediately behind the
+sarcophagus, there flowed from above a stream of strong light, relieving
+with added effect the dark outline of the sculptured ornaments. Through
+the grating which formed the background, I could see the figures of
+shaven monks and stoled priests gliding to and fro, like apparitions;
+and while I thought more,--O much more,--of the still and cold repose
+which wrapped the dead, than of their high deeds and far-spread fame,
+the plaintive music of a distant choir, chanting the _Via crucis_,
+floated through the pillared aisles, receding or approaching as the
+singers changed their station; swelling, sinking, and at length dying
+away on the ear.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[61] Lorenzo tells us in the original, that the ladies who rendered
+themselves thus insupportable, were called (_vulgarly_)
+_Saccenti_:--query--_vulgarly, Blue-stockings_?
+
+[62] Lorenzo de' Medici to his wife Clarice:--
+
+"I arrived here in safety, and am in good health: this, I believe, will
+please thee better than any thing else, except my return, at least so I
+judge from my own desire to be once more with thee. Associate as much as
+possible with my father and sisters. I shall make all possible speed to
+return to thee, for it appears a thousand years till I see thee again.
+Pray to God for me--if thou want any thing from this place write in
+time. From Milan, 22d July, 1469. THY LORENZO."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+THE FAIR GERALDINE.
+
+
+In the reign of the second Grand Duke of Tuscany, of Lorenzo's family,
+(Cosmo I.) Florence, it is said, beheld a novel and extraordinary
+spectacle: a young traveller, from a court and a country which the
+Italians of that day seemed to regard much as we now do the
+Esquimaux,[63] combining the learning of the scholar and the amiable
+bearing of the courtier, with all the rash bravery of youthful romance,
+astonished the inhabitants of that queenly city, first, by rivalling her
+polished nobles in the splendour of his state, and gallantry of his
+manners, and next, by boldly proclaiming that his "lady love" was
+superior to all that Italy could vaunt of beauty, that she was "oltre le
+belle, bella," fair beyond the fairest,--and maintaining his boast in a
+solemn tourney held in her honour, to the overthrow of all his
+opponents.
+
+This was our English Surrey; one of the earliest and most elegant of our
+amatory poets, and the lover of the Fair Geraldine.
+
+It must be admitted that the fame of the Earl of Surrey does not rest
+merely on title, and that if the fair Geraldine had never existed, he
+would still have lived in history as an accomplished scholar, soldier,
+courtier, and been lamented as the noble victim of a suspicious tyrant.
+But if some fair object of romantic gallantry had not given the impulse
+to his genius, and excited him to try his powers in a style of which no
+models yet existed in his native language,[64]--it may be doubted
+whether his name would have descended to us with all those poetical and
+chivalrous associations which give a charm and an interest to his
+memory, far beyond that of a mere historical character. As for the
+fair-haired, blue-eyed Geraldine, the mistress of his fancy and
+affections, and the subject of his verse, her identity long lay
+_entombed_, as it were, in a poetical name; but Surrey had loved her,
+had maintained her beauty at the point of his lance--had made her
+"famous by his pen, and glorious by his sword." This was more than
+enough to excite the interest and the inquiries of posterity, and lo!
+antiquaries and commentators fell to work, archives were searched,
+genealogies were traced, and at length the substance of this beautiful
+poetical shadow was detected: she was proved to have been the Lady
+Elizabeth Fitzgerald, afterwards the wife of a certain Earl of Lincoln,
+of whom little is known--but that he married the woman Surrey had loved.
+
+Surrey has ingeniously contrived to compress, within the compass of a
+sonnet, some of the most interesting particulars of the personal and
+family history of his mistress. The Fitzgeralds derive their origin
+from the Geraldi of Tuscany,--hence
+
+    From Tuscan came my ladye's worthy race,
+    Fair Florence was sometime their ancient seat.
+
+She was born and nurtured in Ireland--
+
+    Fostered she was with milk of Irish breast.
+
+Her father was the Earl of Kildare, her mother allied to the blood
+royal.
+
+    Her sire an Earl, her dame of Prince's blood.
+
+She was brought up (through motives of compassion, after the misfortunes
+of her family,) at Hunsdon, with the Princesses Mary and Elizabeth,
+where Surrey, who frequently visited them in company with the young Duke
+of Richmond,[65] first beheld her.
+
+    Hunsdon did first present her to mine eyes.
+
+She was then extremely young, not above fourteen or fifteen, as it
+appears from comparative dates; and Surrey says very clearly,
+
+    She wanted years to understand
+    The grief that he did feel.
+
+But even then her budding charms made him confess as he beautifully
+expresses it--
+
+    How soon a look can print a thought
+      That never may remove!
+
+It was during the festivals held at Hampton Court, whither she
+accompanied the Princesses, that her conquest was completed; and Surrey
+being afterwards confined at Windsor,[66] was deprived of her society.
+
+    Bright is her hue, and Geraldine she hight;
+    Hampton me taught to wish her first for mine,
+    Windsor, alas! doth chase me from her sight.
+
+Hampton Court was the scene of their frequent interviews. Surrey
+mentions a certain recessed or bow window, in which, retired apart from
+the gay throng around them, they held "converse sweet." Here she gave
+him, as it seems, some encouragement; too proud of such a distinguished
+suitor to let him escape. He in the same moment confesses himself a very
+slave, and betrays an indignant consciousness of the arts by which she
+keeps him entangled in her chain.
+
+    In silence tho' I keep to such secrets myself,
+    Yet do I see how she sometime, doth yield a look by stealth;
+    As tho' it seemed, I wis,--"I will not lose thee so!"
+    When in her heart so sweet a thought did never truly grow.
+
+He accuses her expressly of a love of general admiration, and of giving
+her countenance and favour to unworthy rivals. In "The Warning to a
+Lover how he is abused by his Love," he thus addresses himself as the
+deceived lover:--
+
+    Where thou hast loved so long, with heart and all thy power,
+    I see thee fed with feigned words, &c.
+    I see her pleasant cheer in chiefest of thy suit:
+    When thou art gone, I see him come who gathers up the fruit;
+    And eke in thy respect, I see the base degree
+    Of him to whom she gives the heart, that promised was to thee![67]
+
+The fair Geraldine must have been a practised coquette to have sat for a
+picture so finished and so strongly marked: yet before we blame her for
+this disdainful trifling, it should be remembered that Lord Surrey, at
+the time he was wooing her with "musicke vows," was either married or
+contracted to another,[68]--a circumstance quite in keeping with the
+fashionable system of Platonic gallantry introduced from Italy--
+
+    O Plato! Plato! you have been the cause, &c.
+
+and so forth. I forbear to continue the apostrophe.
+
+According to the old tradition, repeated by all Surrey's biographers, he
+visited on his travels the famous necromancer Cornelius Agrippa, who in
+a magic mirror revealed to him the fair figure of his Geraldine, lying
+dishevelled on a couch, and, by the light of a taper, reading one of his
+tenderest sonnets.
+
+    Fair all the pageant, but how passing fair
+      The slender form that lay on couch of Ind!
+    O'er her white bosom strayed her hazel hair,
+      Pale her dear cheek, as if for love she pined.
+    All in her night-robe loose, she lay reclined,
+      And pensive read from tablet eburnine,
+    Some strain that seemed her inmost soul to find;--
+      That favoured strain was Surrey's raptured line,
+    That fair and lovely form, the Lady Geraldine![69]
+
+This beautiful incident is too celebrated, too touching, not to be one
+of the articles of our poetical faith. It was believed by Surrey's
+contemporaries, and in the age immediately following was gravely related
+by a grave historian. It shows at least the celebrity which his poetry,
+unequalled at that time, had given to his love, and the object of it. In
+fact, when divested of the antique spelling, which, at the first glance,
+revolts by the impression it gives of difficulty and obscurity, some of
+the lyrics of Surrey have not since been surpassed either in elegance of
+sentiment, or flowing grace of expression:--for example--
+
+    A Praise of his Love, wherein he reproveth them that compare
+    their Ladies with his.
+
+    Give place ye lovers here before,
+    That spent your boastes and braggs in vain,
+    My ladye's beauty passeth more
+    The best of yours, I dare well sayne,
+    Then doth the sun the candle light,
+    Or brightest day the darkest night.
+    And thereto hath a truth as just,
+    As had Penelope the fair:
+    For what she sayeth you may it trust.
+      As it by writing sealed were;
+    And virtues hath she many moe,
+    Than I with pen have skill to show.
+
+The following sonnet is rather a specimen of versification than of
+sentiment: the subject is borrowed from Petrarch.
+
+
+A COMPLAINT, BY NIGHT, OF A LOVER NOT BELOVED.
+
+    Alas! so all things now do hold their peace,
+      Heaven and earth disturbed in no thing;
+    The beasts, the air, the birds their song do cease,
+      And the night's car the stars about doth bring:
+    Calm is the sea, the waves work less and less:
+      So am not I, whom love, alas! doth wring,
+    Bringing before my face the great increase
+      Of my desires, whereas I weep and sing,
+    In joy and woe, as in a doubtful case.
+      For my sweet thoughts, some time do pleasure bring;
+    But by and by, the cause of my disease,
+      Gives me a pang, that inwardly doth sting,
+    When that I think, what grief it is again
+      To live, and lack the thing should rid my pain.
+
+Geraldine was so beautiful as to authorise the raptures of her poetical
+lover. Even in her later years, when as Countess of Lincoln, she
+attended on Queen Elizabeth, she retained so much of her excelling
+loveliness, that the adoration paid to her in youth, was not wondered
+at; and her celebrity as Surrey's early love, is alluded to by
+cotemporary writers.[70] There can be no doubt that she was an
+accomplished woman: the learned education the Princesses received at
+Hunsdon, (in the advantages of which she participated,) is well known.
+Her father, Lord Kildare, was a man of vigorous intellect and uncommon
+attainments for the age in which he lived. He was the eighth Earl of his
+noble family, and being engaged in the disturbances of Ireland, then a
+scene of eternal dissension and bloodshed between the native princes and
+the lords of the English pale, he fell under the displeasure of Henry
+the Eighth: his eldest son, and his five brothers, who had been seized
+as hostages, were executed on the same day at Tyburn, and the "stout old
+Earl," as he is called in history, died broken-hearted in the Tower.
+The mother of Geraldine is rendered interesting to us by a little family
+trait, related by one of our old Chroniclers.[71] Lord Kildare, he tells
+us, "was so well affected to his wife, as he would not at anie time buy
+a suite of apparel for himself, but he would suite her with the same
+stuffe; the which gentlenesse she recompensed with equal kindnesse; for
+after that he, the said Earle, deceased in the Tower, she did not onely
+live a chaste and honourable widow, but also nightly, before she went to
+bed, she would resorte to his picture, and there, with a solemn _congé_,
+she would bid her Lorde good nighte."
+
+This Countess of Kildare was Lady Elizabeth Grey, granddaughter of that
+famous Lady Elizabeth Grey, whose virtue made her the queen of Edward
+the Fourth. Thus the fair Geraldine was cousin to the young princes who
+were smothered in the Tower, and may truly be said to have been of
+"Prince's blood."
+
+It must be admitted that the general tone of Surrey's poems does not
+give us a favourable idea of the fair Geraldine's manners and character.
+She was variable, coquetish, and fond of admiration;--on this point I
+have offered some apology for her. She is accused also of marrying
+twice, from _mercenary_ motives, and thus forfeiting the attachment of
+her noble and poetical lover.[72] This is unfair, I think; there is no
+_proof_ that Geraldine married solely from _mercenary_ motives. Surrey
+was himself married, and both the men to whom she was successively
+united,[73] were eminent in their day for high personal qualities,
+though in comparison with Surrey, they have been reduced to hide their
+diminished heads in peerages and genealogies.
+
+The Earl of Surrey was beheaded in 1547. The fair Geraldine was living
+forty years afterwards: she survived for a short time her second
+husband, Lord Lincoln; and with him lies buried under a sumptuous tomb
+at Windsor: she left no descendants. Her youngest brother, Edward
+Fitzgerald, was the lineal ancestor of the present Duke of Leinster.
+
+The only original portrait of the fair Geraldine, now extant, is in the
+gallery of the Duke of Bedford, at Woburn; and I am told that it is
+sufficiently beautiful to justify Surrey's admiration.[74]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[63] "Those bears of English--those barbarous islanders," are common
+phrases in the Italian writers of that age.
+
+[64] Surrey introduced the sonnet, and the use of blank verse into our
+literature. It is a curious fact, that the earliest blank verse extant
+was written by Saint Francis.
+
+[65] Natural brother of the princesses: he was the son of Henry VIII. by
+Lady Talbot.
+
+[66] He was imprisoned for eating meat in Lent.
+
+[67] Lady Frances Vere.
+
+[68] Surrey's Works: Nott's Edit. 4to.
+
+[69] Lay of the Last Minstrel.
+
+[70] Queen Elizabeth's Progresses, vol. i.
+
+[71] Holinshed.
+
+[72] See Nott's edition of Surrey's Works.
+
+[73] She was the second wife of Sir Anthony Browne, and the third wife
+of the Earl of Lincoln, ancestor to the Duke of Newcastle.
+
+[74] Those who are curious about historic proofs, may consult Anecdotes
+of the family of Howard, Memoirs and works of Henry Howard Earl of
+Surrey, edited by Dr. Nott, Park's Royal and Noble Authors, and Collins'
+Peerage, by Brydges.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+GINEVRA, AND ALESSANDRA STROZZI.
+
+
+While the sagacity of Horace Walpole was tracking the identity of the
+fair Geraldine, through the mazes of poetry and probability,--through
+parchments, through peerages, through papers, and through patents, he
+must now and then have been annoyed by the provoking discretion of her
+chivalrous adorer, which had led him such a chase. But of all the
+discreet lovers that ever baffled commentators or biographers, commend
+me to Ariosto! though one of the last from whom discretion might have
+been expected on such a subject. He is known to have been particularly
+susceptible to the power of beauty; passionate in his attachments; and
+though pensive and abstracted in his general habits, almost irresistibly
+captivating in his intercourse with women. Yet such was his fine
+chivalrous feeling for the honour of those who, won by his rare
+qualities, yielded it to his keeping--"such his marvellous secrecy and
+modesty," say his Italian biographers, that although the public gaze was
+fixed upon him in his lifetime, and although, since his death, the
+minutest circumstances relative to him have been subjects of as much
+curiosity and research in Italy, as Shakspeare among us; yet a few
+scattered notices are all that can be brought together to illustrate his
+charming lyrics.
+
+This mystery was not in Ariosto the effect of chance or affectation; it
+arose from a principle of conduct faithfully adhered to from youth to
+age; in behalf of which, and the many beautiful passages expressive of
+devotion and reverential tenderness towards our sex, scattered through
+his great poem, we will endeavour, (though at some little sacrifice of
+the pride and delicacy of women,) to pardon him, for having treated us
+most wickedly, on sundry other occasions. As an emblem of the reserve he
+had imposed on himself, a little bronze Cupid, with his finger on his
+lip, in token of silence, ornamented his inkstand, which is still
+preserved at Ferrara.
+
+Of Ariosto's amatory poems, so full of spirit, grace, and a sort of
+earnest triumphant tenderness, it is impossible to doubt that the
+objects were real. The earliest of his serious attachments, was to a
+young girl of the Florentine family of the Lapi, but residing at Mantua,
+or in its vicinity. Her name was Ginevra,--a name he has tenderly
+commemorated in the Orlando Furioso, by giving it to one of his most
+charming and interesting heroines,--Ginevra di Scozia. He has also,
+after Petrarch's fashion, _played_ upon this name in one or two of his
+sonnets; _Ginevro_ signifying a juniper-tree:
+
+    Non voglio (e Febo e Bacco mi perdoni)
+    Che lor frondi mi mostrino poeta,
+    Ma che un _Ginevro_ sia che mi coroni!
+
+     "I wish not, (may Bacchus and Phoebus pardon me!) either
+     the laurel or the ivy to crown my brows; let my wreath be
+     rather of the thorny juniper!"
+
+His love for Ginevra (which was fondly returned,) began in very early
+youth; their first interview occurred at a _Festa di Ballo_,--a
+fête-champêtre, where Ginevra excelled all her young companions in the
+dance, as much as she surpassed them in her blooming beauty. He alludes
+to stolen interviews, in a grove of laurels, and on the banks of the
+Mincio: and on the whole, confesses that he had no reason to complain of
+cruelty from the fair Ginevra.[75] This attachment lasted long; for,
+four years after their first meeting, Ariosto addresses her in a most
+impassioned strain, and vows that she was then "dearer to him than his
+own soul, and fairer than ever in his eyes." She seems to have left that
+permanent impression on his memory and fancy, that shade of tender
+regret with which a man of strong sensibility and ardent imagination
+always recurs to the first love of his youth, even when the passion
+itself is past. He says himself, when revisiting Mantua many years
+afterwards, that the scene revived all his former tenderness--
+
+    Quel foco ch' io pensai che fosse estinto,
+    Dal tempo, dagli affanni, ed il star lunge
+    Signor pur arde.----
+
+I cannot discover what became of Ginevra ultimately: her fate was a
+common one: she was loved by a celebrated man, was forsaken, and in
+exchange for happiness and for love, she has enjoyed for some time a
+shadowy renown. Her name was usually connected with that of Ariosto,
+till the researches of later biographers discovered the object of that
+more celebrated, more serious, and more lasting passion which inspired
+Ariosto's finest lyrics, which was subsequently sealed by a private
+marriage, and ended only with the poet's life. In this instance, the
+modesty of the lady and the discretion of Ariosto have proved in vain,
+for the name of _Alessandra Strozzi_ is now so inseparably linked with
+that of her poet, that Beatrice is not more identified with Dante, nor
+Laura with Petrarch; though their names be more popular, and their fame
+more widely spread.
+
+    Minor di grido, ma del vanto altera,
+    (E ciò le basta) che suo saggio amante
+    Fu'l grande che cantò l'armi e gli amori--
+    Vedi Alessandra![76]
+
+Alessandra Strozzi was the daughter of Filippo Benucci, and the widow of
+Tito Strozzi, a noble Florentine and famous Latin poet. At the period of
+her first acquaintance with Ariosto, she must have been about
+six-and-twenty, and a beautiful woman, on a very magnificent scale.
+Though I cannot find that she was distinguished for talents, or any
+particular taste for literature, she seems to have possessed higher and
+more loveable qualities, which won Ariosto's admiration and secured his
+respect to the last.
+
+It was on his return from Rome in 1515, that Ariosto visited Florence,
+intending merely to witness the grand festival which was then celebrated
+in honour of St. John the Baptist, and lasted several days. With what
+animation, what graphic power, he has described in one of his canzoni,
+the scene and occasion in which he first beheld his mistress! The
+magnificence of Florence left, he says, few traces on his memory: he
+could only recollect that in all that fair city, he saw nothing so fair
+as herself.
+
+        Sol mi resta immortale
+    Memoria, ch'io non vidi in tutta quella
+    Bella città, di voi, cosa più bella.
+
+He had arrived just in time to be present at a fête, to which both were
+invited, and which Alessandra, notwithstanding her recent widowhood,
+condescended to adorn with her presence, "da preghi vinta"--conquered by
+the entreaties of her friends. The whole scene is set forth like some of
+the living and moving pictures which glow before us in the Orlando.
+
+    Porte, finestre, vie, templi, teatri,
+    Vidi pieni di Donne,
+    A giochi, a pompe, a sacrifici intenti.
+
+The portrait of Alessandra in her festal attire, and all her matronly
+loveliness, looks forth, as it were, from this gorgeous frame, like one
+of Titian's breathing, full-blown beauties. Her dress is minutely
+described: it was black, embroidered over with wreaths of vine-leaves
+and bunches of grapes, in purple and gold; her fair luxuriant hair,
+gathered in a net behind and parted in front, fell down on either side
+of her face, in long curls which touched her shoulders.
+
+    In aurei nodi, il biondo e spesso crine
+    In rara e sottil rete, avea raccolto;
+      Soave ombra di drieto
+    Rendea al collo, e dinanzi alle confine
+      Delle guance divine;
+    E discendea fin a l' avorio bianco
+      Del destro omero, e manco;
+    Con queste reti, insidiosi amori
+      Preser quel giorno, più de mille cori!
+
+    "In golden braids, her fair
+    And richly flowing hair
+    Was gather'd in a subtle net behind,--
+    (A subtle net and rare!)
+    And cast sweet shadows there
+    Over her neck, whilst parted ringlets, twined
+    In beauty, from her forehead fell away,
+    And hung adown her cheek where roses lay,
+    Touching the ivory pale, (how pale and white!)
+    Of both her rounded shoulders, left and right.
+    O crafty Loves! no more ye need your darts;
+    For well ye know, how many thousand hearts,
+      (Willing captives on that day,)
+      In those golden meshes lay!"[77]
+
+On her brow, just where her hair is parted, she wears a sprig of laurel,
+wondrously wrought in gems and gold;
+
+                  Quel gemmato
+    Alloro, tra la serena fronte e l' calle assunto.
+
+After a rapturous, but general description of the lady's surpassing
+beauty, this animated and admirable canzone concludes with the fine
+comparison of himself to the wild falcon, tamed at length to a master's
+hand and voice:--
+
+    La libertade apprezza,
+    Fin che perduta ancor non l' ha il falcone;
+    Preso che sia, depone
+    Del gire errando sì l' antica voglia,
+    Che sempre che si scioglia,
+    Al suo Signor a render con veloci
+    Ali s' andrà, dove udirà le voci!
+
+Ariosto, thus enamoured, forgot the flight of time; instead of remaining
+at Florence a few days, his stay was prolonged to six months; and as he
+resided in the house of his friend Vespucci, who was the brother-in-law
+of Alessandra, he had daily opportunities of seeing her, without in any
+way compromising her matronly dignity. On a certain occasion he finds
+her employed at her embroidery. She is working a robe, with wreaths of
+lilies and amaranthes; these emblems of purity and love suggest, of
+course, the obvious compliments, but in a spirit that places the whole
+scene before us: Alessandra, gracefully bending at her embroidery-frame,
+and listening, with veiled lids and suspended needle, to the tender
+homage of Ariosto, who repeats, as he hangs over her,--
+
+    Non senza causa il giglio e l' amaranto,
+    L' uno di fede, e l' altro fior d' amore, &c.
+
+Even the pattern from which she is working, the silk, the gold, the
+lawn, made happy by her touch, are sanctified, are envied,--
+
+    Avventuroso man! beato ingegno!
+    Beata seta! beatissimo oro!
+    Ben nato lino! inclito bel lavoro,
+    Da chi vuol la mia dea prender disegno,
+    Per far a vostro esempio un vestir degno,
+    Che copra avorio, e perle ed un tesoro![78]
+
+And he adds, "Ah, that she would rather take pattern after me, and
+imitate the constant love I bear her!"
+
+Alessandra must have excelled in needle-work, for we find frequent
+mention of her favorite occupation; and it is even alluded to in the
+Orlando, where describing the wound of Zerbino, Ariosto uses a
+comparison rather too fanciful for the occasion.
+
+    Così talora un bel purpureo nastro
+    Ho veduto partir tela d'argento,
+    Da quel bianca man più ch'alabastro
+    Da cui partire il cor spesso mi sento.
+
+    And so, I sometimes have been wont to view
+    A hand more white than alabaster, part
+    The silver cloth, with ribbons red of hue,
+    A hand I often feel divide my heart.[79]
+
+Among the personal charms of Alessandra, the most striking was the
+beauty and luxuriance of her hair. In the days of Ariosto, fair hair,
+with a golden tinge, was so much admired that it became a fashion; we
+are even informed that the Venetian women had invented a dye, or
+extract, by which they discharged the natural colour of their tresses,
+and gave them this admired hue. Almost all Titian's and Giorgione's
+beauties have fair hair; the "richissima capellatura bionda" of
+Alessandra, was a principal charm in the eyes of her lover, but it was
+one she was destined to lose prematurely; during a dangerous illness,
+some rash and luckless physician ordered all her beautiful tresses to be
+cut off. The remedy, it seems, was equally unnecessary and unfortunate;
+but here was a fine theme for an indignant lover! and Ariosto has,
+accordingly, lavished on it some of his most graceful and poetical
+ideas. Of the three elegant sonnets[80] in which he has commemorated the
+incident, it is difficult to decide which is the finest--the last,
+perhaps, is the most spirited: the poet bursts at once into his subject,
+as in a transport of grief and rage.
+
+"When I think, as I do, a thousand, thousand times a-day, upon those
+golden tresses, which neither wisdom nor necessity, but hasty folly,
+tore, alas! from that fair head, I am enraged,--my cheek burns with
+anger,--even tears gush forth, bathing my face and bosom;--I could die
+to be revenged on the impious stupidity of that rash hand! O Love, if
+such wrong goes unpunished, thine be the reproach! Remember how Bacchus
+avenged on the Thracian King,[81] the clusters torn from his sacred
+vines: wilt thou, who art greater far than he, do less? Wilt thou suffer
+the loveliest and dearest of thy possessions to be audaciously ravished,
+and yet bear it in silence?"[82]
+
+This is powerful enough to be in downright earnest: and unsoftened by
+the flowing harmony of the verse and rhyme, appears even harsh, both in
+sentiment and expression: but the poetry and spirit being inherent, have
+not, I trust, quite escaped in the _transfusion_. When Ariosto, after a
+long absence, revisits the scene in which he first beheld the lady of
+his thoughts, he addresses those "marble halls, and lofty and stately
+roofs,
+
+    "Marmoree logge, alti e superbi tetti,"
+
+in a strain which leaves the issue of his suit something less than
+doubtful:--
+
+"Well do ye remember, ye scenes, when I left ye a captive sick at
+heart, and pierced with Love's sweet pain: but ye know not perhaps how
+sweetly I died, and was restored again to life: how my gentlest Lady,
+seeing that my soul had forsaken me, sent me hers in return to dwell
+with me for ever!"
+
+    "Ben vi sovvien, che di qui andai captivo,
+    Trafitto il cor! ma non sapete forse
+    Com' io morissi, e poi tornassi in vita.
+
+    E che madonna, tosto che s' accorse
+    Esser l' anima in lei da me fuggita,
+    La sua mi diede, e ch' or con questa vivo!"
+
+The exact date of Ariosto's marriage cannot be ascertained, but the
+marriage itself is proved beyond a doubt:[83] it must have taken place
+about 1522. The reasons which induced Ariosto to involve in doubt and
+mystery his union with this admirable woman, can only be
+conjectured,[84] their intercourse was so carefully concealed, and the
+discretion and modesty of Alessandra so remarkable, that no suspicion of
+the ties which bound them to each other, existed during the life of the
+poet; nor did the slightest imputation ever sully the fair fame of her
+he loved.
+
+It were endless to point out the various beauties of Ariosto's
+lyrics,--beauties which, as they spring from feeling, are _felt_. We
+have few sonnets in a dolorous strain, few complaints of cruelty; and
+even these seem inspired, not by the habitual coldness of Alessandra,
+but by some occasional repulses which he confesses to have deserved.
+
+    Per poco consiglio, e troppo ardire.
+
+But we have, in their place, all the glow of sensibility, the sparkling
+of hope, the grateful rapture of returned affection, and that power of
+imagery, by which, with one vivid stroke, he turns his emotions into
+pictures: these predominate throughout. As an instance of the latter,
+there is the apostrophe to Hope, "now bounding and leaping along, now
+creeping with coward steps and slow:"
+
+    O speranza! che ancor dietro si mena
+    Quando a gran salti, e quando a passi lenti!
+
+In one of his madrigals, he says, with an elegance which is perhaps a
+little quaint, "my wishes soar so high, that my hopes shrink back, and
+dare not follow them." In the same spirit, when he is blest with the
+presence of his love, grief is not only banished, but "flies with the
+rapidity of a falcon before the wind,"
+
+    Vola, com' un falcone che ha seco il vento!
+
+Merely to compare his mistress to a rose, would have been common-place.
+She is a rose "unfolding her _paradise_ of leaves,"--a charming
+expression, which has been adopted, I think, by one of our living poets.
+Mingled with the most rapturous praise of Alessandra's triumphant
+beauty, we have constantly the most delightful impression of her
+tenderness, her frank and courteous bearing, and the gladness which her
+presence diffuses through his heart, which, after the sentimental
+lamentations of former poets, are really a relief.
+
+I can understand the self-congratulation, the secret enjoyment, with
+which Ariosto dwelt on the praises of Alessandra, celebrated her charms,
+and exulted in her love, while her name remained an impenetrable secret,
+
+    Nor pass'd his lips in holy silence seal'd!
+
+But when once he had introduced her into the Orlando, he must have had a
+very modest idea of his own future renown, not to have anticipated the
+consequences. A famous passage in the 42d canto, is now universally
+admitted to be a description of Alessandra.[85] She is very strikingly
+introduced, and yet with the usual characteristic mystery; so that while
+nothing is omitted that can excite interest and curiosity, every means
+are taken to baffle and disappoint both. Rinaldo, while travelling in
+Italy, arrives at a splendid palace on the banks of the Po. It is
+minutely described, with all the prodigal magnificence of the Arabian
+Nights', and all the taste of an architect; and among other riches, is
+adorned with the statues of the most celebrated women of that age, all
+of whom are named at length; but among them stands the effigy of one so
+preëminent in majesty, and beauty, and intellect, that though she is
+partly veiled, and habited in modest black, (alluding to her recent
+widowhood,) though she wears neither jewels nor chains of gold, she
+eclipses all the beauties around her, as the evening star outshines all
+others.
+
+    Che sotto puro velo, in nera gonna
+    Senza oro e gemme, in un vestire schietto,
+    Fra le più adorne non parea men bella
+    Che sia tra l'altre la ciprigna stella![86]
+
+At her side stands the image of one, who in humble strains had dared to
+celebrate her virtues and her beauty (meaning himself). "But," adds the
+poet modestly, "I know not why he alone should be placed there, nor what
+he had done to be so honoured; of all the rest, the names were
+sculptured beneath; but of these two, the names remained unknown."--No,
+not so! for those whom Love and Fame have joined together, who shall
+henceforth sunder?
+
+The Orlando Furioso was completed and published shortly after Ariosto's
+visit to Florence; and this passage must have been written apparently
+not only before his marriage with Alessandra, but before he was even
+secure of her affection; perhaps he read it aloud to her, and while his
+stolen looks and faltering voice betrayed the true object of this most
+beautiful and refined homage, she must have felt the delicacy which had
+suppressed her name. In such a moment, how little could she have heeded
+or thought of the voice of future fame, while the accents of her lover
+thrilled through her heart!
+
+Alessandra removed from Florence to Ferrara, about 1519, and inhabited
+the Casa Strozzi, in the street of Santa Maria in Vado. The residence
+of Ariosto was in the Via Mirasole, at some distance. Both houses are
+still standing. She died in 1552, having survived the poet about
+nineteen years; and she was buried in the church of San Rocco at
+Ferrara.
+
+She bore no children to Ariosto; and her son, by her first marriage
+(Count Guido Strozzi), died before her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Ariosto left two sons, whom he tenderly loved, and had educated with
+extreme care. The eldest, Virginio, was the son of a beautiful
+Contadinella, whose name was Orsolina; the mother of the youngest,
+Giovanbattista, was also a girl of inferior rank; her name was Maria.
+Neither are once mentioned or alluded to by Ariosto; but the mischievous
+industry of the poet's commentators has immortalized their names and
+their frailty.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[75]
+    ----Non ebbe unqua pastore
+    Di me più lieto, o più felice amore!
+
+See the canzone to Ginevra, quoted by Baruffaldi. Vita, p. 148.
+
+[76] Monti. Poesie varie, p. 88.
+
+[77] Translated by a friend.
+
+[78] Sonnet 27.
+
+[79] Stewart Rose's translation.
+
+[80] The 26th, 27th, and 28th.
+
+[81] Lycurgus, King of Thrace.
+
+[82] Ariosto. Rime.
+
+[83] The proofs may be consulted in Baruffaldi, "Vita di M. Ludovico
+Ariosto," published in 1807; and also in Frizzi, "Memorie della Famiglia
+Ariosto."
+
+[84] Baruffaldi gives some family reasons, but they are far from being
+satisfactory.--See VITA, in p. 159.
+
+[85] Ruscelli, Fabroni, Baruffaldi, and the late poet Monti, are all
+agreed on this point.
+
+[86] Orlando Furioso, c. 42, st. 93.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+SPENSER'S ROSALIND AND SPENSER'S ELIZABETH.
+
+
+Pass we from the Ariosto of Italy, to Spenser, our English Ariosto; the
+transition is natural:--they resemble each other certainly, but with a
+difference, and this difference reigns especially in their minor poems.
+
+The tender heart and luxuriant fancy of Spenser have thrown round his
+attachments all the strong interest of reality and all the charm of
+romance and poetry; and since we know that the first developement of his
+genius was owing to female influence, his Rosalind ought to have been
+deified for what her beauty achieved, had she possessed sufficient soul
+to appreciate the lustre of her conquest.
+
+Immediately on leaving college, Spenser retired to the north of England,
+where he first became enamoured of the fair being to whom, according to
+the fashion of the day, he gave the fanciful appellation of Rosalind. We
+are told that the letters which form this word being "well ordered,"
+(that is, _transposed_) comprehend her real name; but it has hitherto
+escaped the penetration of his biographers. Two of his friends were
+entrusted with the secret, and they, with a discretion more to be
+regretted than blamed, have kept it. One of these, who speaks from
+personal knowledge, tells us, in a note on the Eclogues, that she was
+the daughter of a widow; that she was a gentlewoman, and one "that for
+her rare and singular gifts of person and mind, Spenser need not have
+been ashamed to love." We can believe this of a poet, whose delicate
+perception of female worth breathes in almost every page of his works;
+but after having, as he hoped, made some progress in her heart, a rival
+stept in, whom Spenser accuses expressly of having supplanted him by
+treacherous arts;[87] and on this obscure and nameless wight, Rosalind
+bestowed the hand which had been coveted,--the charms which had been
+sung by Spenser! He suffered long and deeply, wounded both in his pride
+and in his love: but her beauty and virtue had made a stronger
+impression than her cruelty; and her lover, with a generous tenderness,
+not only pardoned, but found excuses for her disdain.
+
+                      "I have often heard,
+    Fair Rosalind of divers foully blam'd,
+      For being to that swain too cruel hard;
+    But who can tell what cause had that fair maid
+      To use him so, that loved her so well?
+    Or who with blame can justly her upbraid,
+      For loving not; for who can love compel?
+    And (sooth to say) it is full handy thing
+      Rashly to censure creatures so divine;
+    For demi-gods they be; and first did spring
+      From heaven, though graft in frailness feminine."[88]
+
+The exquisite sentiment of these lines is worthy of him who sung of
+"heavenly Una and her milk-white lamb."
+
+To the memory of Rosalind,--to the long felt influence of this first
+passion, and to the melancholy shade which his early disappointment cast
+over a mind naturally cheerful, we owe some of the most tender and
+beautiful passages scattered through his later poems:--for instance--the
+bitter sense of recollected suffering, seems to have suggested that fine
+description of a lover's life, which may almost rank as a _pendant_ to
+the miseries of the courtier, so well known and often quoted.
+
+    Full little know'st thou that hast not tied, &c.
+
+It occurs in the "Hymn to Love."
+
+    The gnawing envy, the heart-fretting fear,
+    The vain surmises, the distrustful shows,
+    The false reports that flying tales do bear,
+    The doubts, the dangers, the delays, the woes,
+    The feigned friends, the unassured foes,
+    With thousands more than any tongue can tell--
+    Do make a lover's life, a wretch's hell!
+
+And again in the Fairey Queen:--
+
+    What equal torment to the grief of mind.
+      And pining anguish, hid in gentle heart,
+    That inly foods itself with thoughts unkind,
+    And nourisheth its own consuming smart;
+    And will to none its malady impart!
+
+The effects produced in a noble and gentle spirit, by virtuous love for
+an exalted object, are not less elegantly described in another stanza of
+the Hymn to Love; and must have been read with rapture in that
+chivalrous age. The last line is particularly beautiful.
+
+    Then forth he casts in his unquiet thought,
+    What he may do, her favour to obtain;
+    What brave exploit, what peril hardly wrought,
+    What puissant conquest, what adventurous pain,
+    May please her best, and grace unto him gain;
+    He dreads no danger, nor misfortune fears,--
+    His faith, his fortune, in his breast he bears!
+
+And in what a fine spirit of poetry, as well as feeling, is that
+description of the power of true beauty, which forms part of his second
+Hymn! It is indeed imitated from the refined Platonics of the Italian
+school, which then prevailed in the court, the camp, the grove, and is a
+little diffuse in style, a little redundant; but how rich in poetry, and
+in the most luxuriant and graceful imagery!
+
+    How vainly then do idle wits invent,
+    That beauty is nought else but mixture made
+    Of colours fair, and goodly temperament
+    Of pure complexions, that shall quickly fade
+    And pass away, like to a summer's shade;
+    Or that it is but comely composition
+    Of parts well measured, with meet disposition!
+
+    Hath white and red in it such wondrous power,
+    That it can pierce through th' eyes into the heart,
+    And therein stir such rage and restless stowre,
+    As nought but death can stint his dolor's smart?
+    Or can proportion of the outward part
+    Move such affection in the inward mind,
+    That it can rob both sense, and reason blind?
+
+    Why do not then the blossoms of the field,
+    Which are array'd with much more orient hue,
+    And to the sense most dainty odours yield,
+    Work like impression in the looker's view?
+    Or why do not fair pictures like power show,
+    In which oft-times we Nature see of Art
+    Excell'd, in perfect limming every part?
+
+    But ah! believe me, there is more than so,
+    That works such wonders in the minds of men,
+    I, that have often prov'd, too well it know.
+    And who so list the like essaies to ken,
+    Shall find by trial, and confess it then,
+    That beauty is not, as fond men misdeem,
+    An outward show of things that only seem.
+
+    For that same goodly hue of white and red,
+    With which the cheeks are sprinkled, shall decay,
+    And those sweet rosy leaves, so fairly spread
+    Upon the lips, shall fade and fall away,
+    To that they were, even to corrupted clay:--
+    That golden wire, those sparkling stars so bright
+    Shall turn to dust, and lose their goodly light.
+
+    But that fair lamp, from whose celestial ray
+    That light proceeds, which kindleth lovers' fire,
+    Shall never be extinguished nor decay;
+    But, when the vital spirits do expire,
+    Unto her native planet shall retire;
+    For it is heavenly born and cannot die,
+    Being a parcel of the purest sky!
+
+At a late period of Spenser's life, the remembrance of this cruel piece
+of excellence,--his Rosalind, was effaced by a second and a happier
+love. His sonnets are addressed to a beautiful Irish girl, the daughter
+of a rich merchant of Cork. She it was who healed the wound inflicted by
+disdain and levity, and taught him the truth he has expressed in one
+charming line--
+
+    Sweet is that love alone, that comes with willingnesse!
+
+Her name was Elizabeth, and her family (as Spenser tells us himself,)
+obscure; but, in spite of her plebeian origin, the lady seems to have
+been a very peremptory and Juno-like beauty. Spenser continually dwells
+upon her pride of sex, and has placed it before us in many charming
+turns of thought, now deprecating it as a fault, but oftener celebrating
+it as a virtue. For instance,--
+
+    Rudely thou wrongest my dear heart's desire,
+    In finding fault with her too portly pride:
+    The thing which I do most in her admire,
+    Is of the world unworthy most envied;
+    For in those lofty looks is close implied,
+    Scorn of base things, disdain of foul dishonour;
+    Threatening rash eyes which gaze on her so wide,
+    That loosely they ne dare to look upon her.
+    Such pride is praise; such portliness is honour.[89]
+
+And again, in the thirteenth sonnet,--
+
+    In that proud port, which her so goodly graceth,
+    Whiles her fair face she rears up to the sky,
+    And to the ground, her eyelids low embaseth,
+    Most goodly temperature ye may descry;
+    Mild humblesse, mixt with awful majesty!
+
+This picture of the deportment erect with conscious dignity, and the
+eyelids veiled with feminine modesty, is very beautiful. We have the
+figure of his Elizabeth before us in all her maidenly dignity and proud
+humility. The next is a softened repetition of the same characteristic
+portrait:
+
+    Was it the work of Nature or of Art,
+    Which temper'd so the features of her face,
+    That pride and meekness, mixt by equal part,
+    Do both appear to adorn her beauty's grace![90]
+
+He rebukes her with a charming mixture of reproof and flattery, in the
+lines--
+
+    Fair Proud! now tell me, why should fair be proud? &c.
+
+This imperious and high-souled beauty at length gives some sign of
+relenting; and pursuing the train of thought and feeling through the
+latter part of the collection, we can trace the vicissitudes of the
+lady's temper, and how the lover sped in his wooing. First, she grants a
+smile, and it is hailed with rapture--
+
+    Sweet smile! the daughter of the Queen of Love,
+    Expressing all thy mother's powerful art,
+    With which she wont to temper angry Jove,
+    When all the gods he threats with thundering dart:
+    Sweet is thy virtue, as thyself sweet art!
+    For, when on me thou shinedst late in sadness,
+    A melting pleasance ran through every part,
+    And me revived with heart-robbing gladness![91]
+
+The effect of a first relenting and affectionate smile, from a being of
+this character, must, in truth, have been irresistible. He tells us how
+lovely she appeared in his eyes,--how surpassing fair:
+
+    When that the cloud of pride which oft doth dark
+    Her goodly light, with smiles she drives away!
+
+He finds her one day embroidering in silk a bee and a spider,
+
+                        Woven all about,
+    With woodbynd flowers and fragrant eglantine,
+
+and he playfully compares himself to a spider, and her to the bee, whom,
+after long and weary watching, he has at length caught in his snare.
+This pretty incident is the subject of the 71st Sonnet. The rapture of
+grateful affection is more eloquent in the Sonnet beginning
+
+    Joy of my life! full oft for loving you
+    I bless my lot, that was so lucky placed, &c.
+
+When he is allowed to hope, the pride which had before checked and
+chilled him, seems to change its character. He feels all the exultation
+of being beloved of one, not easily gained, and "assured unto herself."
+
+    Thrice happy she that is so well assured
+    Unto herself, and settled so in heart, &c.[92]
+
+After a courtship of about three years, he sues for the possession of
+the fair hand to which he had so long aspired; promising her (and not
+vainly,) all the immortality his verse could bestow,--
+
+    Even this verse, vowed to eternity,
+    Shall be of her immortal monument,
+    And tell her praise to all posterity!
+
+The fair Elizabeth at length confesses herself won; but expresses some
+fears at the idea of relinquishing her maiden freedom. His reply is,
+perhaps, the most beautiful of all the Sonnets. It has all the
+tenderness, elegance, and fancy, which distinguish Spenser in his
+happiest moments of inspiration.
+
+    The doubt which ye misdeem, fair love, is vain,
+      That fondly fear to lose your liberty;
+    When, losing one, two liberties ye gain,
+      And make him bound that bondage erst did fly.
+    Sweet be the bands, the which true love doth tye
+      Without constraint, or dread of any ill:
+    The gentle bird feels no captivity
+      Within her cage; but sings, and feeds her fill:
+    There pride dare not approach, nor discord spill
+      The league 'twixt them, that loyal love hath bound:
+    But simple Truth, and mutual Good-will,
+      Seeks, with sweet peace, to salve each other's wound:
+    There Faith doth fearless dwell is brazen tower,
+    And spotless Pleasure builds her sacred bower.[93]
+
+The _Amoretti_, as Spenser has fancifully entitled his Sonnets, are
+certainly tinctured with a good deal of the verbiage and pedantry of the
+times; but I think I have shown that they contain passages of earnest
+feeling, as well as high poetic beauty. Spenser married his Elizabeth,
+about the year 1593, and he has crowned his amatory effusions with a
+most impassioned and triumphant epithalamion on his own nuptials, which
+he concludes with a prophecy, that it shall stand a perpetual monument
+of his happiness, and thus it has been. The passage in which he
+describes his youthful bride, is perhaps one of the most beautiful and
+vivid _pictures_ in the whole compass of English poetry.
+
+    Behold, while she before the altar stands,
+    Hearing the holy priest that to her speaks,
+    And blesses her with his two happy hands.
+    How the red roses flush up in her cheeks.
+    And the pure snow, with goodly vermeil stain,
+    Like crimson died in grain!
+    That even the angels, which continually
+    About the sacred altar do remain,
+    Forget their service, and about her fly,
+    Oft peeping in her face, which seems more fair,
+    The more they on it stare.
+    But her sad eyes, still fastened on the ground,
+    Are governed with a goodly modesty
+    That suffers not a look to glance away,
+    Which may let in a little thought unsound.
+    Why blush ye, love! to give to me your hand
+    The pledge of all our band!
+      Sing! ye sweet angels! Hallelujah sing!
+    That all the woods may answer, and their echoes ring!
+
+And the rapturous apostrophe to the evening star is in a fine strain of
+poetry.
+
+    Late, though it be, at last I see it gloom,
+    And the bright evening star, with golden crest,
+    Appear out of the west!
+    Fair child of beauty! glorious lamp of love!
+    That all the host of heaven in ranks dost lead,
+    And guidest lovers through the night's sad dread,
+    How cheerfully thou lookest from above,
+    And seem'st lo laugh atween thy twinkling light!
+
+As Ariosto has contrived to introduce his personal feelings, and the
+memory of his love, into the Orlando Furioso, so Spenser has enshrined
+_his_ in the Fairy Queen; but he has not, I think, succeeded so well in
+the _manner_ of celebrating the woman he delighted to honour. Ariosto
+has the advantage over the English poet, in delicacy and propriety of
+feeling as well as power. Spenser's picture of the swelling eminence,
+the lawn, the clustering trees, the cascade--
+
+    Whose silver waves did softly tumble down,
+
+haunted by nymphs and fairies; the bevy of beauties who dance in a
+circle round the lady of his love, while he himself, in his character of
+Colin Clout, sits aloof piping on his oaten reed, remind us of one of
+Claude's landscapes: and the difference between the pastoral luxuriance
+of this diffuse description, and the stately magnificence of Ariosto's,
+is very characteristic of the two poets. Were I to choose, however, I
+would rather have been the object of Ariosto's compliment than of
+Spenser's. The passage in the Fairy Queen occurs in the 10th canto of
+the Legend of Sir Calidore; and all his commentators are agreed that the
+allusion is to his Elizabeth, and not to Rosalind.
+
+Both are mentioned in "Colin Clout's come home again." Rosalind, and her
+disdainful rejection of the poet's love, are alluded to near the end, in
+some lines already quoted; but a very beautiful passage, near the
+commencement of the poem, clearly alludes to Elizabeth, under whose
+thrall he was at the time it was written.
+
+    Ah! far be it, (quoth Colin Clout,) fro me,
+    That I, of gentle maids, should ill deserve,
+    For that myself I do profess to be
+    Vassal to one, whom all my days I serve;
+    The beam of Beauty, sparkled from above,
+    The flower of virtue and pure chastitie;
+    The blossom of sweet joy and perfect love;
+    The pearl of peerless grace and modesty!
+    To her, my thoughts I daily dedicate;
+    To her, my heart I nightly martyrise;
+    To her, my love I lowly do prostrate;
+    To her, my life I wholly sacrifice:
+    My thought, my heart, my life, my love, is she! &c.
+
+Spenser married his Elizabeth about the year 1593. He resided at this
+time at the Castle of Kilcolman, in the south of Ireland, a portion of
+the forfeited domains of the Earl of Desmond having been assigned to
+him: but the adherents of that unhappy chief saw in Spenser only an
+invader of their rights,--a stranger living on their inheritance, while
+they were cast out to starvation or banishment. He and his family dwelt
+in continual fears and disturbance from the distracted state of the
+country; and at length, about two years after his marriage, he was
+attacked in his castle by the native Irish. He and his wife escaped with
+difficulty, and one of their children perished in the flames. After this
+catastrophe they came to England, and Spenser died in 1598, about five
+years after his marriage with Elizabeth. The short period of their
+union, though disturbed by misfortunes, losses, and worldly cares, was
+never clouded by domestic disquiet. This haughty beauty,
+
+    Whose lofty countenance seemed to scorn
+    Base thing, and think how she to heaven might climb,
+
+became the tenderest and most faithful of wives. How long she survived
+her husband is not known; but though scarce past the bloom of youth at
+the period of her loss, we have no account of her marrying again.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[87] Eclogue 6.
+
+[88] Colin Clout.
+
+[89] Sonnet 5.
+
+[90] Sonnet 21.
+
+[91] Sonnet 39.
+
+[92] Sonnet 39.
+
+[93] Sonnet 65.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+ON THE LOVE OF SHAKSPEARE.
+
+
+Shakspeare--I approach the subject with reverence, and even with
+fear,--is the only poet I am acquainted with and able to appreciate, who
+appears to have been really heaven-inspired: the workings of his
+wondrous and all-embracing mind were directed by a higher influence than
+ever was exercised by woman, even in the plenitude of her power and her
+charms. Shakspeare's genius waited not on Love and Beauty, but Love and
+Beauty ministered to _him_; he perceived like a spirit; he was created,
+to create; his own individuality is lost in the splendour, the reality,
+and the variety of his own conceptions. When I think what those are, I
+feel how needless, how vain it were to swell the universal voice with
+one so weak as mine. Who would care for it that knows and feels
+Shakspeare? Who would listen to it that does not, if there be such?
+
+It is not Shakspeare as a great power bearing a great name,--but
+Shakspeare in his less divine and less known character,--as a lover and
+a man, who finds a place here. The only writings he has left, through
+which we can trace any thing of his personal feelings and affections,
+are his Sonnets. Every one who reads them, who has tenderness or taste,
+will echo Wordsworth's denunciation against the "flippant insensibility"
+of some of his commentators, who talked of an Act of Parliament not
+being strong enough to compel their perusal, and will agree in his
+opinion, that they are full of the most exquisite feelings, most
+felicitously expressed; but as to the object to whom they were
+addressed, a difference of opinion prevails. From a reference, however,
+to all that is known of Shakspeare's life and fortunes, compared with
+the internal presumptive evidence contained in the Sonnets, it appears
+that some of them are addressed to his amiable friend, Lord Southampton;
+and others, I think, are addressed in Southampton's name, to that
+beautiful Elizabeth Vernon, to whom the Earl was so long and ardently
+attached.[94] The Queen, who did not encourage matrimony among her
+courtiers, absolutely refused her consent to their union. She treated
+him as she did Raleigh in the affair of Elizabeth Throckmorton; and
+Southampton, after four years of impatient submission and still
+increasing love, as tenderly returned by his mistress, married without
+the Queen's knowledge, lost her favour for ever, and had nearly lost his
+head.[95]
+
+That Lord Southampton is the subject of the first fifty-five Sonnets is
+sufficiently clear; and some of these are perfectly beautiful,--as the
+30th, 32d, 41st, 54th. There are others scattered through the rest of
+the volume, on the same subject; but there are many which admit of no
+such interpretation, and are without doubt inspired by the real object
+of a real passion, of whom nothing can be discovered, but that she was
+dark-eyed[96] and dark-haired,[96] that she excelled in music;[97] and
+that she was one of a class of females who do not always, in losing all
+right to our respect, lose also their claim to the admiration of the sex
+who wronged them, or the compassion of the gentler part of their own,
+who have rejected them. This is so clear from various passages, that
+unhappily there can be no doubt of it.[98] He has flung over her,
+designedly it should seem, a veil of immortal texture and fadeless hues,
+"branched and embroidered like the painted Spring," but almost
+impenetrable even to our imagination. There are few allusions to her
+personal beauty, which can in any way individualise her, but bursts of
+deep and passionate feeling, and eloquent reproach, and contending
+emotions, which show, that if she could awaken as much love and impart
+as much happiness as woman ever inspired or bestowed, he endured on her
+account all the pangs of agony, and shame, and jealousy;--that our
+Shakspeare,--he who, in the omnipotence of genius, wielded the two
+worlds of reality and imagination in either hand, who was in conception
+and in act scarce less than a GOD, was in passion and suffering not more
+than MAN.
+
+Instead of any elaborate description of her person, we have, in the only
+sonnet which sets forth her charms, the rich materials of a picture,
+rather than the picture itself.
+
+      The forward violet thus did I chide:
+    Sweet thief, whence didst thou steal thy sweet that smells,
+      If not from my Love's breath? The purple pride
+    Which on thy soft cheek for complexion dwells,
+      In my Love's veins thou hast too grossly dy'd.
+    The lily I condemned for thy hand,
+      And buds of marjoram had stolen thy hair:
+    The roses fearfully on thorns did stand,
+      One blushing shame, another white despair:
+    A third, nor red nor white, had stolen of both,
+      And to his robbery had annex'd thy breath;
+    But for his theft, in pride of all his growth
+      A vengeful canker eat him up to death.
+    More flowers I noted, yet I none could see,
+    But sweet, or colour, it had stolen from thee.
+
+He intimates that he found a rival in one of his own most intimate
+friends, who was also a poet.[99] He laments her absence in this
+exquisite strain;--
+
+    How like a winter hath my absence been
+    From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year!
+    What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen,
+    What old December's bareness everywhere!
+
+    ....*....*....*....*
+
+    For Summer and his pleasures wait on thee,
+    And thou away, the very birds are mute!
+
+He dwells with complacency on her supposed truth and tenderness, her
+bounty, like Juliet's, "boundless as the sea, her love as deep."
+
+    Kind is my love to-day, to-morrow kind,
+    Still constant in a wondrous excellence.
+
+Then, as if conscious upon how unstable a foundation he had built his
+love, he expresses his fear lest he should be betrayed, yet remain
+unconscious of the wrong.
+
+    For there can live no hatred in thine eye,
+      Therefore in that I cannot know thy change!
+    In many looks, the false heart's history
+      Is writ in moods and frowns, and wrinkles strange.
+    But heaven in thy creation did decree,
+      That in thy face sweet love should ever dwell.
+
+He bitterly reproaches her with her levity and falsehood, and himself
+that he can be thus unworthily enslaved,--
+
+    What potions have I drunk of Syren tears, &c.
+
+Then, with lover-like inconsistency, excuses her,--
+
+    As on the finger of a throned queen
+      The basest jewel will be well esteemed:
+    So are those errors that in thee are seen
+      To truths translated, and for true things deem'd.
+
+And the following are powerfully and painfully expressive:--
+
+    How sweet and lovely dost thou make the shame,
+      Which, like the canker in a fragrant rose,
+    Doth spot the beauty of thy budding name!
+      Oh, in what sweets dost thou thy sins enclose!
+
+    And what a mansion have those vices got,
+      Which for their habitation chose out thee,
+    Where Beauty's veil doth cover every blot,
+      And all things turn to fair that eyes can see!
+
+"Who taught thee," he says in another sonnet,
+
+      --to make me love thee more
+    The more I hear, and see just cause for hate?
+
+He who wrote these and similar passages was certainly under the full and
+irresistible influence of female fascination. But who it was that thus
+ruled the universal heart and mighty spirit of our Shakspeare, we know
+not. She stands beside him a veiled and a nameless phantom. Neither dare
+we call in Fancy to penetrate that veil; for who would presume to trace
+even the faintest outline of such a being as Shakspeare could have
+loved?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I think it doubtful to whom were addressed those exquisite lines,
+
+    Then hate me when thou wilt, if ever, now! &c.[100]
+
+but probably to this very person.
+
+The Sonnets in which he alludes to his profession as an actor; where he
+speaks of the brand, "which vulgar scandal stamped upon his brow," and
+of having made himself "a motley to men's view,"[101] are undoubtedly
+addressed to Lord Southampton.
+
+    O, for my sake, do you with fortune chide
+      The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds,
+    That did not better for my life provide,
+      Than publick means, which public manners breeds;
+    Thence comes it that my name receives a brand,
+      And almost thence my nature is subdu'd
+    To what it works in, like the dyer's hand.
+      Pity me then, and wish I were renew'd.
+
+The last I shall remark, perhaps the finest of all, and breathing the
+very soul of profound tenderness and melancholy feeling, must, I think,
+have been addressed to a female.
+
+    No longer mourn for me when I am dead,
+      Than you shall hear the surly sullen bell
+    Give warning to the world that I am fled
+      From this vile earth, with vilest worms to dwell:
+    Nay, if you read this line, remember not
+      The hand that writ it; for I love you so
+    That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot,
+      If thinking on me then should make you woe.
+    O if (I say) you look upon this verse,
+      When I perhaps compounded am with clay,
+    Do not so much as my poor name rehearse;
+      But let your love even with my life decay:
+    Lest the wise world should look into your moan,
+      And mock you with me after I am gone.
+
+The period assigned to the composition of these Sonnets, and the
+attachment which inspired them, is the time when Shakspeare was living a
+wild and irregular life, between the court and the theatre, after his
+flight from Stratford. He had previously married, at the age of
+seventeen, Judith Hathaway, who was eight or ten years older than
+himself: he returned to his native town, after having sounded all depths
+of life, of nature, of passion, and ended his days as the respected
+father of a family, in calm, unostentatious privacy.
+
+One thing I will confess:--It is natural to feel an intense and
+insatiable curiosity relative to great men, a curiosity and interest for
+which nothing can be too minute, too personal.--And yet when I had
+ransacked all that had ever been written, discovered, or surmised,
+relative to Shakspeare's private life, for the purpose of throwing some
+light upon his Sonnets, I felt no gratification, no thankfulness to
+those whose industry had raked up the very few particulars which can be
+known. It is too much, and it is not enough: it disappoints us in one
+point of view--it is superfluous in another: what need to surround with
+common-place, trivial associations, registers of wills and genealogies,
+and I know not what,--the mighty spirit who in dying left behind him not
+merely a name and fame, but a perpetual being, a presence and a power,
+identified with our nature, diffused through all time, and ruling the
+heart and the fancy with an uncontrollable and universal sway!
+
+I rejoice that the name of no one woman is popularly identified with
+that of Shakspeare. He belongs to us all!--the creator of Desdemona, and
+Juliet, and Ophelia, and Imogen, and Viola, and Constance, and Cornelia,
+and Rosalind, and Portia, was not the poet of one woman, but the POET OF
+WOMANKIND.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[94] She was the grandmother of Lady Russell.
+
+[95] Elizabeth Vernon was first cousin to Essex. "Was it treason?" asks
+Essex indignantly, in one of his eloquent letters; "Was it treason in my
+Lord of Southampton to marry my poor kinswoman, that neither long
+imprisonment, nor any punishment besides that hath been usual in such
+cases can satisfy or appease?"
+
+[96] Sonnets 127, 130
+
+[97] Sonnet 128.
+
+[98] See "Douce's Illustrations of Shakspeare."
+
+[99] Sonnets 80, 83.
+
+[100] Sonnet 172.
+
+[101] Sonnets 110, 111.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+SYDNEY'S STELLA.
+
+
+At the very name of Sir Philip Sydney,--the generous, gallant,
+all-accomplished Sydney,--the roused fancy wakes, as at the sound of a
+silver trumpet, to all the gay and splendid associations of chivalry and
+romance. He was in the court of Elizabeth, what Surrey had been in that
+of her father, Henry the Eighth; and like his prototype. Sir Calidore in
+the Fairy Queen,--
+
+    Every look and word that he did say
+    Was like enchantment, that through both the ears
+    And both the eyes, did steal the heart away.
+
+And as Surrey had his Fair Geraldine, Sydney had his STELLA.
+
+Simplicity was not the fashion of Elizabeth's age in any particular: the
+conversation and the poetry addressed by her stately romantic courtiers
+to her and her maids of honour, were like the dresses they wore,--stiff
+with jewels and standing on end with embroidery, gorgeous of hue and
+fantastic in form; but with many a brilliant gem of exceeding price,
+scattered up and down, where one would scarce think to find them; losing
+something of their effect by being misplaced, but none of their inherent
+beauty and value. The poetry of Sir Philip Sydney was extravagantly
+admired in his own time, and it has since been less read than it
+deserves. It contains much of the pedantic quaintness, the laboured
+ornament, the cumbrous phraseology, which was the taste, the language of
+the day: but he had elegance of mind and tenderness of feeling; above
+all, he was in earnest, and accordingly, there are beautiful and
+brilliant things scattered through both his poetry and prose. If his
+"Phoenix-Stella" be less popularly celebrated than the Fair
+Geraldine,--her name less intimate with our fancy,--it is not because
+her poet lacked skill to immortalize her in superlatives: it is the
+recollection of the mournful fate and darkened fame of that beautiful
+but ill-starred woman, contrasted with the brilliant career and spotless
+glory of her lover, which strikes the imagination with a painful
+contrast, and makes us reluctant to dwell on her memory.
+
+The Stella of Sydney's poetry, and the Philoclea of his Arcadia, was the
+Lady Penelope Devereux, the elder sister of the favourite Essex. While
+yet in her childhood, she was the destined bride of Sydney, and for
+several years they were considered as almost engaged to each other: it
+was natural, therefore, at this time, that he should be accustomed to
+regard her with tenderness and unreproved admiration, and should gratify
+both by making her the object of his poetical raptures. She was also
+less openly, but even more ardently, loved by young Charles Blount,
+afterwards Lord Mountjoy, who seems to have disputed with Sydney the
+first place in her heart.
+
+She is described as a woman of exquisite beauty, on a grand and splendid
+scale; dark sparkling eyes; pale brown hair; a rich vivid complexion; a
+regal brow and a noble figure. Sydney tells us that she was at first
+"most fair, most cold;"--and the beautiful sonnet,
+
+    "With how sad steps, O moon, thou climb'st the sky![102]
+    How silently, and with how wan a face!"
+
+refers to his earlier feelings. He describes a tilting-match, held in
+presence of the Queen and Court, in which he came off victor--
+
+    Having this day my horse, my hand, my lance,
+    Guided so well, that I obtained the prize, &c.[103]
+
+"Stella looked on," he says, "and from her fair eyes sent forth the
+encouraging glance that gave him victory." These soft and brilliant eyes
+are often and beautifully touched upon; and it must be remarked, never
+without an allusion to the _modesty_ of their expression.
+
+    O eyes! that do the spheres of beauty move,
+    Which while they make Love conquer, conquer Love.
+
+And on some occasion, when she turned from him bashfully, he addresses
+her in a most impassioned strain,--
+
+    Soul's joy! bend not those morning stars from me,
+    Where virtue is made strong by beauty's might,
+    Where love is chasteness--pain doth learn delight
+    And humbleness doth dwell with majesty:
+    Whatever may ensue, O let me be
+    Copartner of the riches of that sight;
+    Let not mine eyes be hell-driven from that light.
+    O look! O shine! O let me die, and see![104]
+
+Another, "To Sleep," is among the most beautiful, and I believe more
+generally known.
+
+    Lock up, fair lids! the treasure of my heart! &c.
+
+There is also much vivacity and earnest feeling in the lines addressed
+to one who had lately left the presence of Stella, and of whom he
+inquires of her welfare. Whoever has known what it is to be separated
+from those beloved, to ask after them with anxious yet suppressed
+fondness, of some unsympathising acquaintance, to be alternately
+tantalised and _desesperé_, by their vague and careless replies, will
+understand, will feel their truth and beauty. Even the quaint, petulant
+commencement is true to the sentiment:
+
+    Be your words made, good Sir, of Indian ware,
+    That you allow me them at so small rate?
+
+    ....*....*....*....*
+
+    When I demand of Phoenix-Stella's state,
+    You say, forsooth, "You left her well of late."
+    O God! think you that satisfies _my_ care?
+    I would know whether she do sit or walk,--
+    How clothed, how waited on? sighed she, or smiled?
+    Whereof--with whom--how often did she talk?
+    With what pastime, time's journey she beguiled?
+    If her lips deign'd to sweeten my poor name?
+    Say all! and all well said, still say the same!
+
+At length, after the usual train of hopes, fears, complaints, and
+raptures, the lady begins to look with pity and favour on the "ruins of
+her conquest;"[105] and he exults in an acknowledged return of love,
+though her heart be given conditionally,--
+
+    His only, while he virtuous courses takes.
+
+So far Stella appears in a most amiable and captivating light, worthy
+the romantic homage of her accomplished lover. But a dark shade steals,
+like a mildew, over this bright picture of beauty, poetry, and love,
+even while we gaze upon it. The projected union between Sydney and Lady
+Penelope was finally broken off by their respective families, for
+reasons which do not appear.[106] Sir Charles Blount offered himself,
+and was refused, though evidently agreeable to the lady; and she was
+married by her guardians to Lord Rich, a man of talents and integrity,
+but most disagreeable in person and manners, and her declared
+aversion.[107]
+
+This inauspicious union ended, as might have been expected, in misery
+and disgrace. Lady Rich bore her fate with extreme impatience. Her warm
+affections, her high spirit, and her strength of mind, so heroically
+displayed in behalf of her brother, served but to render her more
+poignantly sensible of the tyranny which had forced her into detested
+bonds. She could not forget,--perhaps never wished or sought to
+forget--that she had received the homage of the two most accomplished
+men of that time,--Sydney and Blount; "and not finding that satisfaction
+at home she ought to have received, she looked for it abroad where she
+ought not to find it."
+
+Sydney describes a secret interview which took place between himself and
+Lady Rich shortly after her marriage. I should have observed, that
+Sydney designates himself all through his poems by the name of
+Astrophel.
+
+    In a grove, most rich of shade,
+    Where birds wanton music made,
+    May, then young, his pied weeds showing,
+    New perfumed with flowers fresh growing.
+    Astrophel, with Stella sweet,
+    Did for mutual comfort meet;
+    Both within themselves opprest,
+    But each in the other blest;
+    Him great harms had taught much care,
+    _Her fair neck a foul yoke bear_;
+    But her sight his cares did banish,
+    In his sight her yoke did vanish, &c.
+
+He pleads the time, the place, the season, and their divided vows; and
+would have pressed his suit more warmly,
+
+    But her hand, his hands repelling,
+    Gave repulse--all grace excelling!
+
+    ....*....*....*....*
+
+    Then she spake! her speech was such
+    As not ear, but heart did touch.
+    "Astrophel, (said she) my love,
+    Cease in these effects to prove!
+    Now be still!--yet still believe me,
+    Thy grief more than death would grieve me.
+    Trust me, while, I thus deny,
+    In myself the smart I try:
+    Tyrant honour doth thus use thee;
+    Stella's self might not refuse thee!
+    Therefore, dear! this no more move:
+    Lest, though I leave not thy love,
+    (Which too deep in me is framed!)
+    _I should blush when thou art named!_"
+
+The sentiment he has made her express in the last line is beautiful, and
+too feminine and appropriate not to have been taken from nature; but,
+unhappily, it did not always govern her conduct. How far her coquetry
+proceeded we do not know. Sydney, about a year afterwards, married the
+daughter of Secretary Walsingham, and survived his marriage but a short
+time. This theme of song, this darling of fame, and ornament of his age,
+perished at the battle of Zutphen, in the very summer of his glorious
+youth. "He had trod," as the author of the Effigies Poeticæ so
+beautifully expresses it, "from his cradle to his grave, amid incense
+and flowers--and died in a dream of glory!"
+
+His death was not only such as became the soldier and Christian;--the
+natural elegance and sensibility of his mind followed him even to the
+verge of the tomb: in his last moments, when the mortification had
+commenced, and all hope was over, he called for music into his chamber,
+and lay listening to it with tranquil pleasure. Sydney died in his
+thirty-fourth year.
+
+Among the numerous poets who lamented this deep-felt loss (volumes, I
+believe, were filled with the tributes paid to his memory), was Spenser,
+whom Sydney had early patronised. His elegy, however, is too laboured,
+too lengthy, too artificial, to please altogether, though containing
+some lines of great beauty. It is singular, and a little
+incomprehensible to our modern ideas of _bienséance_ and good taste,
+that in this elegy, which Spenser dedicates to Sydney's widow after her
+remarriage with Essex, he introduces Stella as lamenting over the body
+of Astrophel, tells us how she beat her fair bosom--"the treasury of
+joy,"--how she tore her lovely hair, wept out her eyes,--
+
+    And with sweet kisses suckt the parting breath
+    Out of his lips.
+
+At length, through excess of grief, or the compassion of the gods, she
+is changed into the flower, "by some called starlight, by others
+penthia." This might pass in those days; though, considering all the
+circumstances, it is strange that, even then, it escaped ridicule.
+
+The tears shed for Sydney, by those nearest and dearest to him, were but
+too soon dried. His widow was consoled by Essex, and his Stella, by her
+old lover Mountjoy, who returned from Ireland, flushed with victory and
+honours, and cast himself again at her feet. Their secret intercourse
+remained, for several years, undiscovered. Lady Rich, who was tenderly
+attached to her brother, was guarded in her conduct, fearing equally the
+loss of his esteem, and the renewal of those hostile feelings which had
+already caused one duel between Essex and Mountjoy. She had also
+children; and as all, without exception, lived to be distinguished men
+and virtuous women, we may give her credit for some attention to their
+education,--some compunctious visitings of nature on their account.
+
+During her brother's imprisonment, she made the most strenuous, the most
+persevering efforts to save his life: she besieged Elizabeth with the
+richest presents, the most eloquent letters of supplication;--she
+waylaid her at the door of her chamber, till commanded to remain a
+prisoner in her own house;--she bribed, or otherwise won, all whom she
+thought could plead his cause;--and when these were of no avail, and
+Essex perished, she seems, in her despair, to have thrown off all
+restraint--and at length, fled from the house of her husband.
+
+In 1605 she was legally divorced from Lord Rich; and soon after married
+Mountjoy, then Earl of Devonshire. The marriage of a divorced wife in
+the lifetime of her first husband, was in those days a thing almost
+unprecedented in the English court, and caused the most violent outcry
+and scandal. Laud (the archbishop, then chaplain to the Earl of
+Devonshire,) incurred the censure of the Church for uniting the lovers,
+and ever after fasted on the anniversary of this fatal marriage. The
+Earl, one of the most admirable and distinguished men of that chivalrous
+age, who "felt a stain as a wound," found it impossible to endure the
+infamy brought on himself and the woman he loved: he died about a year
+after: "the griefe," says a contemporary, "of this unhappie love brought
+him to his end."[108]
+
+His unfortunate Countess lingered but a short time after him, and died
+in a miserable obscurity.--Such is the history of Sydney's STELLA.
+
+Three of her sons became English earls; the eldest, Earl of Warwick; the
+second, Earl of Holland; and the third (her son by Mountjoy) Earl of
+Newport. The earldoms of Warwick and Holland were held by her lineal
+descendants, till the death of that young Lord Warwick, whose mother
+married Addison.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[102] Sonnet 31.
+
+[103] Sonnet 41.
+
+[104] Sonnet 48.
+
+[105] Sonnet 54.
+
+[106] "All the lords that wish well to the children of the Earl of
+Essex, and I suppose all the best sorte of the English lords besides,
+doe expect what will become of the treaty between Mr. Philip and my lady
+Penelope. Truly, my Lord, I must say to your lordship, as I have said it
+to my Lord of Leicester and Mr. Philip, the breaking off this match, if
+the default be on your parts, will turn to more dishonour than can be
+repaired with any other marriage in England."--_Letter of Mr. Waterhouse
+to Sir Henry Sydney, in the Sydney Papers._
+
+[107] Zouch's Life of Sir P. Sydney.
+
+[108] Memoirs of King James's Peers, by Sir E. Brydges.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+COURT AND AGE OF ELIZABETH.
+
+DRAYTON, DANIEL, DRUMMOND, &c.
+
+
+The voluminous Drayton[109] has left a collection of sonnets under the
+fantastic title of his IDEAS. Ideas they may be,--but they have neither
+poetry, nor passion, nor even elegance:--a circumstance not very
+surprising, if it be true that he composed them merely to show his
+ingenuity in a style which was then the prevailing fashion of his time.
+Drayton was never married, and little is known of his private life. He
+loved a lady of Coventry, to whom he promises an immortality he has not
+been able to confer.
+
+    How many paltry, foolish, painted things
+      That now in coaches trouble every street,
+    Shall be forgotten, whom no poet sings,
+      E'er they be well wrapp'd in their winding-sheet;
+
+    While I to thee eternity shall give,
+      When nothing else remaineth of these days,
+
+    _And Queens hereafter shall be glad to live
+      Upon the alms of thy superfluous praise;_
+
+    Virgins and matrons reading these my rhimes,
+      Shall be so much delighted with thy story,
+
+    That they shall grieve they liv'd not in these times,
+      To have seen thee, their sex's only glory:
+
+    So thou shall fly above the vulgar throng,
+    Still to survive in my immortal song.
+
+There are fine nervous lines in this Sonnet: we long to hail the exalted
+beauty who is announced by such a flourish of trumpets, and are
+proportionably disappointed to find that she has neither "a local
+habitation nor a name." Drayton's little song,
+
+    I prythee, love! love me no more,
+    Take back the heart you gave me!
+
+stands unique, in point of style, among the rest of his works, and is
+very genuine and passionate. Daniel,[110] who was munificently
+patronized by the Lord Mountjoy, mentioned in the preceding sketch, was
+one of the most graceful sonnetteers of that time; and he has touches of
+tenderness as well as fancy; for _he_ was in earnest, and the object of
+his attachment was real, though disguised under the name of Delia. She
+resided on the banks of the river Avon, and was unmoved by the poet's
+strains. Rank with her outweighed love and genius. Daniel says of his
+Sonnets--
+
+    Though the error of my youth in them appear,
+    Suffice they show I lived, and loved thee dear.
+
+The lines
+
+    Restore thy tresses to the golden ore,
+    Yield Citherea's son those arcs of love,
+
+are luxuriantly elegant, and quite Italian in the flow and imagery. Her
+modesty is prettily set forth in another Sonnet--
+
+    A modest maid, deck'd with a blush of honour,
+      Whose feet do tread green paths of youth and love,
+    The wonder of all eyes that look upon her,
+      Sacred on earth, designed a Saint above!
+
+After a long series of sonnets, elaborately plaintive, he interrupts
+himself with a little touch of truth and nature, which is quite
+refreshing;
+
+    I must not grieve my love! whose eyes should read
+      Lines of delight, whereon her youth might smile;
+    The flowers have time before they come to seed,
+      And she is young, and now must sport the while.
+    And sport, sweet maid! in season of these years,
+      And learn to gather flow'rs before they wither;
+    And where the sweetest blossom first appears,
+      Let Love and Youth conduct thy pleasures thither.
+
+If the lady could have been won by poetical flattery, she must have
+yielded. At length, unable to bear her obduracy, and condemned to see
+another preferred before him, Daniel resolved to travel; and he wrote,
+on this occasion, the most feeling of all his Sonnets.
+
+    And whither, poor forsaken! wilt thou go?
+
+Daniel remained abroad several years, and returning, cured of his
+attachment, he married Giustina Florio, of a family of Waldenses, who
+had fled from the frightful persecutions carried on in the Italian Alps
+against that miserable people. With her, he appears to have been
+sufficiently happy to forget the pain of his former repulse, and enjoy,
+without one regretful pang, the fame it had given him as a poet.
+
+Drummond, of Hawthornden,[111] is yet more celebrated, and with reason.
+He has elegance, and sweetness, and tenderness; but not the pathos or
+the passion we might have expected from the circumstances of his
+attachment, which was as real and deep, as it was mournful in its issue.
+He loved a beautiful girl of the noble family of Cunningham, who is the
+Lesbia of his poetry. After a fervent courtship, he succeeded in
+securing her affections; but she died, "in the fresh April of her
+years," and when their marriage-day had been fixed. Drummond has left us
+a most charming picture of his mistress; of her modesty, her retiring
+sweetness, her accomplishments, and her tenderness for him.
+
+    O sacred blush, empurpling cheeks, pure skies
+      With crimson wings, which spread thee like the morn;
+    O bashful look, sent from those shining eyes;
+      O tongue in which most luscious nectar lies,
+    That can at once both bless and make forlorn;
+      Dear coral lip, which beauty beautifies,
+    That trembling stood before her words were born;
+      And you her words--words! no, but golden chains,
+    Which did enslave my ears, ensnare my soul;
+      Wise image of her mind,--mind that contains
+    A power, all power of senses to controul;
+      So sweetly you from love dissuade do me,
+      That I love more, if more my love can be.
+
+The quaint iteration of the same word through this Sonnet has not an ill
+effect. The lady was in a more relenting mood when he wrote the Sonnet
+on her lips, "those fruits of Paradise,"--
+
+    I die, dear life! unless to me be given
+      As many kisses as the Spring hath flowers,
+      Or there be silver drops in Iris' showers,
+    Or stars there be in all-embracing heaven;
+      And if displeased ye of the match remain,
+      Ye shall have leave to take them back again!
+
+He mentions a handkerchief, which, in the days of their first
+tenderness, she had embroidered for him, unknowing that it was destined
+to be steeped in tears for her loss!--In fact, the grief of Drummond on
+this deprivation was so overwhelming, that he sunk at first into a total
+despondency and inactivity, from which he was with difficulty roused. He
+left the scene of his happiness, and his regrets--
+
+    Are these the flowery banks? is this the mead
+     Where she was wont to pass the pleasant hours?
+    Is this the goodly elm did us o'erspread,
+     Whose tender rind, cut forth in curious flowers
+    By that white hand, contains those flames of ours?
+     Is this the murmuring spring, us music made?
+     Deflourish'd mead, where is your heavenly hue?
+
+He travelled for eight years, seeking, in change of place and scene,
+some solace for his wounded peace. There was a kind of constancy even in
+Drummond's inconstancy; for meeting many years afterwards with an
+amiable girl, who bore the most striking resemblance to his lost
+mistress, he loved her for that very resemblance, and married her. Her
+name was Margaret Logan. I am not aware that there are any verses
+addressed to her.
+
+Drummond has been called the Scottish Petrarch: he tells us himself,
+that "he was the first in this Isle who did celebrate a dead
+mistress,"--and his resemblance to Petrarch, in elegance and sentiment,
+has often been observed: he resembles him, it is true--but it is as a
+professed and palpable imitator resembles the object of his imitation.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On glancing back at the age of Elizabeth,--so adorned by masculine
+talent, in arts, in letters, and in arms,--we are at first surprised to
+find so few distinguished women. It seems remarkable that a golden epoch
+in our literature, to which she gave her name "the Elizabethan age,"--a
+court in which a female ruled,--a period fruitful in great poets, should
+have produced only one or two women who are interesting from their
+poetical celebrity. Of these, Alice Spenser, Countess of Derby, and Mary
+Sydney, Countess of Pembroke, (the sister of Sir Philip Sydney) are the
+most remarkable; the first has enjoyed the double distinction of being
+celebrated by Spenser in her youth, and by Milton in her age,--almost
+too much honour for one woman, though she had been a muse, and a grace,
+and a cardinal virtue, moulded in one. Lady Pembroke has been celebrated
+by Spenser and by Ben Jonson, and was, in every respect, a most
+accomplished woman. To these might be added other names, which might
+have shone aloft like stars, and "shed some influence on this lower
+world:" if the age had not produced two women, so elevated in station,
+and so every way illustrious by accidental or personal qualities, that
+each, in her respective sphere, extinguished all the lesser orbs around
+her. It would have been difficult for any female to seize on the
+attention, or claim either an historical or poetical interest, in the
+age of Queen Elizabeth and Mary Stuart.
+
+In her own court, Elizabeth was not satisfied to preside. She could as
+ill endure a competitor in celebrity or charms, as in power. She
+arrogated to herself all the incense around her; and, in point of
+adulation, she was like the daughter of the horse-leech, whose cry was,
+"give! give!" Her insatiate vanity would have been ludicrous, if it had
+not produced such atrocious consequences. This was the predominant
+weakness of her character, which neutralized her talents, and was
+pampered, till in its excess it became a madness and a vice. This
+precipitated the fate of her lovely rival, Mary Queen of Scots. This
+elevated the profligate Leicester to the pinnacle of favour, and kept
+him there, sullied as he was by every baseness and every crime;[112]
+this hurried Essex to the block; banished Southampton; and sent Raleigh
+and Elizabeth Throckmorton to the Tower. Did one of her attendants, more
+beautiful than the rest, attract the notice or homage of any of the gay
+cavaliers around her,--was an attachment whispered, a marriage
+projected,--it was enough to throw the whole court into consternation.
+"Her Majesty, the Queen, was in a passion;" and, then, heaven help the
+offenders! It was the spirit of Harry the Eighth let loose again. Yet
+such is the reflected glory she derives from the Sydneys and the
+Raleighs, the Walsinghams and Cecils, the Shakspeares and Spensers of
+her time, that we can scarce look beyond it, to stigmatise the hard
+unfeminine egotism of her character.
+
+There was something extremely poetical in her situation, as a maiden
+queen, raised from a prison to a throne, exposed to unceasing danger
+from without and treason from within, and supported through all by her
+own extraordinary talents, and by the devotion of the chivalrous,
+gallant courtiers and captains, who paid to her, as their queen and
+mistress, a homage and obedience they would scarce have paid to a
+sovereign of their own sex. All this display of talent and heroism, and
+chivalrous gallantry, has a fine gorgeous effect to the
+imagination;--but for the woman herself,--as a woman, with her pedantry,
+and her absurd affectation; her masculine temper and coarse insolence;
+her sharp, shrewish, cat-like face, and her pretension to beauty, it is
+impossible to conceive any thing more anti-poetical.
+
+    Yet had she praises in all plenteousness
+    Pour'd upon her, like showers of Castalie.[113]
+
+She was a favourite theme of the poets of the time, and by right divine
+of her sceptre and her sex, an object of glorious flattery, not always
+feigned, even where it was false.
+
+She is the Gloriana of Spenser's Fairy Queen,--she is the "Cynthia, the
+ladye of the sea,"--she is the "Fair Vestal throned in the West," of
+Shakspeare--
+
+    That very time I saw, (but thou couldst not,)
+    Flying between the cold moon and the earth,
+    Cupid all arm'd: a certain aim he took
+    At a fair Vestal, throned by the West,
+    And loosed his love-shaft smartly from his bow,
+    As it should pierce a hundred thousand hearts;
+    But I might see young Cupid's fiery shaft
+    Quench'd in the chaste beams of the wat'ry moon;
+    And the imperial vot'ress passed on
+    In maiden meditation, fancy free.
+
+And the previous allusion to Mary of Scotland, as the "Sea Maid on the
+Dolphin's back,"
+
+    Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath,
+    That the rude sea grew civil at her song,
+
+is not less exquisite.
+
+It would, in truth, have been easier for Mary to have calmed the rude
+sea than her ruder and wilder subjects. These two queens, so strangely
+misplaced, seem as if, by some sport of destiny, each had dropt into the
+sphere designed for the other. Mary should have reigned over the
+Sydneys, the Essexes, the Mountjoys;--and with her smiles, and sweet
+words; and generous gifts, have inspired and rewarded the poets around
+her. Elizabeth should have been transferred to Scotland, where she might
+have bandied frowns and hard names with John Knox, cut off the heads of
+rebellious barons, and boxed the ears of ill-bred courtiers.
+
+This is no place to settle disputed points of history, nor, if it were,
+should I presume to throw an opinion in to one scale or the other; but
+take the two queens as women merely, and with a reference to apparent
+circumstances, I would rather have been Mary than Elizabeth; I would
+rather have been Mary, with all her faults, frailties, and
+misfortunes,--all her power of engaging hearts,--betrayed by her own
+soft nature, and the vile or fierce passions of the men around her, to
+die on a scaffold, with the meekness of a saint and the courage of a
+heroine, with those at her side who would willingly have bled for
+her,--than I would have been that heartless flirt, Elizabeth, surrounded
+by the oriental servility, the lip and knee homage of her splendid
+court; to die at last on her palace-floor, like a crushed wasp--sick of
+her own very selfishness--torpid, sullen, and despairing,--without one
+friend near her, without one heart in the wide world attached to her by
+affection or gratitude.
+
+There is more true and earnest feeling in some little verses written by
+Ronsard on the unhappy Queen of Scots, than in all the elegant,
+fanciful, but extravagant flattery of Elizabeth's poets. After just
+mentioning the English Queen, whom he dispatches in a single line,--
+
+    Je vis leur belle reine, honnête et vertueuse;
+
+he thus dwells on the charms of Mary:--
+
+    Je vis des Ecossais la Reine sage et belle,
+    Qui de corps et d'esprits ressemble une immortelle;
+    J'approchai de ses yeux, mais bien de deux soleils,
+    Deux soleils de beauté, qui n'ont point leurs pareils.
+    Je les vis larmoyer d'une claire rosée,
+    Je vis d'un clair crystal sa paupière arrosée,
+    Se souvenant de France, et du sceptre laissé,
+    Et de son premier feu, comme un songe passé!
+
+And when Mary was a prisoner, he dedicated to her a whole book of poems,
+in which he celebrates her with a warmth, the more delightful that it
+was disinterested. He thanks her for selecting his poems, to amuse her
+solitary hours, and adds feelingly,--
+
+    Car, je ne veux en ce monde choisir
+    Plus grand honneur que vous donner plaisir!
+
+Mary did not leave her courteous poet unrewarded. She contrived, though
+a prisoner, to send him a casket containing two thousand crowns, and a
+vase, on which was represented Mount Parnassus, and a flying Pegasus,
+with this inscription:--
+
+    A Ronsard, l'Apollon de la source des Muses.
+
+No one understood better than Mary the value of a compliment from a
+beauty, and a queen; had she bestowed more precious favours with equal
+effect and discrimination, her memory had escaped some disparagement.
+Ronsard, we are told, was sufficiently a poet, to value the inscription
+on his vase more than the gold in the casket.
+
+Apropos to Ronsard: the history of his loves is so whimsical and so
+truly French, that it must claim a place here.
+
+Yet now I am upon French ground, I may as well take the giant's advice,
+and "begin at the beginning."[114] It seems at first view unaccountable
+that France, which has produced so many remarkable women, should scarce
+exhibit one poetical heroine of great or popular interest, since its
+language and literature assumed their present form; not one who has been
+rendered illustrious or dear to us by the praises of a poet lover. The
+celebrity of celebrated French women is, in truth, very anti-poetical.
+The memory of the kiss which Marguerite d'Ecosse[115] gave to Alain
+Chartier, has long survived the verses he wrote in her praise. Clement
+Marot, the court poet of Francis the First, was the lover, or rather one
+of the lovers, of Diana of Poictiers (mistress to the Dauphin,
+afterwards Henry the Second). She was confessedly the most beautiful and
+the most abandoned woman of her time. Marot could hardly have expected
+to find her a paragon of constancy; yet he laments her fickleness, as if
+it had touched his heart.
+
+
+A DIANE.
+
+    Puisque de vous je n'ai autre visage,
+        Je m'en vais rendre hermite en un desert,
+        Pour prier Dieu, si un autre vous sert,
+    Qu'autant que moi en votre honneur soit sage.
+
+    Adieu, Amour! adieu, gentil corsage!
+       Adieu ce teint! adieu ces friands yeux!
+    Je n'ai pas eu de vous grand avantage,--
+       Un moins aimant aura peut-être mieux.
+
+In a _liaison_ of mere vanity and profligacy, the transition from love
+(if love it be) to hatred and malignity, is not uncommon--as Spenser
+says so beautifully,
+
+          Such love might never long endure,
+    However gay and goodly be the style,
+    That doth ill cause or evil end enure:
+    For Virtue is the band that bindeth hearts most sure!
+
+From being the lady's _lover_, Marot became her satirist; instead of
+_chansons_ in praise of her beauty, he circulated the most biting and
+insufferable epigrams on her person and character. We are told by one,
+who, I presume, speaks _avec connaissance de fait_, that a woman's
+revenge
+
+    Is like the tiger's spring,
+    Deadly and quick, and crushing.
+
+Diana was a libelled beauty, all powerful and unprincipled. Marot, in
+some moment of gaiety and overflowing confidence, had confessed to her
+that he had eaten meat on a "jour maigre:" he had better in those days
+have committed all the seven deadly sins; and when the lady revealed his
+unlucky confession, and denounced him as a heretic, he was immediately
+imprisoned. Instead, however, of being depressed by his situation, or
+moved to make any concessions, he published from his prison a most
+ludicrous lampoon on his _ci-devant_ mistress, of which the burthen was,
+"Prenez le, il a mangé le lard!" He afterwards made his escape, and took
+refuge in the court of Renée, Duchess of Ferrara; and though
+subsequently recalled to France, he continued to pursue Diana with the
+most bitter satire, became a second time a fugitive, partly on her
+account, and died in exile and poverty.[116]
+
+Marot has been called the French Chaucer. He resembles the English poet
+in liveliness of fancy, picturesque imagery, simplicity of expression,
+and satirical humour; but he has these merits in a far less degree; and
+in variety of genius, pathos and power, is immeasurably his inferior.
+
+Ronsard, to whom I at length return, was the successor of Marot. In his
+time the Italian sonnetteers, as Petrarch, Bembo, Sanazzaro, were the
+prevailing models, and classical pedantry the prevailing taste. Ronsard,
+having filled his mind with Greek and learning, determined to be a
+poet, and looked about for a mistress to be the object of his songs:
+for a poet without a mistress was then an unheard-of anomaly. He fixed
+upon a beautiful woman of Blois, named Cassandre, whose Greek
+appellative, it is said, was her principal attraction in his fancy. To
+her he addressed about two hundred and twenty sonnets, in a style so
+lofty and pedantic, stuffed with such hard names and philosophical
+allusions, that the fair Cassandra must have been as wise as her
+namesake, the daughter of Priam, to have comprehended her own praises.
+
+Ronsard's next love was more interesting. Her name was Marie: she was
+beautiful and kind: the poet really loved her; and consequently, we find
+him occasionally descending from his heights of affectation and
+scholarship, to the language of truth, nature and tenderness. Marie died
+young; and among Ronsard's most admired poems are two or three little
+pieces written after her death. As his works are not commonly met with,
+I give one as a specimen of his style:--
+
+
+EPITAPHE DE MARIE.
+
+    Ci reposent les os de la belle Marie,
+    Qui me fit pour un jour quitter mon Vendomois,[117]
+    Qui m'echauffa le sang au plus verd de mes mois;
+    Qui fût toute mon tout, mon bien, et mon envie.
+
+    En sa tombe repose honneur et courtoisie,
+    Et la jeune beauté qu'en l'ame je sentois,
+    Et le flambeau d'Amour, ses traits et son carquois,
+    Et ensemble mon coeur, mes pensées et ma vie.
+
+    Tu es, belle Angevine,[117] un bel astre des cieux;
+    Les anges, tous ravis, se paissent de tes yeux,
+    La terre te regrette, O beauté sans seconde!
+
+    Maintenant tu es vive, et je suis mort d'ennui,
+    Malheureux qui se fie en l'attente d'autrui;
+    Trois amis m'ont trompé,--toi, l'amour, et le monde.
+
+Ronsard had by this time acquired a reputation which eclipsed that of
+all his contemporaries. He was caressed and patronised by Charles the
+Ninth (of hateful memory), who, like Nero, exhibited the revolting
+combination of a taste for poetry and the fine arts, with the most
+sanguinary and depraved dispositions. Ronsard, having lost his Marie,
+was commanded by Catherine de' Medicis to select a mistress from among
+the ladies of her court, to be the future object of his tuneful homage.
+He politely left her Majesty to choose for him, prepared to fall in love
+duly at the royal behest; and Catherine pointed out Helène de Surgeres,
+one of her maids of honour, as worthy to be the second Laura of a second
+Petrarch. The docile poet, with zealous obedience, warbled the praises
+of Helène for the rest of his life. He also consecrated to her a
+fountain near his château in the Vendomois, which has popularly
+preserved her name and fame. It is still known as the "Fontaine
+d'Helène."
+
+Helène was more witty than beautiful, and, though vain of the celebrity
+she had acquired in the verses of Ronsard, she either disliked him in
+the character of a lover, or was one of those lofty ladies
+
+    Who hate to have their dignity profaned
+    With any relish of an earthly thought.[118]
+
+She desired the Cardinal du Perron would request Ronsard (in her name)
+to prefix an epistle to the odes and sonnets addressed to her, assuring
+the world that this poetical love had been purely Platonic. "Madam,"
+said the Cardinal, "you had better give him leave to prefix your
+picture."[119]
+
+I presume my fair and gentle readers (I shall have none, I am sure, who
+are not one or the other, or both,) are as tired as myself of all this
+affectation, and glad to turn from it to the interest of passion and
+reality.
+
+"There is not," says Cowley, "so great a lie to be found in any poet, as
+the vulgar conceit of men, that lying is essential to good poetry." On
+the contrary, where there is not truth, there is nothing--
+
+    Rien n' est beau que le vrai,--le vrai seul est aimable!
+
+While the Italian school of amatory verse was flourishing in France,
+Spain, and England, almost to the extinction of originality in this
+style, the brightest light of Italian poesy had arisen, and was shining
+with a troubled splendour over that land of song. How swiftly at the
+thought does imagination shoot, "like a glancing star," over the wide
+expanse of sea and land, and through a long interval of sad and varied
+years! I am again standing within the porch of the church of San
+Onofrio, looking down upon the little slab in its dark corner, which
+covers the bones of TASSO.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[109] Died 1631
+
+[110] Died in 1619.
+
+[111] Died 1649.
+
+[112] Leicester's influence over Elizabeth appeared so unaccountable,
+that it was ascribed to magic, and to her evil stars.
+
+[113] Spenser's Daphnaida.
+
+[114]
+    Bélier, mon ami! Commencez par le commencement!
+
+                     COUNT HAMILTON.
+
+[115] "La gentille Marguerite," the unhappy wife of Louis the Eleventh.
+Beautiful, accomplished, and in the very spring of life, she died a
+victim to the detestable character of her husband. When one of her
+attendants spoke of hope and life, the Queen, turning from her with an
+expression of deep disgust, exclaimed with a last effort, "Fi de la vie!
+ne m'en parlez plus!"--and expired.
+
+[116] At Althorp, the seat of Lord Spenser, there is a most curious
+picture of Diana of Poictiers, once in the Crawford collection: it is a
+small half-length; the features are fair and regular; the hair is
+elaborately dressed with a profusion of jewels; but there is no drapery
+whatever, except a curtain behind: round the head is the legend from the
+forty-second Psalm,--"Comme le cerf braie après le décours des eaues,
+ainsi brait mon âme après toi, O Dieu!" which is certainly a most
+extraordinary and profane application. In the days of Diana of
+Poictiers, Marot had composed a version of the Psalms, then very
+popular. It was the fashion to sing them to dance and song tunes; and
+the courtiers and beauties had each their favourite psalm, which served
+as a kind of _devise_. This may explain the very singular inscription on
+this very singular picture.
+
+[117] Ronsard was a native of the Vendomois, and Marie, of Anjou.
+
+[118] Ben Jonson.
+
+[119] V. Bayle Dictionnaire Historique.--Pierre de Ronsard was born in
+1524, and died in 1585.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+LEONORA D'ESTE.
+
+
+Leonora d'Este, a princess of the proudest house in Europe, might have
+wedded an emperor, and have been forgotten. The idea, true or false,
+that she it was who broke the heart and frenzied the brain of Tasso, has
+glorified her to future ages; has given her a fame, something like that
+of the Greek of old, who bequeathed his name to immortality, by firing
+the grandest temple of the universe.
+
+The question of Tasso's attachment to the Princess Leonora, is, I
+believe, set at rest by the acute researches and judicious reasoning of
+M. Ginguené, and those who have followed in his steps. A body of
+circumstantial evidence has been collected, which would not only satisfy
+a court of love--but a court of law, with a Lord Chancellor, to boot,
+"_perpending_" at the head of it. That which was once regarded as a
+romance, which we wished to believe, if we _could_, is now an
+established fact, which we cannot disbelieve if we would.
+
+No poet perhaps ever owed so much to female influence as Tasso, or wrote
+so much under the intoxicating inspiration of love and beauty. He paid
+most dearly for such inspiration; and yet not _too_ dearly. The high
+tone of sentiment, the tenderness, and the delicacy which pervade all
+his poems, which prevail even in his most voluptuous descriptions, and
+which give him such a decided superiority over Ariosto, cannot be owing
+to any change of manners or increase of refinement produced by the lapse
+of a few years. It may be traced to the tender influence of two elegant
+women. He for many years read the cantos of the Gerusalemme, as he
+composed them, to the Princesses Lucretia and Leonora, both of whom he
+admired--one of whom he adored.
+
+_Au reste_--the kiss, which he is said to have imprinted on the lips of
+Leonora in a transport of frenzy, as well as the idea that she was the
+primary cause of his insanity, and of his seven years' imprisonment at
+St. Anne's, rest on no authority worthy of credit; yet it is not less
+certain that she was the object of his secret and fervent admiration,
+and that this hopeless passion conspired, with many other causes, to
+fever his irritable temperament and unsettle his imagination, beyond
+that "fine madness," which we are told _ought_ "to possess the poet's
+brain."
+
+When Tasso first visited Ferrara, in 1565, he was just one-and-twenty,
+with all the advantages which a fine countenance, a majestic figure,
+(for he was tall even among the tallest,) noble birth, and excelling
+talents could bestow: he was already distinguished as the author of the
+Rinaldo, his earliest poem, in which he had celebrated (as if
+prophetically,) the Princesses d'Este--and chiefly Leonora.
+
+    Lucrezia Estense, e l'altra i cui crin d'oro,
+    Lacci e reti saran del casto amore.[120]
+
+When Tasso was first introduced to her in her brother's court, Leonora
+was in her thirtieth year; a disparity of age which is certainly no
+argument against the passion she inspired. For a young man, at his first
+entrance into life, to fall in love ambitiously--with a woman, for
+instance, who is older than himself, or with one who is, or ought to be,
+unattainable--is a common occurrence. Tasso, from his boyish years, had
+been the sworn servant of beauty. He tells us, in grave prose, "che la
+sua giovanezza fu tutta sotto-posta all' amorose leggi;"[121] but he was
+also refined, even to fastidiousness, in his intercourse with women. He
+had formed, in his own poetical mind, the most exalted idea of what a
+female ought to be, and unfortunately, she who first realised all his
+dreams of perfection, was a Princess--"there seated where he durst not
+soar." Leonora was still eminently lovely, in that soft, artless,
+unobtrusive style of beauty, which is charming in itself, and in a
+princess irresistible, from its contrast with the loftiness of her
+station and the trappings of her rank. Her complexion was extremely
+fair; her features small and regular; and the form of her head
+peculiarly graceful, if I may judge from a fine medallion I once saw of
+her in Italy. Ill health, and her early acquaintance with the sorrows of
+her unfortunate mother, had given to her countenance a languid and
+pensive cast, and sicklied all the natural bloom of her complexion; but
+"Paleur, qui marque une ame tendre, a bien son prix:" so Tasso thought;
+and this "vago Pallore," which "vanquishes the rose, and makes the dawn
+ashamed of her blushes," he has frequently and beautifully celebrated;
+as in the pretty Madrigal--
+
+    Vita della mia Vita!
+    _O Rosa scolorita!_ &c.
+
+and in those graceful lines,
+
+    Languidetta beltà vinceva amore, &c.
+
+applicable only to Leonora. Her eyes were blue; her mouth of peculiar
+beauty, both in form and expression. In the seventh Sonnet, "Bella è la
+donna mia," he says it was the most lovely feature in her face; in
+another, still finer,[122] he styles this exquisite mouth "a crimson
+shell"--
+
+    Purpurea conca, in cui si nutre
+    Candor di perle elette e pellegrine;
+
+and he concludes it with one of those disguises under which he was
+accustomed to conceal Leonora's name.
+
+    E di sì degno cor tuo straLE ONORA.
+
+She was negligent in her dress, and studious and retired in her habits,
+seldom joining in the amusements of her brother's court, then the gayest
+and most magnificent in Italy.[123] Her accomplished and unhappy mother,
+Renée of France,[124] had early instilled into her mind a love of
+literature, and especially of poetry. She was passionately fond of
+music, and sang admirably. One of Tasso's most beautiful sonnets was
+composed on some occasion when her physician had forbidden her to sing.
+He who had so often felt the magic of that enchanting voice, thus
+describes its power and laments his loss:--
+
+    Ahi, ben è reo destin, ch' invidia, e toglie
+        Almondo il suon de' vostri chiari accenti,
+        Onde addivien che le terrene genti
+        De' maggior pregi, impoverisca e spoglie.
+
+    Ch' ogni nebbia mortal, che 'l senso accoglie,
+         Sgombrar potea dalle più fosche menti
+         L' armonìa dolce, e bei pensieri ardenti
+         Spirar d' onore, e pure e nobil voglie.
+
+    Ma non si merta qui forse cotanto;
+         E basta ben che i sereni occhi, e 'l riso
+         N' infiammin d' un piacer celeste e santo.
+
+    Nulla fora più bello il Paradiso,
+         Se 'l mondo udisse, in voi d' angelo il canto,
+         Siccome vede in voi d' angelo il viso.
+
+"O cruel--O envious destiny, that hast deprived the world of those
+delicious accents, that hast made earth poor in what was dearest and
+sweetest! No cloud ever gathered over the gloomiest mind, which the
+melody of that voice could not disperse; it breathed but to inspire
+noble thoughts and chaste desires.--But, no! it was more than mortals
+could deserve to possess. Those soft eyes, that smile were enough to
+inspire a sacred and sweet delight.--Nor would Paradise any longer excel
+this earth, if in your voice we heard an angel sing, as we behold an
+angel's beauty in your face!"
+
+Leonora, to a sweet-toned voice, added a gift, which, unless thus
+accompanied, loses half its value, and almost all its charm--she spoke
+well; and her eloquence was so persuasive, that we are told she had
+power to move her brother Alphonso, when none else could. Tasso says
+most poetically,
+
+    E l'aura del parlar cortese e saggio,
+    Fra le rose spirar, s'udia sovente;
+
+--meaning--for to translate literally is scarce possible,--that
+"eloquence played round her lips, like the zephyr breathing over roses."
+
+"I (he adds), beholding a celestial beauty walk the earth, closed my
+eyes in terror, exclaiming, O rashness! O folly! for any to dare to gaze
+on such charms! Alas! I quickly perceived that this was my least peril.
+My heart was touched through my ears; her gentle wisdom penetrated
+deeper than her beauty could reach."
+
+With what emotions must a young and ardent poet have listened to his own
+praises from a beautiful mouth, thus sweetly gifted! and it may be
+added, that Leonora's eloquence, and the influence she possessed over
+her brother, were ever employed in behalf of the deserving and
+unfortunate. The good people of Ferrara had such an exalted idea of her
+piety and benevolence, that when an earthquake caused a terrible
+innundation of the Po, and the destruction of the surrounding villages,
+they attributed the safety of their city entirely to her prayers and
+intercession.
+
+Leonora then was not unworthy of her illustrious conquest, either in
+person, heart, or mind. To be summoned daily into the presence of a
+Princess thus beautiful and amiable, to read aloud his verses to her, to
+hear his own praises from her lips, to bask in her approving smiles, to
+associate with her in her retirement, to behold her in all the graceful
+simplicity of her familiar life,--was a dangerous situation for Tasso,
+and surely not less so for Leonora herself. That she was aware of his
+admiration, and perfectly understood his sentiments, and that a
+mysterious intelligence existed between them, consistent with the utmost
+reverence on his part, and the most perfect delicacy and dignity on
+hers, is apparent from the meaning and tendency of innumerable passages
+scattered through his minor poems--too significant in their application
+to be mistaken. Though that application be not avowed, and even
+disguised--the very disguise, when once detected, points to the object.
+Leonora knew, as well as her lover, that a Princess "was no love-mate
+for a bard." She knew far better than her lover, until _he_ too had been
+taught by wretched experience, the haughty and implacable temper of her
+brother Alphonso, who never was known to brook an injury or forgive an
+offender. She must have remembered too well the twelve years'
+imprisonment and the narrow escape from death, of her unfortunate mother
+for a less cause. She was of a timid and reserved nature, increased by
+the extreme delicacy of her constitution. Her hand had frequently been
+sought by princes and nobles, whom she had uniformly rejected, at the
+risk of displeasing her brother; and the eyes of a jealous court were
+upon her. Tasso, on the other hand, was imprudent, hot-headed, fearless,
+ardently attached. For both their sakes, it was necessary for Leonora to
+be guarded and reserved, unless she would have made herself the fable of
+all Italy. And in what glowing verse has Tasso described all the
+delicious pain of such a situation! now proud of his fetters, now
+execrating them in despair. In allusion to his ambitious passion, he is
+Phaeton, Icarus, Tantalus, Ixion.
+
+    Se d' Icàro leggesti c di Fetonte, &c.
+
+But though presumption flung to ruin Icarus and Phaeton, did not the
+power of love bring even Dian down "from her amazing height?"
+
+                       E che non puote
+    Amor, che con catena il ciel unisce?
+    Egli già trae delle celeste rote
+    Di terrana beltà Diana accesa,
+    E d'Ida il bel Fanciul[125] al' ciel rapisce.
+
+This at least is _clearly_ significant, however poetical the allusions;
+but what a world of passion and of meaning breathes through the Sonnet
+which he has entitled "The constrained Silence," ("_Il Silenzio
+Imposto._")
+
+"She is content that I should love her; yet, O what hard restraint of
+galling silence has she imposed!"
+
+    Vuol che l' ami costei; ma duro freno
+    Mi pone ancor d' aspro silenzio; or quale
+    Avrò da lei, se non conosce il male
+    O medecina, o refrigerio almeno?
+
+    ....*....*....*....*
+
+    Tacer ben posso, e tacerò! ch' io toglia
+    Sangue alle piaghe, e luce al vivo foco
+    Non brami già; questa e impossibil voglia
+    Troppo spinse pungenti a dentro i colpi,
+    E troppo ardore accolse in picciol loco:
+    S' apparirà, natura, e sè n' incolpi.[126]
+
+"Yes, I can, I will keep silence; but to command that the wound shall
+not bleed nor the fire burn, is to command impossibility. Too, too deep
+hath the blow been struck; too ardently glows the flame; and if
+betrayed, the fault is in nature--not in me!"
+
+And again, what can be more exquisitely tender, more beautiful in its
+fervent simplicity of expression, than the effusion which follows? How
+miserably does an inadequate prose translation halt after the glowing
+poetry, the rhythmical music, the "linked sweetness" of the original!
+
+    Io non cedo in amar, Donna gentile
+         A' chi mostra di fuor l' interno affetto;
+         Perchè 'l mio si nasconda in mezzo 'l petto,
+         Nè co' fior s' apra del mio nuovo Aprile,
+    Co' vaghi sguardi, e col sembiante umile,
+        Co' detti sparsi in variando aspetto
+        Altri si veggia al vostro amor soggetto,
+        E co' sospiri, e con leggiadro stile.
+
+    E quando gela il cielo, e quando infiamma,
+        E quando parte il sole, e quando riede,
+        Vi segua; come il can selvaggia damma.
+
+    Ch' io se nel cor vi cerco, altri noi vede,
+        E sol mi vanto di nascosa fiamma,
+        E sol mi glorio di secreta fede.[127]
+
+"I yield not in love, O gentlest lady! to those who dare to show their
+love more openly, though I conceal it within the centre of my heart, nor
+suffer it to spread forth, like the other flowers of my spring. Let
+others boast themselves subjects of love for your sake, and slaves of
+your beauty, with admiring looks, with humble aspect, with sighs, with
+eloquent words, with lofty verse! whether the winter freeze or the
+summer burn,--at set of sun, and when he laughs again in heaven, let
+them still pursue you, as dogs the shy and timid deer. But I--O, I seek
+you in my own heart, where none else behold you! My hidden love be my
+only boast: my secret faith, my only glory!"
+
+Without multiplying quotations, which would extend this sketch from
+pages into volumes, it is sufficient to trace through Tasso's verses the
+little incidents which varied this romantic intercourse. The frequent
+indisposition of Leonora, her absence when she went to visit her
+brother, the Cardinal d'Este, at Tivoli, form the subjects of several
+beautiful little poems; as the Sonnets
+
+    Dianzi al vostro languir, &c.
+
+    Donna! poichè fortuna empia mi nega
+    Seguirvi, &c.
+
+    Al nobil colle, ove in antichi marmi
+    Di Greco mano opre famose ammira
+    Vaga LEONORA il mio pensier mi gira.
+
+Here he names her expressly; while in the little lament--
+
+    Lunge da voi, ben mio!
+    Non ho vita ne core! e non son io
+    Non sono, oimè! non sono
+    Quel ch' altra volta fui, ma un Ombra mesta,
+    Un lagrimevol suono, &c.
+
+--the tone is too passionate to allow of it. He finds her looking up one
+night at the stars; it is sufficient to inspire that beautiful little
+song,
+
+    Mentre, mia stella, miri
+    I bei celesti giri,
+    Il cielo esser vorrei,
+    Perchè negli occhi mici
+    Fiso tu rivolgessi
+    Le tue dolci faville;
+    Io vagheggiar potessi
+    Mille bellezze tue, con luci mille![128]
+
+He relates, in another little madrigal, that standing alone with her in
+a balcony, he chanced, perhaps in the eagerness of conversation, to
+extend his arm on hers. He asks pardon for the freedom, and she replies
+with sweetness, "You offended not by placing your arm there, but by
+withdrawing it." This little speech in a coquette would have been _sans
+consequence_; from such a woman as Leonora, it spoke volumes; and her
+lover felt it so. He breaks forth in a rapture at the tender
+condescension,
+
+    O parolette amorose, &c.
+
+Then comes a cloud, but whether of temper or jealousy, we know not. One
+of those luckless trifles, perhaps,
+
+                  --that move
+    Dissension between hearts that love.
+
+Tasso accompanied Lucrezia d'Este, then Duchess of Urbino, to her villa
+of Castel Durante, where he remained for some time, partaking in all the
+amusements of her gay court, without once seeing Leonora. He then wrote
+to her, and the letter fortunately has been preserved entire.
+
+Though guarded in expression, it is throughout in the tone of a lover
+piqued, and yet conscious that he has himself offended; and seeking,
+with a sort of proud humility, the reconciliation on which his happiness
+depends. He sends her a sonnet, which he admits is "far unlike the
+elegant effusions he supposes her now in the habit of receiving." He
+begs to assure her, that though it be in art and wit as poor as he is
+himself in happiness, yet in his present pitiable condition, he could do
+no better; (not that he was to all appearance so very much to be
+pitied). He adds, "do not think, however, that in this vacancy of
+thought, my heart has found leisure for love. The Sonnet is merely
+composed at the request of a certain poor lover, who has for some time
+past quarrelled with his mistress; and now no longer able to endure his
+hard fortune, is obliged to yield, and sue for grace and pardon." "Il
+quale essendo stato un pezzo in colera con la sua donna, ora non potendo
+più, bisogna che si renda e che dimanda mercè." The Sonnet enclosed in
+this letter, ("Sdegno, debil Guerrier,") appears to me one of the least
+pleasing in the collection; as if his genius and his feelings were both
+under some benumbing influence when he wrote it.
+
+In the meanwhile, there was a report that Leonora was about to be united
+to a foreign Prince. Her hand had been demanded of her brother with the
+usual formalities. On this occasion Tasso wrote the fine Canzone,
+
+    Amor, tu vedi, e non hai duolo o sdegno, &c.
+
+"Love! canst thou look on without grief or indignation, to see my gentle
+lady bow her fair neck to the yoke of another?"
+
+The expression in the 6th strophe is very unequivocal--
+
+"Nor let my mistress, though she suffer her bosom to be invaded by a
+newer flame, forget the _former_ bond."
+
+      Nè la mia Donna, perchè scaldi il petto
+    Di nuovo amore, nodo _antico_ sprezzi.
+
+In one of his Sonnets, this jealous pain is yet more strongly
+expressed:--
+
+    Io sparso, ed altri miete! &c.
+
+"I sow, another reaps! I water a lovely blossom, unworthy, alas! to tend
+it; and another gathers the fruit. O rage!--yet must I, through coward
+fear, lock my grief within my own bosom!" &c.
+
+This intended marriage never took place; and Tasso, relieved from his
+fears, and restored to the confidence of Leonora, was again
+comparatively blessed. He sometimes ventured to name her openly in his
+poems,--as in the little Madrigal,
+
+    Cantava in riva al fiume
+    Tirse di LEONORA,
+    E rispondean le selve, e l'onde, _onora_.
+
+Sometimes he disguised her name as l'Aurora, l'Aura, Onor, le
+onora,[129]
+
+    Dell' Onor simulacro e'l nome vostro.
+
+To these the preceding Madrigal is a sort of _key_; or the better to
+conceal the true object of his adoration, he carried his apparent
+homage, and often his poetical gallantry, to the feet of other fair
+ladies. Lucretia d'Este, the elder sister of Leonora; Tarquinia Molza, a
+beauty and a poetess; and Lucretia Bendidio, another most accomplished
+woman, who numbered all the poets and literati of Ferrara in her train,
+frequently inspired him.
+
+The mention of Lucretia Bendidio reminds me of an incident in Tasso's
+early life, which, besides being characteristic of his times and genius,
+is extremely _apropos_ to my present purpose and subject. In the days of
+his first enthusiasm for Lucretia, when he and Guarini were rivals for
+her favour, he undertook to maintain, publicly, fifty _theses_, or
+difficult questions, in the "Science of Love." These "Conclusion!
+amorosi" may be found in the third volume of the great folio edition of
+his works; and some of them, it must be confessed, afforded matter for
+much amusing and edifying discussion; for instance,--"Amore esser più
+nell' amata che nell' amante," "that love exists rather in the person
+beloved than in the lover," which seems to involve a nice distinction in
+metaphysics; and "Nessuna amata essere, o poter essere ingrata,"--"that
+no woman truly beloved, is or can be ungrateful," which involves a
+mystery--and a truth. And the 48th, "Se più si patisca, o non ricevendo
+alcun premio, o ricevendo minor del desiderio,"--"whether in love, it be
+harder to receive no recompense whatever, or less than we desire,"--a
+question so difficult to settle, and so depending on individual feeling,
+that it should have been put to the vote. Others prove, that whatever
+was the practice in those days, the received and philosophical theory of
+love was sublime enough; for instance, the 14th, "That the more love is
+regulated by reason, the more noble it is in its nature." (Agreed to,
+with exceptions, of which Tasso himself might furnish the most
+prominent.) That "compassion in our sex is never a sign of reciprocal
+affection, but on the contrary." (True, generally.) The 34th, "That the
+respect of the lover for her he loves increases the value and delight of
+every favour she grants him." (I think this must have passed undisputed,
+or by acclamation.)
+
+The 38th of these curious propositions, "L'uomo in sua natura amar più
+intentamente e stabilmente che la donna,"--that "men by nature love more
+intensely and more permanently than women," was opposed by Signora
+Orsolina Cavaletta, a woman of singular accomplishments, and who
+displayed, in defence of her sex, so much wit and talent, such various
+learning, ingenuity, and eloquence, that the young disputant, perhaps
+placed in a dilemma between his honour and his gallantry, came very
+hardly off. This singular exhibition continued for three days, and was
+conducted with infinite solemnity, in presence of the Court and the
+Princesses; all the nobility and even the superior clergy of Ferrara
+crowded to witness it; and I doubt whether any lecture at the British
+Institution, on mathematics, or electricity, or geology, was ever
+listened to by our fair bas-bleus with half as much interest as Tasso's
+"Fifty Theses on Love" excited in Ferrara.
+
+Several years after his first introduction to Leonora d'Este, and after
+some of the most impassioned and least ambiguous of his verses were
+written, the Court of Ferrara was embellished by the arrival of two of
+the most beautiful women in all Italy,--Leonora di Sanvitali, Countess
+of Scandiano, then a youthful bride, and her not less lovely
+mother-in-law, Barbara, Countess of Sala. The Countess of Scandiano is
+the _other_ LEONORA who has puzzled all the biographers, from the open
+gallantry and avowed adoration with which Tasso has celebrated her; but
+in strains,--O how different from the sentiment, the veneration, the
+tenderness, and the mystery which breathe through his verses to Leonora
+d'Este! A third Leonora was said to exist in the person of the
+Countess's favourite attendant: but this is untrue. The name of
+Leonora's waiting-maid was Laura. Tasso has addressed several little
+poems to her; and there can be no doubt that she occasionally served as
+a blind to his real attachment for her mistress. The Countess of
+Scandiano's attendant was the fair Olympia, to whom is addressed that
+exquisitely graceful Canzone,
+
+    O con le Grazie elette, e con gli amori.
+
+The Duchess of Ferrara's maid, the beautiful Livia d'Arco, and even her
+dwarf, are also immortalised in Tasso's verses, who poured forth his
+courtly gallantry with an exhaustless and splendid prodigality, fitting
+their praises to his lyre, as if it had never resounded to higher
+themes.
+
+At a court festival given by the Duke Alphonso, in honour of his
+beautiful and illustrious visitors, the Countess of Sala appeared with
+her fine hair wreathed round her head in the form of a coronet, which
+with her grand style of beauty and majestic deportment, gave her the air
+of a Juno. The young Countess of Scandiano, on the other hand, enchanted
+by her Hebe-like graces, her smiles, and the unequalled beauty of a
+pouting underlip;--nothing was talked of at Ferrara but these braided
+tresses and this lovely lip; the poets and the young cavaliers were
+divided into parties on the occasion. Tasso has celebrated both with the
+same voluptuous elegance of style in which he described his Armida. To
+the Countess of Scandiano he wrote,
+
+    Quel labbro, che le rose han colorito
+    Molle si sporge, e tumidetto in fuore, &c.
+
+To the Countess of Sala,
+
+    Barbara! maraviglia de' tempi nostri.
+
+But the Countess of Scandiano was more especially the object of his
+public adoration. It was a poetical passion, openly professed; and
+flattering, as it appears, both to the lady and to her husband, without
+in any degree implicating either her discretion or that of Tasso.
+Compare his verses to this young Countess--this _peregrina Fenice_,[130]
+as he fancifully styles her, who comes shining forth, not _to be
+consumed_, but _to consume_,--to the profound tenderness, the intense
+yet mournful feeling of some of the poems composed for the Princess
+d'Este, about the same time; when he must have daily contrasted the rich
+bloom, the smiling eyes, and sparkling graces of the youthful Countess,
+with the fading or faded beauty, the languid form, and pale cheek of his
+long-loved Leonora. See particularly the Sonnet
+
+    Tre gran Donne vid' io, &c.
+
+"Three illustrious ladies did I behold,--I sung them all--_one only_ I
+loved," &c. And another equally beautiful and significant,
+
+    Perchè 'n giovenil volto amor mi mostri
+      Talor, Donna _Real_, rose e ligustri
+      Oblio non pone in me, de' miei trilustri
+      Affanni, o de miei spesi indarno inchiostri.
+
+    E 'l cor, che s' invaghi degli onor vostri
+      Da prima, e vostro fu poscia più lustri
+      Reserba, amo in sè forme più illustri
+      Che perle e gemme, e bei coralli ed ostri.
+
+    Queste egli in suono di sospir sì chiari
+    Farebbe udir, che d' amorosa face
+    Accenderebbe i più gelati cori.
+
+    Ma oltre suo costume è fatto avaro
+      De' vostri pregi, suoi dolci tesori,
+      Che in se medesmo gli vagheggia e _tace_!
+
+
+TRANSLATION.
+
+    "Albeit in younger faces Love at times
+      May show me where a fresher rose is set,
+      Yet, _Royal_ Lady, can I not forget
+      My fifteen years of pain and useless rhymes.
+    This heart, so touch'd by all thy beauty bright,
+      After so many years is still thine own,
+      And still retaineth forms more exquisite
+      Than pearls, or purple gems, or coral stone.
+    All this my heart in soft sighs would make known,
+      And thus with fire the coldest bosom fill,
+      But that, unlike itself, that heart hath grown
+    So covetous of thy sweet charms, and thee,
+      (Its secret treasures,) that it aye doth flee
+      Inwards, and dwells upon them, and is still."[131]
+
+Lastly, that most perfect Sonnet, so well known and so celebrated, that
+I should not insert it here, but that I am enabled to give, for the
+first time, a translation equally faithful to the sentiment and the
+poetry of the original.
+
+    Negli anni acerbi tuoi, purpurea rosa
+      Sembravi tu, ch' ai rai tepidi, all' ora
+      Non apre 'l sen, ma nel suo verde ancora
+      Verginella s' asconde, e vergognosa.
+
+    O più tosto parei (che mortal cosa,
+      Non s' assomiglia a te) celeste Aurora,
+      Che le campagne imperla, e i monti indora,
+      Lucida in ciel sereno e rugiadosa.
+
+    Or la men verde età nulla a te toglie;
+      Ne te, benche negletta, in manto adorno
+      Giovinetta beltà vince, o pareggia.
+
+    Cosi più vago è 'l fior, poiché le foglie
+      Spiega odorate: e 'l sol nel mezzo giorno
+      Viè-più, che nel mattin, luce e fiammeggia.
+
+
+TRANSLATION.
+
+    "Thou, in thy unripe years, wast like the rose,
+      Which shrinketh from the summer dawn, afraid,
+      And with her green veil, like a bashful maid,
+    Hideth her bosom sweet, and scarcely blows:
+    Or rather,--(for what shape ever arose
+      From the dull earth like thee,) thou didst appear
+      Heavenly Aurora, who, when skies are clear,
+    Her dewy pearls o'er all the country sows.
+      Time stealeth nought: thy rare and careless grace
+    Surpasseth still the youthful bride when neatest,--
+      Her wealth of dress, her budding blooming face,
+    So is the full-blown rose for age the sweetest,
+      So doth the mid-day sun outshine the morn,
+      With rays more beautiful and brighter born!"[132]
+
+Yet all this was too little. His minor lyrics, the unlaboured and
+spontaneous effusions of leisure, of fancy, of sentiment, would have
+been glory enough for any other poet, and fame enough for any other
+woman: but Tasso had founded his hopes of immortality on his great poem,
+The Jerusalem Delivered; and it was imperfect in his eyes unless Leonora
+were shrined in it. To convert the pale, gentle, elegant invalid into a
+heroine, seemed impossible: she was no model for his lovely amazon,
+Clorinda; nor his exquisite sorceress, Armida; nor his love-sick
+Erminia: for her, therefore, and to her honour, and to the eternal
+memory of his love for her, he composed the episode in the second Canto,
+where we have her portrait at full length as Sophronia.
+
+    Vergine era fra lor, di gia matura
+      Verginità, d'alta pensieri e regi,
+      D'alta Beltà; ma sua beltà non cura,
+      O tanto sol quant' onestà sen fregi;
+      E 'l suo pregio maggior che tra le mura
+      D'angusta casa, asconde i suoi gran pregi:
+      E da' vagheggiatori ella s'invola,
+      Alle lodi, agli sguardi, inculta e sola.
+
+    Non sai ben dir s'adorno, o se negletta,
+      Se caso od arte, il bel volto compose,
+      Di natura, d'amor, di cieli amici,
+      Le negligenze sue sono artifici.
+
+    Mirata da ciascun, passa, e non mira
+      L'altera donna!
+
+
+TRANSLATION.
+
+    Among them dwelt a noble maid, matured
+    In loveliness, of thoughts serene and high,
+    And loftiest beauty;--beauty which herself
+    Esteem'd not more than modesty might own.
+    Within an humble dwelling did she hide
+    Her peerless charms, and shunning lovers' eyes,
+    From flattering words and glances, lived retired.
+
+    Whether 'tis curious care, or sweet neglect,
+    Or chance, or art, that have array'd her thus,
+    One scarce can tell: for each unstudied grace
+    Has been the work of Nature, heaven, and love.
+
+    And thus admired by all, unheeding all,
+    Forth steps the noble maid.
+
+It is impossible to mistake, in this finished and exquisite portrait,
+the matured beauty, the negligent attire, and love of solitude which
+characterised Leonora: the resemblance was so perfect, as to be
+universally recognised and acknowledged. But is it not, as M. Ginguené
+remarks, equally certain that Tasso has pourtrayed himself as Olindo?
+
+        Ei che modesto è, com' essa è bella,
+        Brama, assai, poco spera, nulla chiede!
+
+    He, full of modesty and truth,
+    Loved much, hoped little, and desired nought!
+
+Has he not in the verse
+
+    Ed o mia morte avventurosa appiena,
+
+breathed forth all the smothered passion of his soul?--
+
+    Ed o mia morte avventurosa appiena!
+    Oh fortunati miei dolci martiri!
+    S'impetrerò che giunto seno a seno
+    L'anima mia nella tuo bocca io spiri,
+    E venendo tu meco a un tempo meno
+    In me fuor mandi gli ultimi sospiri!
+
+    And O! how happy were my death! how blest
+    These tortures,--could I but the meed obtain,
+    That breast to breast, and lip to lip, our souls
+    Might flee together, and our latest sighs
+    Mingle in death.
+
+This episode is critically a defect in the poem: it seems to stand
+alone, unconnected in any way with the main action; he acknowledged
+this; but he absolutely, and obstinately, refused to alter it, or strike
+it out. He, who was in general amenable to criticism, even to a degree
+of weakness, willed that it should stand an everlasting monument of his
+tenderness, and of the virtues and the charms of her who inspired
+it:--and thus it has been.
+
+A cruel, and, as I think, a most unjust imputation rests on the memory
+of the Princess Leonora. She is accused of cold-heartedness, in
+suffering Tasso to remain so long imprisoned, without interceding in his
+favour, or even vouchsafing any reply to his affecting supplications for
+release, and for her mediation in his behalf. The excuse alledged by
+those who would fain excuse her,--"That she feared to compromise herself
+by any interference," is ten times worse than the accusation itself. But
+though there exists, I suppose, no _written_ proof that Leonora pleaded
+the cause of Tasso, or sought to mitigate his sufferings; neither is
+there any proof of the contrary. We know little, or rather nothing, of
+the private intrigues of Alphonso's palace: we have no "mémoires
+secrètes" of that day; no diaries kept by prying courtiers, to enlighten
+us on what passed in the recesses of the royal apartments: and upon mere
+negative presumption, shall we brand the character of a woman, who
+appears on every other occasion so blameless, so tender-hearted, and
+beneficent, with the imputation of such barbarous selfishness? for the
+honour of our sex, and human nature, I must believe it impossible.
+
+In no other instance was the homage which Tasso loved to pay to
+high-born beauty repaid with ingratitude; all his life he seems to have
+been an object of affectionate interest to women. They, in his misery,
+stood not aloof, but ministered to him the oil and balm, which soothed
+his vexed and distempered spirit. The Countesses of Sala and Scandiano
+never forgot him. Lucretia Bendidio, who had married into the
+Marchiavelli family, sent him in his captivity all the consolation she
+could bestow, or he receive. The Duchess of Urbino (Lucretia d'Este,)
+was munificently kind to him. The young Princess of Mantua, she for whom
+he wrote his "Torrismondo," loaded him with courtesy and proofs of her
+regard. He was ill at the Court of Mantua, after his release from
+Ferrara; and her exertions to procure him a copy of Euripides, which he
+wished to consult, (an anecdote cited somewhere, as a proof of the
+rarity of the book at that time,) is also a proof of the interest and
+attention with which she regarded him. It happened when he was at the
+Court of the Duke of Urbino, that he had to undergo a surgical
+operation; and the sister of the Duke, the young and beautiful Lavinia
+di Rovera, prepared the bandages, and applied them with her own fair and
+princely hands;--a little instance of affectionate interest, which Tasso
+has himself commemorated. If then we do not find Leonora publicly
+appearing as the benefactress of Tasso, and using her influence over her
+brother in his behalf, is it not a presumption that she was implicated
+in his punishment? What comfort or kindness she could have granted,
+must, under such circumstances, have been bestowed with infinite
+precaution; and, from gratitude and discretion, as carefully concealed.
+We know, that after the first year of his confinement, Tasso was removed
+to a less gloomy prison; and we know that Leonora died a few weeks
+afterwards; but what share she might have had in procuring this
+mitigation of his suffering, we do not know; nor how far the fate of
+Tasso might have affected her so as to hasten her own death. If we are
+to argue upon probabilities, without any preponderating proof, in the
+name of womanhood and charity, let it be on the side of indulgence; let
+us not believe Leonora guilty, but upon such authority as never has
+been,--and I trust never can be produced.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+About two years after the completion of the Jerusalem Delivered, and
+four years after the first representation of the Aminta;--when all
+Europe rung with the poet's fame, Tasso fled from the Court of Ferrara,
+in a fit of distraction. His frenzy was caused partly by religious
+horrors and scruples; partly by the petty but accumulated injuries which
+malignity and tyranny had heaped upon him; partly by a long-indulged and
+hopeless passion; and with these, other moral and physical causes
+combined. He fled, to hide himself and his sorrows in the arms of his
+sister Cornelia. The brother and sister had not met since their childish
+years; and Tasso, wild with misery, forlorn, and penniless, knew not
+what reception he was to meet with. When arrived within a league of his
+birthplace, Sorrento,[133] he changed clothes with a shepherd, and in
+this disguise appeared before his sister, as one sent with tidings of
+her brother's misfortunes. The recital, we may believe, was not coldly
+given. Cornelia, who appears to have inherited with the personal beauty,
+the sensibility and strong domestic affections of her mother,
+Portia,[134] was so violently agitated by the eloquence of the feigned
+messenger, that she fainted away; and Tasso was obliged to hasten the
+denouement by discovering himself. In the same moment he was clasped in
+her affectionate arms, and bathed with her tears. How often, when I have
+stood on my balcony at Naples, have I looked towards the white buildings
+of Sorrento, glittering afar upon the distant promontory, and thought
+upon this scene! and felt, how that which is already surpassingly
+beautiful to the eye, may be hallowed to the imagination by such
+remembrances as these!
+
+Tasso resided with his sister for three years, the object of her
+unwearied and tender attention. It was on his return to Ferrara,
+(recalled, as Manso says, by the tenor of Leonora's letters[135]) that
+he was imprisoned as a lunatic at St. Anne's. They show to travellers
+the cell in which he was confined. Over the entrance of the gallery
+leading to it, is written up in large letters, "Ingresso alla Prigione
+di Torquato Tasso," as if to blazon, in the eye of the stranger, what is
+at once the renown and disgrace of that fallen city. The cell itself is
+small, dark and low. The abhorred grate,
+
+    Marring the sun-beams with its hideous shade,
+
+is a semicircular window, strongly cross-barred with iron; it looks into
+a court-yard, so built up, if I remember rightly, that the noon-day sun
+could scarce reach it. Even without the hallowed associations connected
+with the spot, it would have chilled and saddened me. With them, the
+very air had a suffocating weight; and the cold dark walls, and
+low-bowed roof, struck a shivering awe through the blood. Upon the
+plaster outside the grated window, I observed several names written in
+pencil; among the rest, those of Byron and Rogers. I must observe here,
+that the "Lament of Tasso" is, in fact, a cento taken from Tasso's minor
+poems. Almost every sentiment there expressed, may be found in the
+Italian; but the soul of the poet has been transfused with such a
+glowing impulse into its new mould, it never seems to have been adapted
+to another; the precious metal is the same, only the impress is
+different, and it has been stamped by a kindred and a master spirit.
+Lord Byron says,
+
+    Yes, Leonora! it shall be our fate
+    To be entwined for ever; but too late!
+
+Tasso had said, that his name and that of Leonora should be united and
+soar to fame together.
+
+                  "Ella à miei versi, ed io
+    Circondava al suo nome altere piume,
+    E l'un per l'altro andò volando a prova;"
+
+--and a long list of corresponding passages and sentiments might easily
+be pointed out.
+
+The inscription on the door of Tasso's cell, _lies_, I believe, like
+many other inscriptions. Tasso was _not_ confined in this cell for seven
+years; but here it was that he addressed that affecting Canzone to
+Leonora and her sister Lucrezia, which begins "Figlie di
+Renata,"--"daughters of Renée!" Thus in the very commencement, by this
+delicate and tender apostrophe, bespeaking their compassion, by
+awakening the remembrance of their mother, like him so long a wretched
+prisoner. He reminds them of the years he spent at their side--"their
+noble servant and their dear companion,"
+
+    Gli anni miei tra voi spese,--
+    Qual son,--qual fui,--che chiedo--ove mi trovo![136]
+
+He was, after the first year, removed to a larger cell, with better
+accommodations. Here he made a collection of his smaller poems lately
+written, and dedicated them to the two Princesses. But Leonora was no
+longer in a state to be charmed by the verses, or flattered or touched
+by the admiring devotion of her lover,--her poet,--her faithful
+servant: she was dying. A slow and cureless disease preyed on her
+delicate frame, and she expired in the second year of Tasso's
+imprisonment. When the news of her danger was brought to him, he
+requested his friend Pignarola to kiss her hand in his name, and ask her
+whether there was any thing which, in his sad state, he could do for her
+ease or pleasure? We do not know how this tender message was received or
+answered; but it was too late. Leonora died in February 1581, after
+lingering from the November previous.
+
+Thus perished, of a premature decay, the woman who had been for
+seventeen years the idol of a poet's imagination--the worship of a
+poet's heart; she who was not unworthy of being enshrined in the rich
+tracery-work of sweet thoughts and bright fancies she had herself
+suggested. The love of Tasso for the Princess Leonora might have
+appeared, in his own time, something like the "desire of the night-moth
+for the star;" but what is it _now_? what was it _then_ in the eyes of
+her whom he adored? How far was it permitted, encouraged, repaid in
+secret? This we cannot know; and perhaps had we lived at the time,--in
+the very Court, and looked daily into her own soft eyes, practised to
+conceal,--we had been no wiser. Yet one more observation.
+
+When Leonora died, all the poets of Ferrara pressed forward with the
+usual tribute of elegy and eulogium; but the voice of Tasso was not
+heard among the rest. He alone flung no garland on the bier of her,
+whose living brow he had wreathed with the brightest flowers of song.
+This is adduced by Serassi as a proof that he had never loved her.
+Ginguené himself can only account for it, by the presumption that he was
+piqued by that coldness and neglect, which I have shown was merely
+supposititious. Strange reasoning! as if Tasso, while his heart bled
+over his loss, in his solitary cell, could have deigned to join this
+crowd of courtly mourners! as if, under such circumstances, in such a
+moment, the greatness of his grief could have burst forth in any terms
+that must not have exposed himself to fresh rigours, and the fame, at
+least the discretion, of her he had loved, to suspicion! No! nothing
+remained to him but silence;--and he was silent.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[120] See the Rinaldo, c. 8.
+
+[121]
+
+            ----From my very birth
+    My soul was drunk with love, &c.
+
+                     LAMENT OF TASSO.
+
+[122]
+
+    Rose, che l' arte invidiosa mira. &c.
+
+[123]
+
+    Alteremente umile
+    Te chiudi ne' tuoi cari alti soggiorni.
+
+[124] The daughter of Louis XII. She was closely imprisoned during
+twelve years, on suspicion of favouring the early reformers.
+
+[125] Ganymede.
+
+[126] Sonnet 37.
+
+[127] Sonnet 29.
+
+[128] I am told the original idea is in Plato; prettier, however, than
+either, was the speech of a modern lover, whose mistress was gazing
+pensively on a star: "Ne la regardez pas tant, chère amie!--je ne puis
+pas te la donner!"
+
+[129] The Canzono which is, I believe, esteemed the finest of those
+addressed to Leonora,
+
+    Mentre ch' a venerar muovon le gente,
+
+concludes with this play upon her name--
+
+    Costei LE ONORA col bel nome sante.
+
+    She does them HONOUR by her sacred name.
+
+[130] "Foreign Phoenix."
+
+[131] Translated by a friend.
+
+[132] Translated by a friend.
+
+[133] Near Naples: thus, in his pathetic Canzone on himself,--
+
+    Sassel la gloriosa alma Sirena
+    Appresso il cui sepolcro, ebbi la cuna!
+
+[134] The wife of Bernardo Tasso. See an account of her in Black's Life
+of Tasso.
+
+[135] Manso, Vita di T. Tasso.
+
+[136] Part of this Canzone has been elegantly translated by Mr. Wiffen
+in his Life of Tasso, p. 83.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+MILTON AND LEONORA BARONI.
+
+
+The Marquis Manso of Naples, who in his early youth had entertained
+Tasso in his palace, had cherished and honoured him when that great but
+unhappy man was wandering, brain-struck with misery, from one court to
+another,--was, in his old age, the host and admirer of Milton; thus, by
+a singular good fortune, allying his name to two of the most illustrious
+of earth's diviner sons: while theirs, linked together by the
+recollection of this common friend, follow each other in our memory by a
+natural transition. We can think of them as pressing, though at an
+interval of many years, the same friendly hand, and gracing the same
+hospitable board with "colloquy sublime." Tasso, from the romance of his
+story, and his personal character, is the most interesting of the two;
+yet Milton, besides standing highest in the scale of moral dignity, sits
+nearest to our hearts as an Englishman, whose genius, speaking through
+our native accents, strikes upon our sense,
+
+    Like the large utterance of the early gods.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We rise from reading Johnson's Biography of Milton, either with the most
+painful and indignant feeling of the malignity of the critic,[137] or
+with an impression of Milton's character, as false as it is odious. Of
+moral inconsistency and weakness, blended with splendid genius, we have
+proofs lamentable and numerous enough: to be obliged to regard the
+mighty father of English verse,--him "who rode sublime upon the seraph
+wings of ecstasy,"--him, whose harmonious soul was tuned to the music
+of the spheres, though when struck in evil times, and by an adverse
+hand, it sent forth a crash of discord,--him, who has left us the most
+exquisite pictures of tenderness and beauty--to think of such a being as
+a petty domestic tyrant, a coarse-minded fanatic, stern and unfeeling in
+all the relations of life, were enough to confound all our ideas of
+moral fitness. When we figure to ourselves the author of Rasselas
+trampling over the ashes of Milton, lending his mighty powers to degrade
+the majestic, to disfigure the beautiful, and to darken the glorious, it
+is with the same feeling of concentrated disgust with which we recall
+the violation of the poet's grave, some years ago, when vulgar savages
+defaced and carried off his sacred and venerable remains
+piece-meal.[138] Let us for a moment imagine our Milton descending to
+earth to assert his injured fame, and confronted with his great
+biographer--
+
+    Look here upon this picture, and on this--
+
+The one, like his own Adam, with fair large front and hyacinthine locks,
+serene and blooming as his own Eden; in all the dignified graces which
+temperance and self-conquest lend to youth,[139] in all the purity of
+his stainless mind, radiant like another Moses, with the reflected
+glories of the Empyreum,--and then look upon the other!--But it is an
+awful thing for little people, to meddle with great and sacred names;
+and so leaving the Hippopotamus of literature in his den--proceed we.
+
+It relieves the heart from an oppressive contradiction to behold Milton,
+such as he is represented by his other biographers, and such as
+undoubtedly he really was. It is well known, that in his youth, and
+even at a late age, he had an uncommonly fine person, almost to
+effeminacy; and was as gracefully endowed in form and manners, as he was
+highly and holily gifted in mind. His natural mildness, cheerfulness,
+and courtesy, are commemorated by all who knew him, or lived near his
+time.[140] He whom Johnson accuses of a "Turkish contempt of females, as
+inferior beings," and whom he represents in a light so ungentle and
+gloomy, that we cannot imagine him under the influence of beauty, was
+early touched by the softest passions, and during his whole life
+peculiarly sensible to the charm of female society: witness his
+successive marriages, and his friendship and intercourse with Lady
+Margaret Ley, and the all-accomplished Countess of Ranelagh, who
+supplied to him, as he says, the place of every friend:[141]--witness,
+too, a thousand most lovely and glorious passages scattered through his
+works, which women may quote with triumph, as proofs that we had no
+small influence over the imagination of our great epic poet. What but
+the most reverential and lofty feeling of the graces and virtues proper
+to our sex, could have embodied such an exquisite vision as the Lady in
+Comus? or created his delightful Eve? on whom, "as on a queen, a pomp of
+winning graces waited still."
+
+    All higher knowledge in her presence falls
+    Degraded; wisdom, in discourse with her,
+    Loses discountenanc'd, and like folly shows;
+    Authority and reason on her wait,
+    As one intended first, not after made
+    Occasionally; and to consummate all,
+    Greatness of mind and nobleness their seat,
+    Build in her loveliest, and create an awe
+    About her, as a guard angelic plac'd.
+
+And this is the being whom a lady-author calls a "great overgrown baby,
+with nothing to recommend her but her submission, and her fine
+hair!"[142]--two things, be it observed, among the most graceful of our
+feminine attributes, mental and exterior. The poet who conceived and
+wrote this description, most assuredly had not a "Turkish contempt" for
+the female character.
+
+Milton was in love, as he tells us himself, at nineteen; but the object
+cannot even be guessed at. He has celebrated this boyish passion very
+beautifully in one of his Latin elegies. One of the passages in this
+poem, in which he compares the effect produced on him by the first
+momentary view of his mistress, followed by her immediate absence to the
+Theban Oeclides,[143] swallowed up by the abyss which opens beneath
+him, and gazing back upon the parting light of day, is admired for its
+classic sublimity and appropriate beauty.
+
+There is a tradition mentioned by all his biographers, that while Milton
+was a student at Cambridge, an Italian lady of rank, who was travelling
+in England, found him sleeping one day under the shade of a tree, and,
+struck with his beauty, wrote with her pencil on a slip of paper, the
+pretty madrigal of Guarini, which Menage translated for Madame de
+Sevigné, "Occhi, stelle mortali," and leaving it in his hand, pursued
+her journey. This fair unknown is said to have been the cause of
+Milton's travels into Italy; but the story rests on no authority: and it
+is clear, that the "foreign fair" to whom the Sonnets are addressed, was
+neither imaginary nor unknown. During his stay at Rome, he was received
+with particular distinction by the Cardinal Barberini, the nephew of the
+reigning Pope, and at his palace had frequent opportunities of hearing
+Leonora Baroni, the finest singer in Italy. She was the daughter of
+Adriana of Mantua, surnamed, for her beauty, La Bella Adriana, and the
+best singer and player on the lute of her time. Leonora inherited her
+mother's extraordinary talent for music, and conquered all hearts by the
+inexpressible charm of her voice and style. She was also a poetess,
+frequently composing the words of her own songs. Though not a regular
+beauty, she had brilliant eyes, and a captivating countenance and
+manner. Count Fulvio Testi, in a Sonnet addressed to her, celebrates the
+union of so many charms:
+
+    Tra il concento e 'l fulgor, dubbio è se sia
+    L'udir più dolce, o il rimirar più caro.
+    Deh fammi cieco, o fammi sordo, amore!
+
+M. Maugars, himself a musician, who saw and heard Leonora at Rome,
+praises her talents generally, and adds, that she was no coquette; that
+she sang with confidence, but with modesty; that there was nothing in
+her manners that could be censured; that the effect she produced on
+those who heard her, was owing, not only to the wonderful rapidity and
+delicacy of her execution, but to the care with which she gave the exact
+sense and proper expression of the words she sang. He tells us, that on
+one occasion, she _favoured_ him by singing with her mother and her
+sister, each accompanying herself on a different instrument (in those
+days pianos were not, and Leonora's favourite instrument was the
+Theorbo, on which she excelled). This little concert so enraptured our
+musician, that, to use his own words, he forgot his mortality, "et crut
+être dejà parmi les anges, jouissant des contentemens des bienheureux."
+
+It is no wonder that the charms and talents which exalted this prosaic
+Frenchman almost into a poet, should turn the heads of poets themselves.
+The verses addressed to Leonora were collected into a volume, and
+published under the title of "Applausi poetici alle glorie della Signora
+Leonora Baroni."--"Poetical eulogies to the glory of Signora Leonora
+Baroni." A similar homage had been paid to her mother, Adriana, who
+reckoned Tasso among her panegyrists. This may seem too high a
+distinction for a species of talent, which, however admirable, can leave
+behind no durable monument, and therefore can claim no interest with
+posterity. Yet is it just, that those whom heaven has enriched with the
+gift of melody, and who have cultivated that delicious faculty to its
+height, until with angel-skill they can suspend the dominion of pain in
+aching hearts,[144]--that such should ravish with delight a whole
+generation, and then perish from the earth, they and their memory, with
+the pleasure they bestowed, and gratitude be voiceless and tuneless in
+their praise? The gift of song is fleeting as that of beauty; but while
+the painter fixes on his canvas
+
+    The vermeil-tinctur'd lip,
+    Love-darting eyes, and tresses like the morn,
+
+what shall immortalise the tones which "turned sense to soul?" what but
+poetry, which, while it preserves the memory of such excellence, gives
+back to the fancy some reflection of the delight we have felt, when the
+full tide of a divine voice is poured forth to the sense, like wine from
+an enchanted cup, making us thrill "with music's pulse in every artery."
+Leonora Baroni had her poets, and her name, linked with that of Milton,
+shall never die.
+
+It is a curious circumstance, and one but little consonant with the
+popular idea of Milton's austerity, that the object of his poetical
+homage, and even of his serious admiration, was an Italian singer; but
+it must be remembered, that Milton, the son of an accomplished
+musician,[145] was, by nature and education, peculiarly susceptible to
+the power of sweet sounds. Next to poetry, music was with him a passion;
+and the profession of a singer in those days, when the art was in its
+second infancy, was more highly estimated, in proportion as excellence
+was more rare and less publicly exhibited. I cannot find that either
+Leonora Baroni, or her mother Adriana, ever appeared on a stage; yet
+their celebrity had spread from one end of Italy to the other. Milton
+joined the crowd of Leonora's votaries at Rome, and has expressed his
+enthusiastic admiration, not only in verse but in prose.[146] He
+addressed her in Latin and Italian, the languages she understood, and
+which he had perfectly at command. In one of his Latin poems, "To
+Leonora, singing at Rome," the allusion to Leonora d'Este,
+
+    Another Leonora once inspired
+    Tasso, by hopeless love to phrenzy fired, &c.
+
+is as happy as it is beautiful, and shows the belief which then
+prevailed of the real cause of Tasso's delirium.
+
+Two of Milton's Italian sonnets are very beautiful, and have been
+translated by Cowper with singular felicity. All his biographers agree
+that Leonora Baroni is the subject of both; the first, addressed to
+Carlo Diodati, describes the lady, whose dark and foreign charms are
+opposed to those of the _blonde_ beauties he had admired in his youth.
+
+
+SONNET.
+
+    _Diodati! e te 'l diro con maraviglia, &c._
+
+    Charles,--and I say it wondering,--thou must know
+    That I, who once assumed a scornful air,
+    And scoffed at Love, am fallen into his snare;
+    (Full many an upright man has fallen so.)
+    Yet think me not thus dazzled by the flow
+    Of golden locks, or damask rose; more rare
+    The heartfelt beauties of my foreign fair!
+    A mien majestic, with dark brows, that show
+    The tranquil lustre of a lofty mind,--
+    Words exquisite, of idioms more than one;
+    And song, whose fascinating power might bind,
+    And from her sphere draw down the lab'ring moon;
+    With such fire-darting eyes, that should I fill
+    Mine ears with wax, she would enchant me still!
+
+In this translation, though elegant and faithful, the lines
+
+    A mien majestic, with dark brows, that show
+    The tranquil lustre of a lofty mind,
+
+have much diluted the energy of Milton's
+
+    Portamenti alti onesti, e nelle ciglia
+    Quel sereno fulgor d'amabil nero.
+
+In the other Sonnet, addressed to Leonora, he gives, with all the
+simplicity of conscious worth, this lofty description of himself, and of
+his claims to her preference.
+
+
+SONNET.
+
+    _Giovane, piano, e semplicetto amante, &c._
+
+    Enamour'd, artless, young, on foreign ground,
+    Uncertain whither from myself to fly,
+    To thee, dear lady, with an humble sigh,
+    Let me devote my heart, which I have found,
+    By certain proofs not few, intrepid, sound,
+    Good, and addicted to conceptions high:
+    When tempests shake the world, and fire the sky,
+    It rests in adamant, self-wrapt around,
+    As safe from envy and from outrage rude,
+    From hopes and fears that vulgar minds abuse,
+    As fond of genius and fixt solitude,
+    Of the resounding lyre and every muse.
+    Weak you will find it in one only part,
+    Now pierc'd by Love's immedicable dart.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Milton was three times married. The relations of his first wife, (Mary
+Powell,) who were violent Royalists, and ashamed or afraid of their
+connection with a republican, persuaded her to leave him. She
+absolutely forsook her husband for nearly three years, and resided with
+her family at Oxford, when that city was the head-quarters of the King's
+party. "I have so much charity for her," says Aubrey, "that she might
+not wrong his bed; but what man (especially contemplative,) would like
+to have a young wife environed and stormed by the sons of Mars, and
+those of the ennemie partie?"
+
+Milton, though a suspicion of the nature hinted at by Aubrey never rose
+in his mind, was justly incensed at this dereliction. He was on the
+point of divorcing this contumacious bride, and had already made choice
+of another[147] to succeed her, when she threw herself, impromptu, at
+his feet and implored his forgiveness. He forgave her; and when the
+republican party triumphed, the family who had so cruelly wronged him
+found a refuge in his house. This woman embittered his life for fourteen
+or fifteen years.
+
+A remembrance of the reconciliation with his wife, and of his own
+feelings on that occasion, are said to have suggested to Milton's mind
+the beautiful scene between Adam and Eve, in the tenth book of the
+Paradise Lost.
+
+    She ended weeping; and her lowly plight,
+    Immoveable, till peace obtained for faults
+    Acknowledged and deplored, in Adam wrought
+    Commiseration; soon his heart relented
+    Tow'rds her, his life so late and sole delight,
+    Now at his feet submissive in distress,
+    Creature so fair, his reconcilement seeking;
+    As one disarmed, his anger all he lost, &c.
+
+Milton's second and most beloved wife (Catherine Woodcock) died in
+child-bed, within a year after their marriage. He honoured her memory
+with what Johnson (out upon him!) calls a _poor_ sonnet; it is the one
+beginning
+
+    Methought I saw my late espoused saint
+    Brought to me, like Alcestis from the grave;
+
+which, in its solemn and tender strain of feeling and modulated harmony,
+reminds us of Dante. He never ceased to lament her, and to cherish her
+memory with a fond regret:--she must have been full in his heart and
+mind when he wrote those touching lines in the Paradise Lost--
+
+    How can I live without thee? how forego
+    Thy sweet converse and love so dearly joined,
+    To live again in these wild woods forlorn?
+    Should God create another Eve, and I
+    Another rib afford, yet loss of thee
+    Would never from my heart!
+
+After her death,--blind, disconsolate, and helpless--he was abandoned to
+petty wrongs and domestic discord; and suffered from the disobedience
+and unkindness of his two elder daughters, like another Lear.[148] His
+youngest daughter, Deborah, was the only one who acted as his
+amanuensis, and she always spoke of him with extreme affection:--on
+being suddenly shown his picture, twenty years after his death, she
+burst into tears.[149]
+
+These three daughters were grown up, and the youngest about fifteen,
+when Milton married his third wife, Elizabeth Minshull. She was a
+gentle, kind-hearted woman,[150] without pretensions of any kind, who
+watched over his declining years with affectionate care. One biographer
+has not scrupled to assert, that to her,--or rather to her tender
+reverence for his studious habits, and to the peace and comfort she
+brought to his heart and home,--we owe the Paradise Lost: if true, what
+a debt immense of endless gratitude is due to the memory of this
+unobtrusive and amiable woman!
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[137] What Dr. Johnson _wrote_ is known;--he was accustomed to _say_
+that the admiration expressed for Milton was all _cant_.
+
+[138] I have before me the pamphlet, entitled "A Narrative of the
+disinterment of Milton's coffin, on Wednesday the 4th of August, 1790,
+and of the treatment of the Corpse during that and the following day."
+The circumstances are too revolting to be dwelt upon.
+
+[139] Si les Anges, (said Madame de Staël) n'ont pas été representés
+sous les traits de femme, c'est parceque l'union de la force avec la
+pureté, est plus belle et plus celeste encore que la modestie même la
+plus parfaite dans un être faible.
+
+[140] See his life by Dr. Symmons, Dr. Todd, Newton, Hayley, Aubrey,
+Richardson, Warton.
+
+"She (his daughter Deborah) spoke of him with great tenderness; she said
+he was delightful company, the life of the conversation, and that on
+account of a flow of subject, and an unaffected cheerfulness and
+civility," &c.--RICHARDSON.
+
+[141] She was Catherine Boyle, the daughter of the Great Earl of Cork,
+one of the most excellent and most distinguished women of that
+time.--_See Hayley's Life of Milton._
+
+[142] Miss Letitia Hawkins.
+
+[143] Otherwise Amphiaraus: his story is told by Ovid. Met. B. 9.
+
+[144] As Milton felt when he wrote--
+
+    And ever against eating cares,
+    Lap me in soft Lydian airs.
+
+[145] Milton alludes to his father's talent for music:
+
+                            Thyself
+    Art skilful to associate verse with airs
+    Harmonious, and to give the human voice
+    A thousand modulations.--
+    Such distribution of himself to us
+    Was Phoebus' choice; _thou_ hast thy gift, and I
+    Mine also; and between us we receive,
+    Father and Son, the whole inspiring God!
+
+                     AD PATREM.
+
+[146] There is extant a prose letter from Milton to Holstentius, the
+librarian of the Vatican, in which he accounts as one of his greatest
+pleasures at Rome, that of having known and heard Leonora.
+
+[147] A Miss Davies. "The father (says Hayley) seems to have been a
+convert to Milton's arguments; but the lady had scruples. She possessed
+(according to Philips) both wit and beauty. A novelist could hardly
+imagine circumstances more singularly distressing to sensibility than
+the situation of the poet, if, as we may reasonably conjecture, he was
+deeply enamoured of this lady; if her father was inclined to accept him
+as a son-in-law, and the object of his love had no inclination to reject
+his suit, but what arose from a dread of his being indissolubly mated to
+another."--_Life of Milton_, p. 90.
+
+[148]
+
+    --I, dark in light, exposed
+    To daily fraud, contempt, abuse, and wrong,
+    Within doors or without, still as a fool
+    In power of others, never in my own, &c.
+
+                     SAMSON AGONISTES.
+
+[149] Todd's Life of Milton--See also Milton's Will, which has been
+lately recovered, and published by Warton.
+
+[150] Aubrey's Letters.
+
+
+END OF THE FIRST VOLUME.
+
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+  <head>
+    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" />
+    <title>
+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Romance Of Biography, by Mrs. Jameson.
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css">
+
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+    .pagenum  { /* uncomment the next line for invisible page numbers */
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+                text-align: right;
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+
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+    .blockquot{margin-left: 5%; margin-right: 10%;}
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+    .footnote         {margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-size: 0.9em;}
+    .footnote .label  {position: absolute; right: 84%; text-align: right;}
+    .fnanchor         {vertical-align: super; font-size: .8em; text-decoration: none;}
+
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+    .poem span.i4     {display: block; margin-left: 2em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;}
+    .poem span.i10     {display: block; margin-left: 5em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;}
+    .poem span.i12     {display: block; margin-left: 6em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;}
+    .poem span.i14     {display: block; margin-left: 7em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;}
+    .poem span.i16     {display: block; margin-left: 8em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;}
+    .poem span.i18     {display: block; margin-left: 9em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;}
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+
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+<pre>
+
+Project Gutenberg's The Romance of Biography (Vol 1 of 2), by Anna Jameson
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Romance of Biography (Vol 1 of 2)
+       or Memoirs of Women Loved and Celebrated by Poets, from
+              the Days of the Troubadours to the Present Age. 3rd ed.
+              2 Vols.
+
+Author: Anna Jameson
+
+Release Date: February 24, 2011 [EBook #35382]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ROMANCE OF BIOGRAPHY (VOL 1 OF 2) ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Julia Miller, Josephine Paolucci and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net. (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 488px;">
+<img src="images/front.jpg" width="488" height="650" alt="
+ARIOSTO READING HIS VERSES TO ALESSANDRA STROZZI." title="" />
+<span class="caption"><i>T. Wright. sc.</i><br />
+
+ARIOSTO READING HIS VERSES TO ALESSANDRA STROZZI.</span>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="center">
+<i>London, Published by H. Colburn, 1829.</i><br />
+</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>THE LOVES OF THE POETS.</h2>
+
+<h4>VOL. I.</h4>
+
+
+<p class="center">
+LONDON:<br />
+PRINTED BY S. AND R. BENTLEY,<br />
+Dorset Street, Fleet Street.<br />
+</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h1>THE ROMANCE OF BIOGRAPHY;</h1>
+
+<h4>OR</h4>
+
+<h2>MEMOIRS OF WOMEN LOVED AND CELEBRATED BY POETS,</h2>
+
+<h4>FROM</h4>
+
+<h3>THE DAYS OF THE TROUBADOURS TO THE PRESENT AGE;</h3>
+
+<p>A SERIES OF ANECDOTES INTENDED TO ILLUSTRATE THE INFLUENCE WHICH FEMALE
+BEAUTY AND VIRTUE HAVE EXERCISED OVER THE CHARACTERS AND WRITINGS OF MEN
+OF GENIUS.</p>
+
+<h2>BY MRS. JAMESON,</h2>
+
+<p class="center"><i>Authoress of the Diary of an Ennuy&eacute;e; Lives of Celebrated Female
+Sovereigns; Female Characters of Shakspeare's Plays; Beauties of the
+Court of Charles the Second, &amp;c.</i></p>
+
+<p class="center">
+THIRD EDITION,<br />
+IN TWO VOLUMES.<br />
+VOL. I.<br />
+<br />
+LONDON:<br />
+SAUNDERS AND OTLEY.<br />
+<br />
+MDCCCXXXVII.<br />
+</p>
+
+
+<p>Enfin, relevons-nous sous le poids de l'existence; ne donnons pas &agrave; nos
+injustes ennemis, &agrave; nos amis ingrats, le triomphe d'avoir abattu nos
+facult&eacute;s intellectuelles. Ils reduisent &agrave; chercher la cel&egrave;brit&eacute; ceux qui
+se seraient content&eacute;s des affections: eh bien! il faut l'atteindre. Ces
+essais ambitieux ne porteront point rem&egrave;de aux peines de l'&acirc;me; mais ils
+honoreront la vie. La consacrer &agrave; l'espoir toujours tromp&eacute; du bonheur,
+c'est la rendre encore plus infortun&eacute;e. Il vaut mieux r&eacute;unir tous ses
+efforts pour descendre avec quelque noblesse, avec quelque r&eacute;putation,
+la route qui conduit de la jeunesse &agrave; la mort.</p>
+
+<p class="sig">
+MADAME DE STAËL.<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii">[Pg vii]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>THE AUTHOR TO THE READER.</h2>
+
+
+<p>These little sketches (they can pretend to no higher title,) are
+submitted to the public with a feeling of timidity almost painful.</p>
+
+<p>They are absolutely without any other pretension than that of
+exhibiting, in a small compass and under one point of view, many
+anecdotes of biography and criticism, and many beautiful poetical
+portraits, scattered through a variety of works, and all tending to
+illustrate a subject in itself full of interest,&mdash;the influence which
+the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_viii" id="Page_viii">[Pg viii]</a></span> beauty and virtue of women have exercised over the characters and
+writings of men of genius. But little praise or reputation attends the
+mere compiler, but the pleasure of the task has compensated its
+difficulty;&mdash;"song, beauty, youth, love, virtue, joy," these "flowers of
+Paradise," whose growth is not of earth, were all around me; I had but
+to gather them from the intermingling weeds and briars, and to bind them
+into one sparkling wreath, consecrated to the glory of women and the
+gallantry of men.</p>
+
+<p>The design which unfolded itself before me, as these little sketches
+extended gradually from a few memoranda into volumes, is not completed;
+much has been omitted, much suppressed. If I have paused midway in my
+task, it is not for want of materials, which offer themselves in almost
+exhaustless profusion&mdash;nor from want of interest in the subject&mdash;the
+most delightful in which the imagination ever revelled! but because I
+desponded over my own power to do it justice. I know, I feel that it
+required more extensive<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_ix" id="Page_ix">[Pg ix]</a></span> knowledge of languages, more matured judgment,
+more critical power, more eloquence;&mdash;only Madame de Sta&euml;l could have
+fulfilled my conception of the style in which it ought to have been
+treated. It was enthusiasm, not presumption, which induced me to attempt
+it. I have touched on matters, on which there are a variety of tastes
+and opinions, and lightly passed over questions on which there are
+volumes of grave "historic doubts;" but I have ventured on no
+discussion, still less on any decision. I have been satisfied merely to
+quote my authorities; and where these exhibited many opposing facts and
+opinions, it seemed to me that there was far more propriety and much
+less egotism in simply expressing, in the first person, what I thought
+and felt, than in asserting absolutely that a thing <i>is so</i>, or <i>is said
+to be so</i>. Every one has a right to have an opinion, and deliver it with
+modesty; but no one has a right to clothe such opinions in general
+assertions, and in terms which seem to insinuate that they are or ought
+to be universal. I know I am open to criticism<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_x" id="Page_x">[Pg x]</a></span> and contradiction on a
+thousand points; but I have adhered strictly to what appeared to me the
+truth, and examined conscientiously all the sources of information that
+were open to me.</p>
+
+<p>The history of this little book, were it worth revealing, would be the
+history, in miniature, of most human undertakings: it was begun with
+enthusiasm; it has been interrupted by intervals of illness, idleness,
+or more serious cares; it has been pursued through difficulties so
+great, that they would perhaps excuse its many deficiencies; and now I
+see its conclusion with a languor almost approaching to despair;&mdash;at
+least with a feeling which, while it renders me doubly sensitive to
+criticism, and apprehensive of failure, has rendered me almost
+indifferent to success, and careless of praise.</p>
+
+<p>I owe four beautiful translations from the Italian (which are noticed in
+their proper places,) to the kindness of a living poet, whose justly
+celebrated name, were I allowed to mention it, would be subject of pride
+to myself, and double<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xi" id="Page_xi">[Pg xi]</a></span> the value of this little book. I have no other
+assistance of any kind to acknowledge.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Will it be thought unfeminine or obtrusive, if I add yet a few words?</p>
+
+<p>I think it due to truth and to myself to seize this opportunity of
+saying, that a little book published three years ago, and now perhaps
+forgotten, was not written for publication, nor would ever have been
+printed but for accidental circumstances.</p>
+
+<p>That the title under which it appeared was not given by the writer, but
+the publisher, who at the time knew nothing of the author.</p>
+
+<p>And that several false dates, and unimportant circumstances and
+characters were interpolated, to conceal, if possible, the real purport
+and origin of the work. Thus the intention was not to create an
+illusion, by giving to fiction the appearance of truth, but, in fact, to
+give to truth the air of fiction. I was not <i>then</i> prepared for all that
+a woman must meet and endure, who once suffers herself to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xii" id="Page_xii">[Pg xii]</a></span> be betrayed
+into authorship. She may repent at leisure, like a condemned spirit; but
+she has passed that barrier from which there is no return.</p>
+
+<p>C'est assez,&mdash;I will not add a word more, lest it should be said that I
+have only disclaimed the title of the <i>Ennuy&eacute;e</i>, to assume that of the
+<i>Ennuyeuse</i>.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xiii" id="Page_xiii">[Pg xiii]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+<h3>OF THE FIRST VOLUME.</h3>
+
+
+<p>
+<span class="tocnum">Page</span><br />
+<br />
+CHAPTER I.<br />
+<br />
+<span class="smcap">A Poet's Love</span>                                                    <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_1'>1</a></span><br />
+<br />
+CHAPTER II.<br />
+<br />
+<span class="smcap">Loves of the Classic Poets</span>                                       <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_7'>7</a></span><br />
+<br />
+CHAPTER III.<br />
+<br />
+<span class="smcap">The Loves of the Troubadours</span>                                    <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_14'>14</a></span><br />
+<br />
+CHAPTER IV.<br />
+<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xiv" id="Page_xiv">[Pg xiv]</a></span><span class="smcap">The Loves of the Troubadours</span> (continued)                        <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_34'>34</a></span><br />
+<br />
+CHAPTER V.<br />
+<br />
+<span class="smcap">Guido Cavalcanti and Mandetta.&mdash;Cino da Pistoja and Selvaggia</span>   <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_55'>55</a></span><br />
+<br />
+CHAPTER VI.<br />
+<br />
+<span class="smcap">Laura</span>                                                           <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_64'>64</a></span><br />
+<br />
+CHAPTER VII.<br />
+<br />
+<span class="smcap">Laura and Petrarch</span> (continued)                                  <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_85'>85</a></span><br />
+<br />
+CHAPTER VIII.<br />
+<br />
+<span class="smcap">Dante and Beatrice Portinari</span>                                   <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_105'>105</a></span><br />
+<br />
+CHAPTER IX.<br />
+<br />
+<span class="smcap">Dante and Beatrice</span> (continued)                                 <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_125'>125</a></span><br />
+<br />
+CHAPTER X.<br />
+<br />
+<span class="smcap">Chaucer and Philippa Picard.&mdash;King James and Lady Jane Beaufort</span>   <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_133'>133</a></span><br />
+<br />
+CHAPTER XI.<br />
+<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xv" id="Page_xv">[Pg xv]</a></span><span class="smcap">Lorenzo de' Medici and Lucretia Donati</span>                         <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_161'>161</a></span><br />
+<br />
+CHAPTER XII.<br />
+<br />
+<span class="smcap">The Fair Geraldine</span>                                             <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_185'>185</a></span><br />
+<br />
+CHAPTER XIII.<br />
+<br />
+<span class="smcap">Ariosto, Ginevra, and Alessandra Strozzi</span>                       <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_198'>198</a></span><br />
+<br />
+CHAPTER XIV.<br />
+<br />
+<span class="smcap">Spenser's Rosalind. Spenser's Elizabeth</span>                        <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_219'>219</a></span><br />
+<br />
+CHAPTER XV.<br />
+<br />
+<span class="smcap">On the Love of Shakspeare</span>                                      <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_237'>237</a></span><br />
+<br />
+CHAPTER XVI.<br />
+<br />
+<span class="smcap">Sydney's Stella (Lady Rich)</span>                                    <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_249'>249</a></span><br />
+<br />
+CHAPTER XVII.<br />
+<br />
+<span class="smcap">Court and Age of Elizabeth.</span><br /><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xvi" id="Page_xvi">[Pg xvi]</a></span>
+<br />
+<span class="smcap">Drayton, Daniel, Drummond, Mary Queen Of
+Scots, Clement Marot and Diana de Poictier,<br />
+Ronsard's Cassandre, Ronsard's Marie,
+Ronsard's Hel&egrave;ne</span>                                                   <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_263'>263</a></span><br />
+<br />
+CHAPTER XVIII.<br />
+<br />
+<span class="smcap">Leonora d'Este</span>                                                 <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_288'>288</a></span><br />
+<br />
+CHAPTER XIX.<br />
+<br />
+<span class="smcap">Milton and Leonora Baroni</span>                                      <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_330'>330</a></span><br />
+</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p>
+<h2>THE LOVES OF THE POETS.</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER I.</h2>
+
+<h3>A POET'S LOVE.</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Io ti cinsi de gloria, e fatta ho dea!&mdash;<span class="smcap">guidi.</span><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<p>Of all the heaven-bestowed privileges of the poet, the highest, the
+dearest, the most enviable, is the power of immortalising the object of
+his love; of dividing with her his amaranthine wreath of glory, and
+repaying the inspiration caught from her eyes with a crown of
+everlasting fame. It is not enough that in his imagination he has
+deified her&mdash;that he has consecrated his faculties<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span> to her honour&mdash;that
+he has burned his heart in incense upon the altar of her perfections:
+the divinity thus decked out in richest and loveliest hues, he places on
+high, and calls upon all ages and all nations to bow down before her,
+and all ages and all nations obey! worshipping the beauty thus enshrined
+in imperishable verse, when others, perhaps as fair, and not less
+worthy, have gone down, unsung, "to dust and an endless darkness." How
+many women who would otherwise have stolen through the shades of
+domestic life, their charms, virtues, and affections buried with them,
+have become objects of eternal interest and admiration, because their
+memory is linked with the brightest monuments of human genius? While
+many a high-born dame, who once moved, goddess-like, upon the earth, and
+bestowed kingdoms with her hand, lives a mere name in some musty
+chronicle. Though her love was sought by princes, though with her dower
+she might have enriched an emperor,&mdash;what availed it?</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"She had no poet&mdash;and she died!"<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span></div></div>
+
+<p>And how have women repaid this gift of immortality? O believe it, when
+the garland was such as woman is proud to wear, she amply and deeply
+rewarded him who placed it on her brow. If in return for being made
+illustrious, she made her lover happy,&mdash;if for glory she gave a heart,
+was it not a rich equivalent? and if not&mdash;if the lover was unsuccessful,
+still the poet had his reward. Whence came the generous feelings, the
+high imaginations, the glorious fancies, the heavenward inspirations,
+which raised him above the herd of vulgar men&mdash;but from the ennobling
+influence of her he loved? Through <i>her</i>, the world opened upon him with
+a diviner beauty, and all nature became in his sight but a transcript of
+the charms of his mistress. He saw her eyes in the stars of heaven, her
+lips in the half-blown rose. The perfume of the opening flowers was but
+her breath, that "wafted sweetness round about the world:" the lily was
+"a sweet thief" that had stolen its purity from her breast. The violet
+was dipped in the azure of her veins; the aurorean dews, "dropt from the
+opening<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span> eyelids of the morn," were not so pure as her tears; the last
+rose-tint of the dying day was not so bright or so delicate as her
+cheek. Her's was the freshness and the bloom of the Spring; she consumed
+him to languor as the Summer sun; she was kind as the bounteous Autumn,
+or she froze him with her wintry disdain. There was nothing in the
+wonders, the splendours, or the treasures of the created universe,&mdash;in
+heaven or in earth,&mdash;in the seasons or their change, that did not borrow
+from her some charm, some glory beyond its own. Was it not just that the
+beauty she dispensed should be consecrated to her adornment, and that
+the inspiration she bestowed should be repaid to her in fame?</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">For what of thee thy poet doth invent,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He robs thee of, and pays it thee again.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He lends thee virtue, and he stole that word<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From thy behaviour; beauty doth he give,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But found it in thy cheek; he can afford<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No praise to thee but what in thee doth live.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4"><i>Then thank him not for that which he doth say,</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i4"><i>Since what he owes thee, thou thyself dost pay!</i><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20"><span class="smcap">shakspeare's sonnets.</span><br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span></div></div>
+
+<p>The theory, then, which I wish to illustrate, as far as my limited
+powers permit, is this: that where a woman has been exalted above the
+rest of her sex by the talents of a lover, and consigned to enduring
+fame and perpetuity of praise, the passion was real, and was merited;
+that no deep or lasting interest was ever founded in fancy or in
+fiction; that truth, in short, is the basis of all excellence in amatory
+poetry, as in every thing else; for where truth is, there is good of
+some sort, and where there is truth and good, there must be beauty,
+there must be durability of fame. Truth is the golden chain which links
+the terrestrial with the celestial, which sets the seal of heaven on the
+things of this earth, and stamps them to immortality. Poets have risen
+up and been the mere fashion of a day, and have set up idols which have
+been the idols of a day: if the worship be out of date and the idols
+cast down, it is because these adorers wanted sincerity of purpose and
+feeling; their raptures were feigned; their incense was bought or
+adulterate. In the brain or in the fancy, one beauty may<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span> eclipse
+another&mdash;one coquette may drive out another, and tricked off in airy
+verse, they float away unregarded like morning vapours, which the beam
+of genius has tinged with a transient brightness: but let the heart once
+be touched, and it is not only wakened but inspired; the lover kindled
+into the poet, presents to her he loves, his cup of ambrosial praise:
+she tastes&mdash;and the woman is transmuted into a divinity. When the
+Grecian sculptor carved out his deities in marble, and left us wondrous
+and god-like shapes, impersonations of ideal grace unapproachable by
+modern skill, was it through mere mechanical superiority? No;&mdash;it was
+the spirit of faith within which shadowed to his imagination what he
+would represent. In the same manner, no woman has ever been truly,
+lastingly deified in poetry, but in the spirit of truth and of love!</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER II.</h2>
+
+<h3>LOVES OF THE CLASSIC POETS.</h3>
+
+
+<p>I am not sufficiently an antiquarian or scholar, to trace the muses
+"upward to their spring," neither is there occasion to seek our first
+examples of poetical loves in the days of fables and of demi-gods; or in
+those pastoral ages when shepherds were kings and poets: the loves of
+Orpheus and Eurydice are a little too shadowy, and those of the royal
+Solomon rather too mixed and too mystical for our purpose.&mdash;To descend
+then at once to the <i>classical</i> ages of antiquity.</p>
+
+<p>It must be allowed, that as far as women are concerned, we have not much
+reason to regard them with reverence. The fragments of the amatory<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span>
+poetry of the Greeks, which have been preserved to our times, show too
+plainly in what light we were then regarded; and graceful and exquisite
+as many of them are, they bear about them the taint of degraded morals
+and manners, and are utterly destitute of that exalted sentiment of
+respect and tenderness for woman, either individually or as a sex, which
+alone can give them value in our eyes.</p>
+
+<p>I must leave it then to learned commentators to explore and elucidate
+the loves of Sappho and Anacreon. To us unlearned women, they shine out
+through the long lapse of ages, bright <i>names</i>, and little else; a kind
+of half-real,&mdash;half-ideal impersonations of love and song; the one
+enveloped in "a fair luminous cloud," the other "veiled in shadowing
+roses;" and thus veiled and thus shadowed, by all accounts, they had
+better remain.</p>
+
+<p>The same remark, with the same reservation, applies to the Latin poets.
+They wrote beautiful verses, admirable for their harmony, elegance and
+perspicuity of expression; and are studied as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span> models of style in a
+language, the knowledge of which, as far as these poets are concerned,
+were best confined to the other sex. They lived in a corrupted age, and
+their pages are deeply stained with its licentiousness; they inspire no
+sympathy for their love, no interest, no respect for the objects of it.
+How, indeed, should that be possible, when their mistresses, even
+according to the lover's painting, were all either perfectly insipid, or
+utterly abandoned and odious?<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> Ovid, he who has revealed to mortal
+ears "all the soft scandal of the laughing sky," and whose gallantry has
+become proverbial, represents himself as so incensed by the public and
+shameless infidelities of his Corinna, that he treats her with the
+unmanly brutality of some street ruffian;&mdash;in plain language, he beats
+her. They are then reconciled, and again there are quarrels, coarse
+reproaches, and mutual blows. At length the lady, as might be expected
+from such tuition, becoming more and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span> more abandoned, this delicate and
+poetical lover requests, as a last favour, that she will, for the
+future, take some trouble to deceive him more effectually; and the fair
+one, can she do less? kindly consents!</p>
+
+<p>Cynthia, the mistress of Propertius, gets tipsey, overturns the
+supper-table, and throws the cups at her lover's head; he is delighted
+with her <i>playfulness</i>: she leaves him to follow the camp with a
+soldier; he weeps and laments: she returns to him again, and he is
+enchanted with her amiable condescension. Her excesses are such, that he
+is reduced to blush for her and for himself; and he confesses that he is
+become, for her sake, the laughing-stock of all Rome. Cynthia is the
+only one of these classical loves who seems to have possessed any mental
+accomplishments. The poet praises, incidentally, her talents for music
+and poetry; but not as if they added to her charms or enhanced her value
+in his estimation. The Lesbia<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> of Catullus, whose eyes were red with
+weeping the loss of her favourite<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span> sparrow, crowned a life of the most
+flagitious excesses by poisoning her husband. Of the various ladies
+celebrated by Horace and Tibullus, it would really be difficult to
+discover which was most worthless, venal, and profligate. These were the
+refined loves of the classic poets!</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The passion they celebrated never seems to have inspired one ennobling
+or generous sentiment, nor to have lifted them for one moment above the
+grossest selfishness. They had no scruple in exhibiting their mistresses
+to our eyes, as doubtless they appeared in their own, degraded by every
+vice, and in every sense contemptible; beings, not only beyond the pale
+of our sympathy, but of our toleration. Throughout their works, virtue
+appears a mere jest: Love stript of his divinity, even by those who
+first deified him, is what we disdain to call by that name; <i>sentiment</i>,
+as we now understand the word,&mdash;that is, the union of fervent love with
+reverence and delicacy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span> towards its object,&mdash;a thing unknown and unheard
+of,&mdash;and all is "of the earth, earthy."</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>It is for women I write; the fair, pure-hearted, delicate-minded, and
+unclassical reader will recollect that I do not presume to speak of
+these poets critically, being neither critic nor scholar; but merely
+with a reference to my subject, and with a reference to my sex. As
+monuments of the language and literature of a great and polished people,
+rich with a thousand beauties of thought and style, doubtless they have
+their value and their merit: but as monuments also of a state of morals
+inconceivably gross and corrupt; of the condition of women degraded by
+their own vices, the vices and tyranny of the other sex, and the
+prevalence of the Epicurean philosophy, the tendency of which, (however
+disguised by rhetoric,) was ever to lower the tone of the mind;
+considered in this point of view, they might as well have all burned
+together in that vast bonfire of love-poetry which the Doctors of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span> the
+Church raised at Constantinople:&mdash;what a flame it must have made!<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> I need scarcely observe, that the following sketch of the
+lyrical poets of Rome is abridged from the analysis of their works, in
+Ginguen&eacute;'s Histoire Litt&eacute;raire, vol. 3.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> Clodia, the wife of Quintus Metellus Celer.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> "J'ai oui dire dans mon enfance &agrave; Demetrius Chalcondyle,
+homme tr&egrave;s instruit de tout ce qui regarde la Gr&egrave;ce, qui les Pr&eacute;tres
+avaient eu assez d'influence sur les Empereurs de Constantinople, pour
+les engager &agrave; br&ucirc;ler les ouvrages de plusieurs anciens po&euml;tes Grecs, et
+en particulier de ceux qui parlaient des amours, &amp;c. * * * Ces pr&egrave;tres,
+sans doute, montr&egrave;rent une malveillance honteuse envers les anciens
+po&euml;tes; mais ils donn&egrave;rent une grande preuve d'int&eacute;grit&eacute;, de probit&eacute;, et
+de religion."&mdash;<span class="smcap">Alcyonius.</span>
+</p><p>
+This sentiment is put into the mouth of Leo X. at a time when the mania
+of classical learning was at its height.&mdash;See Roscoe, (Leo X.) and
+Ginguen&eacute;.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER III.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE LOVES OF THE TROUBADOURS.</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Gente, che d'amor givan ragionando.&mdash;<span class="smcap">petrarca.</span><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<p>The irruptions of the northern nations, among whom our sex was far
+better appreciated than among the polished Greeks and Romans; the rise
+of Christianity, and the institution of chivalry, by changing the moral
+condition of women, gave also a totally different character to the
+homage addressed to them. It was in the ages called gothic and
+barbarous,&mdash;in that era of high feelings and fierce passions,&mdash;of love,
+war, and wild adventure, that the sex began to take their true station
+in society. From the midst of ignorance, superstition, and ferocity,
+sprung up that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span> enthusiasm, that exaggeration of sentiment, that
+serious, passionate, and imaginative adoration of women, which has
+since, indeed, degenerated into mere gallantry, but was the very
+fountain of all that is most elevated and elegant in modern poetry, and
+most graceful and refined in modern manners.</p>
+
+<p>The amatory poetry of Provence had the same source with the national
+poetry of Spain; both were derived from the Arabians. To them we trace
+not only the use of rhyme, and the various forms of stanzas, employed by
+the early lyric poets, but by a strange revolution, it was from the
+East, where women are now held in seclusion, as mere soulless slaves of
+the passions and caprices of their masters, that the sentimental
+devotion paid to our sex in the chivalrous ages was derived.<a name="FNanchor_4_4" id="FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> The
+poetry of the Troubadours kept alive and enhanced the tone of feeling on
+which it was founded; it was cause and effect re-acting on each other;
+and though their songs exist only in the collections of the antiquarian,
+and the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span> very language in which they wrote has passed away, and may be
+accounted <i>dead</i>,&mdash;so is not the spirit they left behind: as the
+founders of a new school of amatory poetry, we are under obligations to
+their memory, which throw a strong interest around their personal
+adventures, and the women they celebrated.</p>
+
+<p>The tenderness of feeling and delicacy of expression in some of these
+old Proven&ccedil;al poets, are the more touching, when we recollect that the
+writers were sometimes kings and princes, and often knights and
+warriors, famed for their hardihood and exploits. William, Count of
+Poitou, our Richard the First, two Kings of Arragon, a King of Sicily,
+the Dauphin of Auvergne, the Count de Foix, and a Prince of Orange, were
+professors of the "gaye science." Thibault,<a name="FNanchor_5_5" id="FNanchor_5_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> Count of Provence and
+King of Navarre,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span> was another of these royal and chivalrous Troubadours,
+and his <i>lais</i> and his virelais were generally devoted to the praises of
+Blanche of Castile, the mother of Louis the Ninth&mdash;the same Blanche whom
+Shakspeare has introduced into King John, and decked out in panegyric
+far transcending all that her favoured poet and lover could have offered
+at her feet.<a name="FNanchor_6_6" id="FNanchor_6_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a></p>
+
+<p>Thibault did, however, surpass all his contemporaries in refinement of
+style: he usually concludes his <i>chansons</i> with an <i>envoi</i>, or address,
+to the Virgin, worded with such equivocal ingenuity, that it is equally
+applicable to the Queen of Heaven, or the queen of his earthly
+thoughts,&mdash;"La Blanche couronn&eacute;e." There is much simplicity and elegance
+in the following little song, in which the French has been modernised.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Las! si j'avais pouvoir d'oublier<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Sa beaut&eacute;,&mdash;son bien dire,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Et son tr&egrave;s doux regarder<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Finirait mon martyre!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Mais las! mon c&oelig;ur je n'en puis &ocirc;ter;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Et grand affolage<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">M'est d'esp&eacute;rer;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Mais tel servage<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Donne courage<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A tout endurer.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Et puis comment oublier<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Sa beaut&eacute;, son bien dire,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Et son tr&egrave;s doux regarder?<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Mieux aime mon martyre!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Princesses and ladies of rank entered the lists of poesy, and
+vanquished, on almost every occasion, the Troubadours of the other sex.
+For instance, that Countess of Champagne, who presided with such &eacute;clat
+in one of the courts of love; Beatrice, Countess of Provence, the mother
+of four queens, among whom was Berengaria of England; Clara d'Anduse,
+one of whose songs<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span> is translated by Sismondi; a certain Dame
+Castellosa, who in a pathetic remonstrance to some ungrateful lover,
+assures him that if he forsakes her for another, and leaves her to die,
+he will commit a heinous sin before the face of God and man; that
+charming Comtesse de Die, of whom more presently, and others
+innumerable, "tout hommes que femmes, la pluspart gentilshommes et
+Seigneurs de Places, amoureux des Roynes, Imperatrices, Duchesses,
+Marquises, Comtesses, et gentils-femmes; desquelles les maris
+s'estimaient grandement heureux quand nos po&euml;tes leurs addressaient
+quelque chant nouveau en notre langue Proven&ccedil;al." The said poets being
+rewarded by these debonnaire husbands with rich dresses, horses, armour,
+and gold;<a name="FNanchor_7_7" id="FNanchor_7_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a> and by the ladies with praise, thanks, courteous words, and
+sweet smiles, and very often, "altra cosa pi&ugrave; cara." The biography of
+these Troubadours generally commences with the same<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span> phrase&mdash;Such a one
+was "gentilhomme et chevalier," and was "pris d'amour" for such a lady,
+always named, who was the wife of such a lord, and in whose honour and
+praise he composed "maintes belles et doctes chansons." In these
+"chansons,"&mdash;for all the amatory poetry of those times was sung to
+music,&mdash;we have love and romantic adventure oddly enough mixed up with
+piety and devotion, such as were the mode in an age when religion ruled
+the imagination and opinions of men, without in any degree restraining
+the passions, or influencing the conduct. One Troubadour tells us, that
+when he beholds the face of his mistress, he crosses himself with
+delight and gratitude; another pathetically entreats a priest to
+dispense him from his vows of love to a certain lady, whom he loved no
+longer; the lady being the wife of another, one would imagine that the
+dispensation should rather have been required in the first instance.
+Arnaldo de Daniel, unable to soften the obdurate heart of his mistress,
+performs penance, and celebrates six (or as some say, a thousand) masses
+a day, "en<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span> priant Dieu de pouvoir acquerir la grace de sa dame," and
+burns lamps before the Virgin, and consecrates tapers for the same
+purpose: the lady with whom he is thus piously in love, was Cyberna, the
+wife of Guillaume de Bouille. This was something like the incantations
+and sacrifices of the classic poets, who familiarly mixed up their
+mythology with their amours; but in a spirit as different as the
+allegorical cupid of these chivalrous poets is from the winged and
+wanton deity of the Greeks and Romans. Pierre Vidal sees a vision of
+Love, whom he describes as a young knight, fair and fresh as the day,
+crowned with a wreath of flowers instead of a helmet; and mounted on a
+palfrey as white as snow, with a saddle of jasper, and spurs of
+chalcedony; his squires and attendants are "<i>Mercy</i>, <i>Pudeur</i>, and
+<i>Loyaut&eacute;</i>." <i>Sir Cupid</i> on horseback, with his saddle and his spurs,
+attended by Gentleness, Modesty, and Good Faith, is a novel
+divinity.&mdash;Thus, among the Greeks, Love was attended by the Graces, and
+among the Troubadours by the Virtues. In the same spirit of allegory,
+but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span> touched with a more classic elegance, we have Petrarch's Cupid,
+driving his fiery car in triumph, followed by a shadowy host of captives
+to his power,&mdash;the heroes who had confessed and the poets who had sung
+his might.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Vidi un vittorioso e sommo duce,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Pur com' un di color ch' in Campidoglio<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Tr&iuml;onfal carro a gran gloria conduce.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">....*....*....*....*<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Quattro destrier via pi&ugrave; che neve bianchi:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sopr' un carro di foco un garzon crudo<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Con arco in mano, e con s&auml;ette a' fianchi.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And yet more finished is Spenser's "Masque of Cupid," in the third book
+of the Fairy Queen, where Love, as in the antique gem, is mounted on a
+lion, preceded by minstrels carolling</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">A lay of love's delight with sweet concent,<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>attended by Fancy, Desire, Hope, Fear, and Doubt; and followed by Care,
+Repentance, Shame, Strife, Sorrow, &amp;c.&mdash;The vivid colours in which these
+imaginary personages are depicted, the image of the God "uprearing
+himself,"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span> and looking round with disdain on the troop of victims and
+slaves who surround him, the rattling of his darts, as he shakes them in
+defiance and in triumph, and "claps on high his coloured wings twain,"
+forms altogether a most finished and gorgeous picture; such as Rubens
+should have painted, as far as his pencil, rainbow-dipt, could have
+reflected the animated pageant to the eye.</p>
+
+<p>The extravagance of passion and boundless devotion to the fair sex,
+which the Troubadours sang in their lays, they not unfrequently
+illustrated by their actions; and while the knowledge of the first is
+confined to a few antiquarians, the latter still survive in the history
+and the traditions of their province. One of these (Guillaume de la
+Tour) having lost the object of his love, underwent, during a whole
+year, the most cruel and unheard-of penances, in the hope that heaven
+might be won to perform a miracle in his favour, and restore her to his
+arms; at length he died broken-hearted on her tomb.<a name="FNanchor_8_8" id="FNanchor_8_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a> Another,<a name="FNanchor_9_9" id="FNanchor_9_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_9_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span>
+beloved by a certain princess, in some unfortunate moment breaks his vow
+of fidelity, and unable to appease the indignation of his mistress, he
+retires to a forest, builds himself a cabin of boughs, and turns hermit,
+having first made a solemn vow that he will never leave his solitude
+till he is received into favour by his offended love. Being one of the
+most celebrated and popular Troubadours of his province, all the knights
+and the ladies sympathise with his misfortunes: they find themselves
+terribly <i>ennuy&eacute;s</i> in the absence of the poet who was accustomed to
+vaunt their charms and their deeds of prowess; and at the end of two
+years they send a deputation, entreating him to return,&mdash;but in vain:
+they then address themselves to the lady, and humbly solicit the pardon
+of the offender, whose disgrace in her sight, has thrown a whole
+province into mourning. The princess at length relents, but upon
+conditions which appear in these unromantic times equally extraordinary
+and difficult to fulfil. She requires that a hundred brave knights, and
+a hundred fair dames, pledged in love to each<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span> other, (s'aimant d'amour)
+should appear before her on their knees, and with joined hands
+supplicate for mercy: the conditions are fulfilled: the fifty pair of
+lovers are found to go through the ceremony, and the Troubadour receives
+his pardon.<a name="FNanchor_10_10" id="FNanchor_10_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_10_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a></p>
+
+<p>The story of Peyre de Ruer, "gentilhomme et Troubadour," might be termed
+a satirical romance, did we not know that it is a plain fact, related
+with perfect simplicity. He devotes himself to a lady of the noble
+Italian family of Carraccioli, and in her praise he composes, as usual,
+"maintes belles et doctes chansons:"&mdash;but the lady seems to have had a
+taste for magnificence and pleasure; and the poet, in order to find
+favour in her eyes, expends his patrimony in rich apparel, banquets, and
+<i>joustes</i> in her honour. The lady, however, continues inexorable; and
+Peyre de Ruer takes the habit of a pilgrim and wanders about the
+country. He arrives in the holy week at a certain church, and desires of
+the cur&eacute;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span> permission to preach to his congregation of penitents:&mdash;he
+ascends the pulpit, and recites with infinite fervour and grace one of
+his own chansons d'amour,&mdash;for, says the chronicle, "<i>autre chose ne
+s&ccedil;avait</i>," "he knew nothing better." The people mistaking it for an
+invocation to the Virgin Mary or the Saints, are deeply affected and
+edified; eyes are seen to weep that never wept before; the most
+impenitent hearts are suddenly softened: he concludes with an
+exhortation in the same strain&mdash;and then descending from the pulpit,
+places himself at the door, and holding out his hat for the customary
+alms, his delighted congregation fill it to overflowing with pieces of
+silver. Peyre de Ruer forthwith casts off his pilgrim's gown, and in a
+new and splendid dress, and with a new song in his hand, he presents
+himself before the ladye of his love, who charmed by his gay attire not
+less than by his return, receives him most graciously, and bestows on
+him "maintes caresses."</p>
+
+<p>I must observe that the biographer of this Peyre de Ruer, himself a
+churchman, does not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span> appear in the least scandalised or surprised at
+this very novel mode of recruiting his finances and obtaining the favour
+of the lady; but gives us fairly to understand, that after such a proof
+of <i>loyaut&eacute;</i> he should have thought it quite contrary to all rule if she
+had still rejected the addresses of this <i>gentil Troubadour</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Jauffred (or Geffrey) de Rudel is yet more famous, and his story will
+strikingly illustrate the manners of those times. Rudel was the
+favourite minstrel of Geffrey Plantagenet de Bretagne, the elder brother
+of our Richard C&oelig;ur de Lion, and like the royal Richard, a patron of
+music and poetry. During the residence of Rudel at the court of England,
+where he resided in great honour and splendour, caressed for his talents
+and loved for the gentleness of his manners, he heard continually the
+praises of a certain Countess of Tripoli; famed throughout Europe for
+her munificent hospitality to the poor Crusaders. The pilgrims and
+soldiers of the Cross, who were returning wayworn, sick and disabled,
+from the burning plains of Asia, were relieved and entertained<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span> by this
+devout and benevolent Countess; and they repaid her generosity, with all
+the enthusiasm of gratitude, by spreading her fame throughout
+Christendom.</p>
+
+<p>These reports of her beauty and her beneficence, constantly repeated,
+fired the susceptible fancy of Rudel: without having seen her, he fell
+passionately in love with her, and unable to bear any longer the
+torments of absence, he undertook a pilgrimage to visit this unknown
+lady of his love, in company with Bertrand d'Allamanon, another
+celebrated Troubadour of those days. He quitted the English court in
+spite of the entreaties and expostulations of Prince Geffrey
+Plantagenet, and sailed for the Levant. But so it chanced, that falling
+grievously sick on the voyage, he lived only till his vessel reached the
+shores of Tripoli. The Countess being told that a celebrated poet had
+just arrived in her harbour, who was dying for her love, immediately
+hastened on board, and taking his hand, entreated him to live for her
+sake. Rudel, already speechless, and almost in the agonies of death,
+revived for a moment<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span> at this unexpected grace; he was just able to
+express, by a last effort, the excess of his gratitude and love, and
+expired in her arms: thereupon the Countess wept bitterly, and vowed
+herself to a life of penance for the loss she had caused to the
+world.<a name="FNanchor_11_11" id="FNanchor_11_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_11_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a> She commanded that the last song which Rudel had composed in
+her honour, should be transcribed in letters of gold,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span> and carried it
+always in her bosom; and his remains were inclosed in a magnificent
+mausoleum of porphyry, with an Arabic inscription, commemorating his
+genius and his love for her.</p>
+
+<p>It is in allusion to this well-known story, that Petrarch has introduced
+Rudel into the Trionfo d'Amore.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Gianfr&eacute; Rudel ch' uso la vela e 'l remo,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A cercar la suo morte.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The song which the minstrel composed when he fell sick on this romantic
+expedition, and found his strength begin to fail, and which the Countess
+wore, folded within her vest, to the end of her life, is extant, and has
+been translated into most of the languages of Europe; of these
+translations, Sismondi's is the best, preserving the original and
+curious arrangement of the rhymes, as well as the piety, na&iuml;vet&eacute;, and
+tenderness of the sentiment.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Irrit&eacute;, dolent partirai<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Si ne vois cet amour de loin,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Et ne sais quand je le verrai<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Car sont par trop nos terres loin.<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Dieu, qui toutes choses as fait<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Et formas cet amour si loin,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Donne force &agrave; mon c&oelig;ur, car ai<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">L'espoir de voir m'amour au loin.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ah, Seigneur, tenez pour bien vrai<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">L'amour qu'ai pour elle de loin.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Car pour un bien que j'en aurai<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">J'ai mille maux, tant je suis loin.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ja d'autr'amour ne jouirai<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sinon de cet amour de loin&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Qu'une plus belle je n'en s&ccedil;ais<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">En lieu qui soit ni pr&egrave;s ni loin!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Mrs. Piozzi and others have paraphrased this little song, but in a
+spirit so different from the antique simplicity of the original, that I
+shall venture to give a version, which has at least the merit of being
+as faithful as the different idioms of the two languages will allow; I
+am afraid, however, that it will not appear worthy of the honour which
+the Countess conferred on it.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Grieved and troubled shall I die,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">If I meet not my love afar;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Alas! I know not that I e'er<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Shall see her&mdash;for she dwells afar.<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span>
+<span class="i0">O God! that didst all things create,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And formed my sweet love now afar;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Strengthen my heart, that I may hope<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To behold her face, who is afar.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O Lord! believe how very true<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Is my love for her, alas! afar,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Tho' for each joy a thousand pains<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">I bear, because I am so far.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Another love I'll never have,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Save only she who is afar,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For fairer one I never knew<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">In places near, nor yet afar."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Bertrand d'Allamanon, whom I have mentioned as the companion of Rudel on
+his romantic expedition, has left us a little ballad, remarkable for the
+extreme refinement of the sentiment, which is quite &agrave; la Petrarque: he
+gives it the fantastic title of a <i>demi chanson</i>, for a very fantastic
+reason: it is thus translated in Millot. (vol. i. 390).</p>
+
+<p>"On veut savoir pourquoi je fais une <i>demi chanson</i>? c'est parceque je
+n'ai qu'un demi sujet de chanter. Il n'y a d'amour que de ma part;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span> la
+dame que j'aime ne veut pas m'aimer! mais au d&eacute;faut des <i>oui</i> qu'elle me
+refuse, je prendrai les <i>non</i> qu'elle me prodigue:&mdash;<i>esp&eacute;rer aupr&egrave;s
+d'elle vaut mieux que jouir avec tout autre!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>This is exactly the sentiment of Petrarch:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Pur mi consola, che morir per lei<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Meglio &egrave; che gioir d'altra&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>But it is one of those thoughts which spring in the heart, and might
+often be repeated without once being borrowed.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_4" id="Footnote_4_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> Sismondi&mdash;Litt&eacute;rature du Midi.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_5_5" id="Footnote_5_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a>
+</p>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Thibault f&ucirc;t Roi galant et valoureux,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Ses h&acirc;uts faits et son rang n'ont rien fait pour sa gloire;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Mais il f&ucirc;t chansonnier&mdash;et ses couplets heureux,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Nous ont conserv&eacute; sa m&eacute;moire.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&nbsp;</span>
+<span class="i20"><span class="smcap">anthologie de monet.</span><br /></span>
+</div></div></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_6_6" id="Footnote_6_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_6"><span class="label">[6]</span></a>
+</p>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">If lusty Love should go in quest of beauty,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where should he find it fairer than in Blanche?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If zealous Love should go in search of virtue,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where should he find it purer than in Blanche?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If Love, ambitious, sought a match of birth,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whose veins bound richer blood than Lady Blanche?<br /></span>
+</div></div></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_7_7" id="Footnote_7_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7_7"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> La plus honorable recompence qu'on pouvait faire aux dits
+po&euml;tes, &eacute;tait qu'on leur fournissait de draps, chevaux, armure, et
+argent.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_8_8" id="Footnote_8_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8_8"><span class="label">[8]</span></a> Millot, vol. ii. p. 148.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_9_9" id="Footnote_9_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9_9"><span class="label">[9]</span></a> Richard de Barbesieu.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_10_10" id="Footnote_10_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_10_10"><span class="label">[10]</span></a> Millot, vol. iii. p. 86.&mdash;Ginguen&eacute;, vol. i. p. 280.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_11_11" id="Footnote_11_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_11_11"><span class="label">[11]</span></a> "Depuis ne fut jamais veue faire bonne ch&egrave;re," says the
+old chronicle.&mdash;I am tempted to add the description of the first and
+last interview of the Countess and her lover in the exquisite old
+French, of which the antique simplicity and na&iuml;vet&eacute; are untranslateable.
+</p><p>
+"En cet estat fut conduit au port de Trypolly, et l&agrave; arriv&eacute;, son
+compagnon feist (<i>fit</i>) entendre &agrave; la Comtesse la venue du Pelerin
+malade. La Comtesse estant venue en la nef, prit le po&ecirc;te par la main;
+et lui, sachant que c'&eacute;stait la Comtesse, incontinent apr&egrave;s le doult et
+gracieux accueil, recouvra ses esprits, la remercia de ce qu'elle lui
+avait recouvr&eacute; la vie, et lui dict: 'Tr&egrave;s illustre et vertueuse
+princesse, je ne plaindrai point la mort oresque'&mdash;et ne pouvant achever
+son propos, sa maladie s'aigrissant et augmentant, rendit l'esprit entre
+les mains de la Comtesse."&mdash;<i>Vies des plus c&eacute;l&egrave;bres Po&euml;tes Proven&ccedil;aux</i>,
+p. 24.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER IV.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE LOVES OF THE TROUBADOURS CONTINUED.</h3>
+
+
+<p>In striking contrast to the tender and gentle Rudel, we have the
+ferocious Bertrand de Born: he, too, was one of the most celebrated
+Troubadours of his time. As a petty feudal sovereign, he was, partly by
+the events of the age, more by his own fierce and headlong passions,
+plunged in continual wars. Nature however had made him a poet of the
+first order. In these days he would have been another Lord Byron; but he
+lived in a terrible and convulsed state of society, and it was only in
+the intervals snatched from his usual pursuits,&mdash;that is, from burning
+the castles, and ravaging the lands of his neighbours, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span> stirring up
+rebellion, discord, and bloodshed all around him,&mdash;that he composed a
+vast number of <i>lays</i>, <i>sirventes</i>, and <i>chansons</i>; some breathing the
+most martial, and even merciless spirit; others devoted to the praise
+and honour of his love, or rather loves, as full of submissive
+tenderness and chivalrous gallantry.</p>
+
+<p>He first celebrated Elinor Plantagenet, the sister of his friend and
+brother in arms and song, Richard C&oelig;ur de Lion; and we are expressly
+told that Richard was proud of the poetical homage rendered to the
+charms of his sister by this knightly Troubadour, and that the Princess
+was far from being insensible to his admiration. Only one of the many
+songs addressed to Elinor has been preserved; from which we gather, that
+it was composed by Bertrand in the field, at a time when his army was
+threatened with famine, and the poet himself was suffering from the
+pangs of hunger. Elinor married the Duke of Saxony, and Bertrand chose
+for his next love the beautiful Maenz de Montagnac, daughter of the
+Viscount of Turenne, and wife of Talleyrand<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span> de Perigord. The lady
+accepted his service, and acknowledged him as her Knight; but evil
+tongues having attempted to sow dissension between the lovers, Bertrand
+addressed to her a song, in which he defends himself from the imputation
+of inconstancy, in a style altogether characteristic and original. The
+warrior poet, borrowing from the objects of his daily cares, ambition
+and pleasures, phrases to illustrate and enhance the expression of his
+love, wishes "that he may lose his favourite hawk in her first flight;
+that a falcon may stoop and bear her off, as she sits upon his wrist,
+and tear her in his sight, if the sound of his lady's voice be not
+dearer to him than all the gifts of love from another."&mdash;"That he may
+stumble with his shield about his neck; that his helmet may gall his
+brow; that his bridle may be too long, his stirrups too short; that he
+may be forced to ride a hard trotting horse, and find his groom drunk
+when he arrives at his gate, if there be a word of truth in the
+accusations of his enemies:&mdash;that he may not have a <i>denier</i> to stake at
+the gaming-table, and that the dice may never<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span> more be favourable to
+him, if ever he had swerved from his faith:&mdash;that he may look on like a
+dastard, and see his lady wooed and won by another;&mdash;that the winds may
+fail him at sea;&mdash;that in the battle he may be the first to fly, if he
+who has slandered him does not lie in his throat," &amp;c. and so on through
+seven or eight stanzas.</p>
+
+<p>Bertrand de Born exercised in his time a fatal influence on the counsels
+and politics of England. A close and ardent friendship existed between
+him and young Henry Plantagenet, the eldest son of our Henry the Second;
+and the family dissensions which distracted the English Court, and the
+unnatural rebellion of Henry and Richard against their father, were his
+work. It happened some time after the death of Prince Henry, that the
+King of England besieged Bertrand de Born in one of his castles: the
+resistance was long and obstinate, but at length the warlike Troubadour
+was taken prisoner and brought before the King, so justly incensed
+against him, and from whom he had certainly no mercy to expect. The
+heart of Henry was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span> still bleeding with the wounds inflicted by his
+ungrateful children, and he saw before him, and in his power, the
+primary cause of their misdeeds and his own bitter sufferings. Bertrand
+was on the point of being led out to death, when by a single word he
+reminded the King of his lost son, and the tender friendship which had
+existed between them.<a name="FNanchor_12_12" id="FNanchor_12_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_12_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a> The chord was struck which never ceased to
+vibrate in the parental heart of Henry; bursting into tears, he turned
+aside, and commanded Bertrand and his followers to be immediately set at
+liberty: he even restored to Bertrand his castle and his lands, "<i>in the
+name of his dead son</i>." It is such traits as these, occurring at every
+page, which lend to the chronicles of this stormy period an interest
+overpowering the horror they would otherwise excite: for then all the
+best, as well as the worst of human passions were called into play. In
+this tempestuous commingling of all the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span> jarring elements of society, we
+have those strange approximations of the most opposite
+sentiments,&mdash;implacable revenge and sublime forgiveness;&mdash;gross
+licentiousness and delicate tenderness;&mdash;barbarism and
+refinement;&mdash;treachery and fidelity&mdash;which remind one of that
+heterogeneous mass tossed up by a stormy ocean; heaps of pearls,
+unvalued gems, wedges of gold, mingled with dead men's bones, and all
+the slimy, loathsome, and monstrous productions of the deep, which
+during a calm remain together concealed and unknown in its unfathomed
+abysses.</p>
+
+<p>To return from this long similitude to Bertrand de Born: he concluded
+his stormy career in a manner very characteristic of the times; for he
+turned monk, and died in the odour of sanctity. But neither his late
+devotion, nor his warlike heroism, nor his poetic fame, could rescue him
+from the severe justice of Dante, who has visited his crimes and his
+violence with so terrible a judgment, that we forget, while we thrill
+with horror, that the crimes were real, the penance only imaginary.
+Dante, in one of the circles of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span> Inferno, meets Bertrand de Born
+carrying his severed head, <i>lantern wise</i>, in his hand;&mdash;the phantom
+lifts it up by the hair, and the ghastly lips unclose to confess the
+cause and the justice of this horrible and unheard-of penance.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">&mdash;&mdash;Or vedi la pena molesta<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Tu che spirando vai veggendo i morti;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Vedi s'alcuna &egrave; grande come questa.<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">E perch&egrave; tu di me novella porti,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sappi ch' i' son Bertram dal Bornio, quelli<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Che diedi al Re giovane i ma' conforti.<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">I' feci 'l padre e 'l figlio in se ribelli:<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">....*....*....*....*<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Perch'io partii cos&igrave; giunte persone,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Partito porto il mio cerebro, lasso!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Dal suo principio ch '&egrave; 'n questo troncone.<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Cos&igrave; s'osserva in me lo contrappasso.<a name="FNanchor_13_13" id="FNanchor_13_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_13_13" class="fnanchor">[13]</a><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i12">Now behold<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This grievous torment, thou, who breathing goest<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To spy the dead: behold, if any else<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Be terrible as this,&mdash;and that on earth<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thou mayst bear tidings of me, know that I<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Am Bertrand, he of Born, who gave King John<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The counsel mischievous. Father and son<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I set at mutual war:&mdash;&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Spurring them on maliciously to strife.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For parting those so closely knit, my brain<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Parted, alas! I carry from its source<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That in this trunk inhabits. Thus the law<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of retribution fiercely works in me.<a name="FNanchor_14_14" id="FNanchor_14_14"></a><a href="#Footnote_14_14" class="fnanchor">[14]</a><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Pierre Vidal, whose description of love I have quoted before, was one of
+the most extraordinary characters of his time, a kind of poetical Don
+Quixotte:&mdash;his brain was turned with love, poetry, and vanity: he
+believed himself the beloved of all the fair, the mirror of knighthood,
+and the prince of Troubadours. Yet in the midst of all his
+extravagances, he possessed exquisite skill in his art, and was not
+surpassed by any of the poets of those days, for the harmony, delicacy,
+and tenderness of his amatory effusions. He<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span> chose for his first love
+the beautiful wife of the Vicomte de Marseilles: the lady, unlike some
+of the Princesses of her time, distinguished between the poet and the
+man, and as he presumed too far on the encouragement bestowed on him in
+the former capacity, he was banished: he then followed Richard the First
+to the crusade. The verses he addressed to the lady from the Island of
+Cyprus are still preserved. The folly of Vidal, or rather the
+derangement of his imagination, subjected him to some of those
+mystifications which remind us of Don Quixote and Sancho, in the court
+of the laughter-loving Duchess. For instance, Richard and his followers
+amused themselves at Cyprus, by marrying Vidal to a beautiful Greek girl
+of no immaculate reputation, whom they introduced to him as the niece of
+the Greek Emperor. Vidal, in right of his wife, immediately took the
+title of Emperor, assumed the purple, ordered a throne to be carried
+before him, and played the most fantastic antics of authority. Nor was
+this the greatest of his extravagances: on his return to Provence, he
+chose for the second<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span> object of his amorous and poetical devotion, a
+lady whose name happened to be Louve de Penautier: in her honour he
+assumed the name of <i>Loup</i>, and farther to merit the good graces of his
+"<i>Dame</i>," and to do honour to the name he had adopted, he dressed
+himself in the hide of a wolf, and caused himself to be hunted in good
+earnest by a pack of dogs: he was brought back exhausted and half dead
+to the feet of his mistress, who appears to have been more moved to
+merriment than to love by this new and ridiculous exploit.</p>
+
+<p>In general, however, the Troubadours had seldom reason to complain of
+the cruelty of the ladies to whom they devoted their service and their
+songs. The most virtuous and illustrious women thought themselves
+justified in repaying, with smiles and favours, the poetical adoration
+of their lovers; and this lasted until the profession of Troubadour was
+dishonoured by the indiscretions, follies, and vices of those who
+assumed it. Thus Peyrols, a famous Proven&ccedil;al poet, who was distinguished
+in the court of the Dauphin<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span> d'Auvergne, fell passionately in love with
+the sister of that Prince, (the Baronne de Merc&oelig;ur) and the Dauphin,
+(himself a Troubadour) proud of the genius of his minstrel and of the
+poetical devotion paid to his sister, desired her to bestow on her lover
+all the encouragement and favour which was consistent with her dignity.
+The lady, however, either misunderstood her instructions, or found it
+too difficult to obey them: the seducing talents and tender verses of
+this <i>gentil Troubadour</i> prevailed over her dignity:&mdash;Peyrols was
+beloved; but he was not sufficiently discreet. The sudden change in the
+tone and style of his songs betrayed him, and he was banished. A great
+number of his verses, celebrating the Dame de Merc&oelig;ur, are preserved
+by St. Palaye, and translated by Millot.</p>
+
+<p>Bernard de Ventadour was beloved by Elinor de Guienne, afterwards the
+wife of our Henry the Second, and the mother of Richard the First:&mdash;I
+have before observed the poetical penchants of all Elinor's children,
+which they seem to have inherited from their mother.</p>
+
+<p>Sordello of Mantua, whose name is familiar to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span> all the readers of Dante,
+as occurring in one of the finest passages of his great poem,<a name="FNanchor_15_15" id="FNanchor_15_15"></a><a href="#Footnote_15_15" class="fnanchor">[15]</a> was an
+Italian, but like all the best poets of his day, wrote in the Proven&ccedil;al
+tongue: he is said to have carried off the sister of that modern
+Phalaris, the tyrant Ezzelino of Padua. There is a very elegant ballad
+(ballata) by Sordello, translated in Millot's collection; it is properly
+a kind of rondeau, the first line being repeated at the end of every
+stanza; "Helas! &agrave; quoi me servent mes yeux?"&mdash;"Alas! wherefore have I
+eyes?"&mdash;It describes the pleasures of the Spring, which are to him as
+nothing, in the absence of the only object on which his eyes can dwell
+with delight. The arrangement of the rhymes in this pastoral song is
+singularly elegant and musical.</p>
+
+<p>Lastly, as illustrating the history of the amatory poetry of this age, I
+extract from Nostradamus<a name="FNanchor_16_16" id="FNanchor_16_16"></a><a href="#Footnote_16_16" class="fnanchor">[16]</a> the story of the young Countess de Die; she
+loved and was beloved by the Chevalier d'Adh&egrave;mar: (ancestor I presume to
+that Chevalier<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span> d'Adh&egrave;mar who figures in the letters of Madame de
+Sevign&eacute;.) It was not in this case the lover who celebrated the charms of
+his mistress, but the lady, who, being an illustrious female Troubadour,
+"docte en po&euml;sie," celebrated the exploits and magnanimity of her lover.
+The Chevalier, proud of such a distinction, caused the verses of his
+mistress to be beautifully copied, and always carried them in his bosom;
+and whenever he was in the company of knights and ladies, he enchanted
+them by singing a couplet in his own praise out of his lady's book. The
+publicity thus given to their love, was quite in the spirit of the
+times, and does not appear to have injured the reputation of the
+Countess for immaculate virtue,<a name="FNanchor_17_17" id="FNanchor_17_17"></a><a href="#Footnote_17_17" class="fnanchor">[17]</a> which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span> Adh&egrave;mar would probably have
+defended with lance and spear, against any slanderous tongue which had
+dared to defame her.</p>
+
+<p>The conclusion of this romantic story is melancholy. Adh&egrave;mar heard a
+false report, that the Countess, whose purity and constancy he had so
+proudly maintained, had cast away her smiles on a rival: he fell sick
+with grief and bitterness of heart: the Countess, being informed of his
+state, set out, accompanied by her <i>mother</i>, and a long train of knights
+and ladies, to visit and comfort him with assurances of her fidelity;
+but when she appeared at his bed-side, and drew the curtain, it was
+already too late: Adh&egrave;mar expired in her arms. The Countess took the
+veil in the convent of St. Honor&eacute;, and died the same year <i>of grief</i>,
+says the chronicle;&mdash;and to conclude the tragedy characteristically, the
+mother of the young Countess buried her in the same grave with her
+lover, and raised a superb monument to the memory of both. The Countess
+de Die was one of the ten ladies who formed the <i>Court of Love</i>, held at
+Pierrefeu, (about 1194) and in which Estifanie de Baux presided.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>These Courts of Love, and the scenes they gave rise to, were certainly
+open to ridicule; the "belles et subtiles questions d'amour" which were
+there solemnly discussed, and decided by ladies of rank, were often
+absurd, and the decisions something worse: still the fanciful influence
+they gave to women on these subjects, and the gallantry they introduced
+into the intercourse between the sexes, had a tendency to soften the
+manners, to refine the language, and to tinge the sentiments and
+passions with a kind of philosophical mysticism. But these gay and
+gallant Courts of Love, the Proven&ccedil;al Troubadours, their lays, which for
+two centuries had been the delight of all ranks of people, and had
+spread music, love, and poetry through the land;&mdash;their language, which
+had been the chosen dialect of gallantry in every court of Europe,&mdash;were
+at once swept from the earth.</p>
+
+<p>The glory of the Proven&ccedil;al literature began when Provence was raised to
+an independent Fief, under Count Berenger I. about the year 1100; it
+lasted two entire centuries, and ended when<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span> that fine and fertile
+country became the scene of the horrible crusade against the Albigenses;
+when the Inquisition sent forth its exterminating fiends to scatter
+horror and devastation through the land, and the wars and rapacity of
+Charles of Anjou, its new possessor, almost depopulated the country. The
+language which had once celebrated deeds of love and heroism, now sang
+only of desolation and despair. The Troubadours, in a strain worthy of
+their gentle and noble calling, generally advocated the part of the
+Albigenses, and the oppressed of whatever faith; and in many provinces,
+in Lombardy especially, their language was interdicted, lest it might
+introduce heretical or rebellious principles; gradually it fell into
+disuse, and at length into total oblivion. The Troubadours, no longer
+welcomed in castle or in hall, where once</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">They poured to lords and ladies gay,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The unpremeditated lay,<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>were degraded to wandering minstrels and itinerant jugglers. An attempt
+was made, about a century later, (1324) by the institution of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span>
+Floral Games at Thoulouse, to keep alive this high strain of poetical
+gallantry. They were formerly celebrated with great splendour, and a
+shadow of this institution is, I believe, still kept up, but it has
+degenerated into a mere school of affectation. The original race of the
+Troubadours was extinct long before Clemence d'Isaure and her golden
+violet were thought of.</p>
+
+<p>I cannot quit the subject of the Troubadours without one or two
+concluding observations. To these rude bards we owe some new notions of
+poetical justice, which never seem to have occurred to Horace or
+Longinus, and are certainly more magnanimous, as well as more true to
+moral feeling, than those which prevailed among the polished Greeks and
+Romans. For instance, the generous Hector and the constant Troilus are
+invariably exalted above the subtle Ulysses and the savage Achilles.
+Theseus, Jason, and &AElig;neas, instead of being represented as classical
+heroes and pious favourites of the gods, are denounced as recreant
+knights and false traitors to love and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span> beauty. In the estimation of
+these chivalrous bards, a woman's tears outweighed the exploits of
+demi-gods; all the glory of Theseus is forgotten in sympathy for
+Ariadne; and &AElig;neas, in the old ballads and romances, is not, after all
+his perfidy, dismissed to happiness and victory, but is plagued by the
+fiends, haunted by poor Dido's "grimly ghost," and, finally, doomed to
+perish miserably.<a name="FNanchor_18_18" id="FNanchor_18_18"></a><a href="#Footnote_18_18" class="fnanchor">[18]</a> Nor does Jason fare better at their hands; in all
+the old poets he is consigned to just execration. In Dante, we have a
+magnificent and a terrible picture of him, doomed to one of the lowest
+circles of hell, amid a herd of vile seducers, who betrayed the trusting
+faith, or bartered the charms of women. Demons scourge him up and down,
+without mercy or respite, in vengeance for the wrongs of Hypsipyle and
+Medea.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Guarda quel grande che viene<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">E per dolor, non par lagrima spanda;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Quanto aspetto reale ancor ritiene!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Quelli &egrave; Giasone&mdash;<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">&mdash;Con segni e con parole ornate<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Isifile inganno&mdash;&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Tal colpa a tal martiro lui condanna,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Ed anche di <span class="smcap">Medea</span> si fa vendetta.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20"><span class="smcap">Inferno</span>, C. 18.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Behold that lofty shade, who this way tends,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And seems too woe-begone to drop a tear;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">How yet the regal aspect he retains!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'Tis Jason&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&mdash;He who with tokens and fair witching words<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hypsipyle beguil'd&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Such is the guilt condemns him to this pain;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Here too Medea's injuries are aveng'd!"&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20"><span class="smcap">Carey.</span><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And Chaucer, in relating the same story, begins with a burst of generous
+indignation:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Thou root<a name="FNanchor_19_19" id="FNanchor_19_19"></a><a href="#Footnote_19_19" class="fnanchor">[19]</a> of false lovers, Duke Jason,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thou slayer, devourer, and confusion<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of gentil women, gentil creatures!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The story of his double perfidy is told and commented on in the same
+chivalrous feeling: and the old poet concludes with characteristic
+tenderness and simplicity&mdash;</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span></p>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">This was the mede of loving, and guerdon<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That Medea received of Duke Jason,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Right for her truth and for her kindnesse,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That loved him better than herself I guesse!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And lefte her father and her heritage:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And of Jason this is the vassalage<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That in his dayes was never none yfound<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So false a lover going on the ground.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>It is in the same beautiful spirit of reverence to the best virtues of
+our sex, that Alcestis, the wife of Admetus, who sacrificed her life to
+prolong that of her husband, is honoured above all other heroines of
+classical story. She has even been elevated into a kind of presiding
+divinity,&mdash;a second Venus, with nobler attributes,&mdash;and in her new
+existence is feigned to be the consort and companion of Love himself.</p>
+
+<p>Another peculiarity of the poetry of the middle ages, was the worship
+paid to the daisy, (la Marguerite) as symbolical of all that is lovely
+in women. Why so lowly a flower should take precedence of the queenly
+lily and the sumptuous rose, is not very clear; but it seems to have
+originated<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span> with one of the old Proven&ccedil;al poets, whose mistress bore the
+name of Marguerite; and afterwards it became a fashion and a kind of
+poetical mythology.<a name="FNanchor_20_20" id="FNanchor_20_20"></a><a href="#Footnote_20_20" class="fnanchor">[20]</a></p>
+
+<p>Thus in the "Flower and the Leafe" of Chaucer, the ladies and knights of
+the flower approach singing a chorus in honour of the Daisy, of which
+the burthen is, "si douce est la Marguerite."</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_12_12" id="Footnote_12_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_12_12"><span class="label">[12]</span></a> Le Roi lui demande, "S'il a perdu raison?" il lui r&eacute;pond,
+"Helas, oui! c'est depuis la mort du Prince Henri, votre fils!"</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_13_13" id="Footnote_13_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_13_13"><span class="label">[13]</span></a> Inferno, c. xxviii.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_14_14" id="Footnote_14_14"></a><a href="#FNanchor_14_14"><span class="label">[14]</span></a> Carey's translation of Dante. Mr. Carey reads Re Giovanni,
+instead of Re giovane:&mdash;King John, instead of Prince Henry.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_15_15" id="Footnote_15_15"></a><a href="#FNanchor_15_15"><span class="label">[15]</span></a> Purgatorio, c. vi.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_16_16" id="Footnote_16_16"></a><a href="#FNanchor_16_16"><span class="label">[16]</span></a> Vies des plus c&eacute;l&egrave;bres po&euml;tes Proven&ccedil;aux.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_17_17" id="Footnote_17_17"></a><a href="#FNanchor_17_17"><span class="label">[17]</span></a> Agnes de Navarre, Comtesse de Foix, was beloved by
+Guillaume de Machaut, a French poet; he became jealous, and she sent her
+own confessor to him to complain of the injustice of his suspicions, and
+to swear that she was still faithful to him. She required, also, of her
+lover, to write and to publish in verse the history of their love; and
+she preserved, at the same time, in the eyes of her husband and of the
+world, the character of a virtuous Princess.&mdash;<i>See Foscolo</i>&mdash;<i>Essays on
+Petrarch.</i></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_18_18" id="Footnote_18_18"></a><a href="#FNanchor_18_18"><span class="label">[18]</span></a> Percy's Reliques.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_19_19" id="Footnote_19_19"></a><a href="#FNanchor_19_19"><span class="label">[19]</span></a> <i>Root</i>, i. e. example or beginner.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_20_20" id="Footnote_20_20"></a><a href="#FNanchor_20_20"><span class="label">[20]</span></a> See the notes to Chaucer, the works of Froissart, and
+M&eacute;moires sur les Troubadours.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER V.</h2>
+
+<h3>GUIDO CAVALCANTI AND MANDETTA,</h3>
+
+<h3>CINO DA PISTOJA AND SELVAGGIA.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Amatory poetry was transmitted from the Proven&ccedil;als to the Italians and
+Sicilians, among whom the language of the Troubadours had long been
+cultivated, and their songs imitated, but in style yet more affected and
+<i>recherch&eacute;</i>. Few of the Italian poets who preceded Dante, are
+interesting even in a mere literary point of view: of these only one or
+two have shed a reflected splendour round the object of their adoration.
+Guido Cavalcanti, the Florentine, was the early and favourite friend of
+Dante: being engaged in the factions of his native city, he was forced
+on some emergency to quit it; and to escape the vengeance of the
+prevailing party, he undertook<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span> a pilgrimage to Sant Jago. Passing
+through Tolosa, he fell in love with a beautiful Spanish girl, whom he
+has celebrated under the name of <i>Mandetta</i>:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">In un boschetto trovai pastorella<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Pi&ugrave; che la stella bella al mio parere,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Capegli avea biondetti e ricciutelli.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Some of his songs and ballads have considerable grace and nature; but
+they were considered by himself as mere trifles. His grand work on which
+his fame long rested, is a "Canzone sopra l'Amore," in which the subject
+is so profoundly and so philosophically treated, that seven voluminous
+commentaries in Latin and Italian have not yet enabled the world to
+understand it.</p>
+
+<p>The following Sonnet is deservedly celebrated for the consummate beauty
+of the picture it resents, and will give a fair idea of the platonic
+extravagance of the time.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Chi &egrave; questa che vien ch' ogni uom la mira!<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Che fa tremar di caritate l' a're?<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">E mena seco amor, s&igrave; che parlare<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Null' uom ne puote; ma ciascun sospira?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ahi dio! che sembra quando gli occhi gira!<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Dicalo Amor, ch'io nol saprei contare;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Cotanto d' umilt&agrave; donna mi pare<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Che ciascun' altra inver di lei chiam' ira.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Non si porria contar la sua piacenza;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Che a lei s'inchina ogni gentil virtute,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">E la beltate per sua Dea la mostra.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Non &egrave; si alta gi&agrave; la mente nostra<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">E non s'&egrave; posta in noi tanta salute<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Che propriamente n' abbian conoscenza!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<h4>LITERAL TRANSLATION.</h4>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Who is this, on whom all men gaze as she approacheth!&mdash;who
+causeth the very air to tremble around her with
+tenderness?&mdash;who leadeth Love by her side&mdash;in whose presence
+men are dumb; and can only sigh? Ah! Heaven! what power in
+every glance of those eyes! Love alone can tell; for I have
+neither words nor skill! She alone is the Lady of
+gentleness&mdash;beside her, all others seem ungracious and
+unkind. Who can describe her sweetness, her loveliness? to
+her every virtue bows, and beauty points to her as her own
+divinity. The mind of man cannot soar so high, nor is it
+sufficiently purified by divine grace to understand and
+appreciate all her perfections!"</p></div>
+
+<p>The vagueness of this portrait is a part of its beauty:&mdash;it is like a
+lovely dream&mdash;and probably never had any existence, but in the fancy of
+the Poet.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Cino da Pistoia enjoyed the double reputation of being the greatest
+doctor and teacher of the civil law, and most famous poet of his time.
+He was also remarkable for his personal accomplishments and his love of
+pleasure. There is a sonnet which Dante addressed to Cino, reproaching
+him with being inconstant and volatile in love.<a name="FNanchor_21_21" id="FNanchor_21_21"></a><a href="#Footnote_21_21" class="fnanchor">[21]</a> Apparently, this was
+after the death of the beautiful Ricciarda dei Selvaggi; or, as he calls
+her, his Selvaggia: she was of a noble family of Pistoia, her father
+having been gonfaliere, and leader of the faction of the Bianchi; and
+she was also celebrated for her poetical talents. It appears from a
+little madrigal of hers, which has been preserved, that though she
+tenderly returned the affection of her lover, it was without the
+knowledge of her haughty family. It is not distinguished for poetic
+power, but has at least the charm of perfect frankness and simplicity,
+and a kind of <i>abandon</i> that is quite bewitching.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span></p>
+
+<h4>A MESSER CINO DA PISTOJA.</h4>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Gentil mio sir, lo parlare amoroso<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Di voi s&igrave; in allegranza mi mantene,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Che dirvel non poria, ben lo sacciate;<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Perch&egrave; del mio amor sete giojoso,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Di ci&ograve; grand' allegria e gio' mi vene,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Ed altro mai non haggio in volontate,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Fuor del vostro piacere;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Tutt' hora fate la vostra voglienza:<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Haggiate previdenza<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Voi, di celar la nostra desienza.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"My gentle love and lord! those tender words<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of thine so fill my conscious heart with joy,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&mdash;I cannot speak it&mdash;but thou know'st it well;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Wherefore do thou rejoice in that deep love<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I bear thee, knowing that I have no thought<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But to fulfil thy will and crown thy wish:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&mdash;Watch thou&mdash;and hide our mutual hope from all!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Meantime the parents of Ricciarda were exiled from Pistoia, by the
+faction of the Neri. They took refuge from their enemies in a little
+fortress among the Appenines, whither Cino followed them, and was
+received as a comforter amid their distresses. Probably the days passed
+in this dreary abode, among the wild and solitary hills,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span> when he
+assisted Ricciarda in her household duties, and in aiding and consoling
+her parents, were among the happiest of his life; but the winter came,
+and with it many privations and many hardships. Their mountain retreat
+was ill calculated to defend them against the fury of the elements:
+Ricciarda drooped under the pressure of misery and want, and her parents
+and her lover watched the gradual extinction of life&mdash;saw the rose-hue
+fade from her cheek, and the light from her eye, till she melted from
+their arms into death; then they buried her with tears, in a nook among
+the mountains.</p>
+
+<p>Many years afterwards, when Cino had reached the height of his fame, and
+had been crowned with wealth and honours by his native city, he had
+occasion to cross the Appenines on an embassy, and causing his suite to
+travel by another road, he made a pilgrimage alone to the tomb of his
+lost Selvaggia. This incident gave rise to the most striking of all his
+compositions, which with great pathos and sweetness describes his
+feelings, when he flung himself down on her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span> humble grave, to weep over
+the recollection of their past happiness:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Io fu' in sull'alto e in sul beato monte,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Ove adorai baciando il santo sasso,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">E caddi in su quella pietra, oim&egrave; lasso!<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Ove l' onest&agrave; pose la sua fronte;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">E ch' ella chiuse d' ogni virt&ugrave; il fonte<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Quel giorno che di morte acerbo passo<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Fece la donna dello mio cor,&mdash;lasso!&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Gi&agrave; piena tutta d' adornezze conte.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Quivi chiamai a questa guisa Amore:<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">"Dolce mio Dio, fa che quinci mi traggia<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">La morte a se, che qui giace il mio cor!"<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ma poi che non m'intese il mio signore,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Mi disparti, pur chiamando, Selvaggia!<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">L'alpe passai, con voce di dolore.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The circumstance in the last stanza, "I rose up and went on my way, and
+passed the mountain summits, crying aloud 'Selvaggia!' in accents of
+despair," has a strong reality about it, and no doubt <i>was</i> real. Her
+death took place about 1316.</p>
+
+<p>In the history of Italian poetry, Selvaggia is distinguished as the
+"<i>bel numer' una</i>,"&mdash;"the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span> fair number one"&mdash;of the four celebrated
+women of that century&mdash;The others were Dante's Beatrice, Petrarch's
+Laura, and Boccaccio's Fiammetta.</p>
+
+<p>Every one who reads and admires Petrarch, will remember his beautiful
+Sonnet on the Death of Cino, beginning "Piangete Donne"</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Perch&egrave; 'l nostro amoroso messer Cino<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Novellamente s'&egrave; da noi partito.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>In the venerable Cathedral at Pistoia, there is an ancient half-effaced
+bas-relief, representing Cino, surrounded by his disciples, to whom he
+is explaining the code of civil law: a little behind stands the figure
+of a female veiled, and in a pensive attitude, which is supposed to
+represent Ricciarda de' Selvaggi.</p>
+
+<p>All these are alluded to by Petrarch in the Trionfo d'Amore.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i16">Ecco Selvaggia,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ecco Cin da Pistoja; Guitton d'Arezzo;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ecco i due Guidi che gi&agrave; furo in prezzo.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The two Guidi are, Guido Guizzinello, and Guido Cavalcanti. Guitone was
+a famous monk,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span> who is said to have invented the present form of the
+sonnet: to him also is attributed the discovery of counterpoint, and the
+present system of musical notation.</p>
+
+<p>Of Conti's mistress nothing is known, but that she had the most
+beautiful hand in the world, whence the volume of poems written by her
+lover in her praise, is entitled, <i>La Bella Mano</i>, the fair hand. Conti
+lived some years later than Petrarch. I mention him merely to fill up
+the list of those ancient minor poets of Italy, whose names and loves
+are still celebrated.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_21_21" id="Footnote_21_21"></a><a href="#FNanchor_21_21"><span class="label">[21]</span></a>
+</p>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Chi s' innamora, siccome voi fate<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ed ad ogni piacer si lega e scioglie<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Mostra ch'amor leggermente il saetti&mdash;<span class="smcap">son.</span> 44.<br /></span>
+</div></div></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER VI.</h2>
+
+<h3>LAURA.</h3>
+
+
+<p>There are some who doubt the reality of Petrarch's love, because it is
+expressed in numbers; and others, refining on this doubt, profess even
+to question whether his Laura ever existed, except in the imagination
+and the poetry of her lover. The first objection could only be made by
+the most prosaic of commentators&mdash;some true "black-letter dog"<a name="FNanchor_22_22" id="FNanchor_22_22"></a><a href="#Footnote_22_22" class="fnanchor">[22]</a>&mdash;who
+had dustified and mistified his faculties among old parchments. The most
+real and most fervent passion that ever fell under my own knowledge, was
+revealed in verse, and very exquisite verse too, and has inspired many
+an effusion, full of beauty, fancy,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span> and poetry; but it has not,
+therefore, been counted less sincere; and Heaven forbid it should prove
+less lasting than if it had been told in the homeliest prose, and had
+never inspired one beautiful idea or one rapturous verse!</p>
+
+<p>To study Petrarch in his own works, and in his own delightful language;
+to follow him line by line, through all the vicissitudes and
+contradictions of passion; to listen to his self-reproaches, his
+terrors, his regrets, his conflicts; to dwell on his exquisite
+delineations of individual character and peculiar beauty, his simple
+touches of profound pathos and melancholy tenderness:&mdash;and then believe
+all to be mere invention,&mdash;the coinage of the brain,&mdash;a tissue of
+visionary fancies, in which the heart had no share; to confound him with
+the cold metaphysical rhymesters of a later age,&mdash;seems to argue not
+only a strange want of judgment, but an extraordinary obtuseness of
+feeling.<a name="FNanchor_23_23" id="FNanchor_23_23"></a><a href="#Footnote_23_23" class="fnanchor">[23]</a></p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span></p>
+<p>The faults of taste of which Petrarch has been accused over and over
+again, by those who seem to have studied him as Voltaire studied
+Shakspeare,&mdash;his <i>concetti</i>&mdash;his fanciful adoration of the laurel, as
+the emblem of Laura&mdash;his playing on the words <i>Laura</i>, <i>L'aura</i>, and
+<i>Lauro</i>, his <i>freezing flames</i> and <i>burning ice</i>,&mdash;I abandon to critics,
+and let them make the best of them, as defects in what were else
+perfection.</p>
+
+<p>These were the fashion of the day: a great genius may outrun his times,
+but not without bearing about him some ineffaceable impressions of the
+manners and character of the age in which he lived. He is too witty&mdash;"Il
+a trop d'esprit," to be sincere, say the critics,&mdash;"he has a conceit
+left him in his misery,&mdash;a miserable conceit;" but we<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span> know&mdash;at least
+<i>I</i> know&mdash;how in the very extremity of passion the soul can mock at
+itself&mdash;how the fancy can with a bitter and exaggerated gaiety sport
+with the heart!&mdash;These are faults of composition in the writer, and
+admitted to be such; but they prove nothing against the man, the poet,
+or the lover. The reproach of monotony, I confess I never could
+understand. It is rather matter of astonishment, how in a collection of
+nearly four hundred poems, all, with one or two exceptions, turning upon
+the same subject and sentiment, the poet has poured forth such an
+endless and redundant variety both of thought and feeling&mdash;how from the
+wide universe, the changeful face of all beautiful nature, the treasures
+of antique learning, and, above all, from his own overflowing heart, he
+has drawn those lovely pictures, allusions, situations, sentiments and
+reflections, which have, indeed, been stolen, borrowed, imitated, worn
+threadbare by succeeding poets, but in him were the fresh and
+spontaneous effusions of profound feeling and luxuriant fancy. Schlegel
+very justly observes, that the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span> impression of monotony may arise from
+our considering at one view, and bound up in one volume, a long series
+of poems, which were written in the course of many years, at different
+times, and on different occasions. Laura herself, he avers, would
+certainly have been <i>ennuy&eacute;e</i> to death with her own praises, if she had
+been obliged to read over, at one sitting, all the verses which her
+lover composed on her charms; and I agree with him.</p>
+
+<p>It appears to me that the very impression of Petrarch's individual
+character, and the circumstances of his life, on the whole mass of his
+poetry, are evidence of the truth of his attachment, and the reality of
+its object. He was by nature a poet; his love was, therefore, poetical:
+he loved "in numbers, for the numbers came." He was an accomplished
+scholar in a pedantic age,&mdash;and his love is, therefore, illustrated by
+such comparisons and turns of thought as were allied to his habitual
+studies. He had a fertile and playful fancy, and his love is adorned by
+all the luxuriance of his imagination. He had been educated for the
+profession<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span> of the Civil Law, "per vender parole anzi mensogne,"&mdash;to
+sell words and lies, as he disdainfully expressed it,&mdash;and his love is
+mixed up with subtile reasonings on his own hapless state. He was a
+philosopher, and it is tinged with the mystic reveries of Platonism, the
+favourite and fashionable philosophy of the age. He was deeply
+religious, and the strain of devotional and moral feeling which mingles
+with that of passion, or of grief,&mdash;his fears lest the excess of his
+earthly affections should interfere with his eternal salvation,&mdash;his
+continual allusions to his faith, to a future existence, and the
+nothingness and vanity of the world,&mdash;are not so many proofs of his
+profaneness, but of his sincerity. He was suspicious, irritable, and
+susceptible; subject to quick transitions of feeling; raised by a word
+to hope&mdash;plunged by a glance into despair; just such a finely-toned
+instrument as a woman loves to play on;&mdash;and all this we have set forth
+in the contradictions, the self-reproaches, the little daily
+vicissitudes which are events and revolutions in a life of passion; a
+life, which when<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span> exhibited in the rich and softening tints of poetry,
+has all the power of strong interest, united to the charm of harmony and
+expression; but in the reality, and in plain prose, cannot be
+contemplated without a painful compassion. "The day may perhaps come,"
+says Petrarch in one of his familiar letters,<a name="FNanchor_24_24" id="FNanchor_24_24"></a><a href="#Footnote_24_24" class="fnanchor">[24]</a> "when I shall have
+calmness enough to contemplate all the misery of my soul, to examine my
+passion, not however, that I may continue to love her&mdash;but that I may
+love thee alone, O my God! But at this day, how many obstacles have I
+yet to surmount, how many efforts have I yet to make! I no longer love
+as I did love, but still I love; I love in spite of myself&mdash;in
+lamentations and in tears. I will hate her&mdash;No!&mdash;I must still love her!"
+Seven years afterwards he writes,&mdash;"my love is extreme, but it is
+exclusive and virtuous&mdash;virtuous!&mdash;no!&mdash;this disquietude, these
+suspicions, these transports, this watchfulness, this utter weariness of
+every thing, are not signs of a virtuous love!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span> What a picture of an
+impassioned and distracted heart!</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>And who was this Laura, the illustrious object of a passion which has
+filled the wide universe from side to side with her name and fame? What
+was her station, her birth, her lineage? What were her transcendant
+qualities of person, heart, and mind, that she should have swayed, with
+such despotic and distracting power, one of the sovereign spirits of the
+age? Is it not enough that we acknowledge her to have been Petrarch's
+love&mdash;as chaste as fair?</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And whether coldness, pride, or virtue, dignify<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A woman, so she is good, what does it signify?<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>In the present case, it signifies much:&mdash;we are not to be put off with a
+witty or satirical couplet:&mdash;the insatiable curiosity which Laura has
+excited from age to age&mdash;the volumes which have been written on the
+subject&mdash;are a proof of the sincerity of her lover; for nothing but
+truth could ever inspire this lasting and universal interest.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span> But
+without diving into these dry disputations, let us take Laura's portrait
+from Petrarch himself, drawn, it will be said, by the partial hand of a
+poetic lover:&mdash;true; but since Laura is interesting to us from the
+charms she possessed in his eyes, it were unfair to seek her portraiture
+elsewhere.</p>
+
+<p>Laura was of high birth and station, though her life was spent in
+retirement and domestic cares;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">In nobil sangue, vita umile e quete.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Her father, Audibert de Noves, was of the <i>haute noblesse</i> of Avignon,
+and died in her infancy, leaving her a dowry of 1000 gold crowns, (about
+10,000 pounds)&mdash;a magnificent portion for those times. She was married
+at the age of eighteen to Hugh de Sade, a man of rank equal to her own,
+and of corresponding age, but not distinguished by any advantages either
+of person or mind. The marriage contract is dated in January, 1325, two
+years before her first meeting with Petrarch: and in it, her mother, the
+Lady Ermessende, and brother John de Noves, stipulate to pay the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span> dower
+left by her father; and also to bestow on the bride two magnificent
+dresses for state occasions; one of green, embroidered with violets; the
+other of crimson, trimmed with feathers. In all the portraits of Laura
+now extant, she is represented in one of these two dresses, and they are
+frequently alluded to by Petrarch. He tells us expressly, that when he
+first met her at matins in the Church of St. Claire, she was habited in
+a robe of green, spotted with violets.<a name="FNanchor_25_25" id="FNanchor_25_25"></a><a href="#Footnote_25_25" class="fnanchor">[25]</a> Mention is also made of a
+coronal of silver, with which she wreathed her hair; of her necklaces
+and ornaments of pearl. Diamonds are not once alluded to, because the
+art of cutting them had not then been invented. From all which, it
+appears that Laura was opulent, and moved in the first class of society.
+It was customary for the women of rank, in those times, to dress with
+extreme simplicity on ordinary occasions, but with the most gorgeous
+splendour when they appeared in public. There are some beautiful
+descriptions of Laura surrounded by her young female companions,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span>
+divested of all her splendid apparel, in a simple white robe and a few
+flowers in her hair; but still pre-eminent over all by her superior
+loveliness. From the frequent allusions to her dress, and Petrarch's
+angry apostrophes to her mirror, because it assisted to heighten charms
+already too destructive,<a name="FNanchor_26_26" id="FNanchor_26_26"></a><a href="#Footnote_26_26" class="fnanchor">[26]</a> we may infer that Laura was not unmindful
+of the cares of the toilette.</p>
+
+<p>She was in person a fair Madonna-like beauty with soft dark eyes, and a
+profusion of pale golden hair parted on her brow, and falling in rich
+curls over her neck. He dwells on the celestial grace of her figure and
+movements, "l' andar celeste."</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Non era l' andar suo cosa mortale<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ma d' angelica forma.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>He describes the beauty of her hand in the 166th sonnet,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">O bella man che mi distringi il core.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And the loveliness of her mouth,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">La bella bocca angelica.<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span></div></div>
+
+<p>The general character of her beauty must have been pensive, soft,
+unobtrusive, and even somewhat languid:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">L' angelica sembianza umile e piana&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">L' atto mansueto, umile e tardo&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>the last line is exquisitely characteristic. This extreme softness and
+repose must have been far removed from insipidity; for he dwells also on
+the rare and varying expression of her loveliness, "Leggiadria singolare
+e pellegrina;"&mdash;the lightning of her smile, "Il lampeggiar dell'
+angelico riso;"&mdash;and the tender magic of her voice, which was felt in
+the inmost heart, "Il cantar che nell' anima si sente." She had a habit
+of veiling her eyes with her hand, and her looks were generally bent on
+the earth, "o per umiltade o per orgoglio." In the portrait of Laura,
+which I saw at the Laurentian Library at Florence, the eyes have this
+characteristic downcast look. Her lover complains also of a veil, which
+she was fond of wearing. Wandering in the country, one summer's day, he
+sees a young peasant-girl washing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span> a veil in the running stream; he
+recognises the very texture which had so often intervened between him
+and the heaven of Laura's beauty, and he trembles as if he had been in
+the presence of Laura herself. This little incident is the subject of
+the first Madrigal.</p>
+
+<p>He describes her dignified humility, "l' umilt&agrave; superba;"&mdash;her beautiful
+silence, "il bel tacere;"&mdash;her frequent sighs, "i sospir soavemente
+rotti;"&mdash;her sweet disdain and gentle repulses, "dolci sdegni, placide
+repulse;"&mdash;the gesture which spoke without the aid of words, "l'atto che
+parla con silenzio." The picture, it must be confessed, is most
+finished, most delicate, most beautiful;&mdash;supposing only half to be
+true, it is still beautiful. But far more flattering, and more
+honourable to Laura, is her lover's confession of the influence which
+her charming character possessed over him; for it is certain that we owe
+to Laura's exquisite purity of mind and manners, the polished delicacy
+of the homage addressed to her. Passing over, of course, the
+circumstance of her being a married woman,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span> and therefore not a proper
+object of amorous verse,&mdash;there is not in all the poetry she inspired, a
+line or sentiment which angels might not hear and approve. Petrarch
+represents her as expressing neither surprise nor admiration at the
+self-sacrifice of Lucretia, but only wondering that shame and grief had
+not anticipated the dagger of the Roman matron. He describes her
+conversation, "pien d'intelletti dolci ed alti," and her mind ever
+serene, though her countenance was pensive, "in aspetto pensoso, anima
+lieta." He tells us that she had raised him above all low-thoughted
+cares, and purified his heart from all base desires. "I bless the place,
+the time, the hour, when I presumed to lift my eyes upon her,&mdash;I say, O
+my soul, thankful shouldst thou be that hast been deemed worthy of such
+high honour&mdash;for from her spring those gentle thoughts which shall lead
+thee to aspire to the highest good, and to disdain all that the vulgar
+mind desires."</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I' benedico il loco e 'l tempo e l'ora<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Che si alti miraron gli occhi mici;<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span>
+<span class="i0">E dico: anima, assai ringraziar dei<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Che fosti a tanto onor degnata allora.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">....*....*....*....*<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Da lei ti vien l' amoroso pensiero<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Che, mentre 'l segui all' Sommo ben t'invia<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Poco prezzando quel ch' ogni uom desia.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Every generous feeling, every noble and elevated sentiment, every desire
+for improvement, he refers to her, and to her only:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i14">S' alcun bel frutto<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nasce di me, da voi vien prima il seme.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Io per me son quasi un terreno asciutto<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Colto da voi; e 'l pregio &egrave; vostro in tutto.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20"><span class="smcap">canzone 8.</span><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>He gives us in a single line the very <i>beau id&eacute;al</i> of a female
+character, when he tells us that Laura united the highest intellect with
+the purest heart, "In alto intelletto un puro core." He dwells with
+rapture on her angelic modesty, which excited at once his reverence and
+his despair; but he confesses that he still hopes something from the
+pitying tenderness of her disposition.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span>&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Non &egrave; s&igrave; duro cor, che lagrimando,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Pregando, amando, talor non si smova<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">N&egrave; s&igrave; freddo voler, che non si scalde.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The attachment inspired by such a woman was not likely to be lessened by
+absence, or removed by death itself; and it is certain that the second
+part of the Canzoni&egrave;re of Petrarch, written after the death of Laura, is
+more beautiful than the first part: in a more impassioned style, a
+higher tone of feeling, with far fewer faults, both of taste and style.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>It will be said perhaps that "the picture of such a mind as Petrarch's,
+enslaved and distracted by a dreaming passion, employed even in his
+declining years, in writing and polishing love verses, is a pitiable
+subject of contemplation; that if he had not left us his Canzoni&egrave;re, he
+would probably have performed some other excelling work of genius, which
+would have crowned him with equal or superior glory; and that if he had
+never been the lover of Laura, he would have been no less that
+master-spirit<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span> who gave the leading impulse to the age in which he
+lived, by consecrating his life, his energies, all his splendid talents,
+to the cultivation of philosophy and the fine arts, the extension of
+learning and liberty, and the general improvement of mankind."</p>
+
+<p>I doubt this, and I appeal to Petrarch himself.</p>
+
+<p>I believe there is no version into English of the 48th Canzone. If Lady
+Dacre had executed it&mdash;and in the same spirit as the "Chiare, fresche e
+dolce acque," and the "Italia mia," the reader had been spared my
+abortive prose sketch, which will give as just an idea of the original
+as a hasty penciled outline of one of Titian's or Domenichino's
+masterpieces would give us of all the magic colouring and effect of
+their glorious and half-breathing creations.</p>
+
+<p>In this Canzone, Petrarch, in a high strain of poetic imagery, which
+takes nothing from the truth or pathos of the sentiment, allegorises his
+own situation and feelings: he represents himself as citing the Lord of
+Love, "Suo empio e dolce Signore," before the throne of Reason, and
+accusing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span> him as the cause of all his sufferings, sorrows, errors, and
+misspent time. "Through <i>him</i> (Love) I have endured, even from the
+moment I was first beguiled into his power, such various and such
+exquisite pain, that my patience has at length been exhausted, and I
+have abhorred my existence. I have not only forsaken the path of
+ambition and useful exertion, but even of pleasure and of happiness: I,
+who was born, if I do not deceive myself, for far higher purposes than
+to be a mere amorous slave! Through <i>him</i> I have been careless of my
+duty to Heaven,&mdash;negligent of myself:&mdash;for the sake of one woman I
+forgot all else!&mdash;me miserable! What have availed me all the high and
+precious gifts of Heaven, the talents, the genius which raised me above
+other men? My hairs are changed to grey, but still my heart changeth
+not. Hath he not sent me wandering over the earth in search of repose?
+hath he not driven me from city to city, and through forests, and woods,
+and wild solitudes?<a name="FNanchor_27_27" id="FNanchor_27_27"></a><a href="#Footnote_27_27" class="fnanchor">[27]</a> hath he not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span> deprived me of peace, and of that
+sleep which no herbs nor chaunted spells have power to restore? Through
+him, I have become a bye-word in the world, which I have filled with my
+lamentations, till by their repetition I have wearied myself, and
+perhaps all others."</p>
+
+<p>To this long tirade, Love with indignation replies: "Hearest thou the
+falsehood of this ungrateful man? This is he who in his youth devoted
+himself to the despicable traffic of words and lies, and now he blushes
+not to reproach me with having raised him from obscurity, to know the
+delights of an honourable and virtuous life. I gave him power to attain
+a height of fame and virtue to which of himself he had never dared to
+aspire. If he has obtained a name among men, to me he owes it. Let him
+remember the great heroes and poets of antiquity, whose evil stars
+condemned them to lavish their love upon unworthy objects, whose
+mistresses were courtezans and slaves; while for him, I chose from the
+whole world one lovely woman, so gifted by Heaven with all female
+excellence, that her likeness is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span> not to be found beneath the moon,&mdash;one
+whose melodious voice and gentle accents had power to banish from his
+heart every vain, and dark, and vicious thought. These were the wrongs
+of which he complains: such is my reward for all I have done for
+him,&mdash;ungrateful man! Upon my wings hath he soared upwards, till his
+name is placed among the greatest of the sons of song, and fair ladies
+and gentle knights listen with delight to his strains:&mdash;had it not been
+for me, what had he become before now? Perhaps a vain flatterer, seeking
+preferment in a Court, confounded among the herd of vulgar men! I have
+so chastened, so purified his heart through the heavenly image impressed
+upon it, that even in his youth, and in the age of the passions, I
+preserved him pure in thought and in action;<a name="FNanchor_28_28" id="FNanchor_28_28"></a><a href="#Footnote_28_28" class="fnanchor">[28]</a> whatever of good or
+great ever stirred within his breast, he derives from her and from me.
+From the contemplation of virtue, sweetness, and beauty, in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span> the
+gracious countenance of her he loved, I led him upwards to the adoration
+of the first Great Cause, the fountain of all that is beautiful and
+excellent;&mdash;hath he not himself confessed it? And this fair creature,
+whom I gave him to be the honour, and delight, and prop of his frail
+life"&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Here the sense is suddenly broken off in the middle of a line. Petrarch
+utters a cry of horror, and exclaims&mdash;"Yes, you gave her to me, but you
+have also taken her from me!"</p>
+
+<p>Love replies with sweet austerity&mdash;"Not I&mdash;but <span class="smcap">He</span>&mdash;the eternal One&mdash;who
+hath willed it so!"</p>
+
+<p>After this, it will be allowed, I think, that it is to Laura we owe
+Petrarch; and that if the recompense she bestowed on him was not exactly
+that which he sought,&mdash;yet in fame, in greatness, in virtue, and in
+happiness, she well and richly repaid the adoration he lavished at her
+feet, and the glorious wreath of song with which he has circled her
+brows!</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_22_22" id="Footnote_22_22"></a><a href="#FNanchor_22_22"><span class="label">[22]</span></a> See Pursuits of Literature.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_23_23" id="Footnote_23_23"></a><a href="#FNanchor_23_23"><span class="label">[23]</span></a> In a private letter of Petrarch to the Bishop of Lombes,
+occurs the following passage&mdash;(the Bishop, it appears, had rallied him
+on the subject of his attachment.) "Would to God that my Laura were
+indeed but an imaginary person, and my passion for her but sport!&mdash;Alas!
+it is rather a madness!&mdash;hard would it have been, and painful, to feign
+so long a time&mdash;and what extravagance to play such a farce in the world!
+No! we may counterfeit the action and voice of a sick man, but not the
+paleness and wasted looks of the sufferer; and how often have you
+witnessed both in me!"&mdash;<span class="smcap">Sade</span>, vol. i. p. 281.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_24_24" id="Footnote_24_24"></a><a href="#FNanchor_24_24"><span class="label">[24]</span></a> Quoted by Foscolo.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_25_25" id="Footnote_25_25"></a><a href="#FNanchor_25_25"><span class="label">[25]</span></a> Canz. xv. Son. 10.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_26_26" id="Footnote_26_26"></a><a href="#FNanchor_26_26"><span class="label">[26]</span></a> See Son. 37, 38, &amp;c.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_27_27" id="Footnote_27_27"></a><a href="#FNanchor_27_27"><span class="label">[27]</span></a> Foscolo remarks the restless spirit which all his life
+drove Petrarch, like a perturbed spirit, from one residence to another.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_28_28" id="Footnote_28_28"></a><a href="#FNanchor_28_28"><span class="label">[28]</span></a> Here Petrarch seems to have forgotten himself; he was not
+<i>always</i> immaculate.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER VII.</h2>
+
+<h3>LAURA AND PETRARCH CONTINUED.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Much power of lively ridicule, much coarse wit,&mdash;principally French
+wit,&mdash;has been expended on the subject of Laura's virtue; by those, I
+presume, who under similar circumstances would have found such virtue
+"too painful an endeavour."<a name="FNanchor_29_29" id="FNanchor_29_29"></a><a href="#Footnote_29_29" class="fnanchor">[29]</a> Much depraved ingenuity has been
+exerted<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span> to twist certain lines and passages in the Canzoni&egrave;re into a
+sense which shall blot with frailty the memory of this beautiful and
+far-famed being: once believe these interpretations, and all the
+peculiar and graceful charm which now hangs round her intercourse with
+Petrarch vanishes,&mdash;the reverential delicacy of the poet's homage
+becomes a mockery, and all his exalted praises of her unequalled virtue,
+and her invincible chastity, are turned to satire, and insult our moral
+feeling.</p>
+
+<p>But the question, I believe, is finally set at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span> rest, and it were idle
+to war with epigrams. All the evidence that has been collected, external
+and internal, prose and poetry, critical and traditional, tends to
+prove, first, that Laura preserved her virtue to the last; and,
+secondly, that she did not preserve it unassailed; that Petrarch, true
+to his sex,&mdash;a very man, (as Laura has been called a <i>very woman</i>,) used
+at first every art, every effort, every advantage, which his diversified
+accomplishments of mind and person lent him, to destroy the very virtue
+he adored. He only <i>hints</i> this in his poetry, just sufficiently to
+enhance the glory which he has thrown round his divinity; but he speaks
+more plainly in prose.</p>
+
+<p>"Untouched by my prayers, unvanquished by my arguments, unmoved by my
+flattery, she remained faithful to her sex's honour; she resisted her
+own young heart, and mine, and a thousand, thousand, thousand things,
+which must have conquered any other. She remained unshaken. A woman
+taught me the duty of a man! to persuade me to keep the path of virtue,
+her conduct was at once an example and a reproach;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span> and when she beheld
+me break through all bounds, and rush blindly to the precipice, she had
+the courage to abandon me, rather than follow me."<a name="FNanchor_30_30" id="FNanchor_30_30"></a><a href="#Footnote_30_30" class="fnanchor">[30]</a></p>
+
+<p>But whether, in this long conflict, Laura preserved her heart untouched,
+as well as her virtue immaculate; whether she shared the love she
+inspired; or whether she escaped from the captivating assiduities and
+intoxicating homage of her lover, "<i>fancy-free</i>;"&mdash;whether coldness, or
+prudence, or pride, or virtue, or the mere heartless love of admiration,
+or a mixture of all together, dictated her conduct, is at least as well
+worth inquiry, as the exact colour of her eyes, or the form of her nose,
+upon which we have pages of grave discussion. She might have been
+<i>coquette par instinct</i>, if not <i>par calcul</i>; she might have felt, with
+feminine <i>tacte</i>, that to preserve her influence<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span> over Petrarch, it was
+necessary to preserve his respect. She was evidently proud of her
+conquest: she had else been more or less than woman; and at every
+hazard, but that of self-respect, she was resolved to retain him. If
+Petrarch absented himself for a few days, he was generally better
+treated on his return.<a name="FNanchor_31_31" id="FNanchor_31_31"></a><a href="#Footnote_31_31" class="fnanchor">[31]</a> If he avoided her, then her eye followed him
+with a softer expression. When he looked pale from sickness of heart and
+agitation of spirits, Laura would address him with a few words of
+pitying tenderness. He thanks her in those exquisite lines, which seem
+to glow with all the renovation of hope,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Volgendo gli occhi al mio novo colore<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Che fa di morte rimembrar le gente<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Piet&agrave; vi mosse, onde benignamente<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Salutando teneste in vita il core.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">La frale vita ch'ancor meco alberga,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fu de' begli occhi vostri aperto dono,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">E della voce angelica soave!<a name="FNanchor_32_32" id="FNanchor_32_32"></a><a href="#Footnote_32_32" class="fnanchor">[32]</a><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>He presumes upon this benignity, and is again<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span> dashed back with frowns.
+He flies to solitude,&mdash;solitude!&mdash;Never let the proud and torn heart,
+wrung with the sense of injury, and sick with unrequited passion, seek
+that worst resource against pain, for there grief grows by contemplation
+of itself, and every feeling is sharpened by collision. Petrarch sought
+to "mitigate the fever of his heart" amid the shades of Vaucluse, a spot
+so gloomy and so solitary, that his very servants forsook him; and
+Vaucluse, its fountains, its forests, and its hanging cliffs, reflected
+only the image of Laura.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">L'acque parlan d'amore, e l'aura, e i rami<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">E gli augeletti, e i pesci e i fiori e l'erba;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Tutti insieme pregando ch' io sempr'ami!<a name="FNanchor_33_33" id="FNanchor_33_33"></a><a href="#Footnote_33_33" class="fnanchor">[33]</a><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>He is driven again to her feet by his own insupportable thoughts&mdash;and in
+terror of himself;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Tal paura ho di ritrovarmi solo!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span></p>
+<p>He endeavours to maintain in her presence that self-constraint she had
+enjoined. He assumes a cold and calm deportment, and Laura, as she
+passes him, whispers in a tone of gentle reproach, "Petrarch! are you so
+soon weary of loving me?" (ten or eleven years of adoration were, in
+truth, nothing&mdash;<i>to signify</i>!) At length, he resolved to leave Laura and
+Avignon for ever; and instead of plunging into solitude, to seek the
+wiser resource of travel and society. He announced this intention to
+Laura, and bade her a long farewell; either through surprise, or grief,
+or the fear of losing her glorious captive, she turned exceedingly pale,
+a cloud overspread her beautiful countenance, and she fixed her eyes on
+the ground. This was to her lover an intoxicating moment; in the
+exultation of sudden delight, he interpreted these symptoms of
+relenting, this "vago impallidir," too favourably to himself. "She bent
+those gentle eyes upon the earth, which in their sweet silence said,&mdash;to
+me at least they seemed to say,&mdash;'who takes my faithful friend so far
+from me?'"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Chinava a terra il bel guardo gentile,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">E tacendo dicea, com' a me parve&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">"Chi m'allontana il mio fedele amico?"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>On his return to Avignon, a few months afterwards, Laura received him
+with evident pleasure; but he is not, therefore, more <i>avan&ccedil;&eacute;</i>; all this
+was probably the refined coquetterie of a woman of calm passions; but
+not heartless, not really indifferent to the devotion she inspired, nor
+ungrateful for it.</p>
+
+<p>Petrarch has himself left us a most minute and interesting description
+of the whole course of Laura's conduct towards him, which by a beautiful
+figure of poetry he has placed in her own mouth. The passage occurs in
+the <span class="smcap">Trionfo di Morte</span>, beginning, "La notte che segui l'orribil caso."</p>
+
+<p>The apparition of Laura descending on the morning dew, bright as the
+opening dawn, and crowned with Oriental gems,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Di gemme orientali incoronata,<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>appears before her lover, and addresses him with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span> compassionate
+tenderness. After a short dialogue, full of poetic beauty and noble
+thoughts,<a name="FNanchor_34_34" id="FNanchor_34_34"></a><a href="#Footnote_34_34" class="fnanchor">[34]</a> Petrarch conjures her, in the name of heaven and of truth,
+to tell him whether the pity she sometimes expressed for him was allied
+to love? for that the sweetness she mingled with her disdain and
+reserve&mdash;the soft looks with which she tempered her anger, had left him
+for long years in doubt of her real sentiments, still doating, still
+suspecting, still hoping without end:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Creovvi amor pensier mai nella testa,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">D' aver piet&agrave; del mio lungo martire<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Non lasciando vostr' alta impresa onest&agrave;?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Che vostri dolci sdegni e le dolc' ire&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Le dolci paci ne' begli occhi scritte&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Tenner molt' anni in dubbio il mio desire.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>She replies evasively, with a smile and a sigh,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span> that her heart was ever
+with him, but that to preserve her own fair fame, and the virtue of
+both, it was necessary to assume the guise of severity and disdain. She
+describes the arts with which she kept alive his passion, now checking
+his presumption with the most frigid reserve, and when she saw him
+drooping, as a man ready to die, "all fancy-sick and pale of cheer,"
+gently restoring him with soft looks and kind words:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Salvando la tua vita e'l nostro onore."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>She confesses the delight she felt in being beloved, and the pride she
+took in being sung by so great a poet. She reminds him of one particular
+occasion, when seated by her side, and they were left alone, he sang to
+his lute a song composed to her praise, beginning, "Dir pi&ugrave; non osa il
+nostro amore;" and she asks him whether he did not perceive that the
+veil had then nearly fallen from her heart?<a name="FNanchor_35_35" id="FNanchor_35_35"></a><a href="#Footnote_35_35" class="fnanchor">[35]</a></p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span></p>
+<p>She laments, in some exquisite lines, that she had not the happiness to
+be born in Italy, the native country of her lover, and yet allows that
+the land must needs be fair in which she first won his affection.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Duolmi ancor veramente, ch'io non nacqui<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Almen pi&ugrave; presso al tuo fiorito nido!&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ma assai fu bel p&auml;ese ov'io ti piacqui.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>In another passage we have a sentiment evidently taken from nature, and
+exquisitely graceful and feminine. "You," says Laura, "proclaimed to all
+men the passion you felt for me: you called aloud for pity: you kept not
+the tender secret for me alone, but took a pride and a pleasure in
+publishing it forth to the world; thus constraining me, by all a woman's
+fear and modesty, to be silent."&mdash;"But not less is the pain because we
+conceal it in the depths of the heart, nor the greater because we lament
+aloud: fiction and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span> poetry can add nothing to truth, nor yet take from
+it."</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Tu eri di merc&egrave; chiamar gi&agrave; roco<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Quand'io tacea; perch&egrave; vergogna e tema<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Facean molto desir, parer si poco;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Non &egrave; minor il duol perch' altri 'l prema,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ne maggior per andarsi lamentando:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Per fiz&iuml;on non cresce il ver, n&egrave; scema.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Petrarch, then all trembling and in tears, exclaims, "that could he but
+believe he had been dear to her eyes as to her heart, he were
+sufficiently recompensed for all his sufferings;" and she replies, "that
+will I never reveal!" ('<i>quello mi taccio.</i>') By this coquettish and
+characteristic answer, we are still left in the dark. Such was the
+sacred respect in which Petrarch held her he so loved, that though he
+evidently wishes to believe&mdash;perhaps <i>did</i> believe, that he had touched
+her heart, he would not presume to insinuate what Laura had never
+avowed. The whole scene, though less polished in the versification than
+some of his sonnets, is written throughout with all the flow and fervour
+of real feeling. It received<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span> the poet's last corrections twenty-six
+years after Laura's death, and but a few weeks previous to his own.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>When at Milan, I was taken, as a matter of course, to visit the
+Ambrosian library. At the time I was ill in health, dejected and
+indifferent; and I only remember being led in passive resignation from
+room to room, and called upon to admire a vast variety of objects, at
+the moment when I was pining for rest; when to look, think, speak, or
+move, was pain,&mdash;when to sit motionless and gaze out upon the sunshine,
+seemed to me the only supreme blessedness. In such moments as these, we
+can have sympathies with nature, but not with old books and antiquities.
+I have a most confused recollection both of the locality and the
+contents of this famous collection; but there were two objects which
+roused me from this sullen stupor, and indelibly impressed my
+imagination and my memory; and one of these was the celebrated copy of
+Virgil, which had been the favourite<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span> companion and constant study of
+Petrarch, containing that memorandum of the death of Laura, in his own
+handwriting, which, after much expenditure of paper, and argument, and
+critical abuse, is at length admitted to be genuine. I knew little of
+the controversy this famous inscription had occasioned in Italy,&mdash;though
+I was aware that its authenticity had been disputed: but as a homely
+proverb saith, <i>seeing is believing</i>; to look upon the handwriting with
+my own eyes, would have made assurance double sure, if in that moment I
+needed such assurance. I do not remember reasoning or doubting on the
+subject;&mdash;but gushing up like the waters of an intermitting fountain,
+there was a sudden flow of feeling and memory came over my heart:&mdash;I
+stood for some moments silently contemplating the name of <span class="smcap">Laura</span>, in the
+pale, half-effaced characters traced by the hand of her lover; that name
+with which his genius and his love have filled the earth: confused
+thoughts of the mingling of vanity and glory,&mdash;of the "poco polvere che
+nulla sente," and the immortality of deified beauty, were crowded in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span> my
+mind. When all were gone, I turned back, and gave the guide a small
+gratuity to be allowed to do homage to the name of Laura, by pressing my
+lips upon it. The reader smiles at this sentimental enthusiasm; so would
+I, if time had not taught me to respect, as well as regret, what it has
+taken from me, and never can restore.</p>
+
+<p>The memorandum has often been quoted; but this account of the love of
+Petrarch would not be complete were it omitted here. It runs literally
+thus:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Laura, illustrious by her own virtues, and long celebrated by my
+verses, I beheld for the first time, in my early youth, on the 6th of
+April, 1327, about the first hour of the day, in the church of Saint
+Claire in Avignon: and in the same city, in the same month of April, the
+same day and hour, in the year 1348, this light of my life was withdrawn
+from the world while I was at Verona, ignorant, alas! of what had
+befallen me. The terrible intelligence was conveyed in a letter from
+Louis, and reached<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span> me at Parma the 19th of May, early in the morning.</p>
+
+<p>"Her chaste and beautiful remains were deposited the same day after
+vespers, in the Church of the Fratri Minori (Cordeliers). Her spirit, as
+Seneca said of Scipio Africanus,<a name="FNanchor_36_36" id="FNanchor_36_36"></a><a href="#Footnote_36_36" class="fnanchor">[36]</a> has returned, doubtless, to that
+heaven whence it came.</p>
+
+<p>"To preserve the memory of this afflicting loss, it is with a bitter
+pleasure I record it here, in this book which is ever before my eyes,
+that nothing in this world may hereafter delight me: and that the chief
+tie which bound me to life being broken, I may, by frequently looking on
+these words, and thinking on this transitory existence, be prepared to
+quit this earthly Babylon, which, with the help of the divine grace, and
+the constant and manly recollection of those fruitless desires, and vain
+hopes, and sad vicissitudes<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span> which have so long agitated me, will be an
+easy task."</p>
+
+<p>Laura died of the plague, which then desolated Avignon, and terminated
+the life of the sufferer on the third day. The moment she was seized
+with the fatal symptoms, she dictated her will; and notwithstanding the
+pestilential nature of her disorder, she was surrounded to the last by
+her numerous relations and friends, who braved death rather than forsake
+her.</p>
+
+<p>Her tomb was discovered and opened in 1533, in the presence of Francis
+the First, whose celebrated stanzas on the occasion are well known.</p>
+
+<p>Of the fame, which even in her lifetime, the love and poetical adoration
+of Petrarch had thrown round his Laura, a curious instance is given
+which will characterise the manners of the age. When Charles of
+Luxemburgh (afterwards Emperor) was at Avignon, a grand f&ecirc;te was given,
+in his honour, at which all the noblesse were present. He desired that
+Petrarch's Laura should be pointed out to him; and when she was
+introduced, he made a sign with his hand<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span> that the other ladies present
+should fall back; then going up to Laura, and for a moment contemplating
+her with interest, he kissed her respectfully on the forehead and on the
+eyelids. Petrarch alludes to this incident in the 201st sonnet, the last
+line of which shows that this royal salutation was considered singular.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"M'empia d'invidia l'atto dolce e strano."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Petrarch survived her twenty-six years, dying in 1374. He was found
+lifeless one morning in his study, his hand resting on a book.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The inferences I draw from this rapid sketch are, first, that Laura was
+virtuous, but not insensible;&mdash;for had she been facile, she would not
+have preserved her lover's respect; had she been a heartless trifler,
+she could not have retained his love, nor deserved his undying regrets:
+and secondly, that if Petrarch had not attached himself fervently to
+this beautiful and pure-hearted woman, he would have employed his
+splendid talents like other men of his time.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span> He might then have left us
+theological treatises and Latin epics, which the worms would have eaten;
+he might have risen high in the church or state; have become a bold,
+intriguing priest; a politic archbishop,&mdash;a cardinal,&mdash;a pope;&mdash;most
+worthless and empty titles all, compared with that by which he has
+descended to us, as Petrarch, the poet and the lover of Laura!<a name="FNanchor_37_37" id="FNanchor_37_37"></a><a href="#Footnote_37_37" class="fnanchor">[37]</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_29_29" id="Footnote_29_29"></a><a href="#FNanchor_29_29"><span class="label">[29]</span></a> Madame Deshouli&egrave;res speaks "avec connaissance de fait,"
+and even points out the very spot in which Laura, "de l'amoureux
+Petrarque adoucit le martyre."&mdash;Another French lady, who piqued herself
+on being a descendant of the family of Laura, was extremely affronted
+and scandalised when the Chevalier Ramsay asserted that Petrarch's
+passion was purely poetical and platonic, and regarded it heresy to
+suppose that Laura could have been "<i>ungrateful</i>,"&mdash;such was her idea of
+feminine <i>gratitude</i>!&mdash;(Spence's Anecdotes.) Then comes another French
+woman, with the most anti-poetical soul that God ever placed within the
+form of a woman&mdash;"Le fade personage que votre Petrarque! que sa Laure
+&eacute;tait sotte et precieuse! que la Cour d'Amour &eacute;tait fastidieuse!" &amp;c.
+exclaims the acute, amusing, profligate, heartless Madame du Deffand. It
+must be allowed that Petrarch and Laura would have been extremely
+<i>despla&ccedil;es</i> in the Court of the Regent,&mdash;the only <i>Court of Love</i> with
+which Madame du Deffand was acquainted, and which assuredly was not
+<i>fastidieuse</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_30_30" id="Footnote_30_30"></a><a href="#FNanchor_30_30"><span class="label">[30]</span></a> From the Dialogues with St. Augustin, as quoted in the
+"Pieces Justificatives," and by Ginguen&eacute; (Hist. Litt. vol. iii. notes.)
+These imaginary dialogues are a series of Confessions not intended for
+publication by Petrarch, but now printed with his prose works.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_31_31" id="Footnote_31_31"></a><a href="#FNanchor_31_31"><span class="label">[31]</span></a> Sonnet 39.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_32_32" id="Footnote_32_32"></a><a href="#FNanchor_32_32"><span class="label">[32]</span></a> Ballata 5.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_33_33" id="Footnote_33_33"></a><a href="#FNanchor_33_33"><span class="label">[33]</span></a> Petrarch withdrew to Vaucluse in 1337, and spent three
+years in entire solitude. He commenced his journey to Rome in 1341,
+about fourteen years after his first interview with Laura.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_34_34" id="Footnote_34_34"></a><a href="#FNanchor_34_34"><span class="label">[34]</span></a> Petrarch asks her whether it was "pain to die?" she
+replies in those fine lines which have been quoted a thousand times:
+</p>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">La Morte &egrave; fin d' una prigion oscura<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Agli animi gentili; agli altri &egrave; noia,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ch' hanno posto nel fango ogni lor cura.<br /></span>
+</div></div></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_35_35" id="Footnote_35_35"></a><a href="#FNanchor_35_35"><span class="label">[35]</span></a>
+</p>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ma non si ruppe almen ogni vel quando<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sola i tuoi detti, te presente accolsi<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"<i>Dir pi&ugrave; non osa il nostro amor</i>," cantando.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<p>
+(The song here alluded to is not preserved in Petrarch's works, and the
+expression "<i>il nostro amore</i>," is very remarkable.)</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_36_36" id="Footnote_36_36"></a><a href="#FNanchor_36_36"><span class="label">[36]</span></a> This sounds at first pedantic; but it must be remembered
+that at this very time Petrarch was studying Seneca, and writing a Latin
+poem on the history of Scipio: thus the ideas were fresh in his mind.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_37_37" id="Footnote_37_37"></a><a href="#FNanchor_37_37"><span class="label">[37]</span></a> The hypothesis I have assumed relative to Laura's
+character, her married state, and the authenticity of the MS. note in
+the Virgil, have not been lightly adopted, but from deep conviction and
+patient examination: but this is not the place to set arguments and
+authorities in array&mdash;Ginguen&eacute; and Gibbon against Lord Byron and Fraser
+Tytler. I am surprised at the ground Lord Byron has taken on the
+question. As for his characteristic sneer on the assertion of M. de
+Bastie, who had said truly and beautifully&mdash;"qu'il n'y a que la vertu
+seule qui soit capable de faire des impressions que la mort n'efface
+pas," I disdain, in my feminine character, to reply to it; I will
+therefore borrow the eloquence of a more powerful pen:&mdash;"The love of a
+man like Petrarch, would have been less in character, if it had been
+less ideal. For the purposes of inspiration, a single interview was
+quite sufficient. The smile which sank into his heart the first time he
+ever beheld Laura, played round her lips ever after: the look with which
+her eyes first met his, never passed away. The image of his mistress
+still haunted his mind, and was recalled by every object in nature. Even
+death could not dissolve the fine illusion; for that which exists in the
+imagination is alone imperishable. As our feelings become more ideal,
+the impression of the moment indeed becomes less violent; but the effect
+is more general and permanent. The blow is felt only by reflection; it
+is the rebound that is fatal. We are not here standing up for this kind
+of Platonic attachment, but only endeavouring to explain the way in
+which the passions very commonly operate in minds accustomed to draw
+their strongest interests from constant contemplation."&mdash;<i>Edinburgh
+Review.</i></p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER VIII.</h2>
+
+<h3>ON THE LOVE OF DANTE FOR BEATRICE PORTINARI.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Had I taken chronology into due consideration, Dante ought to have
+preceded Petrarch, having been born some forty years before him,&mdash;but I
+forgot it. "Truth," says Wordsworth, "has her pleasure-grounds,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i14">Her haunts of ease<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And easy contemplation;&mdash;gay parterres<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And labyrinthine walks; her sunny glades<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And shady groves for recreation framed."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And such a haunted pleasure-ground of beautiful recollections, would I
+wish my subject to be to myself and to my readers; where we shall be
+priviledged<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span> to wander at will; to pause or turn back; to deviate to
+this side or to that, as memory may prompt, or imagination lead, or
+illustration require.</p>
+
+<p>Dante and his Beatrice are best exhibited in contrast to Petrarch and
+Laura. Petrarch was in his youth an amiable and accomplished courtier,
+whose ambition was to cultivate the arts, and please the fair. Dante
+early plunged into the factions which distracted his native city, was of
+a stern commanding temper, mingling study with action. Petrarch loved
+with all the vivacity of his temper; he took a pleasure in publishing,
+in exaggerating, in embellishing his passion in the eyes of the world.
+Dante, capable of strong and enthusiastic tenderness, and early
+concentrating all the affections of his heart on one object, sought no
+sympathy; and solemnly tells us of himself,&mdash;in contradistinction to
+those poets of his time who wrote of love from fashion or fancy, not
+from feeling,&mdash;that he wrote as love inspired, and as his heart
+dictated.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i6">"Io mi son un che, quando<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Amore spira, noto, ed in quel modo<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ch'ei detta dentro, vo significando."<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20"><span class="smcap">Purgatorio</span>, c. 24.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>A coquette would have triumphed in such a captive as Petrarch; and in
+truth, Laura seems to have "sounded him from the top to the bottom of
+his compass:"&mdash;a tender and impassioned woman would repose on such a
+heart as Dante's, even as his Beatrice did. Petrarch had a gay and
+captivating exterior; his complexion was fair, with sparkling blue eyes
+and a ready smile. He is very amusing on the subject of his own
+coxcombry, and tells us how cautiously he used to turn the corner of a
+street, lest the wind should disorder the elaborate curls of his fine
+hair! Dante, too, was in his youth eminently handsome, but in a style of
+beauty which was characteristic of his mind: his eyes, were large and
+intensely black, his nose aquiline, his complexion of a dark olive, his
+hair and beard very much curled, his step slow and measured, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span> the
+habitual expression of his countenance grave, with a tinge of melancholy
+abstraction. When Petrarch walked along the streets of Avignon, the
+women smiled, and said, "there goes the lover of Laura!" The impression
+which Dante left on those who beheld him, was far different. In allusion
+to his own personal appearance, he used to relate an incident that once
+occurred to him. When years of persecution and exile had added to the
+natural sternness of his countenance, the deep lines left by grief, and
+the brooding spirit of vengeance, he happened to be at Verona, where
+since the publication of the Inferno, he was well known. Passing one day
+by a portico, where several women were seated, one of them whispered,
+with a look of awe,&mdash;"Do you see that man? that is he who goes down to
+hell whenever he pleases, and brings us back tidings of the sinners
+below!" "Ay, indeed!" replied her companion,&mdash;"very likely; see how his
+face is scarred with fire and brimstone, and blackened with smoke, and
+how his hair and beard have been singed and curled in the flames!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Dante had not, however, this forbidding appearance when he won the young
+heart of Beatrice Portinari. They first met at a banquet given by her
+father, Folco de' Portinari, when Dante was only nine years old, and
+Beatrice a year younger. His childish attachment, as he tells us
+himself, commenced from that hour; it became a passion, which increased
+with his years, and did not perish even with its object.</p>
+
+<p>Beatrice has not fared better at the hands of commentators than Laura.
+Laura, with her golden hair scattered to the winds, "i capei d'oro al
+aura sporsi," her soft smiles, and her angel-like deportment, was to be
+Repentance; and the more majestic Beatrice, in whose eyes dwelt love,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">E spiriti d'amore infiammati,<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>was sublimated into <i>Theology</i>: with how much reason we shall examine.</p>
+
+<p>In one of his canzoni, called il Ritratto, (the Portrait) Dante has left
+us a most minute and finished picture of his Beatrice, "which," says Mr.
+Carey, "might well supply a painter<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span> with a far more exalted idea of
+female beauty, than he could form to himself from the celebrated Ode of
+Anacreon, on a similar subject." From this canzone and some lines
+scattered through his sonnets, I shall sketch the person and character
+of Beatrice. She was not in form like the slender, fragile-looking
+Laura, but on a larger scale of loveliness, tall and of a commanding
+figure;<a name="FNanchor_38_38" id="FNanchor_38_38"></a><a href="#Footnote_38_38" class="fnanchor">[38]</a>&mdash;graceful in her gait as a peacock, upright as a crane,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Soava a guisa va di un bel pavone,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Diritta sopra se, come una grua.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Her hair was fair and curling,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Capegli crespi e biondi,"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>but not <i>golden</i>,&mdash;an epithet I do not find once applied to it: she had
+an ample forehead, "spaciosa fronte," a mouth that when it smiled
+surpassed all things in sweetness; so that her Poet would give the
+universe to hear it pronounce a kind "yes."</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Mira che quando ride<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Passa ben di dolcezza ogni altra cosa.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Cos&igrave; di quella bocca il pensier mio<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Mi sprona, perch&egrave; io<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Non ho nel mondo cosa che non desse<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A tal ch'un si, con buon voler dicesse.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Her neck was white and slender, springing gracefully from the bust&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Poi guarda la sua svelta e bianca gola<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Commessa ben dalle spalle e dal petto.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>A small, round, dimpled chin,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Mento tondo, fesso e piccioletto:<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>and thereupon the Poet breaks out into a rapture, any thing but
+theological,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i18">Il bel diletto<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Aver quel collo fra le braccia stretto<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">E far in quella gola un picciol segno!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Her arms were beautiful and round; her hand soft, white, and polished;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">La bianca mano morbida e pulita:<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>her fingers slender, and decorated with jewelled rings as became her
+birth; fair she was as a pearl;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Con un color angelica di perla:<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span></div></div>
+
+<p>graceful and lovely to look upon, but disdainful where it was becoming:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Graziosa a vederla,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">E disdegnosa dove si conviene.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And as a corollary to these traits, I will quote the eleventh Sonnet as
+a more general picture of female loveliness, heightened by some tender
+touches of mental and moral beauty, such as never seem to have occurred
+to the debased imaginations of the classic poets:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Negli occhi porta la mia Donna Amore;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Perch&egrave; si fa gentil ciocch' ella mira:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ov' ella passa, ogni uom ver lei si gira;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">E cui saluta, fa tremar lo core,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Sicch&egrave; bassando 'l viso tutto smuore,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ed ogni suo difetto allor sospira;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fugge dinanzi a lei superbia ed ira.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ajutatemi, donne, a farle onore!<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Ogni dolcezza, ogni pensiero umile<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nasce nel core a chi parlar la sente;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Onde &egrave; laudato chi prima la vide.<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Quel ch' ella par, quando un poco sorride<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No si pu&ograve; dicer, n&egrave; tenera mente;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Si &egrave; nuovo miracolo e gentile.<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span></div></div>
+
+
+<h4>TRANSLATION.</h4>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Love is throned in the eyes of my Beatrice! they ennoble
+every thing she looks upon! As she passes, men turn and
+gaze; and whomsoever she salutes, his heart trembles within
+him; he bows his head, the colour forsakes his cheek, and he
+sighs for his own unworthiness. Pride and anger fly before
+her! Assist me, ladies, to do her honour! All sweet thoughts
+of humble love and good-will spring in the hearts of those
+who hear her speak, so that it is a blessedness first to
+behold her, and when she faintly and softly smiles&mdash;ah! then
+it passes all fancy, all expression, so wondrous is the
+miracle, and so gracious!"</p></div>
+
+<p>The love of Dante for his Beatrice partook of the purity, tenderness,
+and elevated character of her who inspired it, and was also stamped with
+that stern and melancholy abstraction, that disposition to mysticism,
+which were such strong features in the character of her lover. He does
+not break out into fond and effeminate complaints, he does not sigh to
+the winds, nor swell the fountain with his tears; his love does not,
+like Petrarch's, alternately freeze and burn him, nor is it "un dolce
+amaro," "a bitter sweet," with which his fancy can sport in good set
+terms.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span> No; it shakes his whole being like an earthquake; it beats in
+every pulse and artery; it has dwelt in his heart till it has become a
+part of his life, or rather his life itself.<a name="FNanchor_39_39" id="FNanchor_39_39"></a><a href="#Footnote_39_39" class="fnanchor">[39]</a> Though we are not told
+so expressly, it is impossible to doubt, on a consideration of all those
+passages and poems which relate to Beatrice, that his love was approved
+and returned, and that his character was understood and appreciated by a
+woman too generous, too noble-minded, to make him the sport of her
+vanity. He complains, indeed, <i>poetically</i>, of her disdain, for which he
+excuses himself in another poem: "We know that the heavens shine on in
+eternal serenity, and that it is only our imperfect vision, and the
+rising vapours of the earth, that make the ever-beaming stars appear
+clouded at times to our eye." He expresses no fear of a rival in her
+affections; but the native jealousy as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span> well as delicacy of his temper
+appears in those passages in which he addresses the eulogium of Beatrice
+to the Florentine ladies and her young companions.<a name="FNanchor_40_40" id="FNanchor_40_40"></a><a href="#Footnote_40_40" class="fnanchor">[40]</a> Those of his own
+sex, as he assures us, were not worthy to listen to her praises; or must
+perforce have become enamoured of this picture of female excellence, the
+fear of which made a coward of him&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ma tratter&ograve; del suo stato gentile<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Donne e donzelle amorose, con vui;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Che non &egrave; cosa da parlarne altrui.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Among the young companions of Beatrice, Dante particularly distinguishes
+one, who appears to have been her chosen friend, and who, on account of
+her singular and blooming beauty, was called, at Florence, Primavera,
+(the Spring.) Her real name was Giovanna. Dante frequently names them
+together, and in particular in that exquisitely fanciful sonnet to his
+friend Guido Cavalcanti; where he addresses them by those<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span> familiar and
+endearing diminutives, so peculiarly Italian&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">E Monna Vanna e Monna Bice poi.<a name="FNanchor_41_41" id="FNanchor_41_41"></a><a href="#Footnote_41_41" class="fnanchor">[41]</a><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>It appears from the 7th and 8th Sonnets of the Vita Nuova, that in the
+early part of their intercourse,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span> Beatrice, indulging her girlish
+vivacity, smiled to see her lover utterly discountenanced in her
+presence, and pointed out her triumph to her companions. This offence
+seems to have deeply affected the proud, susceptible mind of Dante: it
+was under the influence of some such morose feeling, probably on this
+very occasion, that his dark passions burst forth in the bitter lines
+beginning,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Io maledico il d&igrave; ch' io vidi imprima<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">La luce de' vostri occhi traditori.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>"I curse the day in which I first beheld the splendour of those traitor
+eyes," &amp;c. This angry sonnet forms a fine characteristic contrast with
+that eloquent and impassioned effusion of Petrarch, in which he
+multiplies blessings on the day, the hour, the minute, the season, and
+the spot, in which he first beheld Laura&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Benedetto sia l' giorno, e 'l mese, e l' anno, &amp;c.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>This fit of indignation was, however, short-lived. Every tender emotion
+of Dante's feeling heart seems to have been called forth when<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span> Beatrice
+lost her excellent father. Folco Portinari died in 1289; and the
+description we have of the inconsolable grief of Beatrice and the
+sympathy of her young companions,&mdash;so poetically, so delicately touched
+by her lover,&mdash;impress us with a high idea both of her filial tenderness
+and the general amiability of her disposition, which rendered her thus
+beloved. In the 12th and 13th Sonnets, we have, perhaps, one of the most
+beautiful groups ever presented in poetry. Dante meets a company of
+young Florentine ladies, who were returning from paying Beatrice a visit
+of condolence on the death of her father. Their altered and dejected
+looks, their downcast eyes, and cheeks "colourless as marble," make his
+heart tremble within him; he asks after Beatrice&mdash;"<i>our</i> gentle lady,"
+as he tenderly expresses it: the young girls raise their downcast eyes,
+and regard him with surprise. "Art thou he," they exclaim, "who hast so
+often sung to us the praises of our Beatrice? the voice, indeed, is his;
+but, oh! how changed the aspect! Thou weepest!&mdash;why<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span> shouldest <i>thou</i>
+weep?&mdash;thou hast not seen <i>her</i> tears;&mdash;leave <i>us</i> to weep and return to
+our home, refusing comfort; for we, indeed, have heard her speak, and
+seen her dissolved in grief; so changed is her lovely face by sorrow,
+that to look upon her is enough to make one die at her feet for
+pity."<a name="FNanchor_42_42" id="FNanchor_42_42"></a><a href="#Footnote_42_42" class="fnanchor">[42]</a></p>
+
+<p>It should seem that the extreme affliction of Beatrice for the loss of
+her father, acting on a delicate constitution, hastened her own end, for
+she died within a few months afterwards, in her 24th year. In the "Vita
+Nuova" there is a fragment of a canzone, which breaks off at the end of
+the first strophe; and annexed to it is the following affecting note,
+originally in the handwriting of Dante.</p>
+
+<p>"I was engaged in the composition of this Canzone, and had completed
+only the above stanza, when it pleased the God of justice to call unto
+himself this gentlest of human beings; that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span> she might be glorified
+under the auspices of that blessed Queen, the Virgin Maria, whose name
+was ever held in especial reverence by my sainted Beatrice."</p>
+
+<p>Boccaccio, who knew Dante personally, tells us, that on the death of
+Beatrice, he was so changed by affliction that his best friends could
+scarcely recognise him. He scarcely eat or slept; he would not speak; he
+neglected his person, until he became "una cosa selvatica a vedere," <i>a
+savage thing to the eye</i>: to borrow his own strong expression, he seems
+to have been "grief-stung to madness." To the first Canzone, written
+after the death of Beatrice, Dante has prefixed a note, in which he
+tells us, that after he had long wept in silence the loss of her he
+loved, he thought to give utterance to his sorrow in words; and to
+compose a Canzone, in which he should write, (weeping as he wrote,) of
+the virtues of her who through much anguish had bowed his soul to the
+earth. "Then," he says, "I thus began:&mdash;gli occhi dolenti,"&mdash;which are
+the first words of this Canzone. It is addressed, like the others,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span> to
+her female companions, whom alone he thought worthy to listen to her
+praises, and whose gentle hearts could alone sympathise in his grief.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Non vo parlare altrui<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Se non a cor gentil, che 'n donna sia!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>One stanza of this Canzone is unequalled, I think, for a simplicity at
+once tender and sublime. The sentiment, or rather the meaning, in homely
+English phrase, would run thus:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Ascended is our Beatrice to the highest Heaven, to those realms where
+angels dwell in peace; and you, her fair companions, and Love and me,
+she has left, alas! behind. It was not the frost of winter that chilled
+her, nor was it the heat of summer that withered her; it was the power
+of her virtue, her humility, and her truth, that ascending into Heaven
+moved the <span class="smcap">Eternal Father</span> to call her to himself, seeing that this
+miserable life was not worthy of any thing so fair, so excellent!"</p>
+
+<p>On the anniversary of the death of Beatrice, Dante tells us that he was
+sitting alone, thinking<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span> upon her, and tracing, as he meditated, the
+figure of an angel on his tablets.<a name="FNanchor_43_43" id="FNanchor_43_43"></a><a href="#Footnote_43_43" class="fnanchor">[43]</a> Can any one doubt that this
+little incident, so natural and so affecting,&mdash;his thinking on his lost
+Beatrice, and by association sketching the figure of an angel, while his
+mind dwelt upon her removal to a brighter and better world,&mdash;must have
+been real? It gave rise to the 18th Sonnet of the Vita Nuova, which he
+calls "Il doloroso annovale," (the mournful anniversary.)</p>
+
+<p>Another little circumstance, not less affecting, he has beautifully
+commemorated in two Sonnets which follow the one last mentioned. They
+are addressed to some kind and gentle creature, who from a window beheld
+Dante abandon himself, with fearful vehemence, to the agony of his
+feelings, when he believed no human eye was on him. "She turned pale,"
+he says, "with compassion; her eyes filled with tears, as if she had
+loved me: then did I remember my noble-hearted Beatrice, for even thus
+she often looked upon me," <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span>&amp;c. And he confesses that the grateful, yet
+mournful pleasure with which he met the pitying look of this fair being,
+excited remorse in his heart, that he should be able to derive pleasure
+from anything.</p>
+
+<p>Dante concludes the collection of his <i>Rime</i>, (his miscellaneous poems
+on the subject of his early love) with this remarkable note:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I beheld a marvellous vision, which has caused me to cease from writing
+in praise of my blessed Beatrice, until I can celebrate her more
+worthily; which that I may do, I devote my whole soul to study, as <i>she</i>
+knoweth well; in so much, that if it please the Great Disposer of all
+things to prolong my life for a few years upon this earth, I hope
+hereafter to sing of my Beatrice what never yet was said or sung of
+woman.'"</p>
+
+<p>And in this transport of enthusiasm, Dante conceived the idea of his
+great poem, of which Beatrice was destined to be the heroine. It was to
+no Muse, called by fancy from her fabled heights, and feigned at the
+poet's will; it was not to ambition of fame, nor literary leisure<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span>
+seeking a vent for overflowing thoughts; nor to the wish to aggrandise
+himself, or to flatter the pride of a patron;&mdash;but to the inspiration of
+a young, beautiful, and noble-minded woman, we owe one of the grandest
+efforts of human genius. And never did it enter into the imagination of
+any lover, before or since, to raise so mighty, so vast, so enduring, so
+glorious a monument to the worth and charms of a mistress. Other poets
+were satisfied if they conferred on the object of their love an
+immortality on earth: Dante was not content till he had placed <i>his</i> on
+a throne in the Empyreum, above choirs of angels, in presence of the
+very fountain of glory; her brow wreathed with eternal beams, and
+clothed with the ineffable splendours of beatitude;&mdash;an apotheosis,
+compared to which, all others are earthly and poor indeed.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_38_38" id="Footnote_38_38"></a><a href="#FNanchor_38_38"><span class="label">[38]</span></a> "Membra formosi et grandi."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_39_39" id="Footnote_39_39"></a><a href="#FNanchor_39_39"><span class="label">[39]</span></a> It borrows even the solemn language of Sacred Writ to
+express its intensity:
+</p>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Nelle man vostre, o dolce donna mia!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Raccomando lo spirito che muore.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&nbsp;</span>
+<span class="i20"><span class="smcap">Son. 34.</span><br /></span>
+</div></div></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_40_40" id="Footnote_40_40"></a><a href="#FNanchor_40_40"><span class="label">[40]</span></a> I refer particularly to that sublime Canzone addressed to
+the ladies of Florence, and beginning
+</p>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Donne ch' avete intelletto d' amore."<br /></span>
+</div></div></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_41_41" id="Footnote_41_41"></a><a href="#FNanchor_41_41"><span class="label">[41]</span></a> Monna Vanna, for <i>Madonna Giovanna</i>; and Monna Bice,
+<i>Madonna Beatrice</i>.
+</p><p>
+This famous sonnet has been translated by Hayley and by Shelley. I
+subjoin the version of the latter, as truer to the spirit of the
+original.
+</p><h4>
+THE WISH.&mdash;TO GUIDO CAVALCANTI.
+</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Guido! I would that Lapo, thou, and I,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Led by some strong enchantment, might ascend<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A magic ship, whose charmed sails should fly<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With winds at will, where'er our thoughts might wend:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And that no change, nor any evil chance<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Should mar our joyous voyage; but it might be<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That even satiety should still enhance<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Between our hearts their strict community,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And that the bounteous wizard there would place<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Vanna and Bice, and thy gentle love,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Companions of our wanderings, and would grace<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With passionate talk, wherever we might rove<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our time!&mdash;and each were as content and free<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As I believe that thou and I should be!<br /></span>
+</div></div></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_42_42" id="Footnote_42_42"></a><a href="#FNanchor_42_42"><span class="label">[42]</span></a> Sonnetto 13 (Poesie della Vita Nuova.)</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_43_43" id="Footnote_43_43"></a><a href="#FNanchor_43_43"><span class="label">[43]</span></a> Vita Nuova, p. 268.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER IX.</h2>
+
+<h3>DANTE AND BEATRICE CONTINUED.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Through the two first parts of the Divina Commedia, (Hell and
+Purgatory,) Beatrice is merely announced to the reader&mdash;she does not
+appear in person; for what should the sinless and sanctified spirit of
+Beatrice do in those abodes of eternal anguish and expiatory torment?
+Her appearance, however, in due time and place, is prepared and shadowed
+forth in many beautiful allusions: for instance, it is she, who
+descending from the empyreal height, sends Virgil to be the deliverer of
+Dante in the mysterious forest, and his guide through the abysses of
+torment.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Io son Beatrice che ti faccio andare;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Vegno di loco ove tornar disio:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Amor mi mosse che mi fa parlare.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20"><span class="smcap">Inferno</span>, c. 2.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"I who now bid thee on this errand forth<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Am Beatrice; from a place I come<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Revisited with joy; love brought me thence,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who prompts my speech."<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20"><span class="smcap">Carey's Trans.</span><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And she is <i>indicated</i>, as it were, several times in the course of the
+poem, in a manner which prepares us for the sublimity with which she is
+at length introduced, in all the majesty of a superior nature, all the
+dreamy splendour of an ideal presence, and all the melancholy charm of a
+beloved and lamented reality. When Dante has left the confines of
+Purgatory, a wondrous chariot approaches from afar, surrounded by a
+flight of angelic beings, and veiled in a cloud of flowers ("un nuvola
+di fiori," is the beautiful expression.)&mdash;A female form is at length
+apparent in the midst of this angelic pomp, seated in the car, and
+"robed in hues of living flame:" she is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span> veiled: he cannot discern her
+features, but there moves a hidden virtue from her,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i12">At whose touch<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The power of ancient love was strong within him.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>He recognises the influence which even in his childish days had smote
+him&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">Che gi&agrave; m'avea trafitto<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Prima ch' io fuor della puerizia fosse;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>and his failing heart and quivering frame confess the thrilling presence
+of his Beatrice&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Conosco i segni dell'antica fiamma!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The whole passage is as beautifully wrought as it is feelingly and truly
+conceived.</p>
+
+<p>Beatrice,&mdash;no longer the soft, frail, and feminine being he had known
+and loved upon earth, but an admonishing spirit,&mdash;rises up in her
+chariot,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i10">And with a mien<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of that stern majesty which doth surround<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A mother's presence to her awe-struck child,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She looked&mdash;a flavour of such bitterness<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Was mingled with her pity!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20"><span class="smcap">Carey's Trans.</span><br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span></div></div>
+
+<p>Dante then puts into her mouth the most severe yet eloquent accusation
+against himself: while he stands weeping by, bowed down by shame and
+anguish. She accuses him before the listening angels for his neglected
+time, his wasted talents, his forgetfulness of her, when she was no
+longer upon earth to lead him with the light of her "youthful eyes,"
+(gli occhi giovinetti.)</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i6">Soon as I had changed<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My mortal for immortal, then he left me,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And gave himself to others; when from flesh<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To spirit I had risen, and increase<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of beauty and of virtue circled me,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I was less dear to him and valued less!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20"><span class="smcap">Purgatory, c. 30.&mdash;Carey's Trans.</span><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>This praise of herself and stern upbraiding of her lover, would sound
+harsh from woman's lips, but have a solemnity, and even a sublimity, as
+uttered by a disembodied and angelic being. When Dante, weeping, falters
+out a faint excuse&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i12">Thy fair looks withdrawn,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Things present with deceitful pleasures turned<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My steps aside,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span></div></div>
+
+<p>she answers by reproaching him with his inconstancy to her memory:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i14">Never didst thou spy<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In art or nature aught so passing sweet<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As were the limbs that in their beauteous frame<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Enclosed me, and are scattered now in dust.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If sweetest thing thus failed thee with my death,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What afterward of mortal should thy wish<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Have tempted?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20"><span class="smcap">Purgatory</span>, c. 31.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And she rebukes him, for that he could stoop from the memory of her love
+to be the thrall of a <i>slight girl</i>. This last expression is supposed to
+allude either to Dante's unfortunate marriage with Gemma Donati,<a name="FNanchor_44_44" id="FNanchor_44_44"></a><a href="#Footnote_44_44" class="fnanchor">[44]</a> or
+to the attachment he formed during his exile for a beautiful Lucchese
+named Gentucca, the subject of several of his poems. But,
+notwithstanding all this severity of censure, Dante, gazing on his
+divine monitress, is so rapt by her loveliness, his eyes so eager to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span>
+recompence themselves for "their ten years' thirst," (Beatrice had been
+dead ten years) that not being yet freed from the stain of his earthly
+nature, he is warned not to gaze "too fixedly" on her charms. After a
+farther probation, Beatrice introduces him into the various spheres
+which compose the celestial paradise; and thenceforward she certainly
+assumes the characteristics of an allegorical being. The true
+distinction seems this, that Dante has not represented Divine Wisdom
+under the name and form of Beatrice, but the more to exalt his Beatrice,
+he has clothed her in the attributes of Divine Wisdom.</p>
+
+<p>She at length ascends with him into the Heaven of Heavens, to the source
+of eternal and uncreated light, without shadow and without bound; and
+when Dante looks round for her, he finds she has quitted his side, and
+has taken her place throned among the supremely blessed, "as far above
+him as the region of thunder is above the centre of the sea:" he gazes
+up at her in a rapture of love and devotion, and in a sublime apostrophe
+invokes her still to continue her favour<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span> towards him. She looks down
+upon him from her effulgent height, smiles on him with celestial
+sweetness, and then fixing her eyes on the eternal fountain of glory, is
+absorbed in ecstasy. Here we leave her: the poet had touched the limits
+of permitted thought; the seraph wings of imagination, borne upwards by
+the inspiration of deep love, could no higher soar,&mdash;the audacity of
+genius could dare no farther!</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Dante died at Ravenna in 1321, and was sumptuously interred at the cost
+of Guido da Polenta, the father of that unfortunate Francesca di Rimini,
+whose story he has so exquisitely told in the fifth canto of the
+Inferno. He left several sons and an only daughter, whom he had named
+Beatrice, in remembrance of his early love: she became a nun at Ravenna.</p>
+
+<p>Now where, in the name of all truth and all feeling, were the heads, or
+rather the hearts, of those commentators, who could see nothing in the
+Beatrice thus beautifully pourtrayed, thus<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span> tenderly lamented, and thus
+sublimely commemorated, but a mere allegorical personage, the creation
+of a poet's fancy? Nothing can come of nothing; and it was no unreal or
+imaginary being who turned the course of Dante's ardent passions and
+active spirit, and burning enthusiasm, into one sweeping torrent of love
+and poetry, and gave to Italy and to the world the Divina Commedia!</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_44_44" id="Footnote_44_44"></a><a href="#FNanchor_44_44"><span class="label">[44]</span></a> This marriage was one of policy, and negociated by the
+friends of Dante and of Gemma Donati: her temper was violent and harsh,
+and their domestic peace was, probably, not increased by Dante's
+obstinate regret for his first love.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER X.</h2>
+
+<h3>CHAUCER AND PHILIPPA PICARD.</h3>
+
+
+<p>After Italy, England,&mdash;who has ever trod in her footsteps, and at length
+outstript her in the race of intellect,&mdash;was the next to produce a great
+and prevailing genius in poetry, a master-spirit, whom no change of
+customs, manners, or language, can render wholly obsolete; and who was
+destined, like the rest of his tribe, to bow before the influence of
+woman, to toil in her praise, and soar by her inspiration.</p>
+
+<p>Seven years after the death of Dante, Chaucer was born, and he was
+twenty-four years younger<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span> than Petrarch, whom he met at Padua in 1373;
+this meeting between the two great poets was memorable in itself, and
+yet more interesting for having first introduced into the English
+language that beautiful monument to the virtue of women,&mdash;the story of
+Griselda.</p>
+
+<p>Boccaccio had lately sent to his friend the MS. of the Decamerone, of
+which it is the concluding tale: the tender fancy of Petrarch, refined
+by a forty years' attachment to a gentle and elegant female, passed over
+what was vicious and blameable, or only recommended by the wit and the
+style, and fixed with delight on the tale of Griselda; so beautiful in
+itself, and so honourable to the sex whom he had poetically deified in
+the person of one lovely woman. He amused his leisure hours in
+translating it into Latin, and having finished his version, he placed it
+in the hands of a citizen of Padua, and desired him to read it aloud.
+His friend accordingly began; but as he proceeded, the overpowering
+pathos of the story so affected him, that he was obliged to stop; he
+began again, but was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span> unable to proceed; the gathering tears blinded
+him, and choked his voice, and he threw down the manuscript. This
+incident, which Petrarch himself relates in a letter to Boccaccio,
+occurred about the period when Chaucer passed from Genoa to Padua to
+visit the poet and lover of Laura&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Quel grande, alla cui fama angusto &egrave; il mondo.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Petrarch must have regarded the English poet with that wondering,
+enthusiastic admiration with which we should now hail a Milton or a
+Shakspeare sprung from Otaheite or Nova Zembla; and his heart and soul
+being naturally occupied by his latest work, he repeated the experiment
+he had before tried on his Paduan friend. The impression which the
+Griselda produced upon the vivid, susceptible imagination of Chaucer,
+may be judged from his own beautiful version of it in the <b>Canterbury
+Tales</b>; where the barbarity and improbability of the incidents are so
+redeemed by the pervading truth and purity and tenderness of the
+sentiment, that I suppose it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span> never was perused for the first time
+without tears. Chaucer, as if proud of his interview with Petrarch, and
+anxious to publish it, is careful to tell us that he did not derive the
+story from Boccaccio, but that it was</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Learned at Padua of a worthy clerk,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As proved by his wordes and his work;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Francis Petrark, the Laureat Poete;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>which is also proved by internal evidence.</p>
+
+<p>Chaucer so far resembled Petrarch, that, like him, he was at once poet,
+scholar, courtier, statesman, philosopher, and man of the world; but
+considered merely as poets, they were the very antipodes of each other.
+The genius of Dante has been compared to a Gothic cathedral, vast and
+lofty, and dark and irregular. In the same spirit, Petrarch may be
+likened to a classical and elegant Greek temple, rising aloft in its
+fair and faultless proportions, and compacted of the purest Parian
+marble; while Chaucer is like the far-spreading and picturesque palace
+of the Alhambra, with its hundred chambers, all variously<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span> decorated,
+and rich with barbaric pomp and gold: he is famed rather as the animated
+painter of character, and manners, and external nature, than the poet of
+love and sentiment; and yet no writer, Shakspeare always excepted, (and
+perhaps Spenser) contains so many beautiful and tender passages relating
+to, or inspired by, women. He lived, it is true, in rude times, times
+strangely deficient in good taste and decorum; but when all the
+institutions of chivalry, under the most chivalrous of our kings and
+princes,<a name="FNanchor_45_45" id="FNanchor_45_45"></a><a href="#Footnote_45_45" class="fnanchor">[45]</a> were at their height in England. As a poet, Chaucer was
+enlisted into the service of three of the most illustrious, most
+beautiful, and most accomplished women of that age&mdash;Philippa, the
+high-hearted and generous Queen of Edward the Third; the Lady Blanche of
+Lancaster, first wife of John of Gaunt; and the lovely Anne of Bohemia,
+the Queen of Richard the Second;<a name="FNanchor_46_46" id="FNanchor_46_46"></a><a href="#Footnote_46_46" class="fnanchor">[46]</a> for whom, and at whose command, he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span>
+wrote his "Legende of Gode Women," as some amends for the scandal he had
+spoken of us in other places. The Countess of Essex, the Countess of
+Pembroke, and that beautiful Lady Salisbury, the ancestress of the
+Montagu family, whose famous mischance gave rise to the Order of the
+Garter, were also among Chaucer's patronesses. But the most
+distinguished of all, and the favourite subject of his poetry, was the
+Duchess Blanche. The manner in which he has contrived to celebrate his
+own loves and individual feelings with those of Blanche and her royal
+suitor, has given additional interest to both, and has enabled his
+commentators to fix with tolerable certainty the name and rank of the
+object of his love, as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span> well as the date and circumstances of his
+attachment.</p>
+
+<p>In the earliest of Chaucer's poems, "The <span class="smcap">Court of Love</span>," he describes
+himself as enamoured of a fair mistress, whom in the style of the time,
+he calls Rosial, and himself Philogenet: the lady is described as
+"sprung of noble race and high," with "angel visage," "golden hair," and
+eyes orient and bright, with figure "sharply slender,"</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">So that from the head unto the foot all is sweet womanhead,<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>and arrayed in a vest of green, with her tresses braided with silk and
+gold. She treats him at first with disdain, and the Poet swoons away at
+her feet: satisfied by this convincing proof of his sincerity, she is
+induced to accept his homage, and becomes his "liege ladye," and the
+sovereign of his thoughts. In this poem, which is extremely wild, and
+has come down to us in an imperfect state, Chaucer quaintly admonishes
+all lovers, that an absolute faith in the perfection of their
+mistresses, and obedience to her slightest caprice, are among<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span> the first
+of duties; that they must in all cases believe their ladye faultless;
+that,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">In every thing she doth but as she should.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Construe the best, believe no tales new,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For many a lie is told that seem'th full true;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But think that she, so bounteous and so fair,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Could not be false; imagine this alway.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">....*....*....*....*<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And tho' thou seest a fault right at thine eye,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Excuse it quick, and glose it prettily.<a href="#Footnote_47_47" class="fnanchor">[47]</a><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Nor are they to presume on their own worthiness, nor to imagine it
+possible they can earn</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">By right, her mercie, nor of equity,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But of her grace and womanly pitye.<a name="FNanchor_47_47" id="FNanchor_47_47"></a><a href="#Footnote_47_47" class="fnanchor">[47]</a><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>There is, however, no authority for supposing that at the time this poem
+was written, Chaucer really aspired to the hand of any lady of superior
+birth, or was very seriously in love; he was then about nineteen, and
+had probably selected some fair one, according to the custom of his age,
+to be his "fancy's queen," and in the same spirit<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span> of poetical
+gallantry, he writes to do her honour; he says himself,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">My intent and all my busie care<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Is for to write this treatise as I can,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Unto my ladye, stable, true, and sure;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Faithful and kind sith firste that she began<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Me to accept in service as her man;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To her be all the pleasures of this book,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That, when her like, she may it rede and look.<a name="FNanchor_48_48" id="FNanchor_48_48"></a><a href="#Footnote_48_48" class="fnanchor">[48]</a><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Mixed up with all this gallantry and refinement are some passages
+inconceivably absurd and gross; but such were those times,&mdash;at once rude
+and magnificent&mdash;an odd mixture of cloth of frieze and cloth of gold!</p>
+
+<p>The "Parliament of Birds," entitled in many editions, the "<i>Assembly of
+Fowls</i>," celebrates allegorically the courtship of John of Gaunt and
+Blanche of Lancaster.</p>
+
+<p>Blanche, as the greatest heiress of England, with a duchy for her
+portion, could not fail to be surrounded by pretenders to her hand; but,
+after a year of probation, she decided in favour of John<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span> of Gaunt, who
+thus became Duke of Lancaster in right of his bride. This youthful and
+princely pair were then about nineteen.</p>
+
+<p>The "Parliament of Birds" being written in 1358, when Blanche had
+postponed her choice for a year, has fixed the date of Chaucer's
+attachment to the lady he afterwards married; for, here he describes
+himself as one who had not yet felt the full power of love&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">For albeit that I know not love indeed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ne wot how that he quitteth folks their hire,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yet happeth me full oft in books to read<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of his miracles.&mdash;&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>But the time was come when the poet, now in his thirty-second year, was
+destined to feel, that a strong attachment for a deserving object&mdash;for
+one who will not be obtained unsought, "was no sport," as he expresses
+it, but</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Smart and sorrow, and great heavinesse.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>During the period of trial which Lady Blanche had inflicted on her
+lover, it was Chaucer's fate to fall in love in sad earnest.&mdash;The object
+of this passion, too beautifully and unaffectedly described<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span> not to be
+genuine, was Philippa Picard de Rouet, the daughter of a knight of
+Hainault, and a favourite attendant of Queen Philippa. Her elder sister
+Catherine, was at the same time maid of honour to the Duchess Blanche.
+Both these sisters were distinguished at Court for their beauty and
+accomplishments, and were the friends and companions of the Princesses
+they served: and both are singularly interesting from their connection,
+political and poetical, with English history and literature.</p>
+
+<p>Philippa Picard is one of the principal personages in the poem entitled
+"Chaucer's Dream," which is a kind of epithalamium celebrating the
+marriage of John of Gaunt with the Lady Blanche, which took place at
+Reading, May 19, 1359. It is a wild, fanciful vision of fairy-land and
+enchantments, of which I cannot attempt to give an analysis. In the
+opening lines, written about twelve months after the "Parliament of
+Birds," we find Chaucer in deep love according to all its forms. He is
+lying awake,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">About such hour as lovers weep<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And cry after their lady's grace,<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span></div></div>
+
+<p>thinking on his mistress&mdash;all her goodness and all her sweetness, and
+marvelling how heaven had formed her so exceeding fair,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i10">And in so litel space<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Made such a body and such a face;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So great beauty, and such features,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">More than be in other creatures!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>He falls into a dream as usual, and in the conclusion fancies himself
+present at the splendid festivities which took place at the marriage of
+his patron. The ladye of his affection is described as the beloved
+friend and companion of the bride. She is sent to grace the marriage
+ceremony with her presence; and Chaucer seizes the occasion to plead his
+suit for love and mercy. Then the Prince, the Queen, and all the rest of
+the Court, unite in conjuring the lady to have pity on his pain, and
+recompence his truth; she smiles, and with a pretty hesitation at last
+consents.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Sith his will and yours are one,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Contrary in me shall be none.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>They are married: the ladies and the knights wish them</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i6">&mdash;&mdash;Heart's pleasance,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In joy and health continuance!<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span></div></div>
+
+<p>The minstrels strike up,&mdash;the multitude send forth a shout; and in the
+midst of these joyous and triumphant sounds, and in the troubled
+exultation of his own heart, the sleeper bounds from his couch,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Wening to have been at the feast,<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>and wakes to find it all a dream. He looks around for the gorgeous
+marriage-feast, and instead of the throng of knights and ladies gay, he
+sees nothing but the figures staring at him from the tapestry.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">On the walls old portraiture<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of horsemen, of hawks and hounds,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And hurt deer all full of wounds;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Some like torn, some hurt with shot;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And as my dream was, <i>that</i> was not!<a name="FNanchor_49_49" id="FNanchor_49_49"></a><a href="#Footnote_49_49" class="fnanchor">[49]</a><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>He is plunged in grief to find himself thus reft of all his visionary
+joys, and prays to sleep again, and dream thus for aye, or at least "a
+thousand years and ten."</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span></p>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Lo, here my bliss!&mdash;lo, here my pain!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which to my ladye I complain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And grace and mercy of her requere,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To end my woe and all my fear;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And me accept for her service&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That of my dream, the substance<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Might turnen, once, to cognisance.<a name="FNanchor_50_50" id="FNanchor_50_50"></a><a href="#Footnote_50_50" class="fnanchor">[50]</a><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And the whole concludes with a very tender "envoi," expressly addressed
+to Philippa, although the poem was written in honour of his patrons, the
+Duke and Duchess. It has been well observed, that nothing can be more
+delicate and ingenious than the manner in which Chaucer has complimented
+his mistress, and ventured to shadow forth his own hopes and desires;
+confessing, at the same time, that they were built on air and ended in a
+dream: it may be added, that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span> nothing can be more picturesque and
+beautiful, and vigorous, than some of the descriptive parts of this
+poem.</p>
+
+<p>There is no reason to suppose that Philippa was absolutely deaf to the
+suit, or insensible to the fame and talents of her poet-lover. The delay
+which took place was from a cause honourable to her character and her
+heart; it arose from the declining health of her royal mistress, to whom
+she was most strongly and gratefully attached, and whose noble qualities
+deserved all her affection. It appears, from a comparison of dates, that
+Chaucer endured a suspense of more than nine years, during which he was
+a constant and fervent suitor for his ladye's grace. In this interval he
+translated the Romaunt of the Rose, the most famous poetical work of the
+middle ages. He addressed it to his mistress; and it is remarkable that
+a very elaborate and cynical satire on women, which occurs in the
+original French, is entirely omitted by Chaucer in his version; perhaps
+because it would have been a profanation to her who then ruled his
+heart:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span> on other occasions he showed no such forbearance.</p>
+
+<p>In the year 1369, Chaucer lost his amiable patroness, the Duchess
+Blanche; she died in her thirtieth year; he lamented her death in a long
+poem, entitled the "Booke of the Duchesse." The truth of the story, the
+virtues, the charms, and the youth of the Princess, the grief of her
+husband, and the simplicity and beauty of many passages, render this one
+of the most interesting and striking of all Chaucer's works.</p>
+
+<p>The description of Blanche, in the "Booke of the Duchesse," shows how
+trifling is the difference between a perfect female character in the
+thirteenth century, and what would now be considered as such. It is a
+very lively and animated picture. Her golden hair and laughing eyes; her
+skill in dancing, and her sweet carolling; her "goodly and friendly
+speech;" her debonair looks; her gaiety, that was still "so womanly;"
+her indifference to general admiration; her countenance, "that was so
+simple and so benigne," contrasted with her high-spirited modesty and
+consciousness of lofty birth,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">No living wight might do her shame,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>She loved so well her own name</i>;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>her disdain of that coquetterie which holds men "in balance,"</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">By half-word or by countenance;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>her wit, "without malice, and ever set upon gladnesse;" and her
+goodness, which the Poet, with a nice discrimination of female virtue,
+distinguishes from mere ignorance of evil&mdash;for though in all her actions
+was perfect innocence, he adds,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I say not that she had no knowing<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What harm was; for, else, she<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Had known no good&mdash;so thinketh me;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>are all beautifully and happily set forth, and are charms so appropriate
+to woman, as <i>woman</i>, that no change of fashion or lapse of ages can
+alter their effect. Time</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Can draw no lines there with his antique pen."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>But afterwards follows a trait peculiarly characteristic of the women of
+that chivalrous period. She was not, says Chaucer, one of those ladies
+who send their lovers off<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i14">To Walachie,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To Prussia, and to Tartary,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To Alexandria, ne Turkie;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>and on other bootless errands, by way of displaying their power.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">She used no such <i>knacks small</i>.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>That is, she was superior to such frivolous tricks.</p>
+
+<p>John of Gaunt, who is the principal speaker and chief mourner in the
+poem, gives a history of his courtship, and tells with what mixture of
+fear and awe, he then "right young," approached the lovely heiress of
+Lancaster: but bethinking him that Heaven could never have formed in any
+creature so great beauty and bounty "withouten mercie,"&mdash;in that hope he
+makes his confession of love; and he goes on to tell us, with exquisite
+<i>na&iuml;vet&eacute;</i>,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I wot not well how I began,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Full evil rehearse it, I can:<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">....*....*....*....*<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">For many a word I overskipt<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In telling my tale&mdash;for pure fear,<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Lest that my words misconstrued were.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Softly, and quaking for pure dred,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And shame,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Full oft I wax'd both pale and red;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I durst not once look her on,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For wit, manner, and all was gone;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I said, "Mercie, sweet!"&mdash;and no more.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Then his anguish at her first rejection, and his rapture when, at last,
+he wins from his ladye</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The noble gift of her mercie;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>his domestic happiness&mdash;his loss, and his regrets, are all told with the
+same truth, simplicity, and profound feeling. For such passages and such
+pictures as these, Chaucer will still be read, triumphant as the poet of
+nature, over the rust and dust of ages, and all the difficulties of
+antique style and obsolete spelling; which last, however, though
+repulsive, is only a difficulty to the eye, and easily overcome.</p>
+
+<p>To return to Chaucer's own love.&mdash;In the opening lines of the "Booke of
+the Duchesse," he describes himself as wasted with his "eight years'
+sicknesse," alluding to his long courtship of the coy Philippa:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I have great wonder, by this light,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">How that I live!&mdash;for day nor night<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I may not sleepen well-nigh nought:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I have so many an idle thought<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Purely for the default of sleep;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That, by my troth, I take no keep<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of nothing&mdash;how it com'th or go'th,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To me is nothing liefe or lothe;<a name="FNanchor_51_51" id="FNanchor_51_51"></a><a href="#Footnote_51_51" class="fnanchor">[51]</a><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All is equal good to me,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Joy or sorrow&mdash;whereso it be;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For I have feeling in no thing,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But am, as 'twere, a mazed<a name="FNanchor_52_52" id="FNanchor_52_52"></a><a href="#Footnote_52_52" class="fnanchor">[52]</a> thing,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All day in point to fall adown<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For sorrowful imagination, &amp;c.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>In the same year with the Duchess died the good Queen of Edward the
+Third; and Philippa Picard being thus sadly released from her attendance
+on her mistress, a few months afterwards married Chaucer, then in his
+forty-second year.</p>
+
+<p>In consequence of her good service, Philippa had a pension for her life;
+and I regret that little more is known concerning her: but it should<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span>
+seem that she was a good and tender wife, and that long years of wedded
+life did not weaken her husband's attachment for her; for she
+accompanied Chaucer when he was exiled, about fifteen years after his
+marriage, though every motive of prudence and selfishness, on both
+sides, would then have induced a separation.<a name="FNanchor_53_53" id="FNanchor_53_53"></a><a href="#Footnote_53_53" class="fnanchor">[53]</a> Neither was the poet
+likely to be easily satisfied on the score of conjugal obedience; he was
+rather <i>exigeant</i> and despotic, if we may trust his own description of a
+perfect wife. The chivalrous and poetical lover was the slave of his
+mistress; but once married, it is all <i>vice versa</i>.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">She saith not once <i>nay</i>, when he saith <i>yea</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"Do this," saith he, "all ready, Sir," saith she!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The precise date of Philippa's death is not known, but it took place
+some years before that of her husband. Their residence at the time of
+their marriage, was a small stone building, near the entrance of
+Woodstock Park; it had been given to Chaucer by Edward the Third;
+afterwards<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span> they resided principally at Donnington Castle, that fine and
+striking ruin, which must be remembered by all who have travelled the
+Newberry road. In the domain attached to this castle were three oaks of
+remarkable size and beauty, to which Chaucer gave the names of the
+Queen's oak, the King's oak, and Chaucer's oak; these venerable trees
+were felled in Evelyn's time, and are commemorated in his Sylva, as
+among the noblest of their species.</p>
+
+<p>Philippa's eldest son, Thomas Chaucer, had a daughter, Alice, who became
+the wife of William de la Pole, Duke of Suffolk, the famous favourite of
+Margaret of Anjou. The grandson of Alice Chaucer, by the Duke of
+Suffolk, John Earl of Lincoln, was declared heir to the crown by Richard
+the Third;<a name="FNanchor_54_54" id="FNanchor_54_54"></a><a href="#Footnote_54_54" class="fnanchor">[54]</a> and had the issue of the battle of Bosworth been
+different, would undoubtedly have ascended the throne of England;&mdash;as it
+was, the lineage of Chaucer was extinguished on a scaffold.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span></p>
+<p>The fate of Catherine Picard de Rouet, the sister of Chaucer's wife, was
+still more remarkable,&mdash;she was destined to be the mother of a line of
+kings.</p>
+
+<p>She had been <i>domicella</i>, or maid of honour to the Duchess Blanche,
+after whose death, the infant children of the Princess were committed to
+her care.<a name="FNanchor_55_55" id="FNanchor_55_55"></a><a href="#Footnote_55_55" class="fnanchor">[55]</a> In this situation she won the heart of their father, the
+Duke of Lancaster, who on the death of his second wife, Constance of
+Castile, married Catherine, and his children by her were solemnly
+legitimatized. The conduct of Catherine, except in one instance, had
+been irreproachable: her humility, her prudence, and her various
+accomplishments, not only reconciled the royal family and the people to
+her marriage, but added lustre to her rank: and when Richard the Second
+married Isabella of France, the young Queen, then only nine years old,
+was placed under<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span> the especial care and tuition of the Duchess of
+Lancaster.</p>
+
+<p>One of the grand-daughters of Catherine, Lady Jane Beaufort, had the
+singular fortune of becoming at once the inspiration and the love of a
+great poet, the queen of an accomplished monarch, and the common
+ancestress of all the sovereigns of England since the days of
+Elizabeth.<a name="FNanchor_56_56" id="FNanchor_56_56"></a><a href="#Footnote_56_56" class="fnanchor">[56]</a></p>
+
+<p>Never, perhaps, was the influence of woman on a poetic temperament more
+beautifully illustrated, than in the story of James the First of
+Scotland, and Lady Jane Beaufort. It has been so elegantly told by
+Washington Irving in the Sketch-Book, that it is only necessary to refer
+to it.&mdash;James, while a prisoner, was confined in Windsor Castle, and
+immediately under his window<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span> there was a fair garden, in which the Lady
+Jane was accustomed to walk with her attendants, distinguished above
+them all by her beauty and dignity, even more than by her state and the
+richness of her attire. The young monarch beheld her accidentally, his
+imagination was fired, his heart captivated, and from that moment his
+prison was no longer a dungeon, but a palace of light and love. As he
+was the best poet and musician of his time, he composed songs in her
+praise, set them to music, and sang them to his lute. He also wrote the
+history of his love, with all its circumstances, in a long poem<a name="FNanchor_57_57" id="FNanchor_57_57"></a><a href="#Footnote_57_57" class="fnanchor">[57]</a>
+still extant; and though the language be now obsolete, it is described,
+by those who have studied it, as not only full of beauties both of
+sentiment and expression, but unpolluted by a single thought or allusion
+which the most refined age, or the most fastidious delicacy, could
+reject;&mdash;a singular distinction, when we consider that James's only
+models must have been Gower and Chaucer, to whom no such praise is due:
+we must rather suppose<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span> that he was no imitator, but that he owed his
+inspiration to modest and queenly beauty, and to the genuine tenderness
+of his own heart. His description of the fair apparition who came to
+bless his solitary hours, is so minute and peculiar, that it must have
+been drawn from the life:&mdash;the net of pearls, in which her light tresses
+were gathered up; the chain of fine-wrought gold about her neck; the
+heart-shaped ruby suspended from it, which glowed on her snowy bosom
+like a spark of fire; her white vest looped up to facilitate her
+movements; her graceful damsels who followed at a respectful distance;
+and her little dog gambolling round her with its collar of silver
+bells,&mdash;these, and other picturesque circumstances, were all noted in
+the lover's memory, and have been recorded by the poet's verse. And he
+sums up her perfections thus:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">In her was youth, beauty, and numble port,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Bountee, richesse, and womanly feature.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">God better knows than my pen can report,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Wisdom, largesse,<a name="FNanchor_58_58" id="FNanchor_58_58"></a><a href="#Footnote_58_58" class="fnanchor">[58]</a> estate,<a name="FNanchor_59_59" id="FNanchor_59_59"></a><a href="#Footnote_59_59" class="fnanchor">[59]</a> and cunning<a name="FNanchor_60_60" id="FNanchor_60_60"></a><a href="#Footnote_60_60" class="fnanchor">[60]</a> sure:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In every point so guided her measure,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In word, in deed, in shape, in countenance,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That nature could no more her child advance.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The account of his own feelings as she disappears from his charmed
+gaze,&mdash;his lingering at the window of his tower, till Ph&oelig;bus</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Had bid farewell to every leaf and flower,&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>then resting his head pensively on the cold stone, and the vision which
+steals upon his half-waking, half-dreaming fancy, and shadows forth the
+happy issue of his love,&mdash;are all conceived in the most lively manner.
+It is judged from internal evidence, that this poem must have been
+finished after his marriage, since he intimates that he is blessed in
+the possession of her he loved, and that the fair vision of his solitary
+dungeon is realised.</p>
+
+<p>When the King of Scots was released, he wooed and won openly, and as a
+monarch, the woman he had adored in secret. The marriage was solemnized
+in 1423, and he carried Lady Jane to Scotland where she was crowned soon
+after his bride and queen.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>How well she merited, and how deeply she repaid the love of her devoted
+and all-accomplished husband, is told in history. When James was
+surprised and murdered by some of his factious barons, his queen threw
+herself between him and the daggers of the assassins, received many of
+the wounds aimed at his heart, nor could they complete their purpose
+till they had dragged her by force from his arms. She deserved to be a
+poet's queen and love! These are the souls, the deeds which inspire
+poetry,&mdash;or rather which are themselves poetry, its principle and its
+essence. It was on this occasion that Catherine Douglas, one of the
+queen's attendants, thrust her arm into the stanchion of the door to
+serve the purpose of a bolt, and held it there till the savage
+assailants forced their way by shattering the frail defence. What times
+were those!&mdash;alas! the love of women, and the barbarity of men!</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_45_45" id="Footnote_45_45"></a><a href="#FNanchor_45_45"><span class="label">[45]</span></a> Edward III. and the Black Prince.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_46_46" id="Footnote_46_46"></a><a href="#FNanchor_46_46"><span class="label">[46]</span></a> She was popularly distinguished as the "<i>good</i> Queen
+Anne," and as dear to her husband as to her people. Richard, who with
+many and fatal faults, really possessed sensibility and strong domestic
+affections with which Shakspeare has so finely pourtrayed him, was
+passionately devoted to his amiable wife. She died young, at the Palace
+of Sheen; and when Richard afterwards visited the scene of his loss, he
+solemnly cursed it in his anguish, and commanded it to be razed to the
+ground, which was done. One of our kings afterwards rebuilt it. I think
+Henry the VIIth.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_47_47" id="Footnote_47_47"></a><a href="#FNanchor_47_47"><span class="label">[47]</span></a> Court of Love, v. 369-412.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_48_48" id="Footnote_48_48"></a><a href="#FNanchor_48_48"><span class="label">[48]</span></a> Court of Love, v. 36-42.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_49_49" id="Footnote_49_49"></a><a href="#FNanchor_49_49"><span class="label">[49]</span></a> <i>i. e.</i> the tapestry, like my dream, was a representation,
+not a reality.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_50_50" id="Footnote_50_50"></a><a href="#FNanchor_50_50"><span class="label">[50]</span></a> Chaucer's Dreame, v. 2185. "Here also is showed Chaucer's
+match with a certain gentlewoman, who was so well liked and loved of the
+Lady Blanche and her Lord (as Chaucer himself also was), that gladly
+they concluded a marriage between them."&mdash;<i>Arguments to Chaucer's Works.
+Edit.</i> 1597.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_51_51" id="Footnote_51_51"></a><a href="#FNanchor_51_51"><span class="label">[51]</span></a> To me there is nothing dear or hateful, every thing is
+indifferent.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_52_52" id="Footnote_52_52"></a><a href="#FNanchor_52_52"><span class="label">[52]</span></a> <i>Mazed</i>,&mdash;distracted.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_53_53" id="Footnote_53_53"></a><a href="#FNanchor_53_53"><span class="label">[53]</span></a> Godwin's Life of Chaucer, v. iii. p. 5.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_54_54" id="Footnote_54_54"></a><a href="#FNanchor_54_54"><span class="label">[54]</span></a> In right of his mother, Elizabeth Plantagenet, eldest
+sister of Edward IV.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_55_55" id="Footnote_55_55"></a><a href="#FNanchor_55_55"><span class="label">[55]</span></a> These were Henry of Lancaster, afterwards Henry IV.
+Philippa, Queen of Portugal, and Elizabeth, Duchess of Exeter.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_56_56" id="Footnote_56_56"></a><a href="#FNanchor_56_56"><span class="label">[56]</span></a> Catherine, Duchess of Lancaster, had three sons: the
+second was the famous Cardinal Beaufort; the eldest (created Earl of
+Somerset,) was grandfather to Henry the Seventh, and consequently
+ancestor to the whole race of Tudor: thus from the sister of Chaucer's
+wife are descended all the English sovereigns, from the fifteenth
+century; and likewise the present family of Somerset, Dukes of
+Beaufort.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_57_57" id="Footnote_57_57"></a><a href="#FNanchor_57_57"><span class="label">[57]</span></a> "The King's Quhair," (i.e. <i>cahier</i> or book.)</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_58_58" id="Footnote_58_58"></a><a href="#FNanchor_58_58"><span class="label">[58]</span></a> Liberality.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_59_59" id="Footnote_59_59"></a><a href="#FNanchor_59_59"><span class="label">[59]</span></a> Dignity.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_60_60" id="Footnote_60_60"></a><a href="#FNanchor_60_60"><span class="label">[60]</span></a> Knowledge and discretion.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XI.</h2>
+
+<h3>LORENZO DE' MEDICI AND LUCRETIA DONATI.</h3>
+
+
+<p>To Lorenzo de' Medici,&mdash;or rather to the pre&euml;minence his personal
+qualities, his family possessions, and his unequalled talents, gave him
+over his countrymen,&mdash;some late travellers and politicians have
+attributed the downfall of the liberties of Florence, and attacked his
+memory as the precursor of tyrants and the preparer of slaves. It may be
+so:&mdash;yet was it the fault of Lorenzo, if his collateral posterity
+afterwards became the oppressors of that State of which he was the
+father and the saviour? And since in this world some must command and
+some obey, what power is so legitimate as that derived from the
+influence of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span> superior virtue and talent? from the employ of riches
+obtained by honourable industry, and expended with princely munificence,
+and subscribed to by the will and the affections of the people?</p>
+
+<p>But I forget:&mdash;these are questions foreign to our subject. Politics I
+never could understand in my life, and history I have forgotten,&mdash;or
+would wish to forget,&mdash;perplexed by its conflicting evidence, and
+shocked by its interminable tissue of horrors. Let others then scale the
+height while we gather flowers at the foot; let others explore the mazes
+of the forest; ours be rather</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The gay parterre, the chequered shade,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The morning bower, the evening colonnade,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Those soft recesses of uneasy minds,<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>whence the din of doleful war, the rumour of cruelty and suffering, and
+all the "fitful stir unprofitable" of the world are shut out, and only
+the beautiful and good, or the graceful and the gay, are admitted. There
+have been pens enough, Heaven knows, to chronicle the wrongs, the
+crimes, the sorrows of our sex: why should I add an echo to that voice,
+which from the beginning<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span> has cried aloud in the wilderness of this
+world, upon women betrayed, and betraying in self-defence? A nobler and
+more grateful task be mine, to show them how much of what is most fair,
+most excellent, most sublime among the productions of human genius, has
+been owing to their influence, direct or indirect; and call up the
+spirits of the dead,&mdash;those who from their silent urns still rule the
+pulses of our hearts&mdash;to bear witness to this truth.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>It is not, then, Lorenzo the <span class="smcap">Magnificent</span>, the statesman, and the chief
+of a great republic, who finds a place in these pages,&mdash;but Lorenzo the
+lover and the poet, round whose memory hover a thousand bright
+recollections connected with the revival of arts and literature, and the
+golden age of Italy. Let politicians say what they will, there is a
+spell of harmony, there is music in his very name! how softly the
+vowelled syllables drop from the lips&mdash;<span class="smcap">Lorenzo De' Medici</span>!&mdash;it even
+looks elegant when written. Yes, there is something in the mere sound of
+a name.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span> I remember once taking up a book, and a very celebrated book,
+in which, after turning over some of the pages with pleasure, I came to
+<i>Peter</i> and <i>Laurence Medecis</i>,&mdash;I shut it hastily, as I would have
+covered my ears to protect them from a sudden discord in music.</p>
+
+<p>Between Petrarch and Lorenzo de' Medici, there occurs not a single great
+name in Italian poetry. The century seemed to lie fallow, as if
+preparing for the great birth of various genius which distinguished the
+succeeding age. The sciences and the classics were chiefly studied, and
+philosophy and Greek seemed to have banished love and poetry.</p>
+
+<p>In such a state of things, it is rather surprising to find in Lorenzo
+de' Medici the common case reversed; for by his own confession, it
+appears that it was not love which made him a poet, but poetry which
+made him a lover.</p>
+
+<p>Giuliano, the brother of Lorenzo,&mdash;he who was afterwards assassinated by
+the Pazzi, and was so beloved at Florence for his amiable character and
+personal accomplishments, had been<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span> seized with a passion for a lady
+named Simonetta, who was esteemed the most beautiful woman in Florence,
+and is scarcely ever mentioned but with the epithet, "La bella
+Simonetta."&mdash;She died in the bloom of early youth, and all the wit and
+eloquence of her native city were called forth in condolences addressed
+to Giuliano, or elegies to her memory, in prose and verse, Latin, Greek,
+and Italian. Among the rest, Lorenzo, who had already made several
+attempts in Italian poetry, pressed forward to celebrate the love and
+the loss of his amiable brother:&mdash;in his zeal to do justice to so dear a
+subject, he worked himself up into a fit of amorous and poetical
+enthusiasm which soon found a real and living beauty for its object. But
+to give this romantic tale its proper effect, it must be related in
+Lorenzo's own words. He has left us a most circumstantial and elegant as
+well as interesting and fanciful account of the birth and progress of
+his poetic passion, and I extract it at length from Mr. Roscoe's
+translation.</p>
+
+<p>"A young lady of great personal attractions happened to die at Florence;
+and as she had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span> been very generally admired and beloved, so her death
+was as generally lamented. Nor was this to be much wondered at; for,
+independent of her beauty, her manners were so engaging, that almost
+every person who had any acquaintance with her flattered himself that he
+had obtained the chief place in her affections." (In other words, this
+beautiful Simonetta was an exquisite coquette.)</p>
+
+<p>"This fatal event excited the extreme regret of her admirers; and as she
+was carried to the place of burial, with her face uncovered, those who
+had known her when living, pressed for a last look at the object of
+their adoration, and accompanied her funeral with their tears.</p>
+
+<p>"On this occasion, all the eloquence, and all the wit of Florence were
+exerted in paying due honours to her memory, both in prose and verse.
+Amongst the rest, I also composed a few sonnets; and in order to give
+them greater effect, I endeavoured to convince myself, that I too had
+been deprived of the object of my love, and to excite in my own mind all
+those passions<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span> that might enable me to move the affections of
+others.&mdash;Under the influence of this delusion, I began to think how
+severe was the fate of those by whom she had been beloved; and from
+thence was led to consider, whether there was any other lady in this
+city deserving of such honour and praise, and to imagine the happiness
+that must be experienced by any one, whose good fortune could procure
+him such a subject for his pen. I accordingly sought for some time
+without having the satisfaction of finding any one, who in my judgment
+was deserving of a sincere and constant attachment. But when I had
+nearly resigned all expectations of success, chance threw in my way that
+which had been denied to my most diligent inquiry; as if the God of Love
+had selected this hopeless period, to give me a more decisive proof of
+his power.&mdash;A public festival was held in Florence, to which all that
+was noble and beautiful in the city resorted. To this I was brought by
+some of my companions (I suppose as my destiny led) against my will, for
+I had for some time past avoided such exhibitions; or if<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span> at times I
+attended them, it proceeded rather from a compliance with custom, than
+from any pleasure I experienced in them. Among the ladies there
+assembled, I saw one of such sweet and attractive manners, that while I
+regarded her, I could not help saying, 'If this person were possessed of
+the delicacy, the understanding, the accomplishments of her who is
+lately dead&mdash;most certainly she excels her in the charms of her
+person.&mdash;"</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>"Resigning myself to my passion, I endeavoured to discover, if possible,
+how far her manners and her conversation agreed with her appearance; and
+here I found such an assemblage of extraordinary endowments, that it was
+difficult to say whether she excelled more in person or in mind. Her
+beauty was, as I have before mentioned, astonishing. She was of a just
+and proper height. Her complexion extremely fair, but not
+pale,&mdash;blooming but not ruddy. Her countenance was serious, without
+being severe,&mdash;mild and pleasant without levity or vulgarity. Her eyes
+were lively,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span> without any indication of pride or conceit. Her whole
+shape was so finely proportioned, that amongst other women she appeared
+with superior dignity, yet free from the least degree of formality or
+affectation. In walking, in dancing, or in other exercises which display
+the person, every motion was elegant and appropriate. Her sentiments
+were always just and striking, and have furnished materials for some of
+my sonnets; she always spoke at the proper time, and always to the
+purpose, so that nothing could be added, nothing taken away. Though her
+remarks were often keen and pointed, yet they were so tempered as not to
+give offence. Her understanding was superior to her sex, but without the
+appearance of arrogance or presumption; and she avoided an error too
+common among women, who, when they think themselves sensible, become for
+the most part insupportable.<a name="FNanchor_61_61" id="FNanchor_61_61"></a><a href="#Footnote_61_61" class="fnanchor">[61]</a> To recount all her excellencies would
+far exceed my present limits,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span> and I shall therefore conclude with
+affirming, that there was nothing which could be desired in a beautiful
+and an accomplished woman, which was not in her most abundantly found.
+By these qualities I was so captivated, that not a power or faculty of
+my body or mind remained any longer at liberty, and I could not help
+considering the lady who had died, as the star of Venus, which at the
+approach of the sun is totally overpowered and extinguished."</p>
+
+<p>The real name of this beautiful and accomplished creature, Lorenzo was
+too discreet to reveal; but from contemporary authors, we learn that she
+was Lucretia Donati&mdash;a noble lady, distinguished at Florence for her
+virtue and beauty, and of the same illustrious family which had given a
+wife to Dante.</p>
+
+<p>When Lorenzo undertook to fall in love thus poetically, he was only
+twenty: the experiment was perilous; and it is not wonderful that this
+imaginary passion had at first in his ardent and susceptible mind all
+the effects of a real one: he neglected society&mdash;abandoned himself to
+musing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span> and solitude&mdash;affected the rural shades, and gave up his time,
+and devoted all his powers, to celebrate, in the richest colouring of
+poetry, her whom he had selected to be the mistress of his heart, or
+rather the presiding goddess of his fancy.</p>
+
+<p>The result is exactly what may be imagined, and a proof of the theory on
+which I insist, that "nothing but what arises from the heart goes to the
+heart, and that the verse which never quickened a pulse in the bosom of
+the poet, never awakened a throb in that of his reader." If I were
+required to express in one word the distinguishing character of
+Lorenzo's amatory poems, I should say <i>grace</i>: they are full of refined
+sentiment, elegant simplicity, the most exquisite little touches of
+description, and illustrations, drawn either from external nature, or
+from the refined mysteries of platonism; but there is a want of passion,
+of power, and of pathos; there is no genuine emotion; no overflow of the
+heart, bursting with its own intense feeling; no voice that cries aloud
+for our sympathy, and echoes to our inmost bosom. What<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span> true lover ever
+thought of apologising for having given his time to celebrate the object
+of his love?</p>
+
+<p>"Persecuted as I have been from my youth," says Lorenzo, "some
+indulgence may perhaps be allowed me for having sought consolation in
+these pursuits."&mdash;And again, in allusion to his political
+situation,&mdash;"It is not to be wondered at if I endeavoured to alleviate
+my anxiety by turning to more agreeable subjects of meditation; and in
+celebrating the charms of my mistress, sought a temporary refuge from my
+cares."&mdash;Thus Lorenzo tells us that it was not in obedience to the
+dictates of his own overflowing heart, nor yet to celebrate the charms
+of his mistress, and win her favour, that he wrote in her praise, but to
+amuse himself and distract his mind from those cares and anxieties into
+which he was so early plunged. It has followed as a natural consequence,
+that elegant as are the amatory effusions of Lorenzo, they are less
+celebrated, less popular, than his descriptive and moral poems. His
+Ambra, La Nencia, and his songs for the carnival, have all in their
+respective<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span> style a higher stamp of excellence and originality than his
+love poetry. His forte seems to have been lively description,
+philosophical illustration, and brilliant and sportive fancy, combined
+with a classic taste and polished versification. Some of those sonnets,
+which, though addressed to Madonna Lucretia, turn chiefly on some
+beautiful thought or description, are finished like gems; as that on
+Solitude&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Cerchi chi vuol le pompe e gli alti onori;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>and that well known and charming one, "Sopra Violetti,"</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Non di verdi giardin, ornati e colti, &amp;c.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>both of which have been happily translated by Roscoe; and to these may
+be added the address to Cytherea&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Lascia l' isola tua tanta diletta!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lascia il tuo regno delicato e bello<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ciprigna Dea! &amp;c.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>There is another, not so well known, distinguished by its peculiar fancy
+and elegance&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Spesso mi torna a mente, anzi gi&agrave; mai, &amp;c.<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span></div></div>
+
+<p>In this he recalls to mind the time and the place, and even the vesture
+in which his gentle lady first appeared to him&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Quanto vaga, gentil, leggiadra, e pia<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Non si pu&ograve; dir, ne imaginar assai;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>and he beautifully adds,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Quale sopra i nevosi, ed alti monti<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Apollo spande il suo bel lume adorno,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Tal' i crin suoi sopra la bianca gonna!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Il tempo e 'l luogo non convien ch' io conti,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Che dov' &egrave; si bel sole &egrave; sempre giorno;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">E Paradiso, ov' &egrave; si bella Donna!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>"As over the snowy summits of the high mountains Apollo sheds his golden
+beams, so flowed her golden tresses over her white vest.&mdash;But for the
+<i>time</i> and the <i>place</i>, is it necessary that I should note them? Where
+shines so fair a sun, can it be other than day? Where dwells so
+excellent a beauty, can it be other than Paradise?"</p>
+
+<p>It happened in the midst of Lorenzo's visions of love and poetry, that
+he was called upon to give his hand to a wife chosen by his father for
+political reasons. His inclinations were not consulted,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span> as is plain
+from the blunt amusing manner in which he has noted it down in his
+memoranda. "I, Lorenzo, took to wife Donna Clarice Orsini,&mdash;or rather
+she was given to me, (ovvero mi fu data) on such a day." Yet a union
+thus inauspiciously contracted, was rendered, by the affectionate
+disposition of Lorenzo, and the amiable qualities of his wife, rather
+happy than otherwise; it is true, we have no poetical compliments
+addressed by Lorenzo to Donna Clarice, but there is extant a little
+billet written to her a few months after their marriage, from the tone
+of which it is fair to suppose, that Lorenzo had exchanged his poetic
+flame for a real attachment to an amiable woman.<a name="FNanchor_62_62" id="FNanchor_62_62"></a><a href="#Footnote_62_62" class="fnanchor">[62]</a></p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span></p>
+<p>There is a very beautiful and elegant passage in the beginning of
+Lorenzo's commentary on his own poems, in which he enlarges on the
+theory of love. "The conditions (he says) which appear necessarily to
+belong to a true, exalted, and worthy love, are two. First,&mdash;<i>to love
+but one</i>: secondly,&mdash;<i>to love that one always</i>. Not many lovers have
+hearts so generous as to be capable of fulfilling these two conditions;
+and exceedingly few women display sufficient attractions to withhold men
+from the violation of them; yet without these there is no true love."
+And afterwards, enumerating those charms of person and mind which
+inspire affection, he adds, "and yet these estimable qualities are not
+enough, unless the lover possess sensibility of heart to discern them,
+and elevation and generosity of soul to appreciate them."</p>
+
+<p>This in the original is very elegantly expressed, and the sentiment is
+as true as it is exalted and graceful; but that Lorenzo was not always
+thus philosophically refined, that he could descend<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span> from these
+Platonics to be impassioned and in earnest, and that when touched to the
+heart, he could pour forth the language of the heart, we have a single
+instance, which it is impossible to allude to without feeling some
+emotion of curiosity, which can never now be gratified.</p>
+
+<p>We find among Lorenzo's poems, written later in life than those
+addressed to Lucretia Donati, one entitled simply "An Elegy;" the style
+is different from that of his earlier poetry, and has more of the
+terseness and energy of Dante than the sweetness and flow of Petrarch.
+It begins</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Vinto dagli amorosi, empi martiri."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>"Subdued by the fierce pangs of my love, a thousand times have I taken
+up the pen, to tell thee, O gentle lady mine, all the sighs of my sick
+heart. Then fearing thy displeasure, I have, on a second thought, flung
+it from me. * * * Yet must I speak, for if words were wanting, my pallid
+cheek would betray my suffering."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He then tells her that he does not seek her dishonour, but only her kind
+thoughts, and that he may find a place within her gentle heart.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Perch&egrave; non cerco alcun tuo disonore,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ma sol la grazia tua, e che piaci<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Che'l mio albergo sia dentro al tuo core!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>He wishes that he might be once permitted to twine his fingers in her
+fair hair; to gaze into her eyes;&mdash;but he complains that she will not
+even meet his look,&mdash;that she resolutely turns her eyes another way at
+his approach.&mdash;"But do with me what thou wilt: while I live upon this
+earth, still I must love thee, since it so pleaseth Heaven&mdash;I swear it!
+and my hand writes it!</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>"Come then! oh come, while yet thy gracious looks may avail me, for
+delay is death to one who loves likes me! Would I could send with this
+scroll all the torture of heart, the tears and sighs,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span> the gesture and
+the look, that should accompany it!"</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ma s' egli avvien, che soletti ambo insieme,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Posso il braccio tenerti al collo avvolto,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Vedrai come d'amore alto arde e geme,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Vedrai cader dal mio pallido volto,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nel tuo candido sen lagrime tante.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>(I leave these lines untranslated for the benefit of the Italian
+reader). After a few more stanzas, we have this very unequivocal
+passage:</p>
+
+<p>"O would to Heaven, lady, that marriage had made us one! ah, why didst
+thou not come into this world a little sooner?&mdash;or I a little later? Yet
+why these vain thoughts? since I am doomed to see thee the bride of
+another, and am myself fettered in these marriage bonds!</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>"Thou knowest, Madonna, that these sighs, these burning words, are not
+feigned; for even as Love dictates does my hand write.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>"My life and death are with thee;&mdash;grant me<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span> but a few words, and I am
+content to live;&mdash;if not, let me die! and let my poor remains be laid in
+some forlorn and sequestered spot. Let none whisper the cause of my
+death, lest it should grieve thee! enough if some kind hand engrave upon
+my tomb,&mdash;'<i>He perished through too much love and too much cruelty.</i>'"</p>
+
+<p>I have given, literally, the leading sentiments of this little poem, but
+have left untranslated many of the stanzas. There are one or two
+concetti; but as Ginguen&eacute; truly observes on a different occasion, "Dans
+les po&euml;tes Italiens, souvent la passion est vraie, m&ecirc;me quand
+l'expression ne l'est pas."</p>
+
+<p>The style is so natural, the transitions so abrupt, the expressions so
+energetic, and there are so few of those descriptive ornaments which are
+plentifully scattered through Lorenzo's other poems, that I should
+pronounce it the real effusion of a heart, touched,&mdash;and deeply touched.
+It is to be regretted that we know nothing of the name or real character
+of an object who, deserving or not, could call forth such strong lines
+as these;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span> and in the plenitude of his power and fame, and in the midst
+of his great and serious avocations, deeply, though secretly, tyrannise
+over the peace of Lorenzo.</p>
+
+<p>He is accused,&mdash;I regret that I must allude to it,&mdash;of considerable
+licence of manners with regard to women;&mdash;a reproach from which Roscoe
+has fairly vindicated him. United, at the age of twenty-one, to a woman
+he had never seen; residing in a dissipated capital, surrounded by
+temptation, and from disposition peculiarly sensible to the influence of
+women, it is not matter of astonishment if Lorenzo's conjugal faith was
+not preserved immaculate,&mdash;if he occasionally became the thrall of
+beauty, and&mdash;(since he was not likely to be caught by vulgar
+charms,)&mdash;if he sighed, <i>par hazard</i>, for one who was not to be tempted
+by power or gold: such a one as his Elegy indicates. Two points are
+certain,&mdash;that his uniform respect and kindness to his wife Clarice,
+left her no reason to complain; while his discretion was such, that
+though historians have hazarded a general accusation against him in this
+one particular,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span> there exists not in any contemporary writer one
+scandalous anecdote of his private life, nor the name of any woman to
+whom he was attached, except that of his poetical love, Lucretia Donati.</p>
+
+<p>Lorenzo de' Medici was not handsome in face, nor graceful in form; but
+he was captivating in his manners, and excelled in all manly exercises.
+The engraving prefixed to Roscoe's life of him, does not do justice to
+his countenance. I remember the original picture in the gallery of
+Florence, on which I have looked day after day for many minutes
+together, with an interest that can only be felt on the very spot where
+the memory of Lorenzo is "wherever we look, wherever we move." In spite
+of the stoop in the shoulders, the unbecoming dress, and the harsh
+features, I was struck by the grand simplicity of the head, and the
+mingled expression of acuteness, benevolence, and earnest thought in the
+countenance; the imagination filled with the splendid character of the
+man, might possibly have perceived more than the eye,&mdash;but such was my
+impression.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Lorenzo died in his forty-fourth year, in 1492. He is not interred in
+that celebrated chapel of his family, rich with the sublimest
+productions of Michael Angelo's chisel: he lies at the opposite side of
+the church, in a magnificent sarcophagus of bronze, which contains also
+the ashes of his murdered brother, Giuliano.&mdash;Among the recollections,
+sweet and bitter, which I brought from Florence, is the remembrance of a
+day when retiring, from the glare of an Italian noontide, I stood in the
+church of San Lorenzo, sketching the tomb of Lorenzo and Giuliano de'
+Medici. The spot whence I viewed it was so obscure, that I could scarce
+see the lines traced by my pencil; but immediately behind the
+sarcophagus, there flowed from above a stream of strong light, relieving
+with added effect the dark outline of the sculptured ornaments. Through
+the grating which formed the background, I could see the figures of
+shaven monks and stoled priests gliding to and fro, like apparitions;
+and while I thought more,&mdash;O<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span> much more,&mdash;of the still and cold repose
+which wrapped the dead, than of their high deeds and far-spread fame,
+the plaintive music of a distant choir, chanting the <i>Via crucis</i>,
+floated through the pillared aisles, receding or approaching as the
+singers changed their station; swelling, sinking, and at length dying
+away on the ear.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_61_61" id="Footnote_61_61"></a><a href="#FNanchor_61_61"><span class="label">[61]</span></a> Lorenzo tells us in the original, that the ladies who
+rendered themselves thus insupportable, were called (<i>vulgarly</i>)
+<i>Saccenti</i>:&mdash;query&mdash;<i>vulgarly, Blue-stockings</i>?</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_62_62" id="Footnote_62_62"></a><a href="#FNanchor_62_62"><span class="label">[62]</span></a> Lorenzo de' Medici to his wife Clarice:&mdash;
+</p><p>
+"I arrived here in safety, and am in good health: this, I believe, will
+please thee better than any thing else, except my return, at least so I
+judge from my own desire to be once more with thee. Associate as much as
+possible with my father and sisters. I shall make all possible speed to
+return to thee, for it appears a thousand years till I see thee again.
+Pray to God for me&mdash;if thou want any thing from this place write in
+time. From Milan, 22d July, 1469. <span class="smcap">Thy Lorenzo.</span>"</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XII.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE FAIR GERALDINE.</h3>
+
+
+<p>In the reign of the second Grand Duke of Tuscany, of Lorenzo's family,
+(Cosmo I.) Florence, it is said, beheld a novel and extraordinary
+spectacle: a young traveller, from a court and a country which the
+Italians of that day seemed to regard much as we now do the
+Esquimaux,<a name="FNanchor_63_63" id="FNanchor_63_63"></a><a href="#Footnote_63_63" class="fnanchor">[63]</a> combining the learning of the scholar and the amiable
+bearing of the courtier, with all the rash bravery of youthful romance,
+astonished the inhabitants of that queenly city, first, by rivalling her
+polished nobles in the splendour of his state, and gallantry of his
+manners, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span> next, by boldly proclaiming that his "lady love" was
+superior to all that Italy could vaunt of beauty, that she was "oltre le
+belle, bella," fair beyond the fairest,&mdash;and maintaining his boast in a
+solemn tourney held in her honour, to the overthrow of all his
+opponents.</p>
+
+<p>This was our English Surrey; one of the earliest and most elegant of our
+amatory poets, and the lover of the Fair Geraldine.</p>
+
+<p>It must be admitted that the fame of the Earl of Surrey does not rest
+merely on title, and that if the fair Geraldine had never existed, he
+would still have lived in history as an accomplished scholar, soldier,
+courtier, and been lamented as the noble victim of a suspicious tyrant.
+But if some fair object of romantic gallantry had not given the impulse
+to his genius, and excited him to try his powers in a style of which no
+models yet existed in his native language,<a name="FNanchor_64_64" id="FNanchor_64_64"></a><a href="#Footnote_64_64" class="fnanchor">[64]</a>&mdash;it may be doubted
+whether his name would have descended to us with all those poetical<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span> and
+chivalrous associations which give a charm and an interest to his
+memory, far beyond that of a mere historical character. As for the
+fair-haired, blue-eyed Geraldine, the mistress of his fancy and
+affections, and the subject of his verse, her identity long lay
+<i>entombed</i>, as it were, in a poetical name; but Surrey had loved her,
+had maintained her beauty at the point of his lance&mdash;had made her
+"famous by his pen, and glorious by his sword." This was more than
+enough to excite the interest and the inquiries of posterity, and lo!
+antiquaries and commentators fell to work, archives were searched,
+genealogies were traced, and at length the substance of this beautiful
+poetical shadow was detected: she was proved to have been the Lady
+Elizabeth Fitzgerald, afterwards the wife of a certain Earl of Lincoln,
+of whom little is known&mdash;but that he married the woman Surrey had loved.</p>
+
+<p>Surrey has ingeniously contrived to compress, within the compass of a
+sonnet, some of the most interesting particulars of the personal and
+family history of his mistress. The Fitzgeralds derive<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span> their origin
+from the Geraldi of Tuscany,&mdash;hence</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">From Tuscan came my ladye's worthy race,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fair Florence was sometime their ancient seat.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>She was born and nurtured in Ireland&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Fostered she was with milk of Irish breast.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Her father was the Earl of Kildare, her mother allied to the blood
+royal.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Her sire an Earl, her dame of Prince's blood.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>She was brought up (through motives of compassion, after the misfortunes
+of her family,) at Hunsdon, with the Princesses Mary and Elizabeth,
+where Surrey, who frequently visited them in company with the young Duke
+of Richmond,<a name="FNanchor_65_65" id="FNanchor_65_65"></a><a href="#Footnote_65_65" class="fnanchor">[65]</a> first beheld her.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Hunsdon did first present her to mine eyes.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>She was then extremely young, not above fourteen or fifteen, as it
+appears from comparative dates; and Surrey says very clearly,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">She wanted years to understand<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The grief that he did feel.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span></p>
+<p>But even then her budding charms made him confess as he beautifully
+expresses it&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">How soon a look can print a thought<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That never may remove!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>It was during the festivals held at Hampton Court, whither she
+accompanied the Princesses, that her conquest was completed; and Surrey
+being afterwards confined at Windsor,<a name="FNanchor_66_66" id="FNanchor_66_66"></a><a href="#Footnote_66_66" class="fnanchor">[66]</a> was deprived of her society.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Bright is her hue, and Geraldine she hight;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hampton me taught to wish her first for mine,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Windsor, alas! doth chase me from her sight.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Hampton Court was the scene of their frequent interviews. Surrey
+mentions a certain recessed or bow window, in which, retired apart from
+the gay throng around them, they held "converse sweet." Here she gave
+him, as it seems, some encouragement; too proud of such a distinguished
+suitor to let him escape. He in the same moment confesses himself a very
+slave, and betrays an indignant consciousness of the arts by which she
+keeps him entangled in her chain.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span></p>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">In silence tho' I keep to such secrets myself,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yet do I see how she sometime, doth yield a look by stealth;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As tho' it seemed, I wis,&mdash;"I will not lose thee so!"<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When in her heart so sweet a thought did never truly grow.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>He accuses her expressly of a love of general admiration, and of giving
+her countenance and favour to unworthy rivals. In "The Warning to a
+Lover how he is abused by his Love," he thus addresses himself as the
+deceived lover:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Where thou hast loved so long, with heart and all thy power,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I see thee fed with feigned words, &amp;c.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I see her pleasant cheer in chiefest of thy suit:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When thou art gone, I see him come who gathers up the fruit;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And eke in thy respect, I see the base degree<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of him to whom she gives the heart, that promised was to thee!<a name="FNanchor_67_67" id="FNanchor_67_67"></a><a href="#Footnote_67_67" class="fnanchor">[67]</a><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The fair Geraldine must have been a practised coquette to have sat for a
+picture so finished and so strongly marked: yet before we blame her for
+this disdainful trifling, it should be remembered that Lord Surrey, at
+the time he was wooing her with "musicke vows," was either married or
+contracted to another,<a name="FNanchor_68_68" id="FNanchor_68_68"></a><a href="#Footnote_68_68" class="fnanchor">[68]</a>&mdash;a circumstance<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span> quite in keeping with the
+fashionable system of Platonic gallantry introduced from Italy&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">O Plato! Plato! you have been the cause, &amp;c.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>and so forth. I forbear to continue the apostrophe.</p>
+
+<p>According to the old tradition, repeated by all Surrey's biographers, he
+visited on his travels the famous necromancer Cornelius Agrippa, who in
+a magic mirror revealed to him the fair figure of his Geraldine, lying
+dishevelled on a couch, and, by the light of a taper, reading one of his
+tenderest sonnets.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Fair all the pageant, but how passing fair<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The slender form that lay on couch of Ind!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O'er her white bosom strayed her hazel hair,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Pale her dear cheek, as if for love she pined.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All in her night-robe loose, she lay reclined,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And pensive read from tablet eburnine,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Some strain that seemed her inmost soul to find;&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That favoured strain was Surrey's raptured line,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That fair and lovely form, the Lady Geraldine!<a name="FNanchor_69_69" id="FNanchor_69_69"></a><a href="#Footnote_69_69" class="fnanchor">[69]</a><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>This beautiful incident is too celebrated, too<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span> touching, not to be one
+of the articles of our poetical faith. It was believed by Surrey's
+contemporaries, and in the age immediately following was gravely related
+by a grave historian. It shows at least the celebrity which his poetry,
+unequalled at that time, had given to his love, and the object of it. In
+fact, when divested of the antique spelling, which, at the first glance,
+revolts by the impression it gives of difficulty and obscurity, some of
+the lyrics of Surrey have not since been surpassed either in elegance of
+sentiment, or flowing grace of expression:&mdash;for example&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">A Praise of his Love, wherein he reproveth them that compare<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">their Ladies with his.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Give place ye lovers here before,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That spent your boastes and braggs in vain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My ladye's beauty passeth more<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The best of yours, I dare well sayne,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Then doth the sun the candle light,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or brightest day the darkest night.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And thereto hath a truth as just,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As had Penelope the fair:<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span>
+<span class="i0">For what she sayeth you may it trust.<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">As it by writing sealed were;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And virtues hath she many moe,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Than I with pen have skill to show.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The following sonnet is rather a specimen of versification than of
+sentiment: the subject is borrowed from Petrarch.</p>
+
+
+<h4>A COMPLAINT, BY NIGHT, OF A LOVER NOT BELOVED.</h4>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Alas! so all things now do hold their peace,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Heaven and earth disturbed in no thing;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The beasts, the air, the birds their song do cease,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And the night's car the stars about doth bring:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Calm is the sea, the waves work less and less:<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">So am not I, whom love, alas! doth wring,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bringing before my face the great increase<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of my desires, whereas I weep and sing,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In joy and woe, as in a doubtful case.<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">For my sweet thoughts, some time do pleasure bring;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But by and by, the cause of my disease,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Gives me a pang, that inwardly doth sting,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When that I think, what grief it is again<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To live, and lack the thing should rid my pain.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Geraldine was so beautiful as to authorise the raptures of her poetical
+lover. Even in her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span> later years, when as Countess of Lincoln, she
+attended on Queen Elizabeth, she retained so much of her excelling
+loveliness, that the adoration paid to her in youth, was not wondered
+at; and her celebrity as Surrey's early love, is alluded to by
+cotemporary writers.<a name="FNanchor_70_70" id="FNanchor_70_70"></a><a href="#Footnote_70_70" class="fnanchor">[70]</a> There can be no doubt that she was an
+accomplished woman: the learned education the Princesses received at
+Hunsdon, (in the advantages of which she participated,) is well known.
+Her father, Lord Kildare, was a man of vigorous intellect and uncommon
+attainments for the age in which he lived. He was the eighth Earl of his
+noble family, and being engaged in the disturbances of Ireland, then a
+scene of eternal dissension and bloodshed between the native princes and
+the lords of the English pale, he fell under the displeasure of Henry
+the Eighth: his eldest son, and his five brothers, who had been seized
+as hostages, were executed on the same day at Tyburn, and the "stout old
+Earl," as he is called<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span> in history, died broken-hearted in the Tower.
+The mother of Geraldine is rendered interesting to us by a little family
+trait, related by one of our old Chroniclers.<a name="FNanchor_71_71" id="FNanchor_71_71"></a><a href="#Footnote_71_71" class="fnanchor">[71]</a> Lord Kildare, he tells
+us, "was so well affected to his wife, as he would not at anie time buy
+a suite of apparel for himself, but he would suite her with the same
+stuffe; the which gentlenesse she recompensed with equal kindnesse; for
+after that he, the said Earle, deceased in the Tower, she did not onely
+live a chaste and honourable widow, but also nightly, before she went to
+bed, she would resorte to his picture, and there, with a solemn <i>cong&eacute;</i>,
+she would bid her Lorde good nighte."</p>
+
+<p>This Countess of Kildare was Lady Elizabeth Grey, granddaughter of that
+famous Lady Elizabeth Grey, whose virtue made her the queen of Edward
+the Fourth. Thus the fair Geraldine was cousin to the young princes who
+were smothered in the Tower, and may truly be said to have been of
+"Prince's blood."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It must be admitted that the general tone of Surrey's poems does not
+give us a favourable idea of the fair Geraldine's manners and character.
+She was variable, coquetish, and fond of admiration;&mdash;on this point I
+have offered some apology for her. She is accused also of marrying
+twice, from <i>mercenary</i> motives, and thus forfeiting the attachment of
+her noble and poetical lover.<a name="FNanchor_72_72" id="FNanchor_72_72"></a><a href="#Footnote_72_72" class="fnanchor">[72]</a> This is unfair, I think; there is no
+<i>proof</i> that Geraldine married solely from <i>mercenary</i> motives. Surrey
+was himself married, and both the men to whom she was successively
+united,<a name="FNanchor_73_73" id="FNanchor_73_73"></a><a href="#Footnote_73_73" class="fnanchor">[73]</a> were eminent in their day for high personal qualities,
+though in comparison with Surrey, they have been reduced to hide their
+diminished heads in peerages and genealogies.</p>
+
+<p>The Earl of Surrey was beheaded in 1547. The fair Geraldine was living
+forty years afterwards: she survived for a short time her second<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span>
+husband, Lord Lincoln; and with him lies buried under a sumptuous tomb
+at Windsor: she left no descendants. Her youngest brother, Edward
+Fitzgerald, was the lineal ancestor of the present Duke of Leinster.</p>
+
+<p>The only original portrait of the fair Geraldine, now extant, is in the
+gallery of the Duke of Bedford, at Woburn; and I am told that it is
+sufficiently beautiful to justify Surrey's admiration.<a name="FNanchor_74_74" id="FNanchor_74_74"></a><a href="#Footnote_74_74" class="fnanchor">[74]</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_63_63" id="Footnote_63_63"></a><a href="#FNanchor_63_63"><span class="label">[63]</span></a> "Those bears of English&mdash;those barbarous islanders," are
+common phrases in the Italian writers of that age.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_64_64" id="Footnote_64_64"></a><a href="#FNanchor_64_64"><span class="label">[64]</span></a> Surrey introduced the sonnet, and the use of blank verse
+into our literature. It is a curious fact, that the earliest blank verse
+extant was written by Saint Francis.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_65_65" id="Footnote_65_65"></a><a href="#FNanchor_65_65"><span class="label">[65]</span></a> Natural brother of the princesses: he was the son of Henry
+VIII. by Lady Talbot.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_66_66" id="Footnote_66_66"></a><a href="#FNanchor_66_66"><span class="label">[66]</span></a> He was imprisoned for eating meat in Lent.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_67_67" id="Footnote_67_67"></a><a href="#FNanchor_67_67"><span class="label">[67]</span></a> Lady Frances Vere.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_68_68" id="Footnote_68_68"></a><a href="#FNanchor_68_68"><span class="label">[68]</span></a> Surrey's Works: Nott's Edit. 4to.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_69_69" id="Footnote_69_69"></a><a href="#FNanchor_69_69"><span class="label">[69]</span></a> Lay of the Last Minstrel.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_70_70" id="Footnote_70_70"></a><a href="#FNanchor_70_70"><span class="label">[70]</span></a> Queen Elizabeth's Progresses, vol. i.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_71_71" id="Footnote_71_71"></a><a href="#FNanchor_71_71"><span class="label">[71]</span></a> Holinshed.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_72_72" id="Footnote_72_72"></a><a href="#FNanchor_72_72"><span class="label">[72]</span></a> See Nott's edition of Surrey's Works.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_73_73" id="Footnote_73_73"></a><a href="#FNanchor_73_73"><span class="label">[73]</span></a> She was the second wife of Sir Anthony Browne, and the
+third wife of the Earl of Lincoln, ancestor to the Duke of Newcastle.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_74_74" id="Footnote_74_74"></a><a href="#FNanchor_74_74"><span class="label">[74]</span></a> Those who are curious about historic proofs, may consult
+Anecdotes of the family of Howard, Memoirs and works of Henry Howard
+Earl of Surrey, edited by Dr. Nott, Park's Royal and Noble Authors, and
+Collins' Peerage, by Brydges.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XIII.</h2>
+
+<h3>GINEVRA, AND ALESSANDRA STROZZI.</h3>
+
+
+<p>While the sagacity of Horace Walpole was tracking the identity of the
+fair Geraldine, through the mazes of poetry and probability,&mdash;through
+parchments, through peerages, through papers, and through patents, he
+must now and then have been annoyed by the provoking discretion of her
+chivalrous adorer, which had led him such a chase. But of all the
+discreet lovers that ever baffled commentators or biographers, commend
+me to Ariosto! though one of the last from whom discretion might have
+been expected on such a subject. He is known to have been particularly
+susceptible to the power<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span> of beauty; passionate in his attachments; and
+though pensive and abstracted in his general habits, almost irresistibly
+captivating in his intercourse with women. Yet such was his fine
+chivalrous feeling for the honour of those who, won by his rare
+qualities, yielded it to his keeping&mdash;"such his marvellous secrecy and
+modesty," say his Italian biographers, that although the public gaze was
+fixed upon him in his lifetime, and although, since his death, the
+minutest circumstances relative to him have been subjects of as much
+curiosity and research in Italy, as Shakspeare among us; yet a few
+scattered notices are all that can be brought together to illustrate his
+charming lyrics.</p>
+
+<p>This mystery was not in Ariosto the effect of chance or affectation; it
+arose from a principle of conduct faithfully adhered to from youth to
+age; in behalf of which, and the many beautiful passages expressive of
+devotion and reverential tenderness towards our sex, scattered through
+his great poem, we will endeavour, (though at some little sacrifice of
+the pride and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span> delicacy of women,) to pardon him, for having treated us
+most wickedly, on sundry other occasions. As an emblem of the reserve he
+had imposed on himself, a little bronze Cupid, with his finger on his
+lip, in token of silence, ornamented his inkstand, which is still
+preserved at Ferrara.</p>
+
+<p>Of Ariosto's amatory poems, so full of spirit, grace, and a sort of
+earnest triumphant tenderness, it is impossible to doubt that the
+objects were real. The earliest of his serious attachments, was to a
+young girl of the Florentine family of the Lapi, but residing at Mantua,
+or in its vicinity. Her name was Ginevra,&mdash;a name he has tenderly
+commemorated in the Orlando Furioso, by giving it to one of his most
+charming and interesting heroines,&mdash;Ginevra di Scozia. He has also,
+after Petrarch's fashion, <i>played</i> upon this name in one or two of his
+sonnets; <i>Ginevro</i> signifying a juniper-tree:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Non voglio (e Febo e Bacco mi perdoni)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Che lor frondi mi mostrino poeta,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ma che un <i>Ginevro</i> sia che mi coroni!<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span></div></div>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"I wish not, (may Bacchus and Ph&oelig;bus pardon me!) either
+the laurel or the ivy to crown my brows; let my wreath be
+rather of the thorny juniper!"</p></div>
+
+<p>His love for Ginevra (which was fondly returned,) began in very early
+youth; their first interview occurred at a <i>Festa di Ballo</i>,&mdash;a
+f&ecirc;te-champ&ecirc;tre, where Ginevra excelled all her young companions in the
+dance, as much as she surpassed them in her blooming beauty. He alludes
+to stolen interviews, in a grove of laurels, and on the banks of the
+Mincio: and on the whole, confesses that he had no reason to complain of
+cruelty from the fair Ginevra.<a name="FNanchor_75_75" id="FNanchor_75_75"></a><a href="#Footnote_75_75" class="fnanchor">[75]</a> This attachment lasted long; for,
+four years after their first meeting, Ariosto addresses her in a most
+impassioned strain, and vows that she was then "dearer to him than his
+own soul, and fairer than ever in his eyes." She seems to have left that
+permanent impression on his memory and fancy, that shade<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span> of tender
+regret with which a man of strong sensibility and ardent imagination
+always recurs to the first love of his youth, even when the passion
+itself is past. He says himself, when revisiting Mantua many years
+afterwards, that the scene revived all his former tenderness&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Quel foco ch' io pensai che fosse estinto,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Dal tempo, dagli affanni, ed il star lunge<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Signor pur arde.&mdash;&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>I cannot discover what became of Ginevra ultimately: her fate was a
+common one: she was loved by a celebrated man, was forsaken, and in
+exchange for happiness and for love, she has enjoyed for some time a
+shadowy renown. Her name was usually connected with that of Ariosto,
+till the researches of later biographers discovered the object of that
+more celebrated, more serious, and more lasting passion which inspired
+Ariosto's finest lyrics, which was subsequently sealed by a private
+marriage, and ended only with the poet's life. In this instance, the
+modesty of the lady and the discretion of Ariosto have proved in vain,
+for the name of <i>Alessandra Strozzi</i> is now so inseparably<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span> linked with
+that of her poet, that Beatrice is not more identified with Dante, nor
+Laura with Petrarch; though their names be more popular, and their fame
+more widely spread.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Minor di grido, ma del vanto altera,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">(E ci&ograve; le basta) che suo saggio amante<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fu'l grande che cant&ograve; l'armi e gli amori&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Vedi Alessandra!<a name="FNanchor_76_76" id="FNanchor_76_76"></a><a href="#Footnote_76_76" class="fnanchor">[76]</a><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Alessandra Strozzi was the daughter of Filippo Benucci, and the widow of
+Tito Strozzi, a noble Florentine and famous Latin poet. At the period of
+her first acquaintance with Ariosto, she must have been about
+six-and-twenty, and a beautiful woman, on a very magnificent scale.
+Though I cannot find that she was distinguished for talents, or any
+particular taste for literature, she seems to have possessed higher and
+more loveable qualities, which won Ariosto's admiration and secured his
+respect to the last.</p>
+
+<p>It was on his return from Rome in 1515, that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span> Ariosto visited Florence,
+intending merely to witness the grand festival which was then celebrated
+in honour of St. John the Baptist, and lasted several days. With what
+animation, what graphic power, he has described in one of his canzoni,
+the scene and occasion in which he first beheld his mistress! The
+magnificence of Florence left, he says, few traces on his memory: he
+could only recollect that in all that fair city, he saw nothing so fair
+as herself.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">Sol mi resta immortale<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Memoria, ch'io non vidi in tutta quella<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bella citt&agrave;, di voi, cosa pi&ugrave; bella.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>He had arrived just in time to be present at a f&ecirc;te, to which both were
+invited, and which Alessandra, notwithstanding her recent widowhood,
+condescended to adorn with her presence, "da preghi vinta"&mdash;conquered by
+the entreaties of her friends. The whole scene is set forth like some of
+the living and moving pictures which glow before us in the Orlando.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Porte, finestre, vie, templi, teatri,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Vidi pieni di Donne,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A giochi, a pompe, a sacrifici intenti.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The portrait of Alessandra in her festal attire, and all her matronly
+loveliness, looks forth, as it were, from this gorgeous frame, like one
+of Titian's breathing, full-blown beauties. Her dress is minutely
+described: it was black, embroidered over with wreaths of vine-leaves
+and bunches of grapes, in purple and gold; her fair luxuriant hair,
+gathered in a net behind and parted in front, fell down on either side
+of her face, in long curls which touched her shoulders.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">In aurei nodi, il biondo e spesso crine<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In rara e sottil rete, avea raccolto;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Soave ombra di drieto<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Rendea al collo, e dinanzi alle confine<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Delle guance divine;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">E discendea fin a l' avorio bianco<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Del destro omero, e manco;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Con queste reti, insidiosi amori<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Preser quel giorno, pi&ugrave; de mille cori!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"In golden braids, her fair<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And richly flowing hair<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Was gather'd in a subtle net behind,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">(A subtle net and rare!)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And cast sweet shadows there<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Over her neck, whilst parted ringlets, twined<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In beauty, from her forehead fell away,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And hung adown her cheek where roses lay,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Touching the ivory pale, (how pale and white!)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of both her rounded shoulders, left and right.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O crafty Loves! no more ye need your darts;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For well ye know, how many thousand hearts,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">(Willing captives on that day,)<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">In those golden meshes lay!"<a name="FNanchor_77_77" id="FNanchor_77_77"></a><a href="#Footnote_77_77" class="fnanchor">[77]</a><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>On her brow, just where her hair is parted, she wears a sprig of laurel,
+wondrously wrought in gems and gold;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i14">Quel gemmato<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Alloro, tra la serena fronte e l' calle assunto.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>After a rapturous, but general description of the lady's surpassing
+beauty, this animated and admirable canzone concludes with the fine
+comparison<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span> of himself to the wild falcon, tamed at length to a master's
+hand and voice:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">La libertade apprezza,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fin che perduta ancor non l' ha il falcone;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Preso che sia, depone<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Del gire errando s&igrave; l' antica voglia,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Che sempre che si scioglia,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Al suo Signor a render con veloci<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ali s' andr&agrave;, dove udir&agrave; le voci!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Ariosto, thus enamoured, forgot the flight of time; instead of remaining
+at Florence a few days, his stay was prolonged to six months; and as he
+resided in the house of his friend Vespucci, who was the brother-in-law
+of Alessandra, he had daily opportunities of seeing her, without in any
+way compromising her matronly dignity. On a certain occasion he finds
+her employed at her embroidery. She is working a robe, with wreaths of
+lilies and amaranthes; these emblems of purity and love suggest, of
+course, the obvious compliments, but in a spirit that places the whole
+scene before us: Alessandra, gracefully bending at her embroidery-frame,
+and listening, with veiled lids<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span> and suspended needle, to the tender
+homage of Ariosto, who repeats, as he hangs over her,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Non senza causa il giglio e l' amaranto,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">L' uno di fede, e l' altro fior d' amore, &amp;c.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Even the pattern from which she is working, the silk, the gold, the
+lawn, made happy by her touch, are sanctified, are envied,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Avventuroso man! beato ingegno!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Beata seta! beatissimo oro!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ben nato lino! inclito bel lavoro,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Da chi vuol la mia dea prender disegno,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Per far a vostro esempio un vestir degno,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Che copra avorio, e perle ed un tesoro!<a name="FNanchor_78_78" id="FNanchor_78_78"></a><a href="#Footnote_78_78" class="fnanchor">[78]</a><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And he adds, "Ah, that she would rather take pattern after me, and
+imitate the constant love I bear her!"</p>
+
+<p>Alessandra must have excelled in needle-work, for we find frequent
+mention of her favorite occupation; and it is even alluded to in the
+Orlando, where describing the wound of Zerbino, Ariosto<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span> uses a
+comparison rather too fanciful for the occasion.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Cos&igrave; talora un bel purpureo nastro<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ho veduto partir tela d'argento,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Da quel bianca man pi&ugrave; ch'alabastro<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Da cui partire il cor spesso mi sento.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And so, I sometimes have been wont to view<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A hand more white than alabaster, part<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The silver cloth, with ribbons red of hue,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A hand I often feel divide my heart.<a name="FNanchor_79_79" id="FNanchor_79_79"></a><a href="#Footnote_79_79" class="fnanchor">[79]</a><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Among the personal charms of Alessandra, the most striking was the
+beauty and luxuriance of her hair. In the days of Ariosto, fair hair,
+with a golden tinge, was so much admired that it became a fashion; we
+are even informed that the Venetian women had invented a dye, or
+extract, by which they discharged the natural colour of their tresses,
+and gave them this admired hue. Almost all Titian's and Giorgione's
+beauties have fair hair; the "richissima capellatura bionda" of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span>
+Alessandra, was a principal charm in the eyes of her lover, but it was
+one she was destined to lose prematurely; during a dangerous illness,
+some rash and luckless physician ordered all her beautiful tresses to be
+cut off. The remedy, it seems, was equally unnecessary and unfortunate;
+but here was a fine theme for an indignant lover! and Ariosto has,
+accordingly, lavished on it some of his most graceful and poetical
+ideas. Of the three elegant sonnets<a name="FNanchor_80_80" id="FNanchor_80_80"></a><a href="#Footnote_80_80" class="fnanchor">[80]</a> in which he has commemorated the
+incident, it is difficult to decide which is the finest&mdash;the last,
+perhaps, is the most spirited: the poet bursts at once into his subject,
+as in a transport of grief and rage.</p>
+
+<p>"When I think, as I do, a thousand, thousand times a-day, upon those
+golden tresses, which neither wisdom nor necessity, but hasty folly,
+tore, alas! from that fair head, I am enraged,&mdash;my cheek burns with
+anger,&mdash;even tears gush forth, bathing my face and bosom;&mdash;I could die
+to be revenged on the impious stupidity of that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span> rash hand! O Love, if
+such wrong goes unpunished, thine be the reproach! Remember how Bacchus
+avenged on the Thracian King,<a name="FNanchor_81_81" id="FNanchor_81_81"></a><a href="#Footnote_81_81" class="fnanchor">[81]</a> the clusters torn from his sacred
+vines: wilt thou, who art greater far than he, do less? Wilt thou suffer
+the loveliest and dearest of thy possessions to be audaciously ravished,
+and yet bear it in silence?"<a name="FNanchor_82_82" id="FNanchor_82_82"></a><a href="#Footnote_82_82" class="fnanchor">[82]</a></p>
+
+<p>This is powerful enough to be in downright earnest: and unsoftened by
+the flowing harmony of the verse and rhyme, appears even harsh, both in
+sentiment and expression: but the poetry and spirit being inherent, have
+not, I trust, quite escaped in the <i>transfusion</i>. When Ariosto, after a
+long absence, revisits the scene in which he first beheld the lady of
+his thoughts, he addresses those "marble halls, and lofty and stately
+roofs,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Marmoree logge, alti e superbi tetti,"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>in a strain which leaves the issue of his suit something less than
+doubtful:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Well do ye remember, ye scenes, when I left<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span> ye a captive sick at
+heart, and pierced with Love's sweet pain: but ye know not perhaps how
+sweetly I died, and was restored again to life: how my gentlest Lady,
+seeing that my soul had forsaken me, sent me hers in return to dwell
+with me for ever!"</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Ben vi sovvien, che di qui andai captivo,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Trafitto il cor! ma non sapete forse<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Com' io morissi, e poi tornassi in vita.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">E che madonna, tosto che s' accorse<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Esser l' anima in lei da me fuggita,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">La sua mi diede, e ch' or con questa vivo!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The exact date of Ariosto's marriage cannot be ascertained, but the
+marriage itself is proved beyond a doubt:<a name="FNanchor_83_83" id="FNanchor_83_83"></a><a href="#Footnote_83_83" class="fnanchor">[83]</a> it must have taken place
+about 1522. The reasons which induced Ariosto to involve in doubt and
+mystery his union with this admirable woman, can only be
+conjectured,<a name="FNanchor_84_84" id="FNanchor_84_84"></a><a href="#Footnote_84_84" class="fnanchor">[84]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span> their intercourse was so carefully concealed, and the
+discretion and modesty of Alessandra so remarkable, that no suspicion of
+the ties which bound them to each other, existed during the life of the
+poet; nor did the slightest imputation ever sully the fair fame of her
+he loved.</p>
+
+<p>It were endless to point out the various beauties of Ariosto's
+lyrics,&mdash;beauties which, as they spring from feeling, are <i>felt</i>. We
+have few sonnets in a dolorous strain, few complaints of cruelty; and
+even these seem inspired, not by the habitual coldness of Alessandra,
+but by some occasional repulses which he confesses to have deserved.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Per poco consiglio, e troppo ardire.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>But we have, in their place, all the glow of sensibility, the sparkling
+of hope, the grateful rapture of returned affection, and that power of
+imagery, by which, with one vivid stroke, he turns his emotions into
+pictures: these predominate throughout. As an instance of the latter,
+there is the apostrophe to Hope, "now bounding<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span> and leaping along, now
+creeping with coward steps and slow:"</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">O speranza! che ancor dietro si mena<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Quando a gran salti, e quando a passi lenti!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>In one of his madrigals, he says, with an elegance which is perhaps a
+little quaint, "my wishes soar so high, that my hopes shrink back, and
+dare not follow them." In the same spirit, when he is blest with the
+presence of his love, grief is not only banished, but "flies with the
+rapidity of a falcon before the wind,"</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Vola, com' un falcone che ha seco il vento!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Merely to compare his mistress to a rose, would have been common-place.
+She is a rose "unfolding her <i>paradise</i> of leaves,"&mdash;a charming
+expression, which has been adopted, I think, by one of our living poets.
+Mingled with the most rapturous praise of Alessandra's triumphant
+beauty, we have constantly the most delightful impression of her
+tenderness, her frank and courteous<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span> bearing, and the gladness which her
+presence diffuses through his heart, which, after the sentimental
+lamentations of former poets, are really a relief.</p>
+
+<p>I can understand the self-congratulation, the secret enjoyment, with
+which Ariosto dwelt on the praises of Alessandra, celebrated her charms,
+and exulted in her love, while her name remained an impenetrable secret,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Nor pass'd his lips in holy silence seal'd!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>But when once he had introduced her into the Orlando, he must have had a
+very modest idea of his own future renown, not to have anticipated the
+consequences. A famous passage in the 42d canto, is now universally
+admitted to be a description of Alessandra.<a name="FNanchor_85_85" id="FNanchor_85_85"></a><a href="#Footnote_85_85" class="fnanchor">[85]</a> She is very strikingly
+introduced, and yet with the usual characteristic mystery; so that while
+nothing is omitted that can excite interest and curiosity, every means
+are taken to baffle and disappoint both. Rinaldo,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span> while travelling in
+Italy, arrives at a splendid palace on the banks of the Po. It is
+minutely described, with all the prodigal magnificence of the Arabian
+Nights', and all the taste of an architect; and among other riches, is
+adorned with the statues of the most celebrated women of that age, all
+of whom are named at length; but among them stands the effigy of one so
+pre&euml;minent in majesty, and beauty, and intellect, that though she is
+partly veiled, and habited in modest black, (alluding to her recent
+widowhood,) though she wears neither jewels nor chains of gold, she
+eclipses all the beauties around her, as the evening star outshines all
+others.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Che sotto puro velo, in nera gonna<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Senza oro e gemme, in un vestire schietto,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fra le pi&ugrave; adorne non parea men bella<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Che sia tra l'altre la ciprigna stella!<a name="FNanchor_86_86" id="FNanchor_86_86"></a><a href="#Footnote_86_86" class="fnanchor">[86]</a><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>At her side stands the image of one, who in humble strains had dared to
+celebrate her virtues and her beauty (meaning himself). "But," adds<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span> the
+poet modestly, "I know not why he alone should be placed there, nor what
+he had done to be so honoured; of all the rest, the names were
+sculptured beneath; but of these two, the names remained unknown."&mdash;No,
+not so! for those whom Love and Fame have joined together, who shall
+henceforth sunder?</p>
+
+<p>The Orlando Furioso was completed and published shortly after Ariosto's
+visit to Florence; and this passage must have been written apparently
+not only before his marriage with Alessandra, but before he was even
+secure of her affection; perhaps he read it aloud to her, and while his
+stolen looks and faltering voice betrayed the true object of this most
+beautiful and refined homage, she must have felt the delicacy which had
+suppressed her name. In such a moment, how little could she have heeded
+or thought of the voice of future fame, while the accents of her lover
+thrilled through her heart!</p>
+
+<p>Alessandra removed from Florence to Ferrara, about 1519, and inhabited
+the Casa Strozzi, in the street of Santa Maria in Vado. The residence<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span>
+of Ariosto was in the Via Mirasole, at some distance. Both houses are
+still standing. She died in 1552, having survived the poet about
+nineteen years; and she was buried in the church of San Rocco at
+Ferrara.</p>
+
+<p>She bore no children to Ariosto; and her son, by her first marriage
+(Count Guido Strozzi), died before her.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Ariosto left two sons, whom he tenderly loved, and had educated with
+extreme care. The eldest, Virginio, was the son of a beautiful
+Contadinella, whose name was Orsolina; the mother of the youngest,
+Giovanbattista, was also a girl of inferior rank; her name was Maria.
+Neither are once mentioned or alluded to by Ariosto; but the mischievous
+industry of the poet's commentators has immortalized their names and
+their frailty.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_75_75" id="Footnote_75_75"></a><a href="#FNanchor_75_75"><span class="label">[75]</span></a>
+</p>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">&mdash;&mdash;Non ebbe unqua pastore<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Di me pi&ugrave; lieto, o pi&ugrave; felice amore!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<p>
+See the canzone to Ginevra, quoted by Baruffaldi. Vita, p. 148.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_76_76" id="Footnote_76_76"></a><a href="#FNanchor_76_76"><span class="label">[76]</span></a> Monti. Poesie varie, p. 88.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_77_77" id="Footnote_77_77"></a><a href="#FNanchor_77_77"><span class="label">[77]</span></a> Translated by a friend.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_78_78" id="Footnote_78_78"></a><a href="#FNanchor_78_78"><span class="label">[78]</span></a> Sonnet 27.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_79_79" id="Footnote_79_79"></a><a href="#FNanchor_79_79"><span class="label">[79]</span></a> Stewart Rose's translation.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_80_80" id="Footnote_80_80"></a><a href="#FNanchor_80_80"><span class="label">[80]</span></a> The 26th, 27th, and 28th.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_81_81" id="Footnote_81_81"></a><a href="#FNanchor_81_81"><span class="label">[81]</span></a> Lycurgus, King of Thrace.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_82_82" id="Footnote_82_82"></a><a href="#FNanchor_82_82"><span class="label">[82]</span></a> Ariosto. Rime.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_83_83" id="Footnote_83_83"></a><a href="#FNanchor_83_83"><span class="label">[83]</span></a> The proofs may be consulted in Baruffaldi, "Vita di M.
+Ludovico Ariosto," published in 1807; and also in Frizzi, "Memorie della
+Famiglia Ariosto."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_84_84" id="Footnote_84_84"></a><a href="#FNanchor_84_84"><span class="label">[84]</span></a> Baruffaldi gives some family reasons, but they are far
+from being satisfactory.&mdash;See <span class="smcap">Vita</span>, in p. 159.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_85_85" id="Footnote_85_85"></a><a href="#FNanchor_85_85"><span class="label">[85]</span></a> Ruscelli, Fabroni, Baruffaldi, and the late poet Monti,
+are all agreed on this point.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_86_86" id="Footnote_86_86"></a><a href="#FNanchor_86_86"><span class="label">[86]</span></a> Orlando Furioso, c. 42, st. 93.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XIV.</h2>
+
+<h3>SPENSER'S ROSALIND AND SPENSER'S ELIZABETH.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Pass we from the Ariosto of Italy, to Spenser, our English Ariosto; the
+transition is natural:&mdash;they resemble each other certainly, but with a
+difference, and this difference reigns especially in their minor poems.</p>
+
+<p>The tender heart and luxuriant fancy of Spenser have thrown round his
+attachments all the strong interest of reality and all the charm of
+romance and poetry; and since we know that the first developement of his
+genius was owing to female influence, his Rosalind ought to have been
+deified for what her beauty achieved, had she<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span> possessed sufficient soul
+to appreciate the lustre of her conquest.</p>
+
+<p>Immediately on leaving college, Spenser retired to the north of England,
+where he first became enamoured of the fair being to whom, according to
+the fashion of the day, he gave the fanciful appellation of Rosalind. We
+are told that the letters which form this word being "well ordered,"
+(that is, <i>transposed</i>) comprehend her real name; but it has hitherto
+escaped the penetration of his biographers. Two of his friends were
+entrusted with the secret, and they, with a discretion more to be
+regretted than blamed, have kept it. One of these, who speaks from
+personal knowledge, tells us, in a note on the Eclogues, that she was
+the daughter of a widow; that she was a gentlewoman, and one "that for
+her rare and singular gifts of person and mind, Spenser need not have
+been ashamed to love." We can believe this of a poet, whose delicate
+perception of female worth breathes in almost every page of his works;
+but after having, as he hoped, made some progress in her heart, a rival
+stept in, whom Spenser accuses expressly of having supplanted him by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span>
+treacherous arts;<a name="FNanchor_87_87" id="FNanchor_87_87"></a><a href="#Footnote_87_87" class="fnanchor">[87]</a> and on this obscure and nameless wight, Rosalind
+bestowed the hand which had been coveted,&mdash;the charms which had been
+sung by Spenser! He suffered long and deeply, wounded both in his pride
+and in his love: but her beauty and virtue had made a stronger
+impression than her cruelty; and her lover, with a generous tenderness,
+not only pardoned, but found excuses for her disdain.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i18">"I have often heard,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fair Rosalind of divers foully blam'd,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">For being to that swain too cruel hard;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But who can tell what cause had that fair maid<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To use him so, that loved her so well?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or who with blame can justly her upbraid,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">For loving not; for who can love compel?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And (sooth to say) it is full handy thing<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Rashly to censure creatures so divine;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For demi-gods they be; and first did spring<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">From heaven, though graft in frailness feminine."<a name="FNanchor_88_88" id="FNanchor_88_88"></a><a href="#Footnote_88_88" class="fnanchor">[88]</a><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The exquisite sentiment of these lines is worthy of him who sung of
+"heavenly Una and her milk-white lamb."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span></p><p>To the memory of Rosalind,&mdash;to the long felt influence of this first
+passion, and to the melancholy shade which his early disappointment cast
+over a mind naturally cheerful, we owe some of the most tender and
+beautiful passages scattered through his later poems:&mdash;for instance&mdash;the
+bitter sense of recollected suffering, seems to have suggested that fine
+description of a lover's life, which may almost rank as a <i>pendant</i> to
+the miseries of the courtier, so well known and often quoted.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Full little know'st thou that hast not tied, &amp;c.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>It occurs in the "Hymn to Love."</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The gnawing envy, the heart-fretting fear,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The vain surmises, the distrustful shows,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The false reports that flying tales do bear,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The doubts, the dangers, the delays, the woes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The feigned friends, the unassured foes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With thousands more than any tongue can tell&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Do make a lover's life, a wretch's hell!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And again in the Fairey Queen:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">What equal torment to the grief of mind.<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And pining anguish, hid in gentle heart,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That inly foods itself with thoughts unkind,<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span>
+<span class="i0">And nourisheth its own consuming smart;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And will to none its malady impart!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The effects produced in a noble and gentle spirit, by virtuous love for
+an exalted object, are not less elegantly described in another stanza of
+the Hymn to Love; and must have been read with rapture in that
+chivalrous age. The last line is particularly beautiful.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Then forth he casts in his unquiet thought,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What he may do, her favour to obtain;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What brave exploit, what peril hardly wrought,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What puissant conquest, what adventurous pain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">May please her best, and grace unto him gain;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He dreads no danger, nor misfortune fears,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His faith, his fortune, in his breast he bears!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And in what a fine spirit of poetry, as well as feeling, is that
+description of the power of true beauty, which forms part of his second
+Hymn! It is indeed imitated from the refined Platonics of the Italian
+school, which then prevailed in the court, the camp, the grove, and is a
+little diffuse in style, a little redundant; but how rich in poetry, and
+in the most luxuriant and graceful imagery!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">How vainly then do idle wits invent,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That beauty is nought else but mixture made<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of colours fair, and goodly temperament<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of pure complexions, that shall quickly fade<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And pass away, like to a summer's shade;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or that it is but comely composition<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of parts well measured, with meet disposition!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Hath white and red in it such wondrous power,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That it can pierce through th' eyes into the heart,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And therein stir such rage and restless stowre,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As nought but death can stint his dolor's smart?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or can proportion of the outward part<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Move such affection in the inward mind,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That it can rob both sense, and reason blind?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Why do not then the blossoms of the field,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which are array'd with much more orient hue,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And to the sense most dainty odours yield,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Work like impression in the looker's view?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or why do not fair pictures like power show,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In which oft-times we Nature see of Art<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Excell'd, in perfect limming every part?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But ah! believe me, there is more than so,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That works such wonders in the minds of men,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I, that have often prov'd, too well it know.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And who so list the like essaies to ken,<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Shall find by trial, and confess it then,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That beauty is not, as fond men misdeem,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">An outward show of things that only seem.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">For that same goodly hue of white and red,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With which the cheeks are sprinkled, shall decay,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And those sweet rosy leaves, so fairly spread<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Upon the lips, shall fade and fall away,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To that they were, even to corrupted clay:&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That golden wire, those sparkling stars so bright<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shall turn to dust, and lose their goodly light.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But that fair lamp, from whose celestial ray<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That light proceeds, which kindleth lovers' fire,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shall never be extinguished nor decay;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But, when the vital spirits do expire,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Unto her native planet shall retire;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For it is heavenly born and cannot die,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Being a parcel of the purest sky!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>At a late period of Spenser's life, the remembrance of this cruel piece
+of excellence,&mdash;his Rosalind, was effaced by a second and a happier
+love. His sonnets are addressed to a beautiful Irish girl, the daughter
+of a rich merchant of Cork. She it was who healed the wound inflicted by
+disdain<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span> and levity, and taught him the truth he has expressed in one
+charming line&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Sweet is that love alone, that comes with willingnesse!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Her name was Elizabeth, and her family (as Spenser tells us himself,)
+obscure; but, in spite of her plebeian origin, the lady seems to have
+been a very peremptory and Juno-like beauty. Spenser continually dwells
+upon her pride of sex, and has placed it before us in many charming
+turns of thought, now deprecating it as a fault, but oftener celebrating
+it as a virtue. For instance,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Rudely thou wrongest my dear heart's desire,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In finding fault with her too portly pride:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The thing which I do most in her admire,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Is of the world unworthy most envied;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For in those lofty looks is close implied,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Scorn of base things, disdain of foul dishonour;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Threatening rash eyes which gaze on her so wide,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That loosely they ne dare to look upon her.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Such pride is praise; such portliness is honour.<a name="FNanchor_89_89" id="FNanchor_89_89"></a><a href="#Footnote_89_89" class="fnanchor">[89]</a><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And again, in the thirteenth sonnet,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">In that proud port, which her so goodly graceth,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whiles her fair face she rears up to the sky,<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span>
+<span class="i0">And to the ground, her eyelids low embaseth,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Most goodly temperature ye may descry;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Mild humblesse, mixt with awful majesty!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>This picture of the deportment erect with conscious dignity, and the
+eyelids veiled with feminine modesty, is very beautiful. We have the
+figure of his Elizabeth before us in all her maidenly dignity and proud
+humility. The next is a softened repetition of the same characteristic
+portrait:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Was it the work of Nature or of Art,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which temper'd so the features of her face,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That pride and meekness, mixt by equal part,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Do both appear to adorn her beauty's grace!<a name="FNanchor_90_90" id="FNanchor_90_90"></a><a href="#Footnote_90_90" class="fnanchor">[90]</a><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>He rebukes her with a charming mixture of reproof and flattery, in the
+lines&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Fair Proud! now tell me, why should fair be proud? &amp;c.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>This imperious and high-souled beauty at length gives some sign of
+relenting; and pursuing the train of thought and feeling through the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span>
+latter part of the collection, we can trace the vicissitudes of the
+lady's temper, and how the lover sped in his wooing. First, she grants a
+smile, and it is hailed with rapture&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Sweet smile! the daughter of the Queen of Love,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Expressing all thy mother's powerful art,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With which she wont to temper angry Jove,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When all the gods he threats with thundering dart:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sweet is thy virtue, as thyself sweet art!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For, when on me thou shinedst late in sadness,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A melting pleasance ran through every part,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And me revived with heart-robbing gladness!<a name="FNanchor_91_91" id="FNanchor_91_91"></a><a href="#Footnote_91_91" class="fnanchor">[91]</a><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The effect of a first relenting and affectionate smile, from a being of
+this character, must, in truth, have been irresistible. He tells us how
+lovely she appeared in his eyes,&mdash;how surpassing fair:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">When that the cloud of pride which oft doth dark<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Her goodly light, with smiles she drives away!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>He finds her one day embroidering in silk a bee and a spider,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">Woven all about,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With woodbynd flowers and fragrant eglantine,<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>and he playfully compares himself to a spider, and her to the bee, whom,
+after long and weary watching, he has at length caught in his snare.
+This pretty incident is the subject of the 71st Sonnet. The rapture of
+grateful affection is more eloquent in the Sonnet beginning</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Joy of my life! full oft for loving you<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I bless my lot, that was so lucky placed, &amp;c.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>When he is allowed to hope, the pride which had before checked and
+chilled him, seems to change its character. He feels all the exultation
+of being beloved of one, not easily gained, and "assured unto herself."</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Thrice happy she that is so well assured<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Unto herself, and settled so in heart, &amp;c.<a name="FNanchor_92_92" id="FNanchor_92_92"></a><a href="#Footnote_92_92" class="fnanchor">[92]</a><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>After a courtship of about three years, he sues for the possession of
+the fair hand to which he had so long aspired; promising her (and not
+vainly,) all the immortality his verse could bestow,&mdash;</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span></p>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Even this verse, vowed to eternity,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shall be of her immortal monument,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And tell her praise to all posterity!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The fair Elizabeth at length confesses herself won; but expresses some
+fears at the idea of relinquishing her maiden freedom. His reply is,
+perhaps, the most beautiful of all the Sonnets. It has all the
+tenderness, elegance, and fancy, which distinguish Spenser in his
+happiest moments of inspiration.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The doubt which ye misdeem, fair love, is vain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That fondly fear to lose your liberty;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When, losing one, two liberties ye gain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And make him bound that bondage erst did fly.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sweet be the bands, the which true love doth tye<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Without constraint, or dread of any ill:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The gentle bird feels no captivity<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Within her cage; but sings, and feeds her fill:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There pride dare not approach, nor discord spill<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The league 'twixt them, that loyal love hath bound:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But simple Truth, and mutual Good-will,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Seeks, with sweet peace, to salve each other's wound:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There Faith doth fearless dwell is brazen tower,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And spotless Pleasure builds her sacred bower.<a name="FNanchor_93_93" id="FNanchor_93_93"></a><a href="#Footnote_93_93" class="fnanchor">[93]</a><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The <i>Amoretti</i>, as Spenser has fancifully entitled his Sonnets, are
+certainly tinctured with a good deal of the verbiage and pedantry of the
+times; but I think I have shown that they contain passages of earnest
+feeling, as well as high poetic beauty. Spenser married his Elizabeth,
+about the year 1593, and he has crowned his amatory effusions with a
+most impassioned and triumphant epithalamion on his own nuptials, which
+he concludes with a prophecy, that it shall stand a perpetual monument
+of his happiness, and thus it has been. The passage in which he
+describes his youthful bride, is perhaps one of the most beautiful and
+vivid <i>pictures</i> in the whole compass of English poetry.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Behold, while she before the altar stands,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hearing the holy priest that to her speaks,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And blesses her with his two happy hands.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">How the red roses flush up in her cheeks.<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span>
+<span class="i0">And the pure snow, with goodly vermeil stain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Like crimson died in grain!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That even the angels, which continually<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">About the sacred altar do remain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Forget their service, and about her fly,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Oft peeping in her face, which seems more fair,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The more they on it stare.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But her sad eyes, still fastened on the ground,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Are governed with a goodly modesty<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That suffers not a look to glance away,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which may let in a little thought unsound.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Why blush ye, love! to give to me your hand<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The pledge of all our band!<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Sing! ye sweet angels! Hallelujah sing!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That all the woods may answer, and their echoes ring!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And the rapturous apostrophe to the evening star is in a fine strain of
+poetry.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Late, though it be, at last I see it gloom,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the bright evening star, with golden crest,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Appear out of the west!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fair child of beauty! glorious lamp of love!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That all the host of heaven in ranks dost lead,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And guidest lovers through the night's sad dread,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">How cheerfully thou lookest from above,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And seem'st lo laugh atween thy twinkling light!<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span></div></div>
+
+<p>As Ariosto has contrived to introduce his personal feelings, and the
+memory of his love, into the Orlando Furioso, so Spenser has enshrined
+<i>his</i> in the Fairy Queen; but he has not, I think, succeeded so well in
+the <i>manner</i> of celebrating the woman he delighted to honour. Ariosto
+has the advantage over the English poet, in delicacy and propriety of
+feeling as well as power. Spenser's picture of the swelling eminence,
+the lawn, the clustering trees, the cascade&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Whose silver waves did softly tumble down,<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>haunted by nymphs and fairies; the bevy of beauties who dance in a
+circle round the lady of his love, while he himself, in his character of
+Colin Clout, sits aloof piping on his oaten reed, remind us of one of
+Claude's landscapes: and the difference between the pastoral luxuriance
+of this diffuse description, and the stately magnificence of Ariosto's,
+is very characteristic of the two poets. Were I to choose, however, I
+would rather have been the object of Ariosto's compliment than of
+Spenser's. The passage in the Fairy Queen<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span> occurs in the 10th canto of
+the Legend of Sir Calidore; and all his commentators are agreed that the
+allusion is to his Elizabeth, and not to Rosalind.</p>
+
+<p>Both are mentioned in "Colin Clout's come home again." Rosalind, and her
+disdainful rejection of the poet's love, are alluded to near the end, in
+some lines already quoted; but a very beautiful passage, near the
+commencement of the poem, clearly alludes to Elizabeth, under whose
+thrall he was at the time it was written.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ah! far be it, (quoth Colin Clout,) fro me,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That I, of gentle maids, should ill deserve,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For that myself I do profess to be<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Vassal to one, whom all my days I serve;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The beam of Beauty, sparkled from above,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The flower of virtue and pure chastitie;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The blossom of sweet joy and perfect love;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The pearl of peerless grace and modesty!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To her, my thoughts I daily dedicate;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To her, my heart I nightly martyrise;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To her, my love I lowly do prostrate;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To her, my life I wholly sacrifice:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My thought, my heart, my life, my love, is she! &amp;c.<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span></div></div>
+
+<p>Spenser married his Elizabeth about the year 1593. He resided at this
+time at the Castle of Kilcolman, in the south of Ireland, a portion of
+the forfeited domains of the Earl of Desmond having been assigned to
+him: but the adherents of that unhappy chief saw in Spenser only an
+invader of their rights,&mdash;a stranger living on their inheritance, while
+they were cast out to starvation or banishment. He and his family dwelt
+in continual fears and disturbance from the distracted state of the
+country; and at length, about two years after his marriage, he was
+attacked in his castle by the native Irish. He and his wife escaped with
+difficulty, and one of their children perished in the flames. After this
+catastrophe they came to England, and Spenser died in 1598, about five
+years after his marriage with Elizabeth. The short period of their
+union, though disturbed by misfortunes, losses, and worldly cares, was
+never clouded by domestic disquiet. This haughty beauty,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Whose lofty countenance seemed to scorn<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Base thing, and think how she to heaven might climb,<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span></div></div>
+
+<p>became the tenderest and most faithful of wives. How long she survived
+her husband is not known; but though scarce past the bloom of youth at
+the period of her loss, we have no account of her marrying again.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_87_87" id="Footnote_87_87"></a><a href="#FNanchor_87_87"><span class="label">[87]</span></a> Eclogue 6.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_88_88" id="Footnote_88_88"></a><a href="#FNanchor_88_88"><span class="label">[88]</span></a> Colin Clout.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_89_89" id="Footnote_89_89"></a><a href="#FNanchor_89_89"><span class="label">[89]</span></a> Sonnet 5.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_90_90" id="Footnote_90_90"></a><a href="#FNanchor_90_90"><span class="label">[90]</span></a> Sonnet 21.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_91_91" id="Footnote_91_91"></a><a href="#FNanchor_91_91"><span class="label">[91]</span></a> Sonnet 39.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_92_92" id="Footnote_92_92"></a><a href="#FNanchor_92_92"><span class="label">[92]</span></a> Sonnet 39.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_93_93" id="Footnote_93_93"></a><a href="#FNanchor_93_93"><span class="label">[93]</span></a> Sonnet 65.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XV.</h2>
+
+<h3>ON THE LOVE OF SHAKSPEARE.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Shakspeare&mdash;I approach the subject with reverence, and even with
+fear,&mdash;is the only poet I am acquainted with and able to appreciate, who
+appears to have been really heaven-inspired: the workings of his
+wondrous and all-embracing mind were directed by a higher influence than
+ever was exercised by woman, even in the plenitude of her power and her
+charms. Shakspeare's genius waited not on Love and Beauty, but Love and
+Beauty ministered to <i>him</i>; he perceived like a spirit; he was created,
+to create; his own individuality is lost in the splendour, the reality,
+and the variety of his own conceptions. When I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span> think what those are, I
+feel how needless, how vain it were to swell the universal voice with
+one so weak as mine. Who would care for it that knows and feels
+Shakspeare? Who would listen to it that does not, if there be such?</p>
+
+<p>It is not Shakspeare as a great power bearing a great name,&mdash;but
+Shakspeare in his less divine and less known character,&mdash;as a lover and
+a man, who finds a place here. The only writings he has left, through
+which we can trace any thing of his personal feelings and affections,
+are his Sonnets. Every one who reads them, who has tenderness or taste,
+will echo Wordsworth's denunciation against the "flippant insensibility"
+of some of his commentators, who talked of an Act of Parliament not
+being strong enough to compel their perusal, and will agree in his
+opinion, that they are full of the most exquisite feelings, most
+felicitously expressed; but as to the object to whom they were
+addressed, a difference of opinion prevails. From a reference, however,
+to all that is known of Shakspeare's life and fortunes, compared with
+the internal presumptive evidence contained in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span> the Sonnets, it appears
+that some of them are addressed to his amiable friend, Lord Southampton;
+and others, I think, are addressed in Southampton's name, to that
+beautiful Elizabeth Vernon, to whom the Earl was so long and ardently
+attached.<a name="FNanchor_94_94" id="FNanchor_94_94"></a><a href="#Footnote_94_94" class="fnanchor">[94]</a> The Queen, who did not encourage matrimony among her
+courtiers, absolutely refused her consent to their union. She treated
+him as she did Raleigh in the affair of Elizabeth Throckmorton; and
+Southampton, after four years of impatient submission and still
+increasing love, as tenderly returned by his mistress, married without
+the Queen's knowledge, lost her favour for ever, and had nearly lost his
+head.<a name="FNanchor_95_95" id="FNanchor_95_95"></a><a href="#Footnote_95_95" class="fnanchor">[95]</a></p>
+
+<p>That Lord Southampton is the subject of the first fifty-five Sonnets is
+sufficiently clear; and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span> some of these are perfectly beautiful,&mdash;as the
+30th, 32d, 41st, 54th. There are others scattered through the rest of
+the volume, on the same subject; but there are many which admit of no
+such interpretation, and are without doubt inspired by the real object
+of a real passion, of whom nothing can be discovered, but that she was
+dark-eyed<a href="#Footnote_96_96" class="fnanchor">[96]</a> and dark-haired,<a name="FNanchor_96_96" id="FNanchor_96_96"></a><a href="#Footnote_96_96" class="fnanchor">[96]</a> that she excelled in music;<a name="FNanchor_97_97" id="FNanchor_97_97"></a><a href="#Footnote_97_97" class="fnanchor">[97]</a> and
+that she was one of a class of females who do not always, in losing all
+right to our respect, lose also their claim to the admiration of the sex
+who wronged them, or the compassion of the gentler part of their own,
+who have rejected them. This is so clear from various passages, that
+unhappily there can be no doubt of it.<a name="FNanchor_98_98" id="FNanchor_98_98"></a><a href="#Footnote_98_98" class="fnanchor">[98]</a> He has flung over her,
+designedly it should seem, a veil of immortal texture and fadeless hues,
+"branched and embroidered like the painted Spring," but almost
+impenetrable even to our imagination. There are few allusions to her
+personal beauty, which can in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span> any way individualise her, but bursts of
+deep and passionate feeling, and eloquent reproach, and contending
+emotions, which show, that if she could awaken as much love and impart
+as much happiness as woman ever inspired or bestowed, he endured on her
+account all the pangs of agony, and shame, and jealousy;&mdash;that our
+Shakspeare,&mdash;he who, in the omnipotence of genius, wielded the two
+worlds of reality and imagination in either hand, who was in conception
+and in act scarce less than a <span class="smcap">God</span>, was in passion and suffering not more
+than <span class="smcap">Man</span>.</p>
+
+<p>Instead of any elaborate description of her person, we have, in the only
+sonnet which sets forth her charms, the rich materials of a picture,
+rather than the picture itself.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">The forward violet thus did I chide:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sweet thief, whence didst thou steal thy sweet that smells,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">If not from my Love's breath? The purple pride<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which on thy soft cheek for complexion dwells,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">In my Love's veins thou hast too grossly dy'd.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The lily I condemned for thy hand,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And buds of marjoram had stolen thy hair:<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span>
+<span class="i0">The roses fearfully on thorns did stand,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">One blushing shame, another white despair:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A third, nor red nor white, had stolen of both,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And to his robbery had annex'd thy breath;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But for his theft, in pride of all his growth<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">A vengeful canker eat him up to death.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">More flowers I noted, yet I none could see,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But sweet, or colour, it had stolen from thee.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>He intimates that he found a rival in one of his own most intimate
+friends, who was also a poet.<a name="FNanchor_99_99" id="FNanchor_99_99"></a><a href="#Footnote_99_99" class="fnanchor">[99]</a> He laments her absence in this
+exquisite strain;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">How like a winter hath my absence been<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What old December's bareness everywhere!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">....*....*....*....*<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">For Summer and his pleasures wait on thee,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And thou away, the very birds are mute!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>He dwells with complacency on her supposed truth and tenderness, her
+bounty, like Juliet's, "boundless as the sea, her love as deep."</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span></p>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Kind is my love to-day, to-morrow kind,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Still constant in a wondrous excellence.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Then, as if conscious upon how unstable a foundation he had built his
+love, he expresses his fear lest he should be betrayed, yet remain
+unconscious of the wrong.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">For there can live no hatred in thine eye,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Therefore in that I cannot know thy change!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In many looks, the false heart's history<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Is writ in moods and frowns, and wrinkles strange.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But heaven in thy creation did decree,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That in thy face sweet love should ever dwell.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>He bitterly reproaches her with her levity and falsehood, and himself
+that he can be thus unworthily enslaved,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">What potions have I drunk of Syren tears, &amp;c.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Then, with lover-like inconsistency, excuses her,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">As on the finger of a throned queen<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The basest jewel will be well esteemed:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So are those errors that in thee are seen<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To truths translated, and for true things deem'd.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And the following are powerfully and painfully expressive:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span>&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">How sweet and lovely dost thou make the shame,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Which, like the canker in a fragrant rose,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Doth spot the beauty of thy budding name!<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Oh, in what sweets dost thou thy sins enclose!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And what a mansion have those vices got,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Which for their habitation chose out thee,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where Beauty's veil doth cover every blot,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And all things turn to fair that eyes can see!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>"Who taught thee," he says in another sonnet,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">&mdash;to make me love thee more<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The more I hear, and see just cause for hate?<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>He who wrote these and similar passages was certainly under the full and
+irresistible influence of female fascination. But who it was that thus
+ruled the universal heart and mighty spirit of our Shakspeare, we know
+not. She stands beside him a veiled and a nameless phantom. Neither dare
+we call in Fancy to penetrate that veil; for who would presume to trace
+even the faintest outline of such a being as Shakspeare could have
+loved?</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span></p><hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>I think it doubtful to whom were addressed those exquisite lines,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Then hate me when thou wilt, if ever, now! &amp;c.<a name="FNanchor_100_100" id="FNanchor_100_100"></a><a href="#Footnote_100_100" class="fnanchor">[100]</a><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>but probably to this very person.</p>
+
+<p>The Sonnets in which he alludes to his profession as an actor; where he
+speaks of the brand, "which vulgar scandal stamped upon his brow," and
+of having made himself "a motley to men's view,"<a name="FNanchor_101_101" id="FNanchor_101_101"></a><a href="#Footnote_101_101" class="fnanchor">[101]</a> are undoubtedly
+addressed to Lord Southampton.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">O, for my sake, do you with fortune chide<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That did not better for my life provide,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Than publick means, which public manners breeds;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thence comes it that my name receives a brand,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And almost thence my nature is subdu'd<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To what it works in, like the dyer's hand.<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Pity me then, and wish I were renew'd.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The last I shall remark, perhaps the finest of all, and breathing the
+very soul of profound tenderness and melancholy feeling, must, I think,
+have been addressed to a female.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span></p>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">No longer mourn for me when I am dead,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Than you shall hear the surly sullen bell<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Give warning to the world that I am fled<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">From this vile earth, with vilest worms to dwell:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nay, if you read this line, remember not<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The hand that writ it; for I love you so<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">If thinking on me then should make you woe.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O if (I say) you look upon this verse,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">When I perhaps compounded am with clay,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Do not so much as my poor name rehearse;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">But let your love even with my life decay:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lest the wise world should look into your moan,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And mock you with me after I am gone.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The period assigned to the composition of these Sonnets, and the
+attachment which inspired them, is the time when Shakspeare was living a
+wild and irregular life, between the court and the theatre, after his
+flight from Stratford. He had previously married, at the age of
+seventeen, Judith Hathaway, who was eight or ten years older than
+himself: he returned to his native town, after having sounded all depths
+of life, of nature, of passion,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span> and ended his days as the respected
+father of a family, in calm, unostentatious privacy.</p>
+
+<p>One thing I will confess:&mdash;It is natural to feel an intense and
+insatiable curiosity relative to great men, a curiosity and interest for
+which nothing can be too minute, too personal.&mdash;And yet when I had
+ransacked all that had ever been written, discovered, or surmised,
+relative to Shakspeare's private life, for the purpose of throwing some
+light upon his Sonnets, I felt no gratification, no thankfulness to
+those whose industry had raked up the very few particulars which can be
+known. It is too much, and it is not enough: it disappoints us in one
+point of view&mdash;it is superfluous in another: what need to surround with
+common-place, trivial associations, registers of wills and genealogies,
+and I know not what,&mdash;the mighty spirit who in dying left behind him not
+merely a name and fame, but a perpetual being, a presence and a power,
+identified with our nature, diffused through all time, and ruling the
+heart and the fancy with an uncontrollable and universal sway!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>I rejoice that the name of no one woman is popularly identified with
+that of Shakspeare. He belongs to us all!&mdash;the creator of Desdemona, and
+Juliet, and Ophelia, and Imogen, and Viola, and Constance, and Cornelia,
+and Rosalind, and Portia, was not the poet of one woman, but the <span class="smcap">Poet of
+Womankind</span>.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_94_94" id="Footnote_94_94"></a><a href="#FNanchor_94_94"><span class="label">[94]</span></a> She was the grandmother of Lady Russell.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_95_95" id="Footnote_95_95"></a><a href="#FNanchor_95_95"><span class="label">[95]</span></a> Elizabeth Vernon was first cousin to Essex. "Was it
+treason?" asks Essex indignantly, in one of his eloquent letters; "Was
+it treason in my Lord of Southampton to marry my poor kinswoman, that
+neither long imprisonment, nor any punishment besides that hath been
+usual in such cases can satisfy or appease?"</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_96_96" id="Footnote_96_96"></a><a href="#FNanchor_96_96"><span class="label">[96]</span></a> Sonnets 127, 130</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_97_97" id="Footnote_97_97"></a><a href="#FNanchor_97_97"><span class="label">[97]</span></a> Sonnet 128.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_98_98" id="Footnote_98_98"></a><a href="#FNanchor_98_98"><span class="label">[98]</span></a> See "Douce's Illustrations of Shakspeare."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_99_99" id="Footnote_99_99"></a><a href="#FNanchor_99_99"><span class="label">[99]</span></a> Sonnets 80, 83.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_100_100" id="Footnote_100_100"></a><a href="#FNanchor_100_100"><span class="label">[100]</span></a> Sonnet 172.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_101_101" id="Footnote_101_101"></a><a href="#FNanchor_101_101"><span class="label">[101]</span></a> Sonnets 110, 111.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XVI.</h2>
+
+<h3>SYDNEY'S STELLA.</h3>
+
+
+<p>At the very name of Sir Philip Sydney,&mdash;the generous, gallant,
+all-accomplished Sydney,&mdash;the roused fancy wakes, as at the sound of a
+silver trumpet, to all the gay and splendid associations of chivalry and
+romance. He was in the court of Elizabeth, what Surrey had been in that
+of her father, Henry the Eighth; and like his prototype. Sir Calidore in
+the Fairy Queen,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Every look and word that he did say<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Was like enchantment, that through both the ears<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And both the eyes, did steal the heart away.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And as Surrey had his Fair Geraldine, Sydney had his <span class="smcap">Stella</span>.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Simplicity was not the fashion of Elizabeth's age in any particular: the
+conversation and the poetry addressed by her stately romantic courtiers
+to her and her maids of honour, were like the dresses they wore,&mdash;stiff
+with jewels and standing on end with embroidery, gorgeous of hue and
+fantastic in form; but with many a brilliant gem of exceeding price,
+scattered up and down, where one would scarce think to find them; losing
+something of their effect by being misplaced, but none of their inherent
+beauty and value. The poetry of Sir Philip Sydney was extravagantly
+admired in his own time, and it has since been less read than it
+deserves. It contains much of the pedantic quaintness, the laboured
+ornament, the cumbrous phraseology, which was the taste, the language of
+the day: but he had elegance of mind and tenderness of feeling; above
+all, he was in earnest, and accordingly, there are beautiful and
+brilliant things scattered through both his poetry and prose. If his
+"Ph&oelig;nix-Stella" be less popularly celebrated than the Fair
+Geraldine,&mdash;her name less intimate with our fancy,&mdash;it is not because<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span>
+her poet lacked skill to immortalize her in superlatives: it is the
+recollection of the mournful fate and darkened fame of that beautiful
+but ill-starred woman, contrasted with the brilliant career and spotless
+glory of her lover, which strikes the imagination with a painful
+contrast, and makes us reluctant to dwell on her memory.</p>
+
+<p>The Stella of Sydney's poetry, and the Philoclea of his Arcadia, was the
+Lady Penelope Devereux, the elder sister of the favourite Essex. While
+yet in her childhood, she was the destined bride of Sydney, and for
+several years they were considered as almost engaged to each other: it
+was natural, therefore, at this time, that he should be accustomed to
+regard her with tenderness and unreproved admiration, and should gratify
+both by making her the object of his poetical raptures. She was also
+less openly, but even more ardently, loved by young Charles Blount,
+afterwards Lord Mountjoy, who seems to have disputed with Sydney the
+first place in her heart.</p>
+
+<p>She is described as a woman of exquisite beauty, on a grand and splendid
+scale; dark<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span> sparkling eyes; pale brown hair; a rich vivid complexion; a
+regal brow and a noble figure. Sydney tells us that she was at first
+"most fair, most cold;"&mdash;and the beautiful sonnet,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"With how sad steps, O moon, thou climb'st the sky!<a name="FNanchor_102_102" id="FNanchor_102_102"></a><a href="#Footnote_102_102" class="fnanchor">[102]</a><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">How silently, and with how wan a face!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>refers to his earlier feelings. He describes a tilting-match, held in
+presence of the Queen and Court, in which he came off victor&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Having this day my horse, my hand, my lance,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Guided so well, that I obtained the prize, &amp;c.<a name="FNanchor_103_103" id="FNanchor_103_103"></a><a href="#Footnote_103_103" class="fnanchor">[103]</a><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>"Stella looked on," he says, "and from her fair eyes sent forth the
+encouraging glance that gave him victory." These soft and brilliant eyes
+are often and beautifully touched upon; and it must be remarked, never
+without an allusion to the <i>modesty</i> of their expression.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">O eyes! that do the spheres of beauty move,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which while they make Love conquer, conquer Love.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And on some occasion, when she turned from him<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span> bashfully, he addresses
+her in a most impassioned strain,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Soul's joy! bend not those morning stars from me,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where virtue is made strong by beauty's might,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where love is chasteness&mdash;pain doth learn delight<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And humbleness doth dwell with majesty:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whatever may ensue, O let me be<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Copartner of the riches of that sight;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Let not mine eyes be hell-driven from that light.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O look! O shine! O let me die, and see!<a name="FNanchor_104_104" id="FNanchor_104_104"></a><a href="#Footnote_104_104" class="fnanchor">[104]</a><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Another, "To Sleep," is among the most beautiful, and I believe more
+generally known.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Lock up, fair lids! the treasure of my heart! &amp;c.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>There is also much vivacity and earnest feeling in the lines addressed
+to one who had lately left the presence of Stella, and of whom he
+inquires of her welfare. Whoever has known what it is to be separated
+from those beloved, to ask after them with anxious yet suppressed
+fondness, of some unsympathising acquaintance, to be alternately
+tantalised and <i>desesper&eacute;</i>, by their vague and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span> careless replies, will
+understand, will feel their truth and beauty. Even the quaint, petulant
+commencement is true to the sentiment:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Be your words made, good Sir, of Indian ware,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That you allow me them at so small rate?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">....*....*....*....*<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">When I demand of Ph&oelig;nix-Stella's state,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You say, forsooth, "You left her well of late."<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O God! think you that satisfies <i>my</i> care?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I would know whether she do sit or walk,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">How clothed, how waited on? sighed she, or smiled?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whereof&mdash;with whom&mdash;how often did she talk?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With what pastime, time's journey she beguiled?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If her lips deign'd to sweeten my poor name?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Say all! and all well said, still say the same!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>At length, after the usual train of hopes, fears, complaints, and
+raptures, the lady begins to look with pity and favour on the "ruins of
+her conquest;"<a name="FNanchor_105_105" id="FNanchor_105_105"></a><a href="#Footnote_105_105" class="fnanchor">[105]</a> and he exults in an acknowledged return of love,
+though her heart be given conditionally,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">His only, while he virtuous courses takes.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>So far Stella appears in a most amiable and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span> captivating light, worthy
+the romantic homage of her accomplished lover. But a dark shade steals,
+like a mildew, over this bright picture of beauty, poetry, and love,
+even while we gaze upon it. The projected union between Sydney and Lady
+Penelope was finally broken off by their respective families, for
+reasons which do not appear.<a name="FNanchor_106_106" id="FNanchor_106_106"></a><a href="#Footnote_106_106" class="fnanchor">[106]</a> Sir Charles Blount offered himself,
+and was refused, though evidently agreeable to the lady; and she was
+married by her guardians to Lord Rich, a man of talents and integrity,
+but most disagreeable in person and manners, and her declared
+aversion.<a name="FNanchor_107_107" id="FNanchor_107_107"></a><a href="#Footnote_107_107" class="fnanchor">[107]</a></p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span></p><p>This inauspicious union ended, as might have been expected, in misery
+and disgrace. Lady Rich bore her fate with extreme impatience. Her warm
+affections, her high spirit, and her strength of mind, so heroically
+displayed in behalf of her brother, served but to render her more
+poignantly sensible of the tyranny which had forced her into detested
+bonds. She could not forget,&mdash;perhaps never wished or sought to
+forget&mdash;that she had received the homage of the two most accomplished
+men of that time,&mdash;Sydney and Blount; "and not finding that satisfaction
+at home she ought to have received, she looked for it abroad where she
+ought not to find it."</p>
+
+<p>Sydney describes a secret interview which took place between himself and
+Lady Rich shortly after her marriage. I should have observed, that
+Sydney designates himself all through his poems by the name of
+Astrophel.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">In a grove, most rich of shade,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where birds wanton music made,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">May, then young, his pied weeds showing,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">New perfumed with flowers fresh growing.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Astrophel, with Stella sweet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Did for mutual comfort meet;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Both within themselves opprest,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But each in the other blest;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Him great harms had taught much care,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Her fair neck a foul yoke bear</i>;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But her sight his cares did banish,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In his sight her yoke did vanish, &amp;c.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>He pleads the time, the place, the season, and their divided vows; and
+would have pressed his suit more warmly,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But her hand, his hands repelling,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Gave repulse&mdash;all grace excelling!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">....*....*....*....*<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Then she spake! her speech was such<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As not ear, but heart did touch.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"Astrophel, (said she) my love,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Cease in these effects to prove!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Now be still!&mdash;yet still believe me,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thy grief more than death would grieve me.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Trust me, while, I thus deny,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In myself the smart I try:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Tyrant honour doth thus use thee;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Stella's self might not refuse thee!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Therefore, dear! this no more move:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lest, though I leave not thy love,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">(Which too deep in me is framed!)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>I should blush when thou art named!</i>"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The sentiment he has made her express in the last line is beautiful, and
+too feminine and appropriate not to have been taken from nature; but,
+unhappily, it did not always govern her conduct. How far her coquetry
+proceeded we do not know. Sydney, about a year afterwards, married the
+daughter of Secretary Walsingham, and survived his marriage but a short
+time. This theme of song, this darling of fame, and ornament of his age,
+perished at the battle of Zutphen, in the very summer of his glorious
+youth. "He had trod," as the author of the Effigies Poetic&aelig; so
+beautifully expresses it, "from his cradle to his grave, amid incense
+and flowers&mdash;and died in a dream of glory!"</p>
+
+<p>His death was not only such as became the soldier and Christian;&mdash;the
+natural elegance and sensibility of his mind followed him even to the
+verge of the tomb: in his last moments, when the mortification had
+commenced, and all hope was over, he called for music into his chamber,
+and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span> lay listening to it with tranquil pleasure. Sydney died in his
+thirty-fourth year.</p>
+
+<p>Among the numerous poets who lamented this deep-felt loss (volumes, I
+believe, were filled with the tributes paid to his memory), was Spenser,
+whom Sydney had early patronised. His elegy, however, is too laboured,
+too lengthy, too artificial, to please altogether, though containing
+some lines of great beauty. It is singular, and a little
+incomprehensible to our modern ideas of <i>biens&eacute;ance</i> and good taste,
+that in this elegy, which Spenser dedicates to Sydney's widow after her
+remarriage with Essex, he introduces Stella as lamenting over the body
+of Astrophel, tells us how she beat her fair bosom&mdash;"the treasury of
+joy,"&mdash;how she tore her lovely hair, wept out her eyes,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And with sweet kisses suckt the parting breath<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Out of his lips.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>At length, through excess of grief, or the compassion of the gods, she
+is changed into the flower, "by some called starlight, by others
+penthia." This might pass in those days; though, considering<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span> all the
+circumstances, it is strange that, even then, it escaped ridicule.</p>
+
+<p>The tears shed for Sydney, by those nearest and dearest to him, were but
+too soon dried. His widow was consoled by Essex, and his Stella, by her
+old lover Mountjoy, who returned from Ireland, flushed with victory and
+honours, and cast himself again at her feet. Their secret intercourse
+remained, for several years, undiscovered. Lady Rich, who was tenderly
+attached to her brother, was guarded in her conduct, fearing equally the
+loss of his esteem, and the renewal of those hostile feelings which had
+already caused one duel between Essex and Mountjoy. She had also
+children; and as all, without exception, lived to be distinguished men
+and virtuous women, we may give her credit for some attention to their
+education,&mdash;some compunctious visitings of nature on their account.</p>
+
+<p>During her brother's imprisonment, she made the most strenuous, the most
+persevering efforts to save his life: she besieged Elizabeth with the
+richest presents, the most eloquent letters of supplication;&mdash;she<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span>
+waylaid her at the door of her chamber, till commanded to remain a
+prisoner in her own house;&mdash;she bribed, or otherwise won, all whom she
+thought could plead his cause;&mdash;and when these were of no avail, and
+Essex perished, she seems, in her despair, to have thrown off all
+restraint&mdash;and at length, fled from the house of her husband.</p>
+
+<p>In 1605 she was legally divorced from Lord Rich; and soon after married
+Mountjoy, then Earl of Devonshire. The marriage of a divorced wife in
+the lifetime of her first husband, was in those days a thing almost
+unprecedented in the English court, and caused the most violent outcry
+and scandal. Laud (the archbishop, then chaplain to the Earl of
+Devonshire,) incurred the censure of the Church for uniting the lovers,
+and ever after fasted on the anniversary of this fatal marriage. The
+Earl, one of the most admirable and distinguished men of that chivalrous
+age, who "felt a stain as a wound," found it impossible to endure the
+infamy brought on himself and the woman he loved: he died about a year<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span>
+after: "the griefe," says a contemporary, "of this unhappie love brought
+him to his end."<a name="FNanchor_108_108" id="FNanchor_108_108"></a><a href="#Footnote_108_108" class="fnanchor">[108]</a></p>
+
+<p>His unfortunate Countess lingered but a short time after him, and died
+in a miserable obscurity.&mdash;Such is the history of Sydney's <span class="smcap">Stella</span>.</p>
+
+<p>Three of her sons became English earls; the eldest, Earl of Warwick; the
+second, Earl of Holland; and the third (her son by Mountjoy) Earl of
+Newport. The earldoms of Warwick and Holland were held by her lineal
+descendants, till the death of that young Lord Warwick, whose mother
+married Addison.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_102_102" id="Footnote_102_102"></a><a href="#FNanchor_102_102"><span class="label">[102]</span></a> Sonnet 31.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_103_103" id="Footnote_103_103"></a><a href="#FNanchor_103_103"><span class="label">[103]</span></a> Sonnet 41.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_104_104" id="Footnote_104_104"></a><a href="#FNanchor_104_104"><span class="label">[104]</span></a> Sonnet 48.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_105_105" id="Footnote_105_105"></a><a href="#FNanchor_105_105"><span class="label">[105]</span></a> Sonnet 54.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_106_106" id="Footnote_106_106"></a><a href="#FNanchor_106_106"><span class="label">[106]</span></a> "All the lords that wish well to the children of the Earl
+of Essex, and I suppose all the best sorte of the English lords besides,
+doe expect what will become of the treaty between Mr. Philip and my lady
+Penelope. Truly, my Lord, I must say to your lordship, as I have said it
+to my Lord of Leicester and Mr. Philip, the breaking off this match, if
+the default be on your parts, will turn to more dishonour than can be
+repaired with any other marriage in England."&mdash;<i>Letter of Mr. Waterhouse
+to Sir Henry Sydney, in the Sydney Papers.</i></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_107_107" id="Footnote_107_107"></a><a href="#FNanchor_107_107"><span class="label">[107]</span></a> Zouch's Life of Sir P. Sydney.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_108_108" id="Footnote_108_108"></a><a href="#FNanchor_108_108"><span class="label">[108]</span></a> Memoirs of King James's Peers, by Sir E. Brydges.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XVII.</h2>
+
+<h3>COURT AND AGE OF ELIZABETH.</h3>
+
+<h3>DRAYTON, DANIEL, DRUMMOND, &amp;c.</h3>
+
+
+<p>The voluminous Drayton<a name="FNanchor_109_109" id="FNanchor_109_109"></a><a href="#Footnote_109_109" class="fnanchor">[109]</a> has left a collection of sonnets under the
+fantastic title of his <span class="smcap">Ideas</span>. Ideas they may be,&mdash;but they have neither
+poetry, nor passion, nor even elegance:&mdash;a circumstance not very
+surprising, if it be true that he composed them merely to show his
+ingenuity in a style which was then the prevailing fashion of his time.
+Drayton was never married, and little is known of his private life. He
+loved a lady of Coventry, to whom he promises an immortality he has not
+been able to confer.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">How many paltry, foolish, painted things<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That now in coaches trouble every street,<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Shall be forgotten, whom no poet sings,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">E'er they be well wrapp'd in their winding-sheet;<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">While I to thee eternity shall give,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">When nothing else remaineth of these days,<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0"><i>And Queens hereafter shall be glad to live</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i2"><i>Upon the alms of thy superfluous praise;</i><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Virgins and matrons reading these my rhimes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Shall be so much delighted with thy story,<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">That they shall grieve they liv'd not in these times,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To have seen thee, their sex's only glory:<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">So thou shall fly above the vulgar throng,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Still to survive in my immortal song.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>There are fine nervous lines in this Sonnet: we long to hail the exalted
+beauty who is announced by such a flourish of trumpets, and are
+proportionably disappointed to find that she has neither "a local
+habitation nor a name." Drayton's little song,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I prythee, love! love me no more,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Take back the heart you gave me!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>stands unique, in point of style, among the rest of his works, and is
+very genuine and passionate.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span> Daniel,<a name="FNanchor_110_110" id="FNanchor_110_110"></a><a href="#Footnote_110_110" class="fnanchor">[110]</a> who was munificently
+patronized by the Lord Mountjoy, mentioned in the preceding sketch, was
+one of the most graceful sonnetteers of that time; and he has touches of
+tenderness as well as fancy; for <i>he</i> was in earnest, and the object of
+his attachment was real, though disguised under the name of Delia. She
+resided on the banks of the river Avon, and was unmoved by the poet's
+strains. Rank with her outweighed love and genius. Daniel says of his
+Sonnets&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Though the error of my youth in them appear,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Suffice they show I lived, and loved thee dear.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The lines</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Restore thy tresses to the golden ore,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yield Citherea's son those arcs of love,<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>are luxuriantly elegant, and quite Italian in the flow and imagery. Her
+modesty is prettily set forth in another Sonnet&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">A modest maid, deck'd with a blush of honour,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Whose feet do tread green paths of youth and love,<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span>
+<span class="i0">The wonder of all eyes that look upon her,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Sacred on earth, designed a Saint above!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>After a long series of sonnets, elaborately plaintive, he interrupts
+himself with a little touch of truth and nature, which is quite
+refreshing;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I must not grieve my love! whose eyes should read<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Lines of delight, whereon her youth might smile;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The flowers have time before they come to seed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And she is young, and now must sport the while.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And sport, sweet maid! in season of these years,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And learn to gather flow'rs before they wither;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And where the sweetest blossom first appears,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Let Love and Youth conduct thy pleasures thither.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>If the lady could have been won by poetical flattery, she must have
+yielded. At length, unable to bear her obduracy, and condemned to see
+another preferred before him, Daniel resolved to travel; and he wrote,
+on this occasion, the most feeling of all his Sonnets.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And whither, poor forsaken! wilt thou go?<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Daniel remained abroad several years, and returning, cured of his
+attachment, he married Giustina Florio, of a family of Waldenses, who<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span>
+had fled from the frightful persecutions carried on in the Italian Alps
+against that miserable people. With her, he appears to have been
+sufficiently happy to forget the pain of his former repulse, and enjoy,
+without one regretful pang, the fame it had given him as a poet.</p>
+
+<p>Drummond, of Hawthornden,<a name="FNanchor_111_111" id="FNanchor_111_111"></a><a href="#Footnote_111_111" class="fnanchor">[111]</a> is yet more celebrated, and with reason.
+He has elegance, and sweetness, and tenderness; but not the pathos or
+the passion we might have expected from the circumstances of his
+attachment, which was as real and deep, as it was mournful in its issue.
+He loved a beautiful girl of the noble family of Cunningham, who is the
+Lesbia of his poetry. After a fervent courtship, he succeeded in
+securing her affections; but she died, "in the fresh April of her
+years," and when their marriage-day had been fixed. Drummond has left us
+a most charming picture of his mistress; of her modesty, her retiring
+sweetness, her accomplishments, and her tenderness for him.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span></p>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">O sacred blush, empurpling cheeks, pure skies<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With crimson wings, which spread thee like the morn;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O bashful look, sent from those shining eyes;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">O tongue in which most luscious nectar lies,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That can at once both bless and make forlorn;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Dear coral lip, which beauty beautifies,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That trembling stood before her words were born;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And you her words&mdash;words! no, but golden chains,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which did enslave my ears, ensnare my soul;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Wise image of her mind,&mdash;mind that contains<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A power, all power of senses to controul;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">So sweetly you from love dissuade do me,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That I love more, if more my love can be.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The quaint iteration of the same word through this Sonnet has not an ill
+effect. The lady was in a more relenting mood when he wrote the Sonnet
+on her lips, "those fruits of Paradise,"&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I die, dear life! unless to me be given<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">As many kisses as the Spring hath flowers,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Or there be silver drops in Iris' showers,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or stars there be in all-embracing heaven;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And if displeased ye of the match remain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Ye shall have leave to take them back again!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>He mentions a handkerchief, which, in the days of their first
+tenderness, she had embroidered for him, unknowing that it was destined
+to be steeped<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span> in tears for her loss!&mdash;In fact, the grief of Drummond on
+this deprivation was so overwhelming, that he sunk at first into a total
+despondency and inactivity, from which he was with difficulty roused. He
+left the scene of his happiness, and his regrets&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Are these the flowery banks? is this the mead<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Where she was wont to pass the pleasant hours?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Is this the goodly elm did us o'erspread,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Whose tender rind, cut forth in curious flowers<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By that white hand, contains those flames of ours?<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Is this the murmuring spring, us music made?<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Deflourish'd mead, where is your heavenly hue?<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>He travelled for eight years, seeking, in change of place and scene,
+some solace for his wounded peace. There was a kind of constancy even in
+Drummond's inconstancy; for meeting many years afterwards with an
+amiable girl, who bore the most striking resemblance to his lost
+mistress, he loved her for that very resemblance, and married her. Her
+name was Margaret Logan. I am not aware that there are any verses
+addressed to her.</p>
+
+<p>Drummond has been called the Scottish Petrarch: he tells us himself,
+that "he was the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span> first in this Isle who did celebrate a dead
+mistress,"&mdash;and his resemblance to Petrarch, in elegance and sentiment,
+has often been observed: he resembles him, it is true&mdash;but it is as a
+professed and palpable imitator resembles the object of his imitation.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>On glancing back at the age of Elizabeth,&mdash;so adorned by masculine
+talent, in arts, in letters, and in arms,&mdash;we are at first surprised to
+find so few distinguished women. It seems remarkable that a golden epoch
+in our literature, to which she gave her name "the Elizabethan age,"&mdash;a
+court in which a female ruled,&mdash;a period fruitful in great poets, should
+have produced only one or two women who are interesting from their
+poetical celebrity. Of these, Alice Spenser, Countess of Derby, and Mary
+Sydney, Countess of Pembroke, (the sister of Sir Philip Sydney) are the
+most remarkable; the first has enjoyed the double distinction of being
+celebrated by Spenser in her youth, and by Milton in her age,&mdash;almost
+too much honour for one woman, though she<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span> had been a muse, and a grace,
+and a cardinal virtue, moulded in one. Lady Pembroke has been celebrated
+by Spenser and by Ben Jonson, and was, in every respect, a most
+accomplished woman. To these might be added other names, which might
+have shone aloft like stars, and "shed some influence on this lower
+world:" if the age had not produced two women, so elevated in station,
+and so every way illustrious by accidental or personal qualities, that
+each, in her respective sphere, extinguished all the lesser orbs around
+her. It would have been difficult for any female to seize on the
+attention, or claim either an historical or poetical interest, in the
+age of Queen Elizabeth and Mary Stuart.</p>
+
+<p>In her own court, Elizabeth was not satisfied to preside. She could as
+ill endure a competitor in celebrity or charms, as in power. She
+arrogated to herself all the incense around her; and, in point of
+adulation, she was like the daughter of the horse-leech, whose cry was,
+"give! give!" Her insatiate vanity would have been ludicrous, if it had
+not produced such atrocious consequences.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span> This was the predominant
+weakness of her character, which neutralized her talents, and was
+pampered, till in its excess it became a madness and a vice. This
+precipitated the fate of her lovely rival, Mary Queen of Scots. This
+elevated the profligate Leicester to the pinnacle of favour, and kept
+him there, sullied as he was by every baseness and every crime;<a name="FNanchor_112_112" id="FNanchor_112_112"></a><a href="#Footnote_112_112" class="fnanchor">[112]</a>
+this hurried Essex to the block; banished Southampton; and sent Raleigh
+and Elizabeth Throckmorton to the Tower. Did one of her attendants, more
+beautiful than the rest, attract the notice or homage of any of the gay
+cavaliers around her,&mdash;was an attachment whispered, a marriage
+projected,&mdash;it was enough to throw the whole court into consternation.
+"Her Majesty, the Queen, was in a passion;" and, then, heaven help the
+offenders! It was the spirit of Harry the Eighth let loose again. Yet
+such is the reflected glory she derives from the Sydneys and the
+Raleighs, the Walsinghams and Cecils, the Shakspeares and Spensers of
+her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span> time, that we can scarce look beyond it, to stigmatise the hard
+unfeminine egotism of her character.</p>
+
+<p>There was something extremely poetical in her situation, as a maiden
+queen, raised from a prison to a throne, exposed to unceasing danger
+from without and treason from within, and supported through all by her
+own extraordinary talents, and by the devotion of the chivalrous,
+gallant courtiers and captains, who paid to her, as their queen and
+mistress, a homage and obedience they would scarce have paid to a
+sovereign of their own sex. All this display of talent and heroism, and
+chivalrous gallantry, has a fine gorgeous effect to the
+imagination;&mdash;but for the woman herself,&mdash;as a woman, with her pedantry,
+and her absurd affectation; her masculine temper and coarse insolence;
+her sharp, shrewish, cat-like face, and her pretension to beauty, it is
+impossible to conceive any thing more anti-poetical.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Yet had she praises in all plenteousness<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Pour'd upon her, like showers of Castalie.<a name="FNanchor_113_113" id="FNanchor_113_113"></a><a href="#Footnote_113_113" class="fnanchor">[113]</a><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span></p>
+<p>She was a favourite theme of the poets of the time, and by right divine
+of her sceptre and her sex, an object of glorious flattery, not always
+feigned, even where it was false.</p>
+
+<p>She is the Gloriana of Spenser's Fairy Queen,&mdash;she is the "Cynthia, the
+ladye of the sea,"&mdash;she is the "Fair Vestal throned in the West," of
+Shakspeare&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">That very time I saw, (but thou couldst not,)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Flying between the cold moon and the earth,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Cupid all arm'd: a certain aim he took<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">At a fair Vestal, throned by the West,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And loosed his love-shaft smartly from his bow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As it should pierce a hundred thousand hearts;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But I might see young Cupid's fiery shaft<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Quench'd in the chaste beams of the wat'ry moon;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the imperial vot'ress passed on<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In maiden meditation, fancy free.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And the previous allusion to Mary of Scotland, as the "Sea Maid on the
+Dolphin's back,"</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That the rude sea grew civil at her song,<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>is not less exquisite.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It would, in truth, have been easier for Mary to have calmed the rude
+sea than her ruder and wilder subjects. These two queens, so strangely
+misplaced, seem as if, by some sport of destiny, each had dropt into the
+sphere designed for the other. Mary should have reigned over the
+Sydneys, the Essexes, the Mountjoys;&mdash;and with her smiles, and sweet
+words; and generous gifts, have inspired and rewarded the poets around
+her. Elizabeth should have been transferred to Scotland, where she might
+have bandied frowns and hard names with John Knox, cut off the heads of
+rebellious barons, and boxed the ears of ill-bred courtiers.</p>
+
+<p>This is no place to settle disputed points of history, nor, if it were,
+should I presume to throw an opinion in to one scale or the other; but
+take the two queens as women merely, and with a reference to apparent
+circumstances, I would rather have been Mary than Elizabeth; I would
+rather have been Mary, with all her faults, frailties, and
+misfortunes,&mdash;all her power of engaging hearts,&mdash;betrayed by her own
+soft nature, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span> the vile or fierce passions of the men around her, to
+die on a scaffold, with the meekness of a saint and the courage of a
+heroine, with those at her side who would willingly have bled for
+her,&mdash;than I would have been that heartless flirt, Elizabeth, surrounded
+by the oriental servility, the lip and knee homage of her splendid
+court; to die at last on her palace-floor, like a crushed wasp&mdash;sick of
+her own very selfishness&mdash;torpid, sullen, and despairing,&mdash;without one
+friend near her, without one heart in the wide world attached to her by
+affection or gratitude.</p>
+
+<p>There is more true and earnest feeling in some little verses written by
+Ronsard on the unhappy Queen of Scots, than in all the elegant,
+fanciful, but extravagant flattery of Elizabeth's poets. After just
+mentioning the English Queen, whom he dispatches in a single line,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Je vis leur belle reine, honn&ecirc;te et vertueuse;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>he thus dwells on the charms of Mary:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Je vis des Ecossais la Reine sage et belle,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Qui de corps et d'esprits ressemble une immortelle;<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span>
+<span class="i0">J'approchai de ses yeux, mais bien de deux soleils,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Deux soleils de beaut&eacute;, qui n'ont point leurs pareils.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Je les vis larmoyer d'une claire ros&eacute;e,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Je vis d'un clair crystal sa paupi&egrave;re arros&eacute;e,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Se souvenant de France, et du sceptre laiss&eacute;,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Et de son premier feu, comme un songe pass&eacute;!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And when Mary was a prisoner, he dedicated to her a whole book of poems,
+in which he celebrates her with a warmth, the more delightful that it
+was disinterested. He thanks her for selecting his poems, to amuse her
+solitary hours, and adds feelingly,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Car, je ne veux en ce monde choisir<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Plus grand honneur que vous donner plaisir!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Mary did not leave her courteous poet unrewarded. She contrived, though
+a prisoner, to send him a casket containing two thousand crowns, and a
+vase, on which was represented Mount Parnassus, and a flying Pegasus,
+with this inscription:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">A Ronsard, l'Apollon de la source des Muses.<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span></div></div>
+
+<p>No one understood better than Mary the value of a compliment from a
+beauty, and a queen; had she bestowed more precious favours with equal
+effect and discrimination, her memory had escaped some disparagement.
+Ronsard, we are told, was sufficiently a poet, to value the inscription
+on his vase more than the gold in the casket.</p>
+
+<p>Apropos to Ronsard: the history of his loves is so whimsical and so
+truly French, that it must claim a place here.</p>
+
+<p>Yet now I am upon French ground, I may as well take the giant's advice,
+and "begin at the beginning."<a name="FNanchor_114_114" id="FNanchor_114_114"></a><a href="#Footnote_114_114" class="fnanchor">[114]</a> It seems at first view unaccountable
+that France, which has produced so many remarkable women, should scarce
+exhibit one poetical heroine of great or popular interest, since its
+language and literature assumed their present form; not one who has been
+rendered illustrious or dear to us by the praises of a poet lover. The
+celebrity of celebrated French women is, in truth, very anti-poetical.
+The memory of the kiss<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span> which Marguerite d'Ecosse<a name="FNanchor_115_115" id="FNanchor_115_115"></a><a href="#Footnote_115_115" class="fnanchor">[115]</a> gave to Alain
+Chartier, has long survived the verses he wrote in her praise. Clement
+Marot, the court poet of Francis the First, was the lover, or rather one
+of the lovers, of Diana of Poictiers (mistress to the Dauphin,
+afterwards Henry the Second). She was confessedly the most beautiful and
+the most abandoned woman of her time. Marot could hardly have expected
+to find her a paragon of constancy; yet he laments her fickleness, as if
+it had touched his heart.</p>
+
+
+<h4>A DIANE.</h4>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Puisque de vous je n'ai autre visage,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Je m'en vais rendre hermite en un desert,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Pour prier Dieu, si un autre vous sert,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Qu'autant que moi en votre honneur soit sage.<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Adieu, Amour! adieu, gentil corsage!<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Adieu ce teint! adieu ces friands yeux!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Je n'ai pas eu de vous grand avantage,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Un moins aimant aura peut-&ecirc;tre mieux.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>In a <i>liaison</i> of mere vanity and profligacy, the transition from love
+(if love it be) to hatred and malignity, is not uncommon&mdash;as Spenser
+says so beautifully,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i6">Such love might never long endure,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">However gay and goodly be the style,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That doth ill cause or evil end enure:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For Virtue is the band that bindeth hearts most sure!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>From being the lady's <i>lover</i>, Marot became her satirist; instead of
+<i>chansons</i> in praise of her beauty, he circulated the most biting and
+insufferable epigrams on her person and character. We are told by one,
+who, I presume, speaks <i>avec connaissance de fait</i>, that a woman's
+revenge</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Is like the tiger's spring,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Deadly and quick, and crushing.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Diana was a libelled beauty, all powerful and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span> unprincipled. Marot, in
+some moment of gaiety and overflowing confidence, had confessed to her
+that he had eaten meat on a "jour maigre:" he had better in those days
+have committed all the seven deadly sins; and when the lady revealed his
+unlucky confession, and denounced him as a heretic, he was immediately
+imprisoned. Instead, however, of being depressed by his situation, or
+moved to make any concessions, he published from his prison a most
+ludicrous lampoon on his <i>ci-devant</i> mistress, of which the burthen was,
+"Prenez le, il a mang&eacute; le lard!" He afterwards made his escape, and took
+refuge in the court of Ren&eacute;e, Duchess of Ferrara; and though
+subsequently recalled to France, he continued to pursue Diana with the
+most bitter satire, became a second time a fugitive, partly on her
+account, and died in exile and poverty.<a name="FNanchor_116_116" id="FNanchor_116_116"></a><a href="#Footnote_116_116" class="fnanchor">[116]</a></p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span></p>
+<p>Marot has been called the French Chaucer. He resembles the English poet
+in liveliness of fancy, picturesque imagery, simplicity of expression,
+and satirical humour; but he has these merits in a far less degree; and
+in variety of genius, pathos and power, is immeasurably his inferior.</p>
+
+<p>Ronsard, to whom I at length return, was the successor of Marot. In his
+time the Italian sonnetteers, as Petrarch, Bembo, Sanazzaro, were the
+prevailing models, and classical pedantry the prevailing taste. Ronsard,
+having filled his mind with Greek and learning, determined to be a
+poet,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span> and looked about for a mistress to be the object of his songs:
+for a poet without a mistress was then an unheard-of anomaly. He fixed
+upon a beautiful woman of Blois, named Cassandre, whose Greek
+appellative, it is said, was her principal attraction in his fancy. To
+her he addressed about two hundred and twenty sonnets, in a style so
+lofty and pedantic, stuffed with such hard names and philosophical
+allusions, that the fair Cassandra must have been as wise as her
+namesake, the daughter of Priam, to have comprehended her own praises.</p>
+
+<p>Ronsard's next love was more interesting. Her name was Marie: she was
+beautiful and kind: the poet really loved her; and consequently, we find
+him occasionally descending from his heights of affectation and
+scholarship, to the language of truth, nature and tenderness. Marie died
+young; and among Ronsard's most admired poems are two or three little
+pieces written after her death. As his works are not commonly met with,
+I give one as a specimen of his style:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span>&mdash;</p>
+
+
+<h4>EPITAPHE DE MARIE.</h4>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ci reposent les os de la belle Marie,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Qui me fit pour un jour quitter mon Vendomois,<a href="#Footnote_117_117" class="fnanchor">[117]</a><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Qui m'echauffa le sang au plus verd de mes mois;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Qui f&ucirc;t toute mon tout, mon bien, et mon envie.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">En sa tombe repose honneur et courtoisie,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Et la jeune beaut&eacute; qu'en l'ame je sentois,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Et le flambeau d'Amour, ses traits et son carquois,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Et ensemble mon c&oelig;ur, mes pens&eacute;es et ma vie.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Tu es, belle Angevine,<a name="FNanchor_117_117" id="FNanchor_117_117"></a><a href="#Footnote_117_117" class="fnanchor">[117]</a> un bel astre des cieux;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Les anges, tous ravis, se paissent de tes yeux,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">La terre te regrette, O beaut&eacute; sans seconde!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Maintenant tu es vive, et je suis mort d'ennui,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Malheureux qui se fie en l'attente d'autrui;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Trois amis m'ont tromp&eacute;,&mdash;toi, l'amour, et le monde.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Ronsard had by this time acquired a reputation which eclipsed that of
+all his contemporaries. He was caressed and patronised by Charles the
+Ninth (of hateful memory), who, like Nero, exhibited the revolting
+combination of a taste for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span> poetry and the fine arts, with the most
+sanguinary and depraved dispositions. Ronsard, having lost his Marie,
+was commanded by Catherine de' Medicis to select a mistress from among
+the ladies of her court, to be the future object of his tuneful homage.
+He politely left her Majesty to choose for him, prepared to fall in love
+duly at the royal behest; and Catherine pointed out Hel&egrave;ne de Surgeres,
+one of her maids of honour, as worthy to be the second Laura of a second
+Petrarch. The docile poet, with zealous obedience, warbled the praises
+of Hel&egrave;ne for the rest of his life. He also consecrated to her a
+fountain near his ch&acirc;teau in the Vendomois, which has popularly
+preserved her name and fame. It is still known as the "Fontaine
+d'Hel&egrave;ne."</p>
+
+<p>Hel&egrave;ne was more witty than beautiful, and, though vain of the celebrity
+she had acquired in the verses of Ronsard, she either disliked him in
+the character of a lover, or was one of those lofty ladies</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Who hate to have their dignity profaned<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With any relish of an earthly thought.<a name="FNanchor_118_118" id="FNanchor_118_118"></a><a href="#Footnote_118_118" class="fnanchor">[118]</a><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span></p>
+<p>She desired the Cardinal du Perron would request Ronsard (in her name)
+to prefix an epistle to the odes and sonnets addressed to her, assuring
+the world that this poetical love had been purely Platonic. "Madam,"
+said the Cardinal, "you had better give him leave to prefix your
+picture."<a name="FNanchor_119_119" id="FNanchor_119_119"></a><a href="#Footnote_119_119" class="fnanchor">[119]</a></p>
+
+<p>I presume my fair and gentle readers (I shall have none, I am sure, who
+are not one or the other, or both,) are as tired as myself of all this
+affectation, and glad to turn from it to the interest of passion and
+reality.</p>
+
+<p>"There is not," says Cowley, "so great a lie to be found in any poet, as
+the vulgar conceit of men, that lying is essential to good poetry." On
+the contrary, where there is not truth, there is nothing&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Rien n' est beau que le vrai,&mdash;le vrai seul est aimable!<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span></div></div>
+
+<p>While the Italian school of amatory verse was flourishing in France,
+Spain, and England, almost to the extinction of originality in this
+style, the brightest light of Italian poesy had arisen, and was shining
+with a troubled splendour over that land of song. How swiftly at the
+thought does imagination shoot, "like a glancing star," over the wide
+expanse of sea and land, and through a long interval of sad and varied
+years! I am again standing within the porch of the church of San
+Onofrio, looking down upon the little slab in its dark corner, which
+covers the bones of <span class="smcap">Tasso</span>.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_109_109" id="Footnote_109_109"></a><a href="#FNanchor_109_109"><span class="label">[109]</span></a> Died 1631</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_110_110" id="Footnote_110_110"></a><a href="#FNanchor_110_110"><span class="label">[110]</span></a> Died in 1619.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_111_111" id="Footnote_111_111"></a><a href="#FNanchor_111_111"><span class="label">[111]</span></a> Died 1649.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_112_112" id="Footnote_112_112"></a><a href="#FNanchor_112_112"><span class="label">[112]</span></a> Leicester's influence over Elizabeth appeared so
+unaccountable, that it was ascribed to magic, and to her evil stars.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_113_113" id="Footnote_113_113"></a><a href="#FNanchor_113_113"><span class="label">[113]</span></a> Spenser's Daphnaida.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_114_114" id="Footnote_114_114"></a><a href="#FNanchor_114_114"><span class="label">[114]</span></a>
+</p>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">B&eacute;lier, mon ami! Commencez par le commencement!<br /></span>
+<span class="i20"><span class="smcap">count hamilton.</span><br /></span>
+</div></div></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_115_115" id="Footnote_115_115"></a><a href="#FNanchor_115_115"><span class="label">[115]</span></a> "La gentille Marguerite," the unhappy wife of Louis the
+Eleventh. Beautiful, accomplished, and in the very spring of life, she
+died a victim to the detestable character of her husband. When one of
+her attendants spoke of hope and life, the Queen, turning from her with
+an expression of deep disgust, exclaimed with a last effort, "Fi de la
+vie! ne m'en parlez plus!"&mdash;and expired.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_116_116" id="Footnote_116_116"></a><a href="#FNanchor_116_116"><span class="label">[116]</span></a> At Althorp, the seat of Lord Spenser, there is a most
+curious picture of Diana of Poictiers, once in the Crawford collection:
+it is a small half-length; the features are fair and regular; the hair
+is elaborately dressed with a profusion of jewels; but there is no
+drapery whatever, except a curtain behind: round the head is the legend
+from the forty-second Psalm,&mdash;"Comme le cerf braie apr&egrave;s le d&eacute;cours des
+eaues, ainsi brait mon &acirc;me apr&egrave;s toi, O Dieu!" which is certainly a most
+extraordinary and profane application. In the days of Diana of
+Poictiers, Marot had composed a version of the Psalms, then very
+popular. It was the fashion to sing them to dance and song tunes; and
+the courtiers and beauties had each their favourite psalm, which served
+as a kind of <i>devise</i>. This may explain the very singular inscription on
+this very singular picture.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_117_117" id="Footnote_117_117"></a><a href="#FNanchor_117_117"><span class="label">[117]</span></a> Ronsard was a native of the Vendomois, and Marie, of
+Anjou.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_118_118" id="Footnote_118_118"></a><a href="#FNanchor_118_118"><span class="label">[118]</span></a> Ben Jonson.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_119_119" id="Footnote_119_119"></a><a href="#FNanchor_119_119"><span class="label">[119]</span></a> V. Bayle Dictionnaire Historique.&mdash;Pierre de Ronsard was
+born in 1524, and died in 1585.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XVIII.</h2>
+
+<h3>LEONORA D'ESTE.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Leonora d'Este, a princess of the proudest house in Europe, might have
+wedded an emperor, and have been forgotten. The idea, true or false,
+that she it was who broke the heart and frenzied the brain of Tasso, has
+glorified her to future ages; has given her a fame, something like that
+of the Greek of old, who bequeathed his name to immortality, by firing
+the grandest temple of the universe.</p>
+
+<p>The question of Tasso's attachment to the Princess Leonora, is, I
+believe, set at rest by the acute researches and judicious reasoning of
+M. Ginguen&eacute;, and those who have followed in his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span> steps. A body of
+circumstantial evidence has been collected, which would not only satisfy
+a court of love&mdash;but a court of law, with a Lord Chancellor, to boot,
+"<i>perpending</i>" at the head of it. That which was once regarded as a
+romance, which we wished to believe, if we <i>could</i>, is now an
+established fact, which we cannot disbelieve if we would.</p>
+
+<p>No poet perhaps ever owed so much to female influence as Tasso, or wrote
+so much under the intoxicating inspiration of love and beauty. He paid
+most dearly for such inspiration; and yet not <i>too</i> dearly. The high
+tone of sentiment, the tenderness, and the delicacy which pervade all
+his poems, which prevail even in his most voluptuous descriptions, and
+which give him such a decided superiority over Ariosto, cannot be owing
+to any change of manners or increase of refinement produced by the lapse
+of a few years. It may be traced to the tender influence of two elegant
+women. He for many years read the cantos of the Gerusalemme, as he
+composed them, to the Princesses Lucretia and Leonora, both of whom he
+admired&mdash;one of whom he adored.</p>
+
+<p><i>Au reste</i>&mdash;the kiss, which he is said to have imprinted on the lips of
+Leonora in a transport<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span> of frenzy, as well as the idea that she was the
+primary cause of his insanity, and of his seven years' imprisonment at
+St. Anne's, rest on no authority worthy of credit; yet it is not less
+certain that she was the object of his secret and fervent admiration,
+and that this hopeless passion conspired, with many other causes, to
+fever his irritable temperament and unsettle his imagination, beyond
+that "fine madness," which we are told <i>ought</i> "to possess the poet's
+brain."</p>
+
+<p>When Tasso first visited Ferrara, in 1565, he was just one-and-twenty,
+with all the advantages which a fine countenance, a majestic figure,
+(for he was tall even among the tallest,) noble birth, and excelling
+talents could bestow: he was already distinguished as the author of the
+Rinaldo, his earliest poem, in which he had celebrated (as if
+prophetically,) the Princesses d'Este&mdash;and chiefly Leonora.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Lucrezia Estense, e l'altra i cui crin d'oro,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lacci e reti saran del casto amore.<a name="FNanchor_120_120" id="FNanchor_120_120"></a><a href="#Footnote_120_120" class="fnanchor">[120]</a><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</a></span></p>
+<p>When Tasso was first introduced to her in her brother's court, Leonora
+was in her thirtieth year; a disparity of age which is certainly no
+argument against the passion she inspired. For a young man, at his first
+entrance into life, to fall in love ambitiously&mdash;with a woman, for
+instance, who is older than himself, or with one who is, or ought to be,
+unattainable&mdash;is a common occurrence. Tasso, from his boyish years, had
+been the sworn servant of beauty. He tells us, in grave prose, "che la
+sua giovanezza fu tutta sotto-posta all' amorose leggi;"<a name="FNanchor_121_121" id="FNanchor_121_121"></a><a href="#Footnote_121_121" class="fnanchor">[121]</a> but he was
+also refined, even to fastidiousness, in his intercourse with women. He
+had formed, in his own poetical mind, the most exalted idea of what a
+female ought to be, and unfortunately, she who first realised all his
+dreams of perfection, was a Princess&mdash;"there seated where he durst not
+soar." Leonora was still eminently lovely, in that soft, artless,
+unobtrusive style of beauty, which is charming in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</a></span> itself, and in a
+princess irresistible, from its contrast with the loftiness of her
+station and the trappings of her rank. Her complexion was extremely
+fair; her features small and regular; and the form of her head
+peculiarly graceful, if I may judge from a fine medallion I once saw of
+her in Italy. Ill health, and her early acquaintance with the sorrows of
+her unfortunate mother, had given to her countenance a languid and
+pensive cast, and sicklied all the natural bloom of her complexion; but
+"Paleur, qui marque une ame tendre, a bien son prix:" so Tasso thought;
+and this "vago Pallore," which "vanquishes the rose, and makes the dawn
+ashamed of her blushes," he has frequently and beautifully celebrated;
+as in the pretty Madrigal&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Vita della mia Vita!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>O Rosa scolorita!</i> &amp;c.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>and in those graceful lines,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Languidetta belt&agrave; vinceva amore, &amp;c.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>applicable only to Leonora. Her eyes were blue; her mouth of peculiar
+beauty, both in form and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</a></span> expression. In the seventh Sonnet, "Bella &egrave; la
+donna mia," he says it was the most lovely feature in her face; in
+another, still finer,<a name="FNanchor_122_122" id="FNanchor_122_122"></a><a href="#Footnote_122_122" class="fnanchor">[122]</a> he styles this exquisite mouth "a crimson
+shell"&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Purpurea conca, in cui si nutre<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Candor di perle elette e pellegrine;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>and he concludes it with one of those disguises under which he was
+accustomed to conceal Leonora's name.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">E di s&igrave; degno cor tuo stra<span class="smcap">le onora</span>.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>She was negligent in her dress, and studious and retired in her habits,
+seldom joining in the amusements of her brother's court, then the gayest
+and most magnificent in Italy.<a name="FNanchor_123_123" id="FNanchor_123_123"></a><a href="#Footnote_123_123" class="fnanchor">[123]</a> Her accomplished and unhappy mother,
+Ren&eacute;e of France,<a name="FNanchor_124_124" id="FNanchor_124_124"></a><a href="#Footnote_124_124" class="fnanchor">[124]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</a></span> had early instilled into her mind a love of
+literature, and especially of poetry. She was passionately fond of
+music, and sang admirably. One of Tasso's most beautiful sonnets was
+composed on some occasion when her physician had forbidden her to sing.
+He who had so often felt the magic of that enchanting voice, thus
+describes its power and laments his loss:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ahi, ben &egrave; reo destin, ch' invidia, e toglie<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Almondo il suon de' vostri chiari accenti,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Onde addivien che le terrene genti<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">De' maggior pregi, impoverisca e spoglie.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ch' ogni nebbia mortal, che 'l senso accoglie,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Sgombrar potea dalle pi&ugrave; fosche menti<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">L' armon&igrave;a dolce, e bei pensieri ardenti<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Spirar d' onore, e pure e nobil voglie.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ma non si merta qui forse cotanto;<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">E basta ben che i sereni occhi, e 'l riso<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">N' infiammin d' un piacer celeste e santo.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Nulla fora pi&ugrave; bello il Paradiso,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Se 'l mondo udisse, in voi d' angelo il canto,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Siccome vede in voi d' angelo il viso.<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</a></span></div></div>
+
+<p>"O cruel&mdash;O envious destiny, that hast deprived the world of those
+delicious accents, that hast made earth poor in what was dearest and
+sweetest! No cloud ever gathered over the gloomiest mind, which the
+melody of that voice could not disperse; it breathed but to inspire
+noble thoughts and chaste desires.&mdash;But, no! it was more than mortals
+could deserve to possess. Those soft eyes, that smile were enough to
+inspire a sacred and sweet delight.&mdash;Nor would Paradise any longer excel
+this earth, if in your voice we heard an angel sing, as we behold an
+angel's beauty in your face!"</p>
+
+<p>Leonora, to a sweet-toned voice, added a gift, which, unless thus
+accompanied, loses half its value, and almost all its charm&mdash;she spoke
+well; and her eloquence was so persuasive, that we are told she had
+power to move her brother Alphonso, when none else could. Tasso says
+most poetically,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">E l'aura del parlar cortese e saggio,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fra le rose spirar, s'udia sovente;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>&mdash;meaning&mdash;for to translate literally is scarce possible,&mdash;that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</a></span>
+"eloquence played round her lips, like the zephyr breathing over roses."</p>
+
+<p>"I (he adds), beholding a celestial beauty walk the earth, closed my
+eyes in terror, exclaiming, O rashness! O folly! for any to dare to gaze
+on such charms! Alas! I quickly perceived that this was my least peril.
+My heart was touched through my ears; her gentle wisdom penetrated
+deeper than her beauty could reach."</p>
+
+<p>With what emotions must a young and ardent poet have listened to his own
+praises from a beautiful mouth, thus sweetly gifted! and it may be
+added, that Leonora's eloquence, and the influence she possessed over
+her brother, were ever employed in behalf of the deserving and
+unfortunate. The good people of Ferrara had such an exalted idea of her
+piety and benevolence, that when an earthquake caused a terrible
+innundation of the Po, and the destruction of the surrounding villages,
+they attributed the safety of their city entirely to her prayers and
+intercession.</p>
+
+<p>Leonora then was not unworthy of her illustrious conquest, either in
+person, heart, or mind.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</a></span> To be summoned daily into the presence of a
+Princess thus beautiful and amiable, to read aloud his verses to her, to
+hear his own praises from her lips, to bask in her approving smiles, to
+associate with her in her retirement, to behold her in all the graceful
+simplicity of her familiar life,&mdash;was a dangerous situation for Tasso,
+and surely not less so for Leonora herself. That she was aware of his
+admiration, and perfectly understood his sentiments, and that a
+mysterious intelligence existed between them, consistent with the utmost
+reverence on his part, and the most perfect delicacy and dignity on
+hers, is apparent from the meaning and tendency of innumerable passages
+scattered through his minor poems&mdash;too significant in their application
+to be mistaken. Though that application be not avowed, and even
+disguised&mdash;the very disguise, when once detected, points to the object.
+Leonora knew, as well as her lover, that a Princess "was no love-mate
+for a bard." She knew far better than her lover, until <i>he</i> too had been
+taught by wretched experience, the haughty and implacable temper of her
+brother<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</a></span> Alphonso, who never was known to brook an injury or forgive an
+offender. She must have remembered too well the twelve years'
+imprisonment and the narrow escape from death, of her unfortunate mother
+for a less cause. She was of a timid and reserved nature, increased by
+the extreme delicacy of her constitution. Her hand had frequently been
+sought by princes and nobles, whom she had uniformly rejected, at the
+risk of displeasing her brother; and the eyes of a jealous court were
+upon her. Tasso, on the other hand, was imprudent, hot-headed, fearless,
+ardently attached. For both their sakes, it was necessary for Leonora to
+be guarded and reserved, unless she would have made herself the fable of
+all Italy. And in what glowing verse has Tasso described all the
+delicious pain of such a situation! now proud of his fetters, now
+execrating them in despair. In allusion to his ambitious passion, he is
+Phaeton, Icarus, Tantalus, Ixion.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Se d' Ic&agrave;ro leggesti c di Fetonte, &amp;c.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>But though presumption flung to ruin Icarus<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</a></span> and Phaeton, did not the
+power of love bring even Dian down "from her amazing height?"</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i18">E che non puote<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Amor, che con catena il ciel unisce?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Egli gi&agrave; trae delle celeste rote<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Di terrana belt&agrave; Diana accesa,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">E d'Ida il bel Fanciul<a name="FNanchor_125_125" id="FNanchor_125_125"></a><a href="#Footnote_125_125" class="fnanchor">[125]</a> al' ciel rapisce.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>This at least is <i>clearly</i> significant, however poetical the allusions;
+but what a world of passion and of meaning breathes through the Sonnet
+which he has entitled "The constrained Silence," ("<i>Il Silenzio
+Imposto.</i>")</p>
+
+<p>"She is content that I should love her; yet, O what hard restraint of
+galling silence has she imposed!"</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Vuol che l' ami costei; ma duro freno<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Mi pone ancor d' aspro silenzio; or quale<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Avr&ograve; da lei, se non conosce il male<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O medecina, o refrigerio almeno?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">....*....*....*....*<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Tacer ben posso, e tacer&ograve;! ch' io toglia<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sangue alle piaghe, e luce al vivo foco<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Non brami gi&agrave;; questa e impossibil voglia<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Troppo spinse pungenti a dentro i colpi,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">E troppo ardore accolse in picciol loco:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">S' apparir&agrave;, natura, e s&egrave; n' incolpi.<a name="FNanchor_126_126" id="FNanchor_126_126"></a><a href="#Footnote_126_126" class="fnanchor">[126]</a><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>"Yes, I can, I will keep silence; but to command that the wound shall
+not bleed nor the fire burn, is to command impossibility. Too, too deep
+hath the blow been struck; too ardently glows the flame; and if
+betrayed, the fault is in nature&mdash;not in me!"</p>
+
+<p>And again, what can be more exquisitely tender, more beautiful in its
+fervent simplicity of expression, than the effusion which follows? How
+miserably does an inadequate prose translation halt after the glowing
+poetry, the rhythmical music, the "linked sweetness" of the original!</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Io non cedo in amar, Donna gentile<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">A' chi mostra di fuor l' interno affetto;<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Perch&egrave; 'l mio si nasconda in mezzo 'l petto,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">N&egrave; co' fior s' apra del mio nuovo Aprile,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Co' vaghi sguardi, e col sembiante umile,<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</a></span>
+<span class="i4">Co' detti sparsi in variando aspetto<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Altri si veggia al vostro amor soggetto,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">E co' sospiri, e con leggiadro stile.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">E quando gela il cielo, e quando infiamma,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">E quando parte il sole, e quando riede,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Vi segua; come il can selvaggia damma.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ch' io se nel cor vi cerco, altri noi vede,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">E sol mi vanto di nascosa fiamma,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">E sol mi glorio di secreta fede.<a name="FNanchor_127_127" id="FNanchor_127_127"></a><a href="#Footnote_127_127" class="fnanchor">[127]</a><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>"I yield not in love, O gentlest lady! to those who dare to show their
+love more openly, though I conceal it within the centre of my heart, nor
+suffer it to spread forth, like the other flowers of my spring. Let
+others boast themselves subjects of love for your sake, and slaves of
+your beauty, with admiring looks, with humble aspect, with sighs, with
+eloquent words, with lofty verse! whether the winter freeze or the
+summer burn,&mdash;at set of sun, and when he laughs again in heaven, let
+them still pursue you, as dogs the shy and timid deer. But I&mdash;O, I seek
+you in my own heart, where none else behold you! My hidden<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</a></span> love be my
+only boast: my secret faith, my only glory!"</p>
+
+<p>Without multiplying quotations, which would extend this sketch from
+pages into volumes, it is sufficient to trace through Tasso's verses the
+little incidents which varied this romantic intercourse. The frequent
+indisposition of Leonora, her absence when she went to visit her
+brother, the Cardinal d'Este, at Tivoli, form the subjects of several
+beautiful little poems; as the Sonnets</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Dianzi al vostro languir, &amp;c.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Donna! poich&egrave; fortuna empia mi nega<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Seguirvi, &amp;c.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Al nobil colle, ove in antichi marmi<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Di Greco mano opre famose ammira<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Vaga <span class="smcap">Leonora</span> il mio pensier mi gira.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Here he names her expressly; while in the little lament&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Lunge da voi, ben mio!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Non ho vita ne core! e non son io<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Non sono, oim&egrave;! non sono<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Quel ch' altra volta fui, ma un Ombra mesta,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Un lagrimevol suono, &amp;c.<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</a></span></div></div>
+
+<p>&mdash;the tone is too passionate to allow of it. He finds her looking up one
+night at the stars; it is sufficient to inspire that beautiful little
+song,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Mentre, mia stella, miri<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I bei celesti giri,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Il cielo esser vorrei,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Perch&egrave; negli occhi mici<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fiso tu rivolgessi<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Le tue dolci faville;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Io vagheggiar potessi<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Mille bellezze tue, con luci mille!<a name="FNanchor_128_128" id="FNanchor_128_128"></a><a href="#Footnote_128_128" class="fnanchor">[128]</a><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>He relates, in another little madrigal, that standing alone with her in
+a balcony, he chanced, perhaps in the eagerness of conversation, to
+extend his arm on hers. He asks pardon for the freedom, and she replies
+with sweetness, "You offended not by placing your arm there, but by
+withdrawing it." This little speech in a coquette would have been <i>sans
+consequence</i>; from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</a></span> such a woman as Leonora, it spoke volumes; and her
+lover felt it so. He breaks forth in a rapture at the tender
+condescension,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">O parolette amorose, &amp;c.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Then comes a cloud, but whether of temper or jealousy, we know not. One
+of those luckless trifles, perhaps,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i14">&mdash;that move<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Dissension between hearts that love.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Tasso accompanied Lucrezia d'Este, then Duchess of Urbino, to her villa
+of Castel Durante, where he remained for some time, partaking in all the
+amusements of her gay court, without once seeing Leonora. He then wrote
+to her, and the letter fortunately has been preserved entire.</p>
+
+<p>Though guarded in expression, it is throughout in the tone of a lover
+piqued, and yet conscious that he has himself offended; and seeking,
+with a sort of proud humility, the reconciliation on which his happiness
+depends. He sends her a sonnet, which he admits is "far unlike the
+elegant effusions he supposes her now in the habit of receiving."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</a></span> He
+begs to assure her, that though it be in art and wit as poor as he is
+himself in happiness, yet in his present pitiable condition, he could do
+no better; (not that he was to all appearance so very much to be
+pitied). He adds, "do not think, however, that in this vacancy of
+thought, my heart has found leisure for love. The Sonnet is merely
+composed at the request of a certain poor lover, who has for some time
+past quarrelled with his mistress; and now no longer able to endure his
+hard fortune, is obliged to yield, and sue for grace and pardon." "Il
+quale essendo stato un pezzo in colera con la sua donna, ora non potendo
+pi&ugrave;, bisogna che si renda e che dimanda merc&egrave;." The Sonnet enclosed in
+this letter, ("Sdegno, debil Guerrier,") appears to me one of the least
+pleasing in the collection; as if his genius and his feelings were both
+under some benumbing influence when he wrote it.</p>
+
+<p>In the meanwhile, there was a report that Leonora was about to be united
+to a foreign Prince. Her hand had been demanded of her brother with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[Pg 306]</a></span> the
+usual formalities. On this occasion Tasso wrote the fine Canzone,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Amor, tu vedi, e non hai duolo o sdegno, &amp;c.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>"Love! canst thou look on without grief or indignation, to see my gentle
+lady bow her fair neck to the yoke of another?"</p>
+
+<p>The expression in the 6th strophe is very unequivocal&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Nor let my mistress, though she suffer her bosom to be invaded by a
+newer flame, forget the <i>former</i> bond."</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">N&egrave; la mia Donna, perch&egrave; scaldi il petto<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Di nuovo amore, nodo <i>antico</i> sprezzi.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>In one of his Sonnets, this jealous pain is yet more strongly
+expressed:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Io sparso, ed altri miete! &amp;c.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>"I sow, another reaps! I water a lovely blossom, unworthy, alas! to tend
+it; and another gathers the fruit. O rage!&mdash;yet must I, through coward
+fear, lock my grief within my own bosom!" &amp;c.</p>
+
+<p>This intended marriage never took place; and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</a></span> Tasso, relieved from his
+fears, and restored to the confidence of Leonora, was again
+comparatively blessed. He sometimes ventured to name her openly in his
+poems,&mdash;as in the little Madrigal,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Cantava in riva al fiume<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Tirse di <span class="smcap">Leonora</span>,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">E rispondean le selve, e l'onde, <i>onora</i>.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Sometimes he disguised her name as l'Aurora, l'Aura, Onor, le
+onora,<a name="FNanchor_129_129" id="FNanchor_129_129"></a><a href="#Footnote_129_129" class="fnanchor">[129]</a></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Dell' Onor simulacro e'l nome vostro.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>To these the preceding Madrigal is a sort of <i>key</i>; or the better to
+conceal the true object of his adoration, he carried his apparent
+homage, and often his poetical gallantry, to the feet of other fair
+ladies. Lucretia d'Este, the elder sister of Leonora; Tarquinia Molza, a
+beauty and a poetess; and Lucretia Bendidio, another most<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[Pg 308]</a></span> accomplished
+woman, who numbered all the poets and literati of Ferrara in her train,
+frequently inspired him.</p>
+
+<p>The mention of Lucretia Bendidio reminds me of an incident in Tasso's
+early life, which, besides being characteristic of his times and genius,
+is extremely <i>apropos</i> to my present purpose and subject. In the days of
+his first enthusiasm for Lucretia, when he and Guarini were rivals for
+her favour, he undertook to maintain, publicly, fifty <i>theses</i>, or
+difficult questions, in the "Science of Love." These "Conclusion!
+amorosi" may be found in the third volume of the great folio edition of
+his works; and some of them, it must be confessed, afforded matter for
+much amusing and edifying discussion; for instance,&mdash;"Amore esser pi&ugrave;
+nell' amata che nell' amante," "that love exists rather in the person
+beloved than in the lover," which seems to involve a nice distinction in
+metaphysics; and "Nessuna amata essere, o poter essere ingrata,"&mdash;"that
+no woman truly beloved, is or can be ungrateful," which involves a
+mystery&mdash;and a truth. And the 48th, "Se pi&ugrave; si<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[Pg 309]</a></span> patisca, o non ricevendo
+alcun premio, o ricevendo minor del desiderio,"&mdash;"whether in love, it be
+harder to receive no recompense whatever, or less than we desire,"&mdash;a
+question so difficult to settle, and so depending on individual feeling,
+that it should have been put to the vote. Others prove, that whatever
+was the practice in those days, the received and philosophical theory of
+love was sublime enough; for instance, the 14th, "That the more love is
+regulated by reason, the more noble it is in its nature." (Agreed to,
+with exceptions, of which Tasso himself might furnish the most
+prominent.) That "compassion in our sex is never a sign of reciprocal
+affection, but on the contrary." (True, generally.) The 34th, "That the
+respect of the lover for her he loves increases the value and delight of
+every favour she grants him." (I think this must have passed undisputed,
+or by acclamation.)</p>
+
+<p>The 38th of these curious propositions, "L'uomo in sua natura amar pi&ugrave;
+intentamente e stabilmente che la donna,"&mdash;that "men by nature love more
+intensely and more permanently<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[Pg 310]</a></span> than women," was opposed by Signora
+Orsolina Cavaletta, a woman of singular accomplishments, and who
+displayed, in defence of her sex, so much wit and talent, such various
+learning, ingenuity, and eloquence, that the young disputant, perhaps
+placed in a dilemma between his honour and his gallantry, came very
+hardly off. This singular exhibition continued for three days, and was
+conducted with infinite solemnity, in presence of the Court and the
+Princesses; all the nobility and even the superior clergy of Ferrara
+crowded to witness it; and I doubt whether any lecture at the British
+Institution, on mathematics, or electricity, or geology, was ever
+listened to by our fair bas-bleus with half as much interest as Tasso's
+"Fifty Theses on Love" excited in Ferrara.</p>
+
+<p>Several years after his first introduction to Leonora d'Este, and after
+some of the most impassioned and least ambiguous of his verses were
+written, the Court of Ferrara was embellished by the arrival of two of
+the most beautiful women in all Italy,&mdash;Leonora di Sanvitali, Countess
+of Scandiano, then a youthful bride, and her not less<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[Pg 311]</a></span> lovely
+mother-in-law, Barbara, Countess of Sala. The Countess of Scandiano is
+the <i>other</i> <span class="smcap">Leonora</span> who has puzzled all the biographers, from the open
+gallantry and avowed adoration with which Tasso has celebrated her; but
+in strains,&mdash;O how different from the sentiment, the veneration, the
+tenderness, and the mystery which breathe through his verses to Leonora
+d'Este! A third Leonora was said to exist in the person of the
+Countess's favourite attendant: but this is untrue. The name of
+Leonora's waiting-maid was Laura. Tasso has addressed several little
+poems to her; and there can be no doubt that she occasionally served as
+a blind to his real attachment for her mistress. The Countess of
+Scandiano's attendant was the fair Olympia, to whom is addressed that
+exquisitely graceful Canzone,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">O con le Grazie elette, e con gli amori.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The Duchess of Ferrara's maid, the beautiful Livia d'Arco, and even her
+dwarf, are also immortalised in Tasso's verses, who poured forth his
+courtly gallantry with an exhaustless and splendid<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[Pg 312]</a></span> prodigality, fitting
+their praises to his lyre, as if it had never resounded to higher
+themes.</p>
+
+<p>At a court festival given by the Duke Alphonso, in honour of his
+beautiful and illustrious visitors, the Countess of Sala appeared with
+her fine hair wreathed round her head in the form of a coronet, which
+with her grand style of beauty and majestic deportment, gave her the air
+of a Juno. The young Countess of Scandiano, on the other hand, enchanted
+by her Hebe-like graces, her smiles, and the unequalled beauty of a
+pouting underlip;&mdash;nothing was talked of at Ferrara but these braided
+tresses and this lovely lip; the poets and the young cavaliers were
+divided into parties on the occasion. Tasso has celebrated both with the
+same voluptuous elegance of style in which he described his Armida. To
+the Countess of Scandiano he wrote,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Quel labbro, che le rose han colorito<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Molle si sporge, e tumidetto in fuore, &amp;c.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>To the Countess of Sala,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Barbara! maraviglia de' tempi nostri.<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[Pg 313]</a></span></div></div>
+
+<p>But the Countess of Scandiano was more especially the object of his
+public adoration. It was a poetical passion, openly professed; and
+flattering, as it appears, both to the lady and to her husband, without
+in any degree implicating either her discretion or that of Tasso.
+Compare his verses to this young Countess&mdash;this <i>peregrina Fenice</i>,<a name="FNanchor_130_130" id="FNanchor_130_130"></a><a href="#Footnote_130_130" class="fnanchor">[130]</a>
+as he fancifully styles her, who comes shining forth, not <i>to be
+consumed</i>, but <i>to consume</i>,&mdash;to the profound tenderness, the intense
+yet mournful feeling of some of the poems composed for the Princess
+d'Este, about the same time; when he must have daily contrasted the rich
+bloom, the smiling eyes, and sparkling graces of the youthful Countess,
+with the fading or faded beauty, the languid form, and pale cheek of his
+long-loved Leonora. See particularly the Sonnet</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Tre gran Donne vid' io, &amp;c.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>"Three illustrious ladies did I behold,&mdash;I sung them all&mdash;<i>one only</i> I
+loved," &amp;c. And another equally beautiful and significant,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[Pg 314]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Perch&egrave; 'n giovenil volto amor mi mostri<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Talor, Donna <i>Real</i>, rose e ligustri<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Oblio non pone in me, de' miei trilustri<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Affanni, o de miei spesi indarno inchiostri.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">E 'l cor, che s' invaghi degli onor vostri<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Da prima, e vostro fu poscia pi&ugrave; lustri<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Reserba, amo in s&egrave; forme pi&ugrave; illustri<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Che perle e gemme, e bei coralli ed ostri.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Queste egli in suono di sospir s&igrave; chiari<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Farebbe udir, che d' amorosa face<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Accenderebbe i pi&ugrave; gelati cori.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ma oltre suo costume &egrave; fatto avaro<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">De' vostri pregi, suoi dolci tesori,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Che in se medesmo gli vagheggia e <i>tace</i>!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<h4>TRANSLATION.</h4>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Albeit in younger faces Love at times<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">May show me where a fresher rose is set,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Yet, <i>Royal</i> Lady, can I not forget<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">My fifteen years of pain and useless rhymes.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This heart, so touch'd by all thy beauty bright,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">After so many years is still thine own,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And still retaineth forms more exquisite<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Than pearls, or purple gems, or coral stone.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All this my heart in soft sighs would make known,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And thus with fire the coldest bosom fill,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[Pg 315]</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i2">But that, unlike itself, that heart hath grown<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So covetous of thy sweet charms, and thee,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">(Its secret treasures,) that it aye doth flee<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Inwards, and dwells upon them, and is still."<a name="FNanchor_131_131" id="FNanchor_131_131"></a><a href="#Footnote_131_131" class="fnanchor">[131]</a><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Lastly, that most perfect Sonnet, so well known and so celebrated, that
+I should not insert it here, but that I am enabled to give, for the
+first time, a translation equally faithful to the sentiment and the
+poetry of the original.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Negli anni acerbi tuoi, purpurea rosa<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Sembravi tu, ch' ai rai tepidi, all' ora<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Non apre 'l sen, ma nel suo verde ancora<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Verginella s' asconde, e vergognosa.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">O pi&ugrave; tosto parei (che mortal cosa,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Non s' assomiglia a te) celeste Aurora,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Che le campagne imperla, e i monti indora,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Lucida in ciel sereno e rugiadosa.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Or la men verde et&agrave; nulla a te toglie;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Ne te, benche negletta, in manto adorno<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Giovinetta belt&agrave; vince, o pareggia.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Cosi pi&ugrave; vago &egrave; 'l fior, poich&eacute; le foglie<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Spiega odorate: e 'l sol nel mezzo giorno<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Vi&egrave;-pi&ugrave;, che nel mattin, luce e fiammeggia.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[Pg 316]</a></span></p>
+
+<h4>TRANSLATION.</h4>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Thou, in thy unripe years, wast like the rose,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Which shrinketh from the summer dawn, afraid,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And with her green veil, like a bashful maid,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hideth her bosom sweet, and scarcely blows:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or rather,&mdash;(for what shape ever arose<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">From the dull earth like thee,) thou didst appear<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Heavenly Aurora, who, when skies are clear,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Her dewy pearls o'er all the country sows.<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Time stealeth nought: thy rare and careless grace<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Surpasseth still the youthful bride when neatest,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Her wealth of dress, her budding blooming face,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So is the full-blown rose for age the sweetest,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">So doth the mid-day sun outshine the morn,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With rays more beautiful and brighter born!"<a name="FNanchor_132_132" id="FNanchor_132_132"></a><a href="#Footnote_132_132" class="fnanchor">[132]</a><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Yet all this was too little. His minor lyrics, the unlaboured and
+spontaneous effusions of leisure, of fancy, of sentiment, would have
+been glory enough for any other poet, and fame enough for any other
+woman: but Tasso had founded his hopes of immortality on his great poem,
+The Jerusalem Delivered; and it was imperfect in his eyes unless Leonora
+were shrined in it. To convert the pale, gentle, elegant invalid<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[Pg 317]</a></span> into a
+heroine, seemed impossible: she was no model for his lovely amazon,
+Clorinda; nor his exquisite sorceress, Armida; nor his love-sick
+Erminia: for her, therefore, and to her honour, and to the eternal
+memory of his love for her, he composed the episode in the second Canto,
+where we have her portrait at full length as Sophronia.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Vergine era fra lor, di gia matura<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Verginit&agrave;, d'alta pensieri e regi,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">D'alta Belt&agrave;; ma sua belt&agrave; non cura,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">O tanto sol quant' onest&agrave; sen fregi;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">E 'l suo pregio maggior che tra le mura<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">D'angusta casa, asconde i suoi gran pregi:<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">E da' vagheggiatori ella s'invola,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Alle lodi, agli sguardi, inculta e sola.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Non sai ben dir s'adorno, o se negletta,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Se caso od arte, il bel volto compose,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Di natura, d'amor, di cieli amici,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Le negligenze sue sono artifici.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Mirata da ciascun, passa, e non mira<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">L'altera donna!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<h4>TRANSLATION.</h4>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Among them dwelt a noble maid, matured<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In loveliness, of thoughts serene and high,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[Pg 318]</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And loftiest beauty;&mdash;beauty which herself<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Esteem'd not more than modesty might own.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Within an humble dwelling did she hide<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Her peerless charms, and shunning lovers' eyes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From flattering words and glances, lived retired.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Whether 'tis curious care, or sweet neglect,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or chance, or art, that have array'd her thus,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">One scarce can tell: for each unstudied grace<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Has been the work of Nature, heaven, and love.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And thus admired by all, unheeding all,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Forth steps the noble maid.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>It is impossible to mistake, in this finished and exquisite portrait,
+the matured beauty, the negligent attire, and love of solitude which
+characterised Leonora: the resemblance was so perfect, as to be
+universally recognised and acknowledged. But is it not, as M. Ginguen&eacute;
+remarks, equally certain that Tasso has pourtrayed himself as Olindo?</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">Ei che modesto &egrave;, com' essa &egrave; bella,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Brama, assai, poco spera, nulla chiede!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">He, full of modesty and truth,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Loved much, hoped little, and desired nought!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Has he not in the verse</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ed o mia morte avventurosa appiena,<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[Pg 319]</a></span></div></div>
+
+<p>breathed forth all the smothered passion of his soul?&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ed o mia morte avventurosa appiena!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Oh fortunati miei dolci martiri!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">S'impetrer&ograve; che giunto seno a seno<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">L'anima mia nella tuo bocca io spiri,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">E venendo tu meco a un tempo meno<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In me fuor mandi gli ultimi sospiri!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And O! how happy were my death! how blest<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">These tortures,&mdash;could I but the meed obtain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That breast to breast, and lip to lip, our souls<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Might flee together, and our latest sighs<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Mingle in death.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>This episode is critically a defect in the poem: it seems to stand
+alone, unconnected in any way with the main action; he acknowledged
+this; but he absolutely, and obstinately, refused to alter it, or strike
+it out. He, who was in general amenable to criticism, even to a degree
+of weakness, willed that it should stand an everlasting monument of his
+tenderness, and of the virtues and the charms of her who inspired
+it:&mdash;and thus it has been.</p>
+
+<p>A cruel, and, as I think, a most unjust imputation rests on the memory
+of the Princess<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[Pg 320]</a></span> Leonora. She is accused of cold-heartedness, in
+suffering Tasso to remain so long imprisoned, without interceding in his
+favour, or even vouchsafing any reply to his affecting supplications for
+release, and for her mediation in his behalf. The excuse alledged by
+those who would fain excuse her,&mdash;"That she feared to compromise herself
+by any interference," is ten times worse than the accusation itself. But
+though there exists, I suppose, no <i>written</i> proof that Leonora pleaded
+the cause of Tasso, or sought to mitigate his sufferings; neither is
+there any proof of the contrary. We know little, or rather nothing, of
+the private intrigues of Alphonso's palace: we have no "m&eacute;moires
+secr&egrave;tes" of that day; no diaries kept by prying courtiers, to enlighten
+us on what passed in the recesses of the royal apartments: and upon mere
+negative presumption, shall we brand the character of a woman, who
+appears on every other occasion so blameless, so tender-hearted, and
+beneficent, with the imputation of such barbarous selfishness? for the
+honour of our sex, and human nature, I must believe it impossible.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[Pg 321]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>In no other instance was the homage which Tasso loved to pay to
+high-born beauty repaid with ingratitude; all his life he seems to have
+been an object of affectionate interest to women. They, in his misery,
+stood not aloof, but ministered to him the oil and balm, which soothed
+his vexed and distempered spirit. The Countesses of Sala and Scandiano
+never forgot him. Lucretia Bendidio, who had married into the
+Marchiavelli family, sent him in his captivity all the consolation she
+could bestow, or he receive. The Duchess of Urbino (Lucretia d'Este,)
+was munificently kind to him. The young Princess of Mantua, she for whom
+he wrote his "Torrismondo," loaded him with courtesy and proofs of her
+regard. He was ill at the Court of Mantua, after his release from
+Ferrara; and her exertions to procure him a copy of Euripides, which he
+wished to consult, (an anecdote cited somewhere, as a proof of the
+rarity of the book at that time,) is also a proof of the interest and
+attention with which she regarded him. It happened when he was at the
+Court of the Duke of Urbino, that he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[Pg 322]</a></span> had to undergo a surgical
+operation; and the sister of the Duke, the young and beautiful Lavinia
+di Rovera, prepared the bandages, and applied them with her own fair and
+princely hands;&mdash;a little instance of affectionate interest, which Tasso
+has himself commemorated. If then we do not find Leonora publicly
+appearing as the benefactress of Tasso, and using her influence over her
+brother in his behalf, is it not a presumption that she was implicated
+in his punishment? What comfort or kindness she could have granted,
+must, under such circumstances, have been bestowed with infinite
+precaution; and, from gratitude and discretion, as carefully concealed.
+We know, that after the first year of his confinement, Tasso was removed
+to a less gloomy prison; and we know that Leonora died a few weeks
+afterwards; but what share she might have had in procuring this
+mitigation of his suffering, we do not know; nor how far the fate of
+Tasso might have affected her so as to hasten her own death. If we are
+to argue upon probabilities, without any<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[Pg 323]</a></span> preponderating proof, in the
+name of womanhood and charity, let it be on the side of indulgence; let
+us not believe Leonora guilty, but upon such authority as never has
+been,&mdash;and I trust never can be produced.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>About two years after the completion of the Jerusalem Delivered, and
+four years after the first representation of the Aminta;&mdash;when all
+Europe rung with the poet's fame, Tasso fled from the Court of Ferrara,
+in a fit of distraction. His frenzy was caused partly by religious
+horrors and scruples; partly by the petty but accumulated injuries which
+malignity and tyranny had heaped upon him; partly by a long-indulged and
+hopeless passion; and with these, other moral and physical causes
+combined. He fled, to hide himself and his sorrows in the arms of his
+sister Cornelia. The brother and sister had not met since their childish
+years; and Tasso, wild with misery, forlorn, and penniless, knew not
+what reception he was to meet<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[Pg 324]</a></span> with. When arrived within a league of his
+birthplace, Sorrento,<a name="FNanchor_133_133" id="FNanchor_133_133"></a><a href="#Footnote_133_133" class="fnanchor">[133]</a> he changed clothes with a shepherd, and in
+this disguise appeared before his sister, as one sent with tidings of
+her brother's misfortunes. The recital, we may believe, was not coldly
+given. Cornelia, who appears to have inherited with the personal beauty,
+the sensibility and strong domestic affections of her mother,
+Portia,<a name="FNanchor_134_134" id="FNanchor_134_134"></a><a href="#Footnote_134_134" class="fnanchor">[134]</a> was so violently agitated by the eloquence of the feigned
+messenger, that she fainted away; and Tasso was obliged to hasten the
+denouement by discovering himself. In the same moment he was clasped in
+her affectionate arms, and bathed with her tears. How often, when I have
+stood on my balcony at Naples, have I looked towards the white buildings
+of Sorrento, glittering afar upon the distant promontory, and thought
+upon this scene! and felt, how that which is already<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">[Pg 325]</a></span> surpassingly
+beautiful to the eye, may be hallowed to the imagination by such
+remembrances as these!</p>
+
+<p>Tasso resided with his sister for three years, the object of her
+unwearied and tender attention. It was on his return to Ferrara,
+(recalled, as Manso says, by the tenor of Leonora's letters<a name="FNanchor_135_135" id="FNanchor_135_135"></a><a href="#Footnote_135_135" class="fnanchor">[135]</a>) that
+he was imprisoned as a lunatic at St. Anne's. They show to travellers
+the cell in which he was confined. Over the entrance of the gallery
+leading to it, is written up in large letters, "Ingresso alla Prigione
+di Torquato Tasso," as if to blazon, in the eye of the stranger, what is
+at once the renown and disgrace of that fallen city. The cell itself is
+small, dark and low. The abhorred grate,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Marring the sun-beams with its hideous shade,<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>is a semicircular window, strongly cross-barred with iron; it looks into
+a court-yard, so built up, if I remember rightly, that the noon-day sun
+could scarce reach it. Even without the hallowed associations connected
+with the spot, it would have chilled and saddened me. With them, the
+very air had a suffocating weight; and the cold<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">[Pg 326]</a></span> dark walls, and
+low-bowed roof, struck a shivering awe through the blood. Upon the
+plaster outside the grated window, I observed several names written in
+pencil; among the rest, those of Byron and Rogers. I must observe here,
+that the "Lament of Tasso" is, in fact, a cento taken from Tasso's minor
+poems. Almost every sentiment there expressed, may be found in the
+Italian; but the soul of the poet has been transfused with such a
+glowing impulse into its new mould, it never seems to have been adapted
+to another; the precious metal is the same, only the impress is
+different, and it has been stamped by a kindred and a master spirit.
+Lord Byron says,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Yes, Leonora! it shall be our fate<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To be entwined for ever; but too late!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Tasso had said, that his name and that of Leonora should be united and
+soar to fame together.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i14">"Ella &agrave; miei versi, ed io<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Circondava al suo nome altere piume,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">E l'un per l'altro and&ograve; volando a prova;"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>&mdash;and a long list of corresponding passages and sentiments might easily
+be pointed out.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">[Pg 327]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The inscription on the door of Tasso's cell, <i>lies</i>, I believe, like
+many other inscriptions. Tasso was <i>not</i> confined in this cell for seven
+years; but here it was that he addressed that affecting Canzone to
+Leonora and her sister Lucrezia, which begins "Figlie di
+Renata,"&mdash;"daughters of Ren&eacute;e!" Thus in the very commencement, by this
+delicate and tender apostrophe, bespeaking their compassion, by
+awakening the remembrance of their mother, like him so long a wretched
+prisoner. He reminds them of the years he spent at their side&mdash;"their
+noble servant and their dear companion,"</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Gli anni miei tra voi spese,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Qual son,&mdash;qual fui,&mdash;che chiedo&mdash;ove mi trovo!<a name="FNanchor_136_136" id="FNanchor_136_136"></a><a href="#Footnote_136_136" class="fnanchor">[136]</a><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>He was, after the first year, removed to a larger cell, with better
+accommodations. Here he made a collection of his smaller poems lately
+written, and dedicated them to the two Princesses. But Leonora was no
+longer in a state to be charmed by the verses, or flattered or touched
+by the admiring<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">[Pg 328]</a></span> devotion of her lover,&mdash;her poet,&mdash;her faithful
+servant: she was dying. A slow and cureless disease preyed on her
+delicate frame, and she expired in the second year of Tasso's
+imprisonment. When the news of her danger was brought to him, he
+requested his friend Pignarola to kiss her hand in his name, and ask her
+whether there was any thing which, in his sad state, he could do for her
+ease or pleasure? We do not know how this tender message was received or
+answered; but it was too late. Leonora died in February 1581, after
+lingering from the November previous.</p>
+
+<p>Thus perished, of a premature decay, the woman who had been for
+seventeen years the idol of a poet's imagination&mdash;the worship of a
+poet's heart; she who was not unworthy of being enshrined in the rich
+tracery-work of sweet thoughts and bright fancies she had herself
+suggested. The love of Tasso for the Princess Leonora might have
+appeared, in his own time, something like the "desire of the night-moth
+for the star;" but what is it <i>now</i>? what was it <i>then</i> in the eyes of
+her whom he adored? How far was it permitted, encouraged, repaid in
+secret? This we cannot<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">[Pg 329]</a></span> know; and perhaps had we lived at the time,&mdash;in
+the very Court, and looked daily into her own soft eyes, practised to
+conceal,&mdash;we had been no wiser. Yet one more observation.</p>
+
+<p>When Leonora died, all the poets of Ferrara pressed forward with the
+usual tribute of elegy and eulogium; but the voice of Tasso was not
+heard among the rest. He alone flung no garland on the bier of her,
+whose living brow he had wreathed with the brightest flowers of song.
+This is adduced by Serassi as a proof that he had never loved her.
+Ginguen&eacute; himself can only account for it, by the presumption that he was
+piqued by that coldness and neglect, which I have shown was merely
+supposititious. Strange reasoning! as if Tasso, while his heart bled
+over his loss, in his solitary cell, could have deigned to join this
+crowd of courtly mourners! as if, under such circumstances, in such a
+moment, the greatness of his grief could have burst forth in any terms
+that must not have exposed himself to fresh rigours, and the fame, at
+least the discretion, of her he had loved, to suspicion! No! nothing
+remained to him but silence;&mdash;and he was silent.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_120_120" id="Footnote_120_120"></a><a href="#FNanchor_120_120"><span class="label">[120]</span></a> See the Rinaldo, c. 8.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_121_121" id="Footnote_121_121"></a><a href="#FNanchor_121_121"><span class="label">[121]</span></a>
+</p>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">&mdash;&mdash;From my very birth<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My soul was drunk with love, &amp;c.<br /></span>
+<span class="i20"><span class="smcap">lament of tasso.</span><br /></span>
+</div></div></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_122_122" id="Footnote_122_122"></a><a href="#FNanchor_122_122"><span class="label">[122]</span></a>
+</p>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Rose, che l' arte invidiosa mira. &amp;c.<br /></span>
+</div></div></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_123_123" id="Footnote_123_123"></a><a href="#FNanchor_123_123"><span class="label">[123]</span></a>
+</p>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Alteremente umile<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Te chiudi ne' tuoi cari alti soggiorni.<br /></span>
+</div></div></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_124_124" id="Footnote_124_124"></a><a href="#FNanchor_124_124"><span class="label">[124]</span></a> The daughter of Louis XII. She was closely imprisoned
+during twelve years, on suspicion of favouring the early reformers.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_125_125" id="Footnote_125_125"></a><a href="#FNanchor_125_125"><span class="label">[125]</span></a> Ganymede.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_126_126" id="Footnote_126_126"></a><a href="#FNanchor_126_126"><span class="label">[126]</span></a> Sonnet 37.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_127_127" id="Footnote_127_127"></a><a href="#FNanchor_127_127"><span class="label">[127]</span></a> Sonnet 29.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_128_128" id="Footnote_128_128"></a><a href="#FNanchor_128_128"><span class="label">[128]</span></a> I am told the original idea is in Plato; prettier,
+however, than either, was the speech of a modern lover, whose mistress
+was gazing pensively on a star: "Ne la regardez pas tant, ch&egrave;re
+amie!&mdash;je ne puis pas te la donner!"</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_129_129" id="Footnote_129_129"></a><a href="#FNanchor_129_129"><span class="label">[129]</span></a> The Canzono which is, I believe, esteemed the finest of
+those addressed to Leonora,
+</p>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Mentre ch' a venerar muovon le gente,<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<p>
+concludes with this play upon her name&mdash;
+</p>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Costei <span class="smcap">le onora</span> col bel nome sante.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&nbsp;</span>
+<span class="i0">She does them <span class="smcap">honour</span> by her sacred name.<br /></span>
+</div></div></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_130_130" id="Footnote_130_130"></a><a href="#FNanchor_130_130"><span class="label">[130]</span></a> "Foreign Ph&oelig;nix."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_131_131" id="Footnote_131_131"></a><a href="#FNanchor_131_131"><span class="label">[131]</span></a> Translated by a friend.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_132_132" id="Footnote_132_132"></a><a href="#FNanchor_132_132"><span class="label">[132]</span></a> Translated by a friend.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_133_133" id="Footnote_133_133"></a><a href="#FNanchor_133_133"><span class="label">[133]</span></a> Near Naples: thus, in his pathetic Canzone on himself,&mdash;
+</p>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Sassel la gloriosa alma Sirena<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Appresso il cui sepolcro, ebbi la cuna!<br /></span>
+</div></div></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_134_134" id="Footnote_134_134"></a><a href="#FNanchor_134_134"><span class="label">[134]</span></a> The wife of Bernardo Tasso. See an account of her in
+Black's Life of Tasso.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_135_135" id="Footnote_135_135"></a><a href="#FNanchor_135_135"><span class="label">[135]</span></a> Manso, Vita di T. Tasso.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_136_136" id="Footnote_136_136"></a><a href="#FNanchor_136_136"><span class="label">[136]</span></a> Part of this Canzone has been elegantly translated by Mr.
+Wiffen in his Life of Tasso, p. 83.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">[Pg 330]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XIX.</h2>
+
+<h3>MILTON AND LEONORA BARONI.</h3>
+
+
+<p>The Marquis Manso of Naples, who in his early youth had entertained
+Tasso in his palace, had cherished and honoured him when that great but
+unhappy man was wandering, brain-struck with misery, from one court to
+another,&mdash;was, in his old age, the host and admirer of Milton; thus, by
+a singular good fortune, allying his name to two of the most illustrious
+of earth's diviner sons: while theirs, linked together by the
+recollection of this common friend, follow each other in our memory by a
+natural transition. We can think of them as pressing, though at an
+interval of many years, the same friendly hand,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">[Pg 331]</a></span> and gracing the same
+hospitable board with "colloquy sublime." Tasso, from the romance of his
+story, and his personal character, is the most interesting of the two;
+yet Milton, besides standing highest in the scale of moral dignity, sits
+nearest to our hearts as an Englishman, whose genius, speaking through
+our native accents, strikes upon our sense,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Like the large utterance of the early gods.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>We rise from reading Johnson's Biography of Milton, either with the most
+painful and indignant feeling of the malignity of the critic,<a name="FNanchor_137_137" id="FNanchor_137_137"></a><a href="#Footnote_137_137" class="fnanchor">[137]</a> or
+with an impression of Milton's character, as false as it is odious. Of
+moral inconsistency and weakness, blended with splendid genius, we have
+proofs lamentable and numerous enough: to be obliged to regard the
+mighty father of English verse,&mdash;him "who rode sublime upon the seraph
+wings of ecstasy,"&mdash;him, whose harmonious soul<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">[Pg 332]</a></span> was tuned to the music
+of the spheres, though when struck in evil times, and by an adverse
+hand, it sent forth a crash of discord,&mdash;him, who has left us the most
+exquisite pictures of tenderness and beauty&mdash;to think of such a being as
+a petty domestic tyrant, a coarse-minded fanatic, stern and unfeeling in
+all the relations of life, were enough to confound all our ideas of
+moral fitness. When we figure to ourselves the author of Rasselas
+trampling over the ashes of Milton, lending his mighty powers to degrade
+the majestic, to disfigure the beautiful, and to darken the glorious, it
+is with the same feeling of concentrated disgust with which we recall
+the violation of the poet's grave, some years ago, when vulgar savages
+defaced and carried off his sacred and venerable remains
+piece-meal.<a name="FNanchor_138_138" id="FNanchor_138_138"></a><a href="#Footnote_138_138" class="fnanchor">[138]</a> Let us for a moment imagine our Milton descending<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333">[Pg 333]</a></span> to
+earth to assert his injured fame, and confronted with his great
+biographer&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Look here upon this picture, and on this&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The one, like his own Adam, with fair large front and hyacinthine locks,
+serene and blooming as his own Eden; in all the dignified graces which
+temperance and self-conquest lend to youth,<a name="FNanchor_139_139" id="FNanchor_139_139"></a><a href="#Footnote_139_139" class="fnanchor">[139]</a> in all the purity of
+his stainless mind, radiant like another Moses, with the reflected
+glories of the Empyreum,&mdash;and then look upon the other!&mdash;But it is an
+awful thing for little people, to meddle with great and sacred names;
+and so leaving the Hippopotamus of literature in his den&mdash;proceed we.</p>
+
+<p>It relieves the heart from an oppressive contradiction to behold Milton,
+such as he is represented by his other biographers, and such as
+undoubtedly he really was. It is well known,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334">[Pg 334]</a></span> that in his youth, and
+even at a late age, he had an uncommonly fine person, almost to
+effeminacy; and was as gracefully endowed in form and manners, as he was
+highly and holily gifted in mind. His natural mildness, cheerfulness,
+and courtesy, are commemorated by all who knew him, or lived near his
+time.<a name="FNanchor_140_140" id="FNanchor_140_140"></a><a href="#Footnote_140_140" class="fnanchor">[140]</a> He whom Johnson accuses of a "Turkish contempt of females, as
+inferior beings," and whom he represents in a light so ungentle and
+gloomy, that we cannot imagine him under the influence of beauty, was
+early touched by the softest passions, and during his whole life
+peculiarly sensible to the charm of female society: witness his
+successive marriages, and his friendship and intercourse with Lady
+Margaret Ley, and the all-accomplished Countess of Ranelagh, who
+supplied to him, as he says, the place of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335">[Pg 335]</a></span> every friend:<a name="FNanchor_141_141" id="FNanchor_141_141"></a><a href="#Footnote_141_141" class="fnanchor">[141]</a>&mdash;witness,
+too, a thousand most lovely and glorious passages scattered through his
+works, which women may quote with triumph, as proofs that we had no
+small influence over the imagination of our great epic poet. What but
+the most reverential and lofty feeling of the graces and virtues proper
+to our sex, could have embodied such an exquisite vision as the Lady in
+Comus? or created his delightful Eve? on whom, "as on a queen, a pomp of
+winning graces waited still."</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">All higher knowledge in her presence falls<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Degraded; wisdom, in discourse with her,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Loses discountenanc'd, and like folly shows;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Authority and reason on her wait,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As one intended first, not after made<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Occasionally; and to consummate all,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Greatness of mind and nobleness their seat,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Build in her loveliest, and create an awe<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">About her, as a guard angelic plac'd.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And this is the being whom a lady-author calls a "great overgrown baby,
+with nothing to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336">[Pg 336]</a></span> recommend her but her submission, and her fine
+hair!"<a name="FNanchor_142_142" id="FNanchor_142_142"></a><a href="#Footnote_142_142" class="fnanchor">[142]</a>&mdash;two things, be it observed, among the most graceful of our
+feminine attributes, mental and exterior. The poet who conceived and
+wrote this description, most assuredly had not a "Turkish contempt" for
+the female character.</p>
+
+<p>Milton was in love, as he tells us himself, at nineteen; but the object
+cannot even be guessed at. He has celebrated this boyish passion very
+beautifully in one of his Latin elegies. One of the passages in this
+poem, in which he compares the effect produced on him by the first
+momentary view of his mistress, followed by her immediate absence to the
+Theban &OElig;clides,<a name="FNanchor_143_143" id="FNanchor_143_143"></a><a href="#Footnote_143_143" class="fnanchor">[143]</a> swallowed up by the abyss which opens beneath
+him, and gazing back upon the parting light of day, is admired for its
+classic sublimity and appropriate beauty.</p>
+
+<p>There is a tradition mentioned by all his biographers, that while Milton
+was a student at Cambridge, an Italian lady of rank, who was travelling
+in England, found him sleeping one day<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_337" id="Page_337">[Pg 337]</a></span> under the shade of a tree, and,
+struck with his beauty, wrote with her pencil on a slip of paper, the
+pretty madrigal of Guarini, which Menage translated for Madame de
+Sevign&eacute;, "Occhi, stelle mortali," and leaving it in his hand, pursued
+her journey. This fair unknown is said to have been the cause of
+Milton's travels into Italy; but the story rests on no authority: and it
+is clear, that the "foreign fair" to whom the Sonnets are addressed, was
+neither imaginary nor unknown. During his stay at Rome, he was received
+with particular distinction by the Cardinal Barberini, the nephew of the
+reigning Pope, and at his palace had frequent opportunities of hearing
+Leonora Baroni, the finest singer in Italy. She was the daughter of
+Adriana of Mantua, surnamed, for her beauty, La Bella Adriana, and the
+best singer and player on the lute of her time. Leonora inherited her
+mother's extraordinary talent for music, and conquered all hearts by the
+inexpressible charm of her voice and style. She was also a poetess,
+frequently composing the words of her own songs. Though not a regular
+beauty, she had brilliant<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_338" id="Page_338">[Pg 338]</a></span> eyes, and a captivating countenance and
+manner. Count Fulvio Testi, in a Sonnet addressed to her, celebrates the
+union of so many charms:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Tra il concento e 'l fulgor, dubbio &egrave; se sia<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">L'udir pi&ugrave; dolce, o il rimirar pi&ugrave; caro.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Deh fammi cieco, o fammi sordo, amore!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>M. Maugars, himself a musician, who saw and heard Leonora at Rome,
+praises her talents generally, and adds, that she was no coquette; that
+she sang with confidence, but with modesty; that there was nothing in
+her manners that could be censured; that the effect she produced on
+those who heard her, was owing, not only to the wonderful rapidity and
+delicacy of her execution, but to the care with which she gave the exact
+sense and proper expression of the words she sang. He tells us, that on
+one occasion, she <i>favoured</i> him by singing with her mother and her
+sister, each accompanying herself on a different instrument (in those
+days pianos were not, and Leonora's favourite instrument was the
+Theorbo, on which she excelled). This little concert so enraptured our
+musician, that, to use his own words, he forgot his mortality, "et crut
+&ecirc;tre dej&agrave; parmi<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_339" id="Page_339">[Pg 339]</a></span> les anges, jouissant des contentemens des bienheureux."</p>
+
+<p>It is no wonder that the charms and talents which exalted this prosaic
+Frenchman almost into a poet, should turn the heads of poets themselves.
+The verses addressed to Leonora were collected into a volume, and
+published under the title of "Applausi poetici alle glorie della Signora
+Leonora Baroni."&mdash;"Poetical eulogies to the glory of Signora Leonora
+Baroni." A similar homage had been paid to her mother, Adriana, who
+reckoned Tasso among her panegyrists. This may seem too high a
+distinction for a species of talent, which, however admirable, can leave
+behind no durable monument, and therefore can claim no interest with
+posterity. Yet is it just, that those whom heaven has enriched with the
+gift of melody, and who have cultivated that delicious faculty to its
+height, until with angel-skill they can suspend the dominion of pain in
+aching hearts,<a name="FNanchor_144_144" id="FNanchor_144_144"></a><a href="#Footnote_144_144" class="fnanchor">[144]</a>&mdash;that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_340" id="Page_340">[Pg 340]</a></span> such should ravish with delight a whole
+generation, and then perish from the earth, they and their memory, with
+the pleasure they bestowed, and gratitude be voiceless and tuneless in
+their praise? The gift of song is fleeting as that of beauty; but while
+the painter fixes on his canvas</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The vermeil-tinctur'd lip,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Love-darting eyes, and tresses like the morn,<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>what shall immortalise the tones which "turned sense to soul?" what but
+poetry, which, while it preserves the memory of such excellence, gives
+back to the fancy some reflection of the delight we have felt, when the
+full tide of a divine voice is poured forth to the sense, like wine from
+an enchanted cup, making us thrill "with music's pulse in every artery."
+Leonora Baroni had her poets, and her name, linked with that of Milton,
+shall never die.</p>
+
+<p>It is a curious circumstance, and one but little consonant with the
+popular idea of Milton's austerity, that the object of his poetical
+homage,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_341" id="Page_341">[Pg 341]</a></span> and even of his serious admiration, was an Italian singer; but
+it must be remembered, that Milton, the son of an accomplished
+musician,<a name="FNanchor_145_145" id="FNanchor_145_145"></a><a href="#Footnote_145_145" class="fnanchor">[145]</a> was, by nature and education, peculiarly susceptible to
+the power of sweet sounds. Next to poetry, music was with him a passion;
+and the profession of a singer in those days, when the art was in its
+second infancy, was more highly estimated, in proportion as excellence
+was more rare and less publicly exhibited. I cannot find that either
+Leonora Baroni, or her mother Adriana, ever appeared on a stage; yet
+their celebrity had spread from one end of Italy to the other. Milton
+joined the crowd of Leonora's votaries at Rome,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_342" id="Page_342">[Pg 342]</a></span> and has expressed his
+enthusiastic admiration, not only in verse but in prose.<a name="FNanchor_146_146" id="FNanchor_146_146"></a><a href="#Footnote_146_146" class="fnanchor">[146]</a> He
+addressed her in Latin and Italian, the languages she understood, and
+which he had perfectly at command. In one of his Latin poems, "To
+Leonora, singing at Rome," the allusion to Leonora d'Este,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Another Leonora once inspired<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Tasso, by hopeless love to phrenzy fired, &amp;c.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>is as happy as it is beautiful, and shows the belief which then
+prevailed of the real cause of Tasso's delirium.</p>
+
+<p>Two of Milton's Italian sonnets are very beautiful, and have been
+translated by Cowper with singular felicity. All his biographers agree
+that Leonora Baroni is the subject of both; the first, addressed to
+Carlo Diodati, describes the lady, whose dark and foreign charms are
+opposed to those of the <i>blonde</i> beauties he had admired in his youth.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_343" id="Page_343">[Pg 343]</a></span></p>
+
+<h4>SONNET.</h4>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0"><i>Diodati! e te 'l diro con maraviglia, &amp;c.</i><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Charles,&mdash;and I say it wondering,&mdash;thou must know<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That I, who once assumed a scornful air,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And scoffed at Love, am fallen into his snare;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">(Full many an upright man has fallen so.)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yet think me not thus dazzled by the flow<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of golden locks, or damask rose; more rare<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The heartfelt beauties of my foreign fair!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A mien majestic, with dark brows, that show<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The tranquil lustre of a lofty mind,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Words exquisite, of idioms more than one;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And song, whose fascinating power might bind,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And from her sphere draw down the lab'ring moon;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With such fire-darting eyes, that should I fill<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Mine ears with wax, she would enchant me still!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>In this translation, though elegant and faithful, the lines</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">A mien majestic, with dark brows, that show<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The tranquil lustre of a lofty mind,<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>have much diluted the energy of Milton's</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Portamenti alti onesti, e nelle ciglia<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Quel sereno fulgor d'amabil nero.<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_344" id="Page_344">[Pg 344]</a></span></div></div>
+
+<p>In the other Sonnet, addressed to Leonora, he gives, with all the
+simplicity of conscious worth, this lofty description of himself, and of
+his claims to her preference.</p>
+
+
+<h4>SONNET.</h4>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0"><i>Giovane, piano, e semplicetto amante, &amp;c.</i><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Enamour'd, artless, young, on foreign ground,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Uncertain whither from myself to fly,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To thee, dear lady, with an humble sigh,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Let me devote my heart, which I have found,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By certain proofs not few, intrepid, sound,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Good, and addicted to conceptions high:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When tempests shake the world, and fire the sky,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It rests in adamant, self-wrapt around,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As safe from envy and from outrage rude,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From hopes and fears that vulgar minds abuse,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As fond of genius and fixt solitude,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of the resounding lyre and every muse.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Weak you will find it in one only part,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Now pierc'd by Love's immedicable dart.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Milton was three times married. The relations of his first wife, (Mary
+Powell,) who were violent Royalists, and ashamed or afraid of their
+connection with a republican, persuaded her to leave<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_345" id="Page_345">[Pg 345]</a></span> him. She
+absolutely forsook her husband for nearly three years, and resided with
+her family at Oxford, when that city was the head-quarters of the King's
+party. "I have so much charity for her," says Aubrey, "that she might
+not wrong his bed; but what man (especially contemplative,) would like
+to have a young wife environed and stormed by the sons of Mars, and
+those of the ennemie partie?"</p>
+
+<p>Milton, though a suspicion of the nature hinted at by Aubrey never rose
+in his mind, was justly incensed at this dereliction. He was on the
+point of divorcing this contumacious bride, and had already made choice
+of another<a name="FNanchor_147_147" id="FNanchor_147_147"></a><a href="#Footnote_147_147" class="fnanchor">[147]</a> to succeed her,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_346" id="Page_346">[Pg 346]</a></span> when she threw herself, impromptu, at
+his feet and implored his forgiveness. He forgave her; and when the
+republican party triumphed, the family who had so cruelly wronged him
+found a refuge in his house. This woman embittered his life for fourteen
+or fifteen years.</p>
+
+<p>A remembrance of the reconciliation with his wife, and of his own
+feelings on that occasion, are said to have suggested to Milton's mind
+the beautiful scene between Adam and Eve, in the tenth book of the
+Paradise Lost.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">She ended weeping; and her lowly plight,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Immoveable, till peace obtained for faults<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Acknowledged and deplored, in Adam wrought<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Commiseration; soon his heart relented<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Tow'rds her, his life so late and sole delight,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Now at his feet submissive in distress,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Creature so fair, his reconcilement seeking;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As one disarmed, his anger all he lost, &amp;c.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Milton's second and most beloved wife (Catherine Woodcock) died in
+child-bed, within a year after their marriage. He honoured her memory<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_347" id="Page_347">[Pg 347]</a></span>
+with what Johnson (out upon him!) calls a <i>poor</i> sonnet; it is the one
+beginning</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Methought I saw my late espoused saint<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Brought to me, like Alcestis from the grave;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>which, in its solemn and tender strain of feeling and modulated harmony,
+reminds us of Dante. He never ceased to lament her, and to cherish her
+memory with a fond regret:&mdash;she must have been full in his heart and
+mind when he wrote those touching lines in the Paradise Lost&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">How can I live without thee? how forego<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thy sweet converse and love so dearly joined,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To live again in these wild woods forlorn?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Should God create another Eve, and I<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Another rib afford, yet loss of thee<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Would never from my heart!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>After her death,&mdash;blind, disconsolate, and helpless&mdash;he was abandoned to
+petty wrongs and domestic discord; and suffered from the disobedience<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_348" id="Page_348">[Pg 348]</a></span>
+and unkindness of his two elder daughters, like another Lear.<a name="FNanchor_148_148" id="FNanchor_148_148"></a><a href="#Footnote_148_148" class="fnanchor">[148]</a> His
+youngest daughter, Deborah, was the only one who acted as his
+amanuensis, and she always spoke of him with extreme affection:&mdash;on
+being suddenly shown his picture, twenty years after his death, she
+burst into tears.<a name="FNanchor_149_149" id="FNanchor_149_149"></a><a href="#Footnote_149_149" class="fnanchor">[149]</a></p>
+
+<p>These three daughters were grown up, and the youngest about fifteen,
+when Milton married his third wife, Elizabeth Minshull. She was a
+gentle, kind-hearted woman,<a name="FNanchor_150_150" id="FNanchor_150_150"></a><a href="#Footnote_150_150" class="fnanchor">[150]</a> without pretensions of any kind, who
+watched over his declining years with affectionate care. One biographer
+has not scrupled to assert, that to her,&mdash;or rather to her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_349" id="Page_349">[Pg 349]</a></span> tender
+reverence for his studious habits, and to the peace and comfort she
+brought to his heart and home,&mdash;we owe the Paradise Lost: if true, what
+a debt immense of endless gratitude is due to the memory of this
+unobtrusive and amiable woman!</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_137_137" id="Footnote_137_137"></a><a href="#FNanchor_137_137"><span class="label">[137]</span></a> What Dr. Johnson <i>wrote</i> is known;&mdash;he was accustomed to
+<i>say</i> that the admiration expressed for Milton was all <i>cant</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_138_138" id="Footnote_138_138"></a><a href="#FNanchor_138_138"><span class="label">[138]</span></a> I have before me the pamphlet, entitled "A Narrative of
+the disinterment of Milton's coffin, on Wednesday the 4th of August,
+1790, and of the treatment of the Corpse during that and the following
+day." The circumstances are too revolting to be dwelt upon.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_139_139" id="Footnote_139_139"></a><a href="#FNanchor_139_139"><span class="label">[139]</span></a> Si les Anges, (said Madame de Sta&euml;l) n'ont pas &eacute;t&eacute;
+represent&eacute;s sous les traits de femme, c'est parceque l'union de la force
+avec la puret&eacute;, est plus belle et plus celeste encore que la modestie
+m&ecirc;me la plus parfaite dans un &ecirc;tre faible.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_140_140" id="Footnote_140_140"></a><a href="#FNanchor_140_140"><span class="label">[140]</span></a> See his life by Dr. Symmons, Dr. Todd, Newton, Hayley,
+Aubrey, Richardson, Warton.
+</p><p>
+"She (his daughter Deborah) spoke of him with great tenderness; she said
+he was delightful company, the life of the conversation, and that on
+account of a flow of subject, and an unaffected cheerfulness and
+civility," &amp;c.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Richardson.</span></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_141_141" id="Footnote_141_141"></a><a href="#FNanchor_141_141"><span class="label">[141]</span></a> She was Catherine Boyle, the daughter of the Great Earl
+of Cork, one of the most excellent and most distinguished women of that
+time.&mdash;<i>See Hayley's Life of Milton.</i></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_142_142" id="Footnote_142_142"></a><a href="#FNanchor_142_142"><span class="label">[142]</span></a> Miss Letitia Hawkins.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_143_143" id="Footnote_143_143"></a><a href="#FNanchor_143_143"><span class="label">[143]</span></a> Otherwise Amphiaraus: his story is told by Ovid. Met. B.
+9.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_144_144" id="Footnote_144_144"></a><a href="#FNanchor_144_144"><span class="label">[144]</span></a> As Milton felt when he wrote&mdash;
+</p>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And ever against eating cares,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lap me in soft Lydian airs.<br /></span>
+</div></div></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_145_145" id="Footnote_145_145"></a><a href="#FNanchor_145_145"><span class="label">[145]</span></a> Milton alludes to his father's talent for music:
+</p>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i24">Thyself<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Art skilful to associate verse with airs<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Harmonious, and to give the human voice<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A thousand modulations.&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Such distribution of himself to us<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Was Ph&oelig;bus' choice; <i>thou</i> hast thy gift, and I<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Mine also; and between us we receive,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Father and Son, the whole inspiring God!<br /></span>
+<span class="i20"><span class="smcap">ad patrem.</span><br /></span>
+</div></div></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_146_146" id="Footnote_146_146"></a><a href="#FNanchor_146_146"><span class="label">[146]</span></a> There is extant a prose letter from Milton to
+Holstentius, the librarian of the Vatican, in which he accounts as one
+of his greatest pleasures at Rome, that of having known and heard
+Leonora.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_147_147" id="Footnote_147_147"></a><a href="#FNanchor_147_147"><span class="label">[147]</span></a> A Miss Davies. "The father (says Hayley) seems to have
+been a convert to Milton's arguments; but the lady had scruples. She
+possessed (according to Philips) both wit and beauty. A novelist could
+hardly imagine circumstances more singularly distressing to sensibility
+than the situation of the poet, if, as we may reasonably conjecture, he
+was deeply enamoured of this lady; if her father was inclined to accept
+him as a son-in-law, and the object of his love had no inclination to
+reject his suit, but what arose from a dread of his being indissolubly
+mated to another."&mdash;<i>Life of Milton</i>, p. 90.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_148_148" id="Footnote_148_148"></a><a href="#FNanchor_148_148"><span class="label">[148]</span></a>
+</p>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">&mdash;I, dark in light, exposed<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To daily fraud, contempt, abuse, and wrong,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Within doors or without, still as a fool<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In power of others, never in my own, &amp;c.<br /></span>
+<span class="i20"><span class="smcap">samson agonistes.</span><br /></span>
+</div></div></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_149_149" id="Footnote_149_149"></a><a href="#FNanchor_149_149"><span class="label">[149]</span></a> Todd's Life of Milton&mdash;See also Milton's Will, which has
+been lately recovered, and published by Warton.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_150_150" id="Footnote_150_150"></a><a href="#FNanchor_150_150"><span class="label">[150]</span></a> Aubrey's Letters.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<h4>END OF THE FIRST VOLUME.</h4>
+
+<p class="center">
+LONDON:<br />
+PRINTED BY S. AND R. BENTLEY,<br />
+Dorset Street, Fleet Street.<br />
+</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Romance of Biography (Vol 1 of 2), by 
+Anna Jameson
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+Project Gutenberg's The Romance of Biography (Vol 1 of 2), by Anna Jameson
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Romance of Biography (Vol 1 of 2)
+       or Memoirs of Women Loved and Celebrated by Poets, from
+       the Days of the Troubadours to the Present Age. 3rd ed.
+       2 Vols.
+
+Author: Anna Jameson
+
+Release Date: February 24, 2011 [EBook #35382]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ROMANCE OF BIOGRAPHY (VOL 1 OF 2) ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Julia Miller, Josephine Paolucci and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net. (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: _T. Wright. sc._
+
+ARIOSTO READING HIS VERSES TO ALESSANDRA STROZZI.]
+
+
+_London, Published by H. Colburn, 1829._
+
+
+
+
+THE LOVES OF THE POETS.
+
+VOL. I.
+
+
+LONDON:
+PRINTED BY S. AND R. BENTLEY,
+Dorset Street, Fleet Street.
+
+
+
+
+THE ROMANCE OF BIOGRAPHY;
+
+OR
+
+MEMOIRS OF WOMEN LOVED AND CELEBRATED BY POETS,
+
+FROM
+
+THE DAYS OF THE TROUBADOURS TO THE PRESENT AGE;
+
+A SERIES OF ANECDOTES INTENDED TO ILLUSTRATE THE INFLUENCE WHICH FEMALE
+BEAUTY AND VIRTUE HAVE EXERCISED OVER THE CHARACTERS AND WRITINGS OF MEN
+OF GENIUS.
+
+BY MRS. JAMESON,
+
+_Authoress of the Diary of an Ennuyee; Lives of Celebrated Female
+Sovereigns; Female Characters of Shakspeare's Plays; Beauties of the
+Court of Charles the Second, &c._
+
+THIRD EDITION,
+IN TWO VOLUMES.
+VOL. I.
+
+LONDON:
+SAUNDERS AND OTLEY.
+
+MDCCCXXXVII.
+
+
+Enfin, relevons-nous sous le poids de l'existence; ne donnons pas a nos
+injustes ennemis, a nos amis ingrats, le triomphe d'avoir abattu nos
+facultes intellectuelles. Ils reduisent a chercher la celebrite ceux qui
+se seraient contentes des affections: eh bien! il faut l'atteindre. Ces
+essais ambitieux ne porteront point remede aux peines de l'ame; mais ils
+honoreront la vie. La consacrer a l'espoir toujours trompe du bonheur,
+c'est la rendre encore plus infortunee. Il vaut mieux reunir tous ses
+efforts pour descendre avec quelque noblesse, avec quelque reputation,
+la route qui conduit de la jeunesse a la mort.
+
+                    MADAME DE STAEL.
+
+
+
+
+THE AUTHOR TO THE READER.
+
+
+These little sketches (they can pretend to no higher title,) are
+submitted to the public with a feeling of timidity almost painful.
+
+They are absolutely without any other pretension than that of
+exhibiting, in a small compass and under one point of view, many
+anecdotes of biography and criticism, and many beautiful poetical
+portraits, scattered through a variety of works, and all tending to
+illustrate a subject in itself full of interest,--the influence which
+the beauty and virtue of women have exercised over the characters and
+writings of men of genius. But little praise or reputation attends the
+mere compiler, but the pleasure of the task has compensated its
+difficulty;--"song, beauty, youth, love, virtue, joy," these "flowers of
+Paradise," whose growth is not of earth, were all around me; I had but
+to gather them from the intermingling weeds and briars, and to bind them
+into one sparkling wreath, consecrated to the glory of women and the
+gallantry of men.
+
+The design which unfolded itself before me, as these little sketches
+extended gradually from a few memoranda into volumes, is not completed;
+much has been omitted, much suppressed. If I have paused midway in my
+task, it is not for want of materials, which offer themselves in almost
+exhaustless profusion--nor from want of interest in the subject--the
+most delightful in which the imagination ever revelled! but because I
+desponded over my own power to do it justice. I know, I feel that it
+required more extensive knowledge of languages, more matured judgment,
+more critical power, more eloquence;--only Madame de Stael could have
+fulfilled my conception of the style in which it ought to have been
+treated. It was enthusiasm, not presumption, which induced me to attempt
+it. I have touched on matters, on which there are a variety of tastes
+and opinions, and lightly passed over questions on which there are
+volumes of grave "historic doubts;" but I have ventured on no
+discussion, still less on any decision. I have been satisfied merely to
+quote my authorities; and where these exhibited many opposing facts and
+opinions, it seemed to me that there was far more propriety and much
+less egotism in simply expressing, in the first person, what I thought
+and felt, than in asserting absolutely that a thing _is so_, or _is said
+to be so_. Every one has a right to have an opinion, and deliver it with
+modesty; but no one has a right to clothe such opinions in general
+assertions, and in terms which seem to insinuate that they are or ought
+to be universal. I know I am open to criticism and contradiction on a
+thousand points; but I have adhered strictly to what appeared to me the
+truth, and examined conscientiously all the sources of information that
+were open to me.
+
+The history of this little book, were it worth revealing, would be the
+history, in miniature, of most human undertakings: it was begun with
+enthusiasm; it has been interrupted by intervals of illness, idleness,
+or more serious cares; it has been pursued through difficulties so
+great, that they would perhaps excuse its many deficiencies; and now I
+see its conclusion with a languor almost approaching to despair;--at
+least with a feeling which, while it renders me doubly sensitive to
+criticism, and apprehensive of failure, has rendered me almost
+indifferent to success, and careless of praise.
+
+I owe four beautiful translations from the Italian (which are noticed in
+their proper places,) to the kindness of a living poet, whose justly
+celebrated name, were I allowed to mention it, would be subject of pride
+to myself, and double the value of this little book. I have no other
+assistance of any kind to acknowledge.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Will it be thought unfeminine or obtrusive, if I add yet a few words?
+
+I think it due to truth and to myself to seize this opportunity of
+saying, that a little book published three years ago, and now perhaps
+forgotten, was not written for publication, nor would ever have been
+printed but for accidental circumstances.
+
+That the title under which it appeared was not given by the writer, but
+the publisher, who at the time knew nothing of the author.
+
+And that several false dates, and unimportant circumstances and
+characters were interpolated, to conceal, if possible, the real purport
+and origin of the work. Thus the intention was not to create an
+illusion, by giving to fiction the appearance of truth, but, in fact, to
+give to truth the air of fiction. I was not _then_ prepared for all that
+a woman must meet and endure, who once suffers herself to be betrayed
+into authorship. She may repent at leisure, like a condemned spirit; but
+she has passed that barrier from which there is no return.
+
+C'est assez,--I will not add a word more, lest it should be said that I
+have only disclaimed the title of the _Ennuyee_, to assume that of the
+_Ennuyeuse_.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+OF THE FIRST VOLUME.
+
+
+                                                                  Page
+
+CHAPTER I.
+A POET'S LOVE                                                        1
+
+CHAPTER II.
+LOVES OF THE CLASSIC POETS                                           7
+
+CHAPTER III.
+THE LOVES OF THE TROUBADOURS                                        14
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+THE LOVES OF THE TROUBADOURS (continued)                            34
+
+CHAPTER V.
+GUIDO CAVALCANTI AND MANDETTA.--CINO DA PISTOJA AND SELVAGGIA       55
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+LAURA                                                               64
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+LAURA AND PETRARCH (continued)                                      85
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+DANTE AND BEATRICE PORTINARI                                       105
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+DANTE AND BEATRICE (continued)                                     125
+
+CHAPTER X.
+CHAUCER AND PHILIPPA PICARD.--KING JAMES AND LADY JANE BEAUFORT    133
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+LORENZO DE' MEDICI AND LUCRETIA DONATI                             161
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+THE FAIR GERALDINE                                                 185
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+ARIOSTO, GINEVRA, AND ALESSANDRA STROZZI                           198
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+SPENSER'S ROSALIND. SPENSER'S ELIZABETH                            219
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+ON THE LOVE OF SHAKSPEARE                                          237
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+SYDNEY'S STELLA (LADY RICH)                                        249
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+COURT AND AGE OF ELIZABETH.
+
+DRAYTON, DANIEL, DRUMMOND, MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS, CLEMENT
+MAROT AND DIANA DE POICTIER, RONSARD'S CASSANDRE,
+RONSARD'S MARIE, RONSARD'S HELENE                                  263
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+LEONORA D'ESTE                                                     288
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+MILTON AND LEONORA BARONI                                          330
+
+
+
+
+THE LOVES OF THE POETS.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+A POET'S LOVE.
+
+    Io ti cinsi de gloria, e fatta ho dea!--GUIDI.
+
+
+Of all the heaven-bestowed privileges of the poet, the highest, the
+dearest, the most enviable, is the power of immortalising the object of
+his love; of dividing with her his amaranthine wreath of glory, and
+repaying the inspiration caught from her eyes with a crown of
+everlasting fame. It is not enough that in his imagination he has
+deified her--that he has consecrated his faculties to her honour--that
+he has burned his heart in incense upon the altar of her perfections:
+the divinity thus decked out in richest and loveliest hues, he places on
+high, and calls upon all ages and all nations to bow down before her,
+and all ages and all nations obey! worshipping the beauty thus enshrined
+in imperishable verse, when others, perhaps as fair, and not less
+worthy, have gone down, unsung, "to dust and an endless darkness." How
+many women who would otherwise have stolen through the shades of
+domestic life, their charms, virtues, and affections buried with them,
+have become objects of eternal interest and admiration, because their
+memory is linked with the brightest monuments of human genius? While
+many a high-born dame, who once moved, goddess-like, upon the earth, and
+bestowed kingdoms with her hand, lives a mere name in some musty
+chronicle. Though her love was sought by princes, though with her dower
+she might have enriched an emperor,--what availed it?
+
+    "She had no poet--and she died!"
+
+And how have women repaid this gift of immortality? O believe it, when
+the garland was such as woman is proud to wear, she amply and deeply
+rewarded him who placed it on her brow. If in return for being made
+illustrious, she made her lover happy,--if for glory she gave a heart,
+was it not a rich equivalent? and if not--if the lover was unsuccessful,
+still the poet had his reward. Whence came the generous feelings, the
+high imaginations, the glorious fancies, the heavenward inspirations,
+which raised him above the herd of vulgar men--but from the ennobling
+influence of her he loved? Through _her_, the world opened upon him with
+a diviner beauty, and all nature became in his sight but a transcript of
+the charms of his mistress. He saw her eyes in the stars of heaven, her
+lips in the half-blown rose. The perfume of the opening flowers was but
+her breath, that "wafted sweetness round about the world:" the lily was
+"a sweet thief" that had stolen its purity from her breast. The violet
+was dipped in the azure of her veins; the aurorean dews, "dropt from the
+opening eyelids of the morn," were not so pure as her tears; the last
+rose-tint of the dying day was not so bright or so delicate as her
+cheek. Her's was the freshness and the bloom of the Spring; she consumed
+him to languor as the Summer sun; she was kind as the bounteous Autumn,
+or she froze him with her wintry disdain. There was nothing in the
+wonders, the splendours, or the treasures of the created universe,--in
+heaven or in earth,--in the seasons or their change, that did not borrow
+from her some charm, some glory beyond its own. Was it not just that the
+beauty she dispensed should be consecrated to her adornment, and that
+the inspiration she bestowed should be repaid to her in fame?
+
+    For what of thee thy poet doth invent,
+    He robs thee of, and pays it thee again.
+    He lends thee virtue, and he stole that word
+    From thy behaviour; beauty doth he give,
+    But found it in thy cheek; he can afford
+    No praise to thee but what in thee doth live.
+
+       _Then thank him not for that which he doth say,
+       Since what he owes thee, thou thyself dost pay!_
+
+                     SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS.
+
+The theory, then, which I wish to illustrate, as far as my limited
+powers permit, is this: that where a woman has been exalted above the
+rest of her sex by the talents of a lover, and consigned to enduring
+fame and perpetuity of praise, the passion was real, and was merited;
+that no deep or lasting interest was ever founded in fancy or in
+fiction; that truth, in short, is the basis of all excellence in amatory
+poetry, as in every thing else; for where truth is, there is good of
+some sort, and where there is truth and good, there must be beauty,
+there must be durability of fame. Truth is the golden chain which links
+the terrestrial with the celestial, which sets the seal of heaven on the
+things of this earth, and stamps them to immortality. Poets have risen
+up and been the mere fashion of a day, and have set up idols which have
+been the idols of a day: if the worship be out of date and the idols
+cast down, it is because these adorers wanted sincerity of purpose and
+feeling; their raptures were feigned; their incense was bought or
+adulterate. In the brain or in the fancy, one beauty may eclipse
+another--one coquette may drive out another, and tricked off in airy
+verse, they float away unregarded like morning vapours, which the beam
+of genius has tinged with a transient brightness: but let the heart once
+be touched, and it is not only wakened but inspired; the lover kindled
+into the poet, presents to her he loves, his cup of ambrosial praise:
+she tastes--and the woman is transmuted into a divinity. When the
+Grecian sculptor carved out his deities in marble, and left us wondrous
+and god-like shapes, impersonations of ideal grace unapproachable by
+modern skill, was it through mere mechanical superiority? No;--it was
+the spirit of faith within which shadowed to his imagination what he
+would represent. In the same manner, no woman has ever been truly,
+lastingly deified in poetry, but in the spirit of truth and of love!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+LOVES OF THE CLASSIC POETS.
+
+
+I am not sufficiently an antiquarian or scholar, to trace the muses
+"upward to their spring," neither is there occasion to seek our first
+examples of poetical loves in the days of fables and of demi-gods; or in
+those pastoral ages when shepherds were kings and poets: the loves of
+Orpheus and Eurydice are a little too shadowy, and those of the royal
+Solomon rather too mixed and too mystical for our purpose.--To descend
+then at once to the _classical_ ages of antiquity.
+
+It must be allowed, that as far as women are concerned, we have not much
+reason to regard them with reverence. The fragments of the amatory
+poetry of the Greeks, which have been preserved to our times, show too
+plainly in what light we were then regarded; and graceful and exquisite
+as many of them are, they bear about them the taint of degraded morals
+and manners, and are utterly destitute of that exalted sentiment of
+respect and tenderness for woman, either individually or as a sex, which
+alone can give them value in our eyes.
+
+I must leave it then to learned commentators to explore and elucidate
+the loves of Sappho and Anacreon. To us unlearned women, they shine out
+through the long lapse of ages, bright _names_, and little else; a kind
+of half-real,--half-ideal impersonations of love and song; the one
+enveloped in "a fair luminous cloud," the other "veiled in shadowing
+roses;" and thus veiled and thus shadowed, by all accounts, they had
+better remain.
+
+The same remark, with the same reservation, applies to the Latin poets.
+They wrote beautiful verses, admirable for their harmony, elegance and
+perspicuity of expression; and are studied as models of style in a
+language, the knowledge of which, as far as these poets are concerned,
+were best confined to the other sex. They lived in a corrupted age, and
+their pages are deeply stained with its licentiousness; they inspire no
+sympathy for their love, no interest, no respect for the objects of it.
+How, indeed, should that be possible, when their mistresses, even
+according to the lover's painting, were all either perfectly insipid, or
+utterly abandoned and odious?[1] Ovid, he who has revealed to mortal
+ears "all the soft scandal of the laughing sky," and whose gallantry has
+become proverbial, represents himself as so incensed by the public and
+shameless infidelities of his Corinna, that he treats her with the
+unmanly brutality of some street ruffian;--in plain language, he beats
+her. They are then reconciled, and again there are quarrels, coarse
+reproaches, and mutual blows. At length the lady, as might be expected
+from such tuition, becoming more and more abandoned, this delicate and
+poetical lover requests, as a last favour, that she will, for the
+future, take some trouble to deceive him more effectually; and the fair
+one, can she do less? kindly consents!
+
+Cynthia, the mistress of Propertius, gets tipsey, overturns the
+supper-table, and throws the cups at her lover's head; he is delighted
+with her _playfulness_: she leaves him to follow the camp with a
+soldier; he weeps and laments: she returns to him again, and he is
+enchanted with her amiable condescension. Her excesses are such, that he
+is reduced to blush for her and for himself; and he confesses that he is
+become, for her sake, the laughing-stock of all Rome. Cynthia is the
+only one of these classical loves who seems to have possessed any mental
+accomplishments. The poet praises, incidentally, her talents for music
+and poetry; but not as if they added to her charms or enhanced her value
+in his estimation. The Lesbia[2] of Catullus, whose eyes were red with
+weeping the loss of her favourite sparrow, crowned a life of the most
+flagitious excesses by poisoning her husband. Of the various ladies
+celebrated by Horace and Tibullus, it would really be difficult to
+discover which was most worthless, venal, and profligate. These were the
+refined loves of the classic poets!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The passion they celebrated never seems to have inspired one ennobling
+or generous sentiment, nor to have lifted them for one moment above the
+grossest selfishness. They had no scruple in exhibiting their mistresses
+to our eyes, as doubtless they appeared in their own, degraded by every
+vice, and in every sense contemptible; beings, not only beyond the pale
+of our sympathy, but of our toleration. Throughout their works, virtue
+appears a mere jest: Love stript of his divinity, even by those who
+first deified him, is what we disdain to call by that name; _sentiment_,
+as we now understand the word,--that is, the union of fervent love with
+reverence and delicacy towards its object,--a thing unknown and unheard
+of,--and all is "of the earth, earthy."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It is for women I write; the fair, pure-hearted, delicate-minded, and
+unclassical reader will recollect that I do not presume to speak of
+these poets critically, being neither critic nor scholar; but merely
+with a reference to my subject, and with a reference to my sex. As
+monuments of the language and literature of a great and polished people,
+rich with a thousand beauties of thought and style, doubtless they have
+their value and their merit: but as monuments also of a state of morals
+inconceivably gross and corrupt; of the condition of women degraded by
+their own vices, the vices and tyranny of the other sex, and the
+prevalence of the Epicurean philosophy, the tendency of which, (however
+disguised by rhetoric,) was ever to lower the tone of the mind;
+considered in this point of view, they might as well have all burned
+together in that vast bonfire of love-poetry which the Doctors of the
+Church raised at Constantinople:--what a flame it must have made![3]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] I need scarcely observe, that the following sketch of the lyrical
+poets of Rome is abridged from the analysis of their works, in
+Ginguene's Histoire Litteraire, vol. 3.
+
+[2] Clodia, the wife of Quintus Metellus Celer.
+
+[3] "J'ai oui dire dans mon enfance a Demetrius Chalcondyle, homme tres
+instruit de tout ce qui regarde la Grece, qui les Pretres avaient eu
+assez d'influence sur les Empereurs de Constantinople, pour les engager
+a bruler les ouvrages de plusieurs anciens poetes Grecs, et en
+particulier de ceux qui parlaient des amours, &c. * * * Ces pretres,
+sans doute, montrerent une malveillance honteuse envers les anciens
+poetes; mais ils donnerent une grande preuve d'integrite, de probite, et
+de religion."--ALCYONIUS.
+
+This sentiment is put into the mouth of Leo X. at a time when the mania
+of classical learning was at its height.--See Roscoe, (Leo X.) and
+Ginguene.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+THE LOVES OF THE TROUBADOURS.
+
+    Gente, che d'amor givan ragionando.--PETRARCA.
+
+
+The irruptions of the northern nations, among whom our sex was far
+better appreciated than among the polished Greeks and Romans; the rise
+of Christianity, and the institution of chivalry, by changing the moral
+condition of women, gave also a totally different character to the
+homage addressed to them. It was in the ages called gothic and
+barbarous,--in that era of high feelings and fierce passions,--of love,
+war, and wild adventure, that the sex began to take their true station
+in society. From the midst of ignorance, superstition, and ferocity,
+sprung up that enthusiasm, that exaggeration of sentiment, that
+serious, passionate, and imaginative adoration of women, which has
+since, indeed, degenerated into mere gallantry, but was the very
+fountain of all that is most elevated and elegant in modern poetry, and
+most graceful and refined in modern manners.
+
+The amatory poetry of Provence had the same source with the national
+poetry of Spain; both were derived from the Arabians. To them we trace
+not only the use of rhyme, and the various forms of stanzas, employed by
+the early lyric poets, but by a strange revolution, it was from the
+East, where women are now held in seclusion, as mere soulless slaves of
+the passions and caprices of their masters, that the sentimental
+devotion paid to our sex in the chivalrous ages was derived.[4] The
+poetry of the Troubadours kept alive and enhanced the tone of feeling on
+which it was founded; it was cause and effect re-acting on each other;
+and though their songs exist only in the collections of the antiquarian,
+and the very language in which they wrote has passed away, and may be
+accounted _dead_,--so is not the spirit they left behind: as the
+founders of a new school of amatory poetry, we are under obligations to
+their memory, which throw a strong interest around their personal
+adventures, and the women they celebrated.
+
+The tenderness of feeling and delicacy of expression in some of these
+old Provencal poets, are the more touching, when we recollect that the
+writers were sometimes kings and princes, and often knights and
+warriors, famed for their hardihood and exploits. William, Count of
+Poitou, our Richard the First, two Kings of Arragon, a King of Sicily,
+the Dauphin of Auvergne, the Count de Foix, and a Prince of Orange, were
+professors of the "gaye science." Thibault,[5] Count of Provence and
+King of Navarre, was another of these royal and chivalrous Troubadours,
+and his _lais_ and his virelais were generally devoted to the praises of
+Blanche of Castile, the mother of Louis the Ninth--the same Blanche whom
+Shakspeare has introduced into King John, and decked out in panegyric
+far transcending all that her favoured poet and lover could have offered
+at her feet.[6]
+
+Thibault did, however, surpass all his contemporaries in refinement of
+style: he usually concludes his _chansons_ with an _envoi_, or address,
+to the Virgin, worded with such equivocal ingenuity, that it is equally
+applicable to the Queen of Heaven, or the queen of his earthly
+thoughts,--"La Blanche couronnee." There is much simplicity and elegance
+in the following little song, in which the French has been modernised.
+
+    "Las! si j'avais pouvoir d'oublier
+      Sa beaute,--son bien dire,
+    Et son tres doux regarder
+      Finirait mon martyre!
+
+    Mais las! mon coeur je n'en puis oter;
+    Et grand affolage
+    M'est d'esperer;
+    Mais tel servage
+    Donne courage
+    A tout endurer.
+
+    Et puis comment oublier
+      Sa beaute, son bien dire,
+    Et son tres doux regarder?
+      Mieux aime mon martyre!"
+
+Princesses and ladies of rank entered the lists of poesy, and
+vanquished, on almost every occasion, the Troubadours of the other sex.
+For instance, that Countess of Champagne, who presided with such eclat
+in one of the courts of love; Beatrice, Countess of Provence, the mother
+of four queens, among whom was Berengaria of England; Clara d'Anduse,
+one of whose songs is translated by Sismondi; a certain Dame
+Castellosa, who in a pathetic remonstrance to some ungrateful lover,
+assures him that if he forsakes her for another, and leaves her to die,
+he will commit a heinous sin before the face of God and man; that
+charming Comtesse de Die, of whom more presently, and others
+innumerable, "tout hommes que femmes, la pluspart gentilshommes et
+Seigneurs de Places, amoureux des Roynes, Imperatrices, Duchesses,
+Marquises, Comtesses, et gentils-femmes; desquelles les maris
+s'estimaient grandement heureux quand nos poetes leurs addressaient
+quelque chant nouveau en notre langue Provencal." The said poets being
+rewarded by these debonnaire husbands with rich dresses, horses, armour,
+and gold;[7] and by the ladies with praise, thanks, courteous words, and
+sweet smiles, and very often, "altra cosa piu cara." The biography of
+these Troubadours generally commences with the same phrase--Such a one
+was "gentilhomme et chevalier," and was "pris d'amour" for such a lady,
+always named, who was the wife of such a lord, and in whose honour and
+praise he composed "maintes belles et doctes chansons." In these
+"chansons,"--for all the amatory poetry of those times was sung to
+music,--we have love and romantic adventure oddly enough mixed up with
+piety and devotion, such as were the mode in an age when religion ruled
+the imagination and opinions of men, without in any degree restraining
+the passions, or influencing the conduct. One Troubadour tells us, that
+when he beholds the face of his mistress, he crosses himself with
+delight and gratitude; another pathetically entreats a priest to
+dispense him from his vows of love to a certain lady, whom he loved no
+longer; the lady being the wife of another, one would imagine that the
+dispensation should rather have been required in the first instance.
+Arnaldo de Daniel, unable to soften the obdurate heart of his mistress,
+performs penance, and celebrates six (or as some say, a thousand) masses
+a day, "en priant Dieu de pouvoir acquerir la grace de sa dame," and
+burns lamps before the Virgin, and consecrates tapers for the same
+purpose: the lady with whom he is thus piously in love, was Cyberna, the
+wife of Guillaume de Bouille. This was something like the incantations
+and sacrifices of the classic poets, who familiarly mixed up their
+mythology with their amours; but in a spirit as different as the
+allegorical cupid of these chivalrous poets is from the winged and
+wanton deity of the Greeks and Romans. Pierre Vidal sees a vision of
+Love, whom he describes as a young knight, fair and fresh as the day,
+crowned with a wreath of flowers instead of a helmet; and mounted on a
+palfrey as white as snow, with a saddle of jasper, and spurs of
+chalcedony; his squires and attendants are "_Mercy_, _Pudeur_, and
+_Loyaute_." _Sir Cupid_ on horseback, with his saddle and his spurs,
+attended by Gentleness, Modesty, and Good Faith, is a novel
+divinity.--Thus, among the Greeks, Love was attended by the Graces, and
+among the Troubadours by the Virtues. In the same spirit of allegory,
+but touched with a more classic elegance, we have Petrarch's Cupid,
+driving his fiery car in triumph, followed by a shadowy host of captives
+to his power,--the heroes who had confessed and the poets who had sung
+his might.
+
+    Vidi un vittorioso e sommo duce,
+    Pur com' un di color ch' in Campidoglio
+    Trionfal carro a gran gloria conduce.
+
+    ....*....*....*....*
+
+    Quattro destrier via piu che neve bianchi:
+    Sopr' un carro di foco un garzon crudo
+    Con arco in mano, e con saeette a' fianchi.
+
+And yet more finished is Spenser's "Masque of Cupid," in the third book
+of the Fairy Queen, where Love, as in the antique gem, is mounted on a
+lion, preceded by minstrels carolling
+
+    A lay of love's delight with sweet concent,
+
+attended by Fancy, Desire, Hope, Fear, and Doubt; and followed by Care,
+Repentance, Shame, Strife, Sorrow, &c.--The vivid colours in which these
+imaginary personages are depicted, the image of the God "uprearing
+himself," and looking round with disdain on the troop of victims and
+slaves who surround him, the rattling of his darts, as he shakes them in
+defiance and in triumph, and "claps on high his coloured wings twain,"
+forms altogether a most finished and gorgeous picture; such as Rubens
+should have painted, as far as his pencil, rainbow-dipt, could have
+reflected the animated pageant to the eye.
+
+The extravagance of passion and boundless devotion to the fair sex,
+which the Troubadours sang in their lays, they not unfrequently
+illustrated by their actions; and while the knowledge of the first is
+confined to a few antiquarians, the latter still survive in the history
+and the traditions of their province. One of these (Guillaume de la
+Tour) having lost the object of his love, underwent, during a whole
+year, the most cruel and unheard-of penances, in the hope that heaven
+might be won to perform a miracle in his favour, and restore her to his
+arms; at length he died broken-hearted on her tomb.[8] Another,[9]
+beloved by a certain princess, in some unfortunate moment breaks his vow
+of fidelity, and unable to appease the indignation of his mistress, he
+retires to a forest, builds himself a cabin of boughs, and turns hermit,
+having first made a solemn vow that he will never leave his solitude
+till he is received into favour by his offended love. Being one of the
+most celebrated and popular Troubadours of his province, all the knights
+and the ladies sympathise with his misfortunes: they find themselves
+terribly _ennuyes_ in the absence of the poet who was accustomed to
+vaunt their charms and their deeds of prowess; and at the end of two
+years they send a deputation, entreating him to return,--but in vain:
+they then address themselves to the lady, and humbly solicit the pardon
+of the offender, whose disgrace in her sight, has thrown a whole
+province into mourning. The princess at length relents, but upon
+conditions which appear in these unromantic times equally extraordinary
+and difficult to fulfil. She requires that a hundred brave knights, and
+a hundred fair dames, pledged in love to each other, (s'aimant d'amour)
+should appear before her on their knees, and with joined hands
+supplicate for mercy: the conditions are fulfilled: the fifty pair of
+lovers are found to go through the ceremony, and the Troubadour receives
+his pardon.[10]
+
+The story of Peyre de Ruer, "gentilhomme et Troubadour," might be termed
+a satirical romance, did we not know that it is a plain fact, related
+with perfect simplicity. He devotes himself to a lady of the noble
+Italian family of Carraccioli, and in her praise he composes, as usual,
+"maintes belles et doctes chansons:"--but the lady seems to have had a
+taste for magnificence and pleasure; and the poet, in order to find
+favour in her eyes, expends his patrimony in rich apparel, banquets, and
+_joustes_ in her honour. The lady, however, continues inexorable; and
+Peyre de Ruer takes the habit of a pilgrim and wanders about the
+country. He arrives in the holy week at a certain church, and desires of
+the cure permission to preach to his congregation of penitents:--he
+ascends the pulpit, and recites with infinite fervour and grace one of
+his own chansons d'amour,--for, says the chronicle, "_autre chose ne
+scavait_," "he knew nothing better." The people mistaking it for an
+invocation to the Virgin Mary or the Saints, are deeply affected and
+edified; eyes are seen to weep that never wept before; the most
+impenitent hearts are suddenly softened: he concludes with an
+exhortation in the same strain--and then descending from the pulpit,
+places himself at the door, and holding out his hat for the customary
+alms, his delighted congregation fill it to overflowing with pieces of
+silver. Peyre de Ruer forthwith casts off his pilgrim's gown, and in a
+new and splendid dress, and with a new song in his hand, he presents
+himself before the ladye of his love, who charmed by his gay attire not
+less than by his return, receives him most graciously, and bestows on
+him "maintes caresses."
+
+I must observe that the biographer of this Peyre de Ruer, himself a
+churchman, does not appear in the least scandalised or surprised at
+this very novel mode of recruiting his finances and obtaining the favour
+of the lady; but gives us fairly to understand, that after such a proof
+of _loyaute_ he should have thought it quite contrary to all rule if she
+had still rejected the addresses of this _gentil Troubadour_.
+
+Jauffred (or Geffrey) de Rudel is yet more famous, and his story will
+strikingly illustrate the manners of those times. Rudel was the
+favourite minstrel of Geffrey Plantagenet de Bretagne, the elder brother
+of our Richard Coeur de Lion, and like the royal Richard, a patron of
+music and poetry. During the residence of Rudel at the court of England,
+where he resided in great honour and splendour, caressed for his talents
+and loved for the gentleness of his manners, he heard continually the
+praises of a certain Countess of Tripoli; famed throughout Europe for
+her munificent hospitality to the poor Crusaders. The pilgrims and
+soldiers of the Cross, who were returning wayworn, sick and disabled,
+from the burning plains of Asia, were relieved and entertained by this
+devout and benevolent Countess; and they repaid her generosity, with all
+the enthusiasm of gratitude, by spreading her fame throughout
+Christendom.
+
+These reports of her beauty and her beneficence, constantly repeated,
+fired the susceptible fancy of Rudel: without having seen her, he fell
+passionately in love with her, and unable to bear any longer the
+torments of absence, he undertook a pilgrimage to visit this unknown
+lady of his love, in company with Bertrand d'Allamanon, another
+celebrated Troubadour of those days. He quitted the English court in
+spite of the entreaties and expostulations of Prince Geffrey
+Plantagenet, and sailed for the Levant. But so it chanced, that falling
+grievously sick on the voyage, he lived only till his vessel reached the
+shores of Tripoli. The Countess being told that a celebrated poet had
+just arrived in her harbour, who was dying for her love, immediately
+hastened on board, and taking his hand, entreated him to live for her
+sake. Rudel, already speechless, and almost in the agonies of death,
+revived for a moment at this unexpected grace; he was just able to
+express, by a last effort, the excess of his gratitude and love, and
+expired in her arms: thereupon the Countess wept bitterly, and vowed
+herself to a life of penance for the loss she had caused to the
+world.[11] She commanded that the last song which Rudel had composed in
+her honour, should be transcribed in letters of gold, and carried it
+always in her bosom; and his remains were inclosed in a magnificent
+mausoleum of porphyry, with an Arabic inscription, commemorating his
+genius and his love for her.
+
+It is in allusion to this well-known story, that Petrarch has introduced
+Rudel into the Trionfo d'Amore.
+
+    Gianfre Rudel ch' uso la vela e 'l remo,
+    A cercar la suo morte.
+
+The song which the minstrel composed when he fell sick on this romantic
+expedition, and found his strength begin to fail, and which the Countess
+wore, folded within her vest, to the end of her life, is extant, and has
+been translated into most of the languages of Europe; of these
+translations, Sismondi's is the best, preserving the original and
+curious arrangement of the rhymes, as well as the piety, naivete, and
+tenderness of the sentiment.
+
+    Irrite, dolent partirai
+    Si ne vois cet amour de loin,
+    Et ne sais quand je le verrai
+    Car sont par trop nos terres loin.
+    Dieu, qui toutes choses as fait
+    Et formas cet amour si loin,
+    Donne force a mon coeur, car ai
+    L'espoir de voir m'amour au loin.
+    Ah, Seigneur, tenez pour bien vrai
+    L'amour qu'ai pour elle de loin.
+    Car pour un bien que j'en aurai
+    J'ai mille maux, tant je suis loin.
+    Ja d'autr'amour ne jouirai
+    Sinon de cet amour de loin--
+    Qu'une plus belle je n'en scais
+    En lieu qui soit ni pres ni loin!
+
+Mrs. Piozzi and others have paraphrased this little song, but in a
+spirit so different from the antique simplicity of the original, that I
+shall venture to give a version, which has at least the merit of being
+as faithful as the different idioms of the two languages will allow; I
+am afraid, however, that it will not appear worthy of the honour which
+the Countess conferred on it.
+
+    "Grieved and troubled shall I die,
+      If I meet not my love afar;
+    Alas! I know not that I e'er
+      Shall see her--for she dwells afar.
+    O God! that didst all things create,
+      And formed my sweet love now afar;
+    Strengthen my heart, that I may hope
+      To behold her face, who is afar.
+    O Lord! believe how very true
+      Is my love for her, alas! afar,
+    Tho' for each joy a thousand pains
+      I bear, because I am so far.
+    Another love I'll never have,
+      Save only she who is afar,
+    For fairer one I never knew
+      In places near, nor yet afar."
+
+Bertrand d'Allamanon, whom I have mentioned as the companion of Rudel on
+his romantic expedition, has left us a little ballad, remarkable for the
+extreme refinement of the sentiment, which is quite a la Petrarque: he
+gives it the fantastic title of a _demi chanson_, for a very fantastic
+reason: it is thus translated in Millot. (vol. i. 390).
+
+"On veut savoir pourquoi je fais une _demi chanson_? c'est parceque je
+n'ai qu'un demi sujet de chanter. Il n'y a d'amour que de ma part; la
+dame que j'aime ne veut pas m'aimer! mais au defaut des _oui_ qu'elle me
+refuse, je prendrai les _non_ qu'elle me prodigue:--_esperer aupres
+d'elle vaut mieux que jouir avec tout autre!_"
+
+This is exactly the sentiment of Petrarch:
+
+    Pur mi consola, che morir per lei
+    Meglio e che gioir d'altra--
+
+But it is one of those thoughts which spring in the heart, and might
+often be repeated without once being borrowed.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[4] Sismondi--Litterature du Midi.
+
+[5]
+    Thibault fut Roi galant et valoureux,
+      Ses hauts faits et son rang n'ont rien fait pour sa gloire;
+    Mais il fut chansonnier--et ses couplets heureux,
+      Nous ont conserve sa memoire.
+
+                     ANTHOLOGIE DE MONET.
+
+[6]
+    If lusty Love should go in quest of beauty,
+    Where should he find it fairer than in Blanche?
+    If zealous Love should go in search of virtue,
+    Where should he find it purer than in Blanche?
+    If Love, ambitious, sought a match of birth,
+    Whose veins bound richer blood than Lady Blanche?
+
+[7] La plus honorable recompence qu'on pouvait faire aux dits poetes,
+etait qu'on leur fournissait de draps, chevaux, armure, et argent.
+
+[8] Millot, vol. ii. p. 148.
+
+[9] Richard de Barbesieu.
+
+[10] Millot, vol. iii. p. 86.--Ginguene, vol. i. p. 280.
+
+[11] "Depuis ne fut jamais veue faire bonne chere," says the old
+chronicle.--I am tempted to add the description of the first and last
+interview of the Countess and her lover in the exquisite old French, of
+which the antique simplicity and naivete are untranslateable.
+
+"En cet estat fut conduit au port de Trypolly, et la arrive, son
+compagnon feist (_fit_) entendre a la Comtesse la venue du Pelerin
+malade. La Comtesse estant venue en la nef, prit le poete par la main;
+et lui, sachant que c'estait la Comtesse, incontinent apres le doult et
+gracieux accueil, recouvra ses esprits, la remercia de ce qu'elle lui
+avait recouvre la vie, et lui dict: 'Tres illustre et vertueuse
+princesse, je ne plaindrai point la mort oresque'--et ne pouvant achever
+son propos, sa maladie s'aigrissant et augmentant, rendit l'esprit entre
+les mains de la Comtesse."--_Vies des plus celebres Poetes Provencaux_,
+p. 24.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+THE LOVES OF THE TROUBADOURS CONTINUED.
+
+
+In striking contrast to the tender and gentle Rudel, we have the
+ferocious Bertrand de Born: he, too, was one of the most celebrated
+Troubadours of his time. As a petty feudal sovereign, he was, partly by
+the events of the age, more by his own fierce and headlong passions,
+plunged in continual wars. Nature however had made him a poet of the
+first order. In these days he would have been another Lord Byron; but he
+lived in a terrible and convulsed state of society, and it was only in
+the intervals snatched from his usual pursuits,--that is, from burning
+the castles, and ravaging the lands of his neighbours, and stirring up
+rebellion, discord, and bloodshed all around him,--that he composed a
+vast number of _lays_, _sirventes_, and _chansons_; some breathing the
+most martial, and even merciless spirit; others devoted to the praise
+and honour of his love, or rather loves, as full of submissive
+tenderness and chivalrous gallantry.
+
+He first celebrated Elinor Plantagenet, the sister of his friend and
+brother in arms and song, Richard Coeur de Lion; and we are expressly
+told that Richard was proud of the poetical homage rendered to the
+charms of his sister by this knightly Troubadour, and that the Princess
+was far from being insensible to his admiration. Only one of the many
+songs addressed to Elinor has been preserved; from which we gather, that
+it was composed by Bertrand in the field, at a time when his army was
+threatened with famine, and the poet himself was suffering from the
+pangs of hunger. Elinor married the Duke of Saxony, and Bertrand chose
+for his next love the beautiful Maenz de Montagnac, daughter of the
+Viscount of Turenne, and wife of Talleyrand de Perigord. The lady
+accepted his service, and acknowledged him as her Knight; but evil
+tongues having attempted to sow dissension between the lovers, Bertrand
+addressed to her a song, in which he defends himself from the imputation
+of inconstancy, in a style altogether characteristic and original. The
+warrior poet, borrowing from the objects of his daily cares, ambition
+and pleasures, phrases to illustrate and enhance the expression of his
+love, wishes "that he may lose his favourite hawk in her first flight;
+that a falcon may stoop and bear her off, as she sits upon his wrist,
+and tear her in his sight, if the sound of his lady's voice be not
+dearer to him than all the gifts of love from another."--"That he may
+stumble with his shield about his neck; that his helmet may gall his
+brow; that his bridle may be too long, his stirrups too short; that he
+may be forced to ride a hard trotting horse, and find his groom drunk
+when he arrives at his gate, if there be a word of truth in the
+accusations of his enemies:--that he may not have a _denier_ to stake at
+the gaming-table, and that the dice may never more be favourable to
+him, if ever he had swerved from his faith:--that he may look on like a
+dastard, and see his lady wooed and won by another;--that the winds may
+fail him at sea;--that in the battle he may be the first to fly, if he
+who has slandered him does not lie in his throat," &c. and so on through
+seven or eight stanzas.
+
+Bertrand de Born exercised in his time a fatal influence on the counsels
+and politics of England. A close and ardent friendship existed between
+him and young Henry Plantagenet, the eldest son of our Henry the Second;
+and the family dissensions which distracted the English Court, and the
+unnatural rebellion of Henry and Richard against their father, were his
+work. It happened some time after the death of Prince Henry, that the
+King of England besieged Bertrand de Born in one of his castles: the
+resistance was long and obstinate, but at length the warlike Troubadour
+was taken prisoner and brought before the King, so justly incensed
+against him, and from whom he had certainly no mercy to expect. The
+heart of Henry was still bleeding with the wounds inflicted by his
+ungrateful children, and he saw before him, and in his power, the
+primary cause of their misdeeds and his own bitter sufferings. Bertrand
+was on the point of being led out to death, when by a single word he
+reminded the King of his lost son, and the tender friendship which had
+existed between them.[12] The chord was struck which never ceased to
+vibrate in the parental heart of Henry; bursting into tears, he turned
+aside, and commanded Bertrand and his followers to be immediately set at
+liberty: he even restored to Bertrand his castle and his lands, "_in the
+name of his dead son_." It is such traits as these, occurring at every
+page, which lend to the chronicles of this stormy period an interest
+overpowering the horror they would otherwise excite: for then all the
+best, as well as the worst of human passions were called into play. In
+this tempestuous commingling of all the jarring elements of society, we
+have those strange approximations of the most opposite
+sentiments,--implacable revenge and sublime forgiveness;--gross
+licentiousness and delicate tenderness;--barbarism and
+refinement;--treachery and fidelity--which remind one of that
+heterogeneous mass tossed up by a stormy ocean; heaps of pearls,
+unvalued gems, wedges of gold, mingled with dead men's bones, and all
+the slimy, loathsome, and monstrous productions of the deep, which
+during a calm remain together concealed and unknown in its unfathomed
+abysses.
+
+To return from this long similitude to Bertrand de Born: he concluded
+his stormy career in a manner very characteristic of the times; for he
+turned monk, and died in the odour of sanctity. But neither his late
+devotion, nor his warlike heroism, nor his poetic fame, could rescue him
+from the severe justice of Dante, who has visited his crimes and his
+violence with so terrible a judgment, that we forget, while we thrill
+with horror, that the crimes were real, the penance only imaginary.
+Dante, in one of the circles of the Inferno, meets Bertrand de Born
+carrying his severed head, _lantern wise_, in his hand;--the phantom
+lifts it up by the hair, and the ghastly lips unclose to confess the
+cause and the justice of this horrible and unheard-of penance.
+
+      ----Or vedi la pena molesta
+    Tu che spirando vai veggendo i morti;
+    Vedi s'alcuna e grande come questa.
+      E perche tu di me novella porti,
+    Sappi ch' i' son Bertram dal Bornio, quelli
+    Che diedi al Re giovane i ma' conforti.
+      I' feci 'l padre e 'l figlio in se ribelli:
+
+    ....*....*....*....*
+
+      Perch'io partii cosi giunte persone,
+    Partito porto il mio cerebro, lasso!
+    Dal suo principio ch 'e 'n questo troncone.
+      Cosi s'osserva in me lo contrappasso.[13]
+
+                Now behold
+    This grievous torment, thou, who breathing goest
+    To spy the dead: behold, if any else
+    Be terrible as this,--and that on earth
+    Thou mayst bear tidings of me, know that I
+    Am Bertrand, he of Born, who gave King John
+    The counsel mischievous. Father and son
+    I set at mutual war:----
+    Spurring them on maliciously to strife.
+    For parting those so closely knit, my brain
+    Parted, alas! I carry from its source
+    That in this trunk inhabits. Thus the law
+    Of retribution fiercely works in me.[14]
+
+Pierre Vidal, whose description of love I have quoted before, was one of
+the most extraordinary characters of his time, a kind of poetical Don
+Quixotte:--his brain was turned with love, poetry, and vanity: he
+believed himself the beloved of all the fair, the mirror of knighthood,
+and the prince of Troubadours. Yet in the midst of all his
+extravagances, he possessed exquisite skill in his art, and was not
+surpassed by any of the poets of those days, for the harmony, delicacy,
+and tenderness of his amatory effusions. He chose for his first love
+the beautiful wife of the Vicomte de Marseilles: the lady, unlike some
+of the Princesses of her time, distinguished between the poet and the
+man, and as he presumed too far on the encouragement bestowed on him in
+the former capacity, he was banished: he then followed Richard the First
+to the crusade. The verses he addressed to the lady from the Island of
+Cyprus are still preserved. The folly of Vidal, or rather the
+derangement of his imagination, subjected him to some of those
+mystifications which remind us of Don Quixote and Sancho, in the court
+of the laughter-loving Duchess. For instance, Richard and his followers
+amused themselves at Cyprus, by marrying Vidal to a beautiful Greek girl
+of no immaculate reputation, whom they introduced to him as the niece of
+the Greek Emperor. Vidal, in right of his wife, immediately took the
+title of Emperor, assumed the purple, ordered a throne to be carried
+before him, and played the most fantastic antics of authority. Nor was
+this the greatest of his extravagances: on his return to Provence, he
+chose for the second object of his amorous and poetical devotion, a
+lady whose name happened to be Louve de Penautier: in her honour he
+assumed the name of _Loup_, and farther to merit the good graces of his
+"_Dame_," and to do honour to the name he had adopted, he dressed
+himself in the hide of a wolf, and caused himself to be hunted in good
+earnest by a pack of dogs: he was brought back exhausted and half dead
+to the feet of his mistress, who appears to have been more moved to
+merriment than to love by this new and ridiculous exploit.
+
+In general, however, the Troubadours had seldom reason to complain of
+the cruelty of the ladies to whom they devoted their service and their
+songs. The most virtuous and illustrious women thought themselves
+justified in repaying, with smiles and favours, the poetical adoration
+of their lovers; and this lasted until the profession of Troubadour was
+dishonoured by the indiscretions, follies, and vices of those who
+assumed it. Thus Peyrols, a famous Provencal poet, who was distinguished
+in the court of the Dauphin d'Auvergne, fell passionately in love with
+the sister of that Prince, (the Baronne de Mercoeur) and the Dauphin,
+(himself a Troubadour) proud of the genius of his minstrel and of the
+poetical devotion paid to his sister, desired her to bestow on her lover
+all the encouragement and favour which was consistent with her dignity.
+The lady, however, either misunderstood her instructions, or found it
+too difficult to obey them: the seducing talents and tender verses of
+this _gentil Troubadour_ prevailed over her dignity:--Peyrols was
+beloved; but he was not sufficiently discreet. The sudden change in the
+tone and style of his songs betrayed him, and he was banished. A great
+number of his verses, celebrating the Dame de Mercoeur, are preserved
+by St. Palaye, and translated by Millot.
+
+Bernard de Ventadour was beloved by Elinor de Guienne, afterwards the
+wife of our Henry the Second, and the mother of Richard the First:--I
+have before observed the poetical penchants of all Elinor's children,
+which they seem to have inherited from their mother.
+
+Sordello of Mantua, whose name is familiar to all the readers of Dante,
+as occurring in one of the finest passages of his great poem,[15] was an
+Italian, but like all the best poets of his day, wrote in the Provencal
+tongue: he is said to have carried off the sister of that modern
+Phalaris, the tyrant Ezzelino of Padua. There is a very elegant ballad
+(ballata) by Sordello, translated in Millot's collection; it is properly
+a kind of rondeau, the first line being repeated at the end of every
+stanza; "Helas! a quoi me servent mes yeux?"--"Alas! wherefore have I
+eyes?"--It describes the pleasures of the Spring, which are to him as
+nothing, in the absence of the only object on which his eyes can dwell
+with delight. The arrangement of the rhymes in this pastoral song is
+singularly elegant and musical.
+
+Lastly, as illustrating the history of the amatory poetry of this age, I
+extract from Nostradamus[16] the story of the young Countess de Die; she
+loved and was beloved by the Chevalier d'Adhemar: (ancestor I presume to
+that Chevalier d'Adhemar who figures in the letters of Madame de
+Sevigne.) It was not in this case the lover who celebrated the charms of
+his mistress, but the lady, who, being an illustrious female Troubadour,
+"docte en poesie," celebrated the exploits and magnanimity of her lover.
+The Chevalier, proud of such a distinction, caused the verses of his
+mistress to be beautifully copied, and always carried them in his bosom;
+and whenever he was in the company of knights and ladies, he enchanted
+them by singing a couplet in his own praise out of his lady's book. The
+publicity thus given to their love, was quite in the spirit of the
+times, and does not appear to have injured the reputation of the
+Countess for immaculate virtue,[17] which Adhemar would probably have
+defended with lance and spear, against any slanderous tongue which had
+dared to defame her.
+
+The conclusion of this romantic story is melancholy. Adhemar heard a
+false report, that the Countess, whose purity and constancy he had so
+proudly maintained, had cast away her smiles on a rival: he fell sick
+with grief and bitterness of heart: the Countess, being informed of his
+state, set out, accompanied by her _mother_, and a long train of knights
+and ladies, to visit and comfort him with assurances of her fidelity;
+but when she appeared at his bed-side, and drew the curtain, it was
+already too late: Adhemar expired in her arms. The Countess took the
+veil in the convent of St. Honore, and died the same year _of grief_,
+says the chronicle;--and to conclude the tragedy characteristically, the
+mother of the young Countess buried her in the same grave with her
+lover, and raised a superb monument to the memory of both. The Countess
+de Die was one of the ten ladies who formed the _Court of Love_, held at
+Pierrefeu, (about 1194) and in which Estifanie de Baux presided.
+
+These Courts of Love, and the scenes they gave rise to, were certainly
+open to ridicule; the "belles et subtiles questions d'amour" which were
+there solemnly discussed, and decided by ladies of rank, were often
+absurd, and the decisions something worse: still the fanciful influence
+they gave to women on these subjects, and the gallantry they introduced
+into the intercourse between the sexes, had a tendency to soften the
+manners, to refine the language, and to tinge the sentiments and
+passions with a kind of philosophical mysticism. But these gay and
+gallant Courts of Love, the Provencal Troubadours, their lays, which for
+two centuries had been the delight of all ranks of people, and had
+spread music, love, and poetry through the land;--their language, which
+had been the chosen dialect of gallantry in every court of Europe,--were
+at once swept from the earth.
+
+The glory of the Provencal literature began when Provence was raised to
+an independent Fief, under Count Berenger I. about the year 1100; it
+lasted two entire centuries, and ended when that fine and fertile
+country became the scene of the horrible crusade against the Albigenses;
+when the Inquisition sent forth its exterminating fiends to scatter
+horror and devastation through the land, and the wars and rapacity of
+Charles of Anjou, its new possessor, almost depopulated the country. The
+language which had once celebrated deeds of love and heroism, now sang
+only of desolation and despair. The Troubadours, in a strain worthy of
+their gentle and noble calling, generally advocated the part of the
+Albigenses, and the oppressed of whatever faith; and in many provinces,
+in Lombardy especially, their language was interdicted, lest it might
+introduce heretical or rebellious principles; gradually it fell into
+disuse, and at length into total oblivion. The Troubadours, no longer
+welcomed in castle or in hall, where once
+
+    They poured to lords and ladies gay,
+    The unpremeditated lay,
+
+were degraded to wandering minstrels and itinerant jugglers. An attempt
+was made, about a century later, (1324) by the institution of the
+Floral Games at Thoulouse, to keep alive this high strain of poetical
+gallantry. They were formerly celebrated with great splendour, and a
+shadow of this institution is, I believe, still kept up, but it has
+degenerated into a mere school of affectation. The original race of the
+Troubadours was extinct long before Clemence d'Isaure and her golden
+violet were thought of.
+
+I cannot quit the subject of the Troubadours without one or two
+concluding observations. To these rude bards we owe some new notions of
+poetical justice, which never seem to have occurred to Horace or
+Longinus, and are certainly more magnanimous, as well as more true to
+moral feeling, than those which prevailed among the polished Greeks and
+Romans. For instance, the generous Hector and the constant Troilus are
+invariably exalted above the subtle Ulysses and the savage Achilles.
+Theseus, Jason, and AEneas, instead of being represented as classical
+heroes and pious favourites of the gods, are denounced as recreant
+knights and false traitors to love and beauty. In the estimation of
+these chivalrous bards, a woman's tears outweighed the exploits of
+demi-gods; all the glory of Theseus is forgotten in sympathy for
+Ariadne; and AEneas, in the old ballads and romances, is not, after all
+his perfidy, dismissed to happiness and victory, but is plagued by the
+fiends, haunted by poor Dido's "grimly ghost," and, finally, doomed to
+perish miserably.[18] Nor does Jason fare better at their hands; in all
+the old poets he is consigned to just execration. In Dante, we have a
+magnificent and a terrible picture of him, doomed to one of the lowest
+circles of hell, amid a herd of vile seducers, who betrayed the trusting
+faith, or bartered the charms of women. Demons scourge him up and down,
+without mercy or respite, in vengeance for the wrongs of Hypsipyle and
+Medea.
+
+    Guarda quel grande che viene
+    E per dolor, non par lagrima spanda;
+    Quanto aspetto reale ancor ritiene!
+    Quelli e Giasone--
+
+    --Con segni e con parole ornate
+      Isifile inganno----
+    Tal colpa a tal martiro lui condanna,
+      Ed anche di MEDEA si fa vendetta.
+
+                     INFERNO, C. 18.
+
+    "Behold that lofty shade, who this way tends,
+    And seems too woe-begone to drop a tear;
+    How yet the regal aspect he retains!
+    'Tis Jason--
+    --He who with tokens and fair witching words
+    Hypsipyle beguil'd--
+    Such is the guilt condemns him to this pain;
+    Here too Medea's injuries are aveng'd!"--
+
+                     CAREY.
+
+And Chaucer, in relating the same story, begins with a burst of generous
+indignation:
+
+    Thou root[19] of false lovers, Duke Jason,
+    Thou slayer, devourer, and confusion
+    Of gentil women, gentil creatures!
+
+The story of his double perfidy is told and commented on in the same
+chivalrous feeling: and the old poet concludes with characteristic
+tenderness and simplicity--
+
+    This was the mede of loving, and guerdon
+    That Medea received of Duke Jason,
+    Right for her truth and for her kindnesse,
+    That loved him better than herself I guesse!
+    And lefte her father and her heritage:
+    And of Jason this is the vassalage
+    That in his dayes was never none yfound
+    So false a lover going on the ground.
+
+It is in the same beautiful spirit of reverence to the best virtues of
+our sex, that Alcestis, the wife of Admetus, who sacrificed her life to
+prolong that of her husband, is honoured above all other heroines of
+classical story. She has even been elevated into a kind of presiding
+divinity,--a second Venus, with nobler attributes,--and in her new
+existence is feigned to be the consort and companion of Love himself.
+
+Another peculiarity of the poetry of the middle ages, was the worship
+paid to the daisy, (la Marguerite) as symbolical of all that is lovely
+in women. Why so lowly a flower should take precedence of the queenly
+lily and the sumptuous rose, is not very clear; but it seems to have
+originated with one of the old Provencal poets, whose mistress bore the
+name of Marguerite; and afterwards it became a fashion and a kind of
+poetical mythology.[20]
+
+Thus in the "Flower and the Leafe" of Chaucer, the ladies and knights of
+the flower approach singing a chorus in honour of the Daisy, of which
+the burthen is, "si douce est la Marguerite."
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[12] Le Roi lui demande, "S'il a perdu raison?" il lui repond, "Helas,
+oui! c'est depuis la mort du Prince Henri, votre fils!"
+
+[13] Inferno, c. xxviii.
+
+[14] Carey's translation of Dante. Mr. Carey reads Re Giovanni, instead
+of Re giovane:--King John, instead of Prince Henry.
+
+[15] Purgatorio, c. vi.
+
+[16] Vies des plus celebres poetes Provencaux.
+
+[17] Agnes de Navarre, Comtesse de Foix, was beloved by Guillaume de
+Machaut, a French poet; he became jealous, and she sent her own
+confessor to him to complain of the injustice of his suspicions, and to
+swear that she was still faithful to him. She required, also, of her
+lover, to write and to publish in verse the history of their love; and
+she preserved, at the same time, in the eyes of her husband and of the
+world, the character of a virtuous Princess.--_See Foscolo_--_Essays on
+Petrarch._
+
+[18] Percy's Reliques.
+
+[19] _Root_, i. e. example or beginner.
+
+[20] See the notes to Chaucer, the works of Froissart, and Memoires sur
+les Troubadours.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+GUIDO CAVALCANTI AND MANDETTA,
+
+CINO DA PISTOJA AND SELVAGGIA.
+
+
+Amatory poetry was transmitted from the Provencals to the Italians and
+Sicilians, among whom the language of the Troubadours had long been
+cultivated, and their songs imitated, but in style yet more affected and
+_recherche_. Few of the Italian poets who preceded Dante, are
+interesting even in a mere literary point of view: of these only one or
+two have shed a reflected splendour round the object of their adoration.
+Guido Cavalcanti, the Florentine, was the early and favourite friend of
+Dante: being engaged in the factions of his native city, he was forced
+on some emergency to quit it; and to escape the vengeance of the
+prevailing party, he undertook a pilgrimage to Sant Jago. Passing
+through Tolosa, he fell in love with a beautiful Spanish girl, whom he
+has celebrated under the name of _Mandetta_:
+
+    In un boschetto trovai pastorella
+    Piu che la stella bella al mio parere,
+    Capegli avea biondetti e ricciutelli.
+
+Some of his songs and ballads have considerable grace and nature; but
+they were considered by himself as mere trifles. His grand work on which
+his fame long rested, is a "Canzone sopra l'Amore," in which the subject
+is so profoundly and so philosophically treated, that seven voluminous
+commentaries in Latin and Italian have not yet enabled the world to
+understand it.
+
+The following Sonnet is deservedly celebrated for the consummate beauty
+of the picture it resents, and will give a fair idea of the platonic
+extravagance of the time.
+
+    Chi e questa che vien ch' ogni uom la mira!
+      Che fa tremar di caritate l' a're?
+      E mena seco amor, si che parlare
+      Null' uom ne puote; ma ciascun sospira?
+    Ahi dio! che sembra quando gli occhi gira!
+      Dicalo Amor, ch'io nol saprei contare;
+      Cotanto d' umilta donna mi pare
+      Che ciascun' altra inver di lei chiam' ira.
+    Non si porria contar la sua piacenza;
+      Che a lei s'inchina ogni gentil virtute,
+      E la beltate per sua Dea la mostra.
+    Non e si alta gia la mente nostra
+      E non s'e posta in noi tanta salute
+      Che propriamente n' abbian conoscenza!
+
+
+LITERAL TRANSLATION.
+
+     "Who is this, on whom all men gaze as she approacheth!--who
+     causeth the very air to tremble around her with
+     tenderness?--who leadeth Love by her side--in whose presence
+     men are dumb; and can only sigh? Ah! Heaven! what power in
+     every glance of those eyes! Love alone can tell; for I have
+     neither words nor skill! She alone is the Lady of
+     gentleness--beside her, all others seem ungracious and
+     unkind. Who can describe her sweetness, her loveliness? to
+     her every virtue bows, and beauty points to her as her own
+     divinity. The mind of man cannot soar so high, nor is it
+     sufficiently purified by divine grace to understand and
+     appreciate all her perfections!"
+
+The vagueness of this portrait is a part of its beauty:--it is like a
+lovely dream--and probably never had any existence, but in the fancy of
+the Poet.
+
+Cino da Pistoia enjoyed the double reputation of being the greatest
+doctor and teacher of the civil law, and most famous poet of his time.
+He was also remarkable for his personal accomplishments and his love of
+pleasure. There is a sonnet which Dante addressed to Cino, reproaching
+him with being inconstant and volatile in love.[21] Apparently, this was
+after the death of the beautiful Ricciarda dei Selvaggi; or, as he calls
+her, his Selvaggia: she was of a noble family of Pistoia, her father
+having been gonfaliere, and leader of the faction of the Bianchi; and
+she was also celebrated for her poetical talents. It appears from a
+little madrigal of hers, which has been preserved, that though she
+tenderly returned the affection of her lover, it was without the
+knowledge of her haughty family. It is not distinguished for poetic
+power, but has at least the charm of perfect frankness and simplicity,
+and a kind of _abandon_ that is quite bewitching.
+
+
+A MESSER CINO DA PISTOJA.
+
+    Gentil mio sir, lo parlare amoroso
+      Di voi si in allegranza mi mantene,
+      Che dirvel non poria, ben lo sacciate;
+        Perche del mio amor sete giojoso,
+      Di cio grand' allegria e gio' mi vene,
+      Ed altro mai non haggio in volontate,
+      Fuor del vostro piacere;
+      Tutt' hora fate la vostra voglienza:
+      Haggiate previdenza
+      Voi, di celar la nostra desienza.
+
+    "My gentle love and lord! those tender words
+    Of thine so fill my conscious heart with joy,
+    --I cannot speak it--but thou know'st it well;
+    Wherefore do thou rejoice in that deep love
+    I bear thee, knowing that I have no thought
+    But to fulfil thy will and crown thy wish:
+    --Watch thou--and hide our mutual hope from all!"
+
+Meantime the parents of Ricciarda were exiled from Pistoia, by the
+faction of the Neri. They took refuge from their enemies in a little
+fortress among the Appenines, whither Cino followed them, and was
+received as a comforter amid their distresses. Probably the days passed
+in this dreary abode, among the wild and solitary hills, when he
+assisted Ricciarda in her household duties, and in aiding and consoling
+her parents, were among the happiest of his life; but the winter came,
+and with it many privations and many hardships. Their mountain retreat
+was ill calculated to defend them against the fury of the elements:
+Ricciarda drooped under the pressure of misery and want, and her parents
+and her lover watched the gradual extinction of life--saw the rose-hue
+fade from her cheek, and the light from her eye, till she melted from
+their arms into death; then they buried her with tears, in a nook among
+the mountains.
+
+Many years afterwards, when Cino had reached the height of his fame, and
+had been crowned with wealth and honours by his native city, he had
+occasion to cross the Appenines on an embassy, and causing his suite to
+travel by another road, he made a pilgrimage alone to the tomb of his
+lost Selvaggia. This incident gave rise to the most striking of all his
+compositions, which with great pathos and sweetness describes his
+feelings, when he flung himself down on her humble grave, to weep over
+the recollection of their past happiness:
+
+    Io fu' in sull'alto e in sul beato monte,
+      Ove adorai baciando il santo sasso,
+      E caddi in su quella pietra, oime lasso!
+      Ove l' onesta pose la sua fronte;
+    E ch' ella chiuse d' ogni virtu il fonte
+      Quel giorno che di morte acerbo passo
+      Fece la donna dello mio cor,--lasso!--
+      Gia piena tutta d' adornezze conte.
+    Quivi chiamai a questa guisa Amore:
+      "Dolce mio Dio, fa che quinci mi traggia
+      La morte a se, che qui giace il mio cor!"
+    Ma poi che non m'intese il mio signore,
+      Mi disparti, pur chiamando, Selvaggia!
+      L'alpe passai, con voce di dolore.
+
+The circumstance in the last stanza, "I rose up and went on my way, and
+passed the mountain summits, crying aloud 'Selvaggia!' in accents of
+despair," has a strong reality about it, and no doubt _was_ real. Her
+death took place about 1316.
+
+In the history of Italian poetry, Selvaggia is distinguished as the
+"_bel numer' una_,"--"the fair number one"--of the four celebrated
+women of that century--The others were Dante's Beatrice, Petrarch's
+Laura, and Boccaccio's Fiammetta.
+
+Every one who reads and admires Petrarch, will remember his beautiful
+Sonnet on the Death of Cino, beginning "Piangete Donne"
+
+    Perche 'l nostro amoroso messer Cino
+    Novellamente s'e da noi partito.
+
+In the venerable Cathedral at Pistoia, there is an ancient half-effaced
+bas-relief, representing Cino, surrounded by his disciples, to whom he
+is explaining the code of civil law: a little behind stands the figure
+of a female veiled, and in a pensive attitude, which is supposed to
+represent Ricciarda de' Selvaggi.
+
+All these are alluded to by Petrarch in the Trionfo d'Amore.
+
+                    Ecco Selvaggia,
+    Ecco Cin da Pistoja; Guitton d'Arezzo;
+    Ecco i due Guidi che gia furo in prezzo.
+
+The two Guidi are, Guido Guizzinello, and Guido Cavalcanti. Guitone was
+a famous monk, who is said to have invented the present form of the
+sonnet: to him also is attributed the discovery of counterpoint, and the
+present system of musical notation.
+
+Of Conti's mistress nothing is known, but that she had the most
+beautiful hand in the world, whence the volume of poems written by her
+lover in her praise, is entitled, _La Bella Mano_, the fair hand. Conti
+lived some years later than Petrarch. I mention him merely to fill up
+the list of those ancient minor poets of Italy, whose names and loves
+are still celebrated.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[21]
+    Chi s' innamora, siccome voi fate
+    Ed ad ogni piacer si lega e scioglie
+    Mostra ch'amor leggermente il saetti--SON. 44.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+LAURA.
+
+
+There are some who doubt the reality of Petrarch's love, because it is
+expressed in numbers; and others, refining on this doubt, profess even
+to question whether his Laura ever existed, except in the imagination
+and the poetry of her lover. The first objection could only be made by
+the most prosaic of commentators--some true "black-letter dog"[22]--who
+had dustified and mistified his faculties among old parchments. The most
+real and most fervent passion that ever fell under my own knowledge, was
+revealed in verse, and very exquisite verse too, and has inspired many
+an effusion, full of beauty, fancy, and poetry; but it has not,
+therefore, been counted less sincere; and Heaven forbid it should prove
+less lasting than if it had been told in the homeliest prose, and had
+never inspired one beautiful idea or one rapturous verse!
+
+To study Petrarch in his own works, and in his own delightful language;
+to follow him line by line, through all the vicissitudes and
+contradictions of passion; to listen to his self-reproaches, his
+terrors, his regrets, his conflicts; to dwell on his exquisite
+delineations of individual character and peculiar beauty, his simple
+touches of profound pathos and melancholy tenderness:--and then believe
+all to be mere invention,--the coinage of the brain,--a tissue of
+visionary fancies, in which the heart had no share; to confound him with
+the cold metaphysical rhymesters of a later age,--seems to argue not
+only a strange want of judgment, but an extraordinary obtuseness of
+feeling.[23]
+
+The faults of taste of which Petrarch has been accused over and over
+again, by those who seem to have studied him as Voltaire studied
+Shakspeare,--his _concetti_--his fanciful adoration of the laurel, as
+the emblem of Laura--his playing on the words _Laura_, _L'aura_, and
+_Lauro_, his _freezing flames_ and _burning ice_,--I abandon to critics,
+and let them make the best of them, as defects in what were else
+perfection.
+
+These were the fashion of the day: a great genius may outrun his times,
+but not without bearing about him some ineffaceable impressions of the
+manners and character of the age in which he lived. He is too witty--"Il
+a trop d'esprit," to be sincere, say the critics,--"he has a conceit
+left him in his misery,--a miserable conceit;" but we know--at least
+_I_ know--how in the very extremity of passion the soul can mock at
+itself--how the fancy can with a bitter and exaggerated gaiety sport
+with the heart!--These are faults of composition in the writer, and
+admitted to be such; but they prove nothing against the man, the poet,
+or the lover. The reproach of monotony, I confess I never could
+understand. It is rather matter of astonishment, how in a collection of
+nearly four hundred poems, all, with one or two exceptions, turning upon
+the same subject and sentiment, the poet has poured forth such an
+endless and redundant variety both of thought and feeling--how from the
+wide universe, the changeful face of all beautiful nature, the treasures
+of antique learning, and, above all, from his own overflowing heart, he
+has drawn those lovely pictures, allusions, situations, sentiments and
+reflections, which have, indeed, been stolen, borrowed, imitated, worn
+threadbare by succeeding poets, but in him were the fresh and
+spontaneous effusions of profound feeling and luxuriant fancy. Schlegel
+very justly observes, that the impression of monotony may arise from
+our considering at one view, and bound up in one volume, a long series
+of poems, which were written in the course of many years, at different
+times, and on different occasions. Laura herself, he avers, would
+certainly have been _ennuyee_ to death with her own praises, if she had
+been obliged to read over, at one sitting, all the verses which her
+lover composed on her charms; and I agree with him.
+
+It appears to me that the very impression of Petrarch's individual
+character, and the circumstances of his life, on the whole mass of his
+poetry, are evidence of the truth of his attachment, and the reality of
+its object. He was by nature a poet; his love was, therefore, poetical:
+he loved "in numbers, for the numbers came." He was an accomplished
+scholar in a pedantic age,--and his love is, therefore, illustrated by
+such comparisons and turns of thought as were allied to his habitual
+studies. He had a fertile and playful fancy, and his love is adorned by
+all the luxuriance of his imagination. He had been educated for the
+profession of the Civil Law, "per vender parole anzi mensogne,"--to
+sell words and lies, as he disdainfully expressed it,--and his love is
+mixed up with subtile reasonings on his own hapless state. He was a
+philosopher, and it is tinged with the mystic reveries of Platonism, the
+favourite and fashionable philosophy of the age. He was deeply
+religious, and the strain of devotional and moral feeling which mingles
+with that of passion, or of grief,--his fears lest the excess of his
+earthly affections should interfere with his eternal salvation,--his
+continual allusions to his faith, to a future existence, and the
+nothingness and vanity of the world,--are not so many proofs of his
+profaneness, but of his sincerity. He was suspicious, irritable, and
+susceptible; subject to quick transitions of feeling; raised by a word
+to hope--plunged by a glance into despair; just such a finely-toned
+instrument as a woman loves to play on;--and all this we have set forth
+in the contradictions, the self-reproaches, the little daily
+vicissitudes which are events and revolutions in a life of passion; a
+life, which when exhibited in the rich and softening tints of poetry,
+has all the power of strong interest, united to the charm of harmony and
+expression; but in the reality, and in plain prose, cannot be
+contemplated without a painful compassion. "The day may perhaps come,"
+says Petrarch in one of his familiar letters,[24] "when I shall have
+calmness enough to contemplate all the misery of my soul, to examine my
+passion, not however, that I may continue to love her--but that I may
+love thee alone, O my God! But at this day, how many obstacles have I
+yet to surmount, how many efforts have I yet to make! I no longer love
+as I did love, but still I love; I love in spite of myself--in
+lamentations and in tears. I will hate her--No!--I must still love her!"
+Seven years afterwards he writes,--"my love is extreme, but it is
+exclusive and virtuous--virtuous!--no!--this disquietude, these
+suspicions, these transports, this watchfulness, this utter weariness of
+every thing, are not signs of a virtuous love!" What a picture of an
+impassioned and distracted heart!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And who was this Laura, the illustrious object of a passion which has
+filled the wide universe from side to side with her name and fame? What
+was her station, her birth, her lineage? What were her transcendant
+qualities of person, heart, and mind, that she should have swayed, with
+such despotic and distracting power, one of the sovereign spirits of the
+age? Is it not enough that we acknowledge her to have been Petrarch's
+love--as chaste as fair?
+
+    And whether coldness, pride, or virtue, dignify
+    A woman, so she is good, what does it signify?
+
+In the present case, it signifies much:--we are not to be put off with a
+witty or satirical couplet:--the insatiable curiosity which Laura has
+excited from age to age--the volumes which have been written on the
+subject--are a proof of the sincerity of her lover; for nothing but
+truth could ever inspire this lasting and universal interest. But
+without diving into these dry disputations, let us take Laura's portrait
+from Petrarch himself, drawn, it will be said, by the partial hand of a
+poetic lover:--true; but since Laura is interesting to us from the
+charms she possessed in his eyes, it were unfair to seek her portraiture
+elsewhere.
+
+Laura was of high birth and station, though her life was spent in
+retirement and domestic cares;
+
+    In nobil sangue, vita umile e quete.
+
+Her father, Audibert de Noves, was of the _haute noblesse_ of Avignon,
+and died in her infancy, leaving her a dowry of 1000 gold crowns, (about
+10,000 pounds)--a magnificent portion for those times. She was married
+at the age of eighteen to Hugh de Sade, a man of rank equal to her own,
+and of corresponding age, but not distinguished by any advantages either
+of person or mind. The marriage contract is dated in January, 1325, two
+years before her first meeting with Petrarch: and in it, her mother, the
+Lady Ermessende, and brother John de Noves, stipulate to pay the dower
+left by her father; and also to bestow on the bride two magnificent
+dresses for state occasions; one of green, embroidered with violets; the
+other of crimson, trimmed with feathers. In all the portraits of Laura
+now extant, she is represented in one of these two dresses, and they are
+frequently alluded to by Petrarch. He tells us expressly, that when he
+first met her at matins in the Church of St. Claire, she was habited in
+a robe of green, spotted with violets.[25] Mention is also made of a
+coronal of silver, with which she wreathed her hair; of her necklaces
+and ornaments of pearl. Diamonds are not once alluded to, because the
+art of cutting them had not then been invented. From all which, it
+appears that Laura was opulent, and moved in the first class of society.
+It was customary for the women of rank, in those times, to dress with
+extreme simplicity on ordinary occasions, but with the most gorgeous
+splendour when they appeared in public. There are some beautiful
+descriptions of Laura surrounded by her young female companions,
+divested of all her splendid apparel, in a simple white robe and a few
+flowers in her hair; but still pre-eminent over all by her superior
+loveliness. From the frequent allusions to her dress, and Petrarch's
+angry apostrophes to her mirror, because it assisted to heighten charms
+already too destructive,[26] we may infer that Laura was not unmindful
+of the cares of the toilette.
+
+She was in person a fair Madonna-like beauty with soft dark eyes, and a
+profusion of pale golden hair parted on her brow, and falling in rich
+curls over her neck. He dwells on the celestial grace of her figure and
+movements, "l' andar celeste."
+
+    Non era l' andar suo cosa mortale
+    Ma d' angelica forma.
+
+He describes the beauty of her hand in the 166th sonnet,--
+
+    O bella man che mi distringi il core.
+
+And the loveliness of her mouth,--
+
+    La bella bocca angelica.
+
+The general character of her beauty must have been pensive, soft,
+unobtrusive, and even somewhat languid:
+
+    L' angelica sembianza umile e piana--
+    L' atto mansueto, umile e tardo--
+
+the last line is exquisitely characteristic. This extreme softness and
+repose must have been far removed from insipidity; for he dwells also on
+the rare and varying expression of her loveliness, "Leggiadria singolare
+e pellegrina;"--the lightning of her smile, "Il lampeggiar dell'
+angelico riso;"--and the tender magic of her voice, which was felt in
+the inmost heart, "Il cantar che nell' anima si sente." She had a habit
+of veiling her eyes with her hand, and her looks were generally bent on
+the earth, "o per umiltade o per orgoglio." In the portrait of Laura,
+which I saw at the Laurentian Library at Florence, the eyes have this
+characteristic downcast look. Her lover complains also of a veil, which
+she was fond of wearing. Wandering in the country, one summer's day, he
+sees a young peasant-girl washing a veil in the running stream; he
+recognises the very texture which had so often intervened between him
+and the heaven of Laura's beauty, and he trembles as if he had been in
+the presence of Laura herself. This little incident is the subject of
+the first Madrigal.
+
+He describes her dignified humility, "l' umilta superba;"--her beautiful
+silence, "il bel tacere;"--her frequent sighs, "i sospir soavemente
+rotti;"--her sweet disdain and gentle repulses, "dolci sdegni, placide
+repulse;"--the gesture which spoke without the aid of words, "l'atto che
+parla con silenzio." The picture, it must be confessed, is most
+finished, most delicate, most beautiful;--supposing only half to be
+true, it is still beautiful. But far more flattering, and more
+honourable to Laura, is her lover's confession of the influence which
+her charming character possessed over him; for it is certain that we owe
+to Laura's exquisite purity of mind and manners, the polished delicacy
+of the homage addressed to her. Passing over, of course, the
+circumstance of her being a married woman, and therefore not a proper
+object of amorous verse,--there is not in all the poetry she inspired, a
+line or sentiment which angels might not hear and approve. Petrarch
+represents her as expressing neither surprise nor admiration at the
+self-sacrifice of Lucretia, but only wondering that shame and grief had
+not anticipated the dagger of the Roman matron. He describes her
+conversation, "pien d'intelletti dolci ed alti," and her mind ever
+serene, though her countenance was pensive, "in aspetto pensoso, anima
+lieta." He tells us that she had raised him above all low-thoughted
+cares, and purified his heart from all base desires. "I bless the place,
+the time, the hour, when I presumed to lift my eyes upon her,--I say, O
+my soul, thankful shouldst thou be that hast been deemed worthy of such
+high honour--for from her spring those gentle thoughts which shall lead
+thee to aspire to the highest good, and to disdain all that the vulgar
+mind desires."
+
+    I' benedico il loco e 'l tempo e l'ora
+    Che si alti miraron gli occhi mici;
+    E dico: anima, assai ringraziar dei
+    Che fosti a tanto onor degnata allora.
+
+    ....*....*....*....*
+
+    Da lei ti vien l' amoroso pensiero
+    Che, mentre 'l segui all' Sommo ben t'invia
+    Poco prezzando quel ch' ogni uom desia.
+
+Every generous feeling, every noble and elevated sentiment, every desire
+for improvement, he refers to her, and to her only:
+
+                  S' alcun bel frutto
+    Nasce di me, da voi vien prima il seme.
+    Io per me son quasi un terreno asciutto
+    Colto da voi; e 'l pregio e vostro in tutto.
+
+                     CANZONE 8.
+
+He gives us in a single line the very _beau ideal_ of a female
+character, when he tells us that Laura united the highest intellect with
+the purest heart, "In alto intelletto un puro core." He dwells with
+rapture on her angelic modesty, which excited at once his reverence and
+his despair; but he confesses that he still hopes something from the
+pitying tenderness of her disposition.--
+
+    Non e si duro cor, che lagrimando,
+    Pregando, amando, talor non si smova
+    Ne si freddo voler, che non si scalde.
+
+The attachment inspired by such a woman was not likely to be lessened by
+absence, or removed by death itself; and it is certain that the second
+part of the Canzoniere of Petrarch, written after the death of Laura, is
+more beautiful than the first part: in a more impassioned style, a
+higher tone of feeling, with far fewer faults, both of taste and style.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It will be said perhaps that "the picture of such a mind as Petrarch's,
+enslaved and distracted by a dreaming passion, employed even in his
+declining years, in writing and polishing love verses, is a pitiable
+subject of contemplation; that if he had not left us his Canzoniere, he
+would probably have performed some other excelling work of genius, which
+would have crowned him with equal or superior glory; and that if he had
+never been the lover of Laura, he would have been no less that
+master-spirit who gave the leading impulse to the age in which he
+lived, by consecrating his life, his energies, all his splendid talents,
+to the cultivation of philosophy and the fine arts, the extension of
+learning and liberty, and the general improvement of mankind."
+
+I doubt this, and I appeal to Petrarch himself.
+
+I believe there is no version into English of the 48th Canzone. If Lady
+Dacre had executed it--and in the same spirit as the "Chiare, fresche e
+dolce acque," and the "Italia mia," the reader had been spared my
+abortive prose sketch, which will give as just an idea of the original
+as a hasty penciled outline of one of Titian's or Domenichino's
+masterpieces would give us of all the magic colouring and effect of
+their glorious and half-breathing creations.
+
+In this Canzone, Petrarch, in a high strain of poetic imagery, which
+takes nothing from the truth or pathos of the sentiment, allegorises his
+own situation and feelings: he represents himself as citing the Lord of
+Love, "Suo empio e dolce Signore," before the throne of Reason, and
+accusing him as the cause of all his sufferings, sorrows, errors, and
+misspent time. "Through _him_ (Love) I have endured, even from the
+moment I was first beguiled into his power, such various and such
+exquisite pain, that my patience has at length been exhausted, and I
+have abhorred my existence. I have not only forsaken the path of
+ambition and useful exertion, but even of pleasure and of happiness: I,
+who was born, if I do not deceive myself, for far higher purposes than
+to be a mere amorous slave! Through _him_ I have been careless of my
+duty to Heaven,--negligent of myself:--for the sake of one woman I
+forgot all else!--me miserable! What have availed me all the high and
+precious gifts of Heaven, the talents, the genius which raised me above
+other men? My hairs are changed to grey, but still my heart changeth
+not. Hath he not sent me wandering over the earth in search of repose?
+hath he not driven me from city to city, and through forests, and woods,
+and wild solitudes?[27] hath he not deprived me of peace, and of that
+sleep which no herbs nor chaunted spells have power to restore? Through
+him, I have become a bye-word in the world, which I have filled with my
+lamentations, till by their repetition I have wearied myself, and
+perhaps all others."
+
+To this long tirade, Love with indignation replies: "Hearest thou the
+falsehood of this ungrateful man? This is he who in his youth devoted
+himself to the despicable traffic of words and lies, and now he blushes
+not to reproach me with having raised him from obscurity, to know the
+delights of an honourable and virtuous life. I gave him power to attain
+a height of fame and virtue to which of himself he had never dared to
+aspire. If he has obtained a name among men, to me he owes it. Let him
+remember the great heroes and poets of antiquity, whose evil stars
+condemned them to lavish their love upon unworthy objects, whose
+mistresses were courtezans and slaves; while for him, I chose from the
+whole world one lovely woman, so gifted by Heaven with all female
+excellence, that her likeness is not to be found beneath the moon,--one
+whose melodious voice and gentle accents had power to banish from his
+heart every vain, and dark, and vicious thought. These were the wrongs
+of which he complains: such is my reward for all I have done for
+him,--ungrateful man! Upon my wings hath he soared upwards, till his
+name is placed among the greatest of the sons of song, and fair ladies
+and gentle knights listen with delight to his strains:--had it not been
+for me, what had he become before now? Perhaps a vain flatterer, seeking
+preferment in a Court, confounded among the herd of vulgar men! I have
+so chastened, so purified his heart through the heavenly image impressed
+upon it, that even in his youth, and in the age of the passions, I
+preserved him pure in thought and in action;[28] whatever of good or
+great ever stirred within his breast, he derives from her and from me.
+From the contemplation of virtue, sweetness, and beauty, in the
+gracious countenance of her he loved, I led him upwards to the adoration
+of the first Great Cause, the fountain of all that is beautiful and
+excellent;--hath he not himself confessed it? And this fair creature,
+whom I gave him to be the honour, and delight, and prop of his frail
+life"--
+
+Here the sense is suddenly broken off in the middle of a line. Petrarch
+utters a cry of horror, and exclaims--"Yes, you gave her to me, but you
+have also taken her from me!"
+
+Love replies with sweet austerity--"Not I--but HE--the eternal One--who
+hath willed it so!"
+
+After this, it will be allowed, I think, that it is to Laura we owe
+Petrarch; and that if the recompense she bestowed on him was not exactly
+that which he sought,--yet in fame, in greatness, in virtue, and in
+happiness, she well and richly repaid the adoration he lavished at her
+feet, and the glorious wreath of song with which he has circled her
+brows!
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[22] See Pursuits of Literature.
+
+[23] In a private letter of Petrarch to the Bishop of Lombes, occurs the
+following passage--(the Bishop, it appears, had rallied him on the
+subject of his attachment.) "Would to God that my Laura were indeed but
+an imaginary person, and my passion for her but sport!--Alas! it is
+rather a madness!--hard would it have been, and painful, to feign so
+long a time--and what extravagance to play such a farce in the world!
+No! we may counterfeit the action and voice of a sick man, but not the
+paleness and wasted looks of the sufferer; and how often have you
+witnessed both in me!"--SADE, vol. i. p. 281.
+
+[24] Quoted by Foscolo.
+
+[25] Canz. xv. Son. 10.
+
+[26] See Son. 37, 38, &c.
+
+[27] Foscolo remarks the restless spirit which all his life drove
+Petrarch, like a perturbed spirit, from one residence to another.
+
+[28] Here Petrarch seems to have forgotten himself; he was not _always_
+immaculate.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+LAURA AND PETRARCH CONTINUED.
+
+
+Much power of lively ridicule, much coarse wit,--principally French
+wit,--has been expended on the subject of Laura's virtue; by those, I
+presume, who under similar circumstances would have found such virtue
+"too painful an endeavour."[29] Much depraved ingenuity has been
+exerted to twist certain lines and passages in the Canzoniere into a
+sense which shall blot with frailty the memory of this beautiful and
+far-famed being: once believe these interpretations, and all the
+peculiar and graceful charm which now hangs round her intercourse with
+Petrarch vanishes,--the reverential delicacy of the poet's homage
+becomes a mockery, and all his exalted praises of her unequalled virtue,
+and her invincible chastity, are turned to satire, and insult our moral
+feeling.
+
+But the question, I believe, is finally set at rest, and it were idle
+to war with epigrams. All the evidence that has been collected, external
+and internal, prose and poetry, critical and traditional, tends to
+prove, first, that Laura preserved her virtue to the last; and,
+secondly, that she did not preserve it unassailed; that Petrarch, true
+to his sex,--a very man, (as Laura has been called a _very woman_,) used
+at first every art, every effort, every advantage, which his diversified
+accomplishments of mind and person lent him, to destroy the very virtue
+he adored. He only _hints_ this in his poetry, just sufficiently to
+enhance the glory which he has thrown round his divinity; but he speaks
+more plainly in prose.
+
+"Untouched by my prayers, unvanquished by my arguments, unmoved by my
+flattery, she remained faithful to her sex's honour; she resisted her
+own young heart, and mine, and a thousand, thousand, thousand things,
+which must have conquered any other. She remained unshaken. A woman
+taught me the duty of a man! to persuade me to keep the path of virtue,
+her conduct was at once an example and a reproach; and when she beheld
+me break through all bounds, and rush blindly to the precipice, she had
+the courage to abandon me, rather than follow me."[30]
+
+But whether, in this long conflict, Laura preserved her heart untouched,
+as well as her virtue immaculate; whether she shared the love she
+inspired; or whether she escaped from the captivating assiduities and
+intoxicating homage of her lover, "_fancy-free_;"--whether coldness, or
+prudence, or pride, or virtue, or the mere heartless love of admiration,
+or a mixture of all together, dictated her conduct, is at least as well
+worth inquiry, as the exact colour of her eyes, or the form of her nose,
+upon which we have pages of grave discussion. She might have been
+_coquette par instinct_, if not _par calcul_; she might have felt, with
+feminine _tacte_, that to preserve her influence over Petrarch, it was
+necessary to preserve his respect. She was evidently proud of her
+conquest: she had else been more or less than woman; and at every
+hazard, but that of self-respect, she was resolved to retain him. If
+Petrarch absented himself for a few days, he was generally better
+treated on his return.[31] If he avoided her, then her eye followed him
+with a softer expression. When he looked pale from sickness of heart and
+agitation of spirits, Laura would address him with a few words of
+pitying tenderness. He thanks her in those exquisite lines, which seem
+to glow with all the renovation of hope,
+
+      Volgendo gli occhi al mio novo colore
+    Che fa di morte rimembrar le gente
+    Pieta vi mosse, onde benignamente
+    Salutando teneste in vita il core.
+
+      La frale vita ch'ancor meco alberga,
+    Fu de' begli occhi vostri aperto dono,
+    E della voce angelica soave![32]
+
+He presumes upon this benignity, and is again dashed back with frowns.
+He flies to solitude,--solitude!--Never let the proud and torn heart,
+wrung with the sense of injury, and sick with unrequited passion, seek
+that worst resource against pain, for there grief grows by contemplation
+of itself, and every feeling is sharpened by collision. Petrarch sought
+to "mitigate the fever of his heart" amid the shades of Vaucluse, a spot
+so gloomy and so solitary, that his very servants forsook him; and
+Vaucluse, its fountains, its forests, and its hanging cliffs, reflected
+only the image of Laura.
+
+      L'acque parlan d'amore, e l'aura, e i rami
+    E gli augeletti, e i pesci e i fiori e l'erba;
+      Tutti insieme pregando ch' io sempr'ami![33]
+
+He is driven again to her feet by his own insupportable thoughts--and in
+terror of himself;--
+
+    Tal paura ho di ritrovarmi solo!
+
+He endeavours to maintain in her presence that self-constraint she had
+enjoined. He assumes a cold and calm deportment, and Laura, as she
+passes him, whispers in a tone of gentle reproach, "Petrarch! are you so
+soon weary of loving me?" (ten or eleven years of adoration were, in
+truth, nothing--_to signify_!) At length, he resolved to leave Laura and
+Avignon for ever; and instead of plunging into solitude, to seek the
+wiser resource of travel and society. He announced this intention to
+Laura, and bade her a long farewell; either through surprise, or grief,
+or the fear of losing her glorious captive, she turned exceedingly pale,
+a cloud overspread her beautiful countenance, and she fixed her eyes on
+the ground. This was to her lover an intoxicating moment; in the
+exultation of sudden delight, he interpreted these symptoms of
+relenting, this "vago impallidir," too favourably to himself. "She bent
+those gentle eyes upon the earth, which in their sweet silence said,--to
+me at least they seemed to say,--'who takes my faithful friend so far
+from me?'"
+
+      Chinava a terra il bel guardo gentile,
+    E tacendo dicea, com' a me parve--
+      "Chi m'allontana il mio fedele amico?"
+
+On his return to Avignon, a few months afterwards, Laura received him
+with evident pleasure; but he is not, therefore, more _avance_; all this
+was probably the refined coquetterie of a woman of calm passions; but
+not heartless, not really indifferent to the devotion she inspired, nor
+ungrateful for it.
+
+Petrarch has himself left us a most minute and interesting description
+of the whole course of Laura's conduct towards him, which by a beautiful
+figure of poetry he has placed in her own mouth. The passage occurs in
+the TRIONFO DI MORTE, beginning, "La notte che segui l'orribil caso."
+
+The apparition of Laura descending on the morning dew, bright as the
+opening dawn, and crowned with Oriental gems,
+
+    Di gemme orientali incoronata,
+
+appears before her lover, and addresses him with compassionate
+tenderness. After a short dialogue, full of poetic beauty and noble
+thoughts,[34] Petrarch conjures her, in the name of heaven and of truth,
+to tell him whether the pity she sometimes expressed for him was allied
+to love? for that the sweetness she mingled with her disdain and
+reserve--the soft looks with which she tempered her anger, had left him
+for long years in doubt of her real sentiments, still doating, still
+suspecting, still hoping without end:
+
+    Creovvi amor pensier mai nella testa,
+    D' aver pieta del mio lungo martire
+    Non lasciando vostr' alta impresa onesta?
+
+    Che vostri dolci sdegni e le dolc' ire--
+    Le dolci paci ne' begli occhi scritte--
+    Tenner molt' anni in dubbio il mio desire.
+
+She replies evasively, with a smile and a sigh, that her heart was ever
+with him, but that to preserve her own fair fame, and the virtue of
+both, it was necessary to assume the guise of severity and disdain. She
+describes the arts with which she kept alive his passion, now checking
+his presumption with the most frigid reserve, and when she saw him
+drooping, as a man ready to die, "all fancy-sick and pale of cheer,"
+gently restoring him with soft looks and kind words:
+
+    "Salvando la tua vita e'l nostro onore."
+
+She confesses the delight she felt in being beloved, and the pride she
+took in being sung by so great a poet. She reminds him of one particular
+occasion, when seated by her side, and they were left alone, he sang to
+his lute a song composed to her praise, beginning, "Dir piu non osa il
+nostro amore;" and she asks him whether he did not perceive that the
+veil had then nearly fallen from her heart?[35]
+
+She laments, in some exquisite lines, that she had not the happiness to
+be born in Italy, the native country of her lover, and yet allows that
+the land must needs be fair in which she first won his affection.
+
+    Duolmi ancor veramente, ch'io non nacqui
+    Almen piu presso al tuo fiorito nido!--
+    Ma assai fu bel paeese ov'io ti piacqui.
+
+In another passage we have a sentiment evidently taken from nature, and
+exquisitely graceful and feminine. "You," says Laura, "proclaimed to all
+men the passion you felt for me: you called aloud for pity: you kept not
+the tender secret for me alone, but took a pride and a pleasure in
+publishing it forth to the world; thus constraining me, by all a woman's
+fear and modesty, to be silent."--"But not less is the pain because we
+conceal it in the depths of the heart, nor the greater because we lament
+aloud: fiction and poetry can add nothing to truth, nor yet take from
+it."
+
+      Tu eri di merce chiamar gia roco
+    Quand'io tacea; perche vergogna e tema
+    Facean molto desir, parer si poco;
+    Non e minor il duol perch' altri 'l prema,
+    Ne maggior per andarsi lamentando:
+    Per fizion non cresce il ver, ne scema.
+
+Petrarch, then all trembling and in tears, exclaims, "that could he but
+believe he had been dear to her eyes as to her heart, he were
+sufficiently recompensed for all his sufferings;" and she replies, "that
+will I never reveal!" ('_quello mi taccio._') By this coquettish and
+characteristic answer, we are still left in the dark. Such was the
+sacred respect in which Petrarch held her he so loved, that though he
+evidently wishes to believe--perhaps _did_ believe, that he had touched
+her heart, he would not presume to insinuate what Laura had never
+avowed. The whole scene, though less polished in the versification than
+some of his sonnets, is written throughout with all the flow and fervour
+of real feeling. It received the poet's last corrections twenty-six
+years after Laura's death, and but a few weeks previous to his own.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When at Milan, I was taken, as a matter of course, to visit the
+Ambrosian library. At the time I was ill in health, dejected and
+indifferent; and I only remember being led in passive resignation from
+room to room, and called upon to admire a vast variety of objects, at
+the moment when I was pining for rest; when to look, think, speak, or
+move, was pain,--when to sit motionless and gaze out upon the sunshine,
+seemed to me the only supreme blessedness. In such moments as these, we
+can have sympathies with nature, but not with old books and antiquities.
+I have a most confused recollection both of the locality and the
+contents of this famous collection; but there were two objects which
+roused me from this sullen stupor, and indelibly impressed my
+imagination and my memory; and one of these was the celebrated copy of
+Virgil, which had been the favourite companion and constant study of
+Petrarch, containing that memorandum of the death of Laura, in his own
+handwriting, which, after much expenditure of paper, and argument, and
+critical abuse, is at length admitted to be genuine. I knew little of
+the controversy this famous inscription had occasioned in Italy,--though
+I was aware that its authenticity had been disputed: but as a homely
+proverb saith, _seeing is believing_; to look upon the handwriting with
+my own eyes, would have made assurance double sure, if in that moment I
+needed such assurance. I do not remember reasoning or doubting on the
+subject;--but gushing up like the waters of an intermitting fountain,
+there was a sudden flow of feeling and memory came over my heart:--I
+stood for some moments silently contemplating the name of LAURA, in the
+pale, half-effaced characters traced by the hand of her lover; that name
+with which his genius and his love have filled the earth: confused
+thoughts of the mingling of vanity and glory,--of the "poco polvere che
+nulla sente," and the immortality of deified beauty, were crowded in my
+mind. When all were gone, I turned back, and gave the guide a small
+gratuity to be allowed to do homage to the name of Laura, by pressing my
+lips upon it. The reader smiles at this sentimental enthusiasm; so would
+I, if time had not taught me to respect, as well as regret, what it has
+taken from me, and never can restore.
+
+The memorandum has often been quoted; but this account of the love of
+Petrarch would not be complete were it omitted here. It runs literally
+thus:--
+
+"Laura, illustrious by her own virtues, and long celebrated by my
+verses, I beheld for the first time, in my early youth, on the 6th of
+April, 1327, about the first hour of the day, in the church of Saint
+Claire in Avignon: and in the same city, in the same month of April, the
+same day and hour, in the year 1348, this light of my life was withdrawn
+from the world while I was at Verona, ignorant, alas! of what had
+befallen me. The terrible intelligence was conveyed in a letter from
+Louis, and reached me at Parma the 19th of May, early in the morning.
+
+"Her chaste and beautiful remains were deposited the same day after
+vespers, in the Church of the Fratri Minori (Cordeliers). Her spirit, as
+Seneca said of Scipio Africanus,[36] has returned, doubtless, to that
+heaven whence it came.
+
+"To preserve the memory of this afflicting loss, it is with a bitter
+pleasure I record it here, in this book which is ever before my eyes,
+that nothing in this world may hereafter delight me: and that the chief
+tie which bound me to life being broken, I may, by frequently looking on
+these words, and thinking on this transitory existence, be prepared to
+quit this earthly Babylon, which, with the help of the divine grace, and
+the constant and manly recollection of those fruitless desires, and vain
+hopes, and sad vicissitudes which have so long agitated me, will be an
+easy task."
+
+Laura died of the plague, which then desolated Avignon, and terminated
+the life of the sufferer on the third day. The moment she was seized
+with the fatal symptoms, she dictated her will; and notwithstanding the
+pestilential nature of her disorder, she was surrounded to the last by
+her numerous relations and friends, who braved death rather than forsake
+her.
+
+Her tomb was discovered and opened in 1533, in the presence of Francis
+the First, whose celebrated stanzas on the occasion are well known.
+
+Of the fame, which even in her lifetime, the love and poetical adoration
+of Petrarch had thrown round his Laura, a curious instance is given
+which will characterise the manners of the age. When Charles of
+Luxemburgh (afterwards Emperor) was at Avignon, a grand fete was given,
+in his honour, at which all the noblesse were present. He desired that
+Petrarch's Laura should be pointed out to him; and when she was
+introduced, he made a sign with his hand that the other ladies present
+should fall back; then going up to Laura, and for a moment contemplating
+her with interest, he kissed her respectfully on the forehead and on the
+eyelids. Petrarch alludes to this incident in the 201st sonnet, the last
+line of which shows that this royal salutation was considered singular.
+
+    "M'empia d'invidia l'atto dolce e strano."
+
+Petrarch survived her twenty-six years, dying in 1374. He was found
+lifeless one morning in his study, his hand resting on a book.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The inferences I draw from this rapid sketch are, first, that Laura was
+virtuous, but not insensible;--for had she been facile, she would not
+have preserved her lover's respect; had she been a heartless trifler,
+she could not have retained his love, nor deserved his undying regrets:
+and secondly, that if Petrarch had not attached himself fervently to
+this beautiful and pure-hearted woman, he would have employed his
+splendid talents like other men of his time. He might then have left us
+theological treatises and Latin epics, which the worms would have eaten;
+he might have risen high in the church or state; have become a bold,
+intriguing priest; a politic archbishop,--a cardinal,--a pope;--most
+worthless and empty titles all, compared with that by which he has
+descended to us, as Petrarch, the poet and the lover of Laura![37]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[29] Madame Deshoulieres speaks "avec connaissance de fait," and even
+points out the very spot in which Laura, "de l'amoureux Petrarque
+adoucit le martyre."--Another French lady, who piqued herself on being a
+descendant of the family of Laura, was extremely affronted and
+scandalised when the Chevalier Ramsay asserted that Petrarch's passion
+was purely poetical and platonic, and regarded it heresy to suppose that
+Laura could have been "_ungrateful_,"--such was her idea of feminine
+_gratitude_!--(Spence's Anecdotes.) Then comes another French woman,
+with the most anti-poetical soul that God ever placed within the form of
+a woman--"Le fade personage que votre Petrarque! que sa Laure etait
+sotte et precieuse! que la Cour d'Amour etait fastidieuse!" &c. exclaims
+the acute, amusing, profligate, heartless Madame du Deffand. It must be
+allowed that Petrarch and Laura would have been extremely _desplaces_ in
+the Court of the Regent,--the only _Court of Love_ with which Madame du
+Deffand was acquainted, and which assuredly was not _fastidieuse_.
+
+[30] From the Dialogues with St. Augustin, as quoted in the "Pieces
+Justificatives," and by Ginguene (Hist. Litt. vol. iii. notes.) These
+imaginary dialogues are a series of Confessions not intended for
+publication by Petrarch, but now printed with his prose works.
+
+[31] Sonnet 39.
+
+[32] Ballata 5.
+
+[33] Petrarch withdrew to Vaucluse in 1337, and spent three years in
+entire solitude. He commenced his journey to Rome in 1341, about
+fourteen years after his first interview with Laura.
+
+[34] Petrarch asks her whether it was "pain to die?" she replies in
+those fine lines which have been quoted a thousand times:
+
+    La Morte e fin d' una prigion oscura
+    Agli animi gentili; agli altri e noia,
+    Ch' hanno posto nel fango ogni lor cura.
+
+[35]
+    Ma non si ruppe almen ogni vel quando
+    Sola i tuoi detti, te presente accolsi
+    "_Dir piu non osa il nostro amor_," cantando.
+
+(The song here alluded to is not preserved in Petrarch's works, and the
+expression "_il nostro amore_," is very remarkable.)
+
+[36] This sounds at first pedantic; but it must be remembered that at
+this very time Petrarch was studying Seneca, and writing a Latin poem on
+the history of Scipio: thus the ideas were fresh in his mind.
+
+[37] The hypothesis I have assumed relative to Laura's character, her
+married state, and the authenticity of the MS. note in the Virgil, have
+not been lightly adopted, but from deep conviction and patient
+examination: but this is not the place to set arguments and authorities
+in array--Ginguene and Gibbon against Lord Byron and Fraser Tytler. I am
+surprised at the ground Lord Byron has taken on the question. As for his
+characteristic sneer on the assertion of M. de Bastie, who had said
+truly and beautifully--"qu'il n'y a que la vertu seule qui soit capable
+de faire des impressions que la mort n'efface pas," I disdain, in my
+feminine character, to reply to it; I will therefore borrow the
+eloquence of a more powerful pen:--"The love of a man like Petrarch,
+would have been less in character, if it had been less ideal. For the
+purposes of inspiration, a single interview was quite sufficient. The
+smile which sank into his heart the first time he ever beheld Laura,
+played round her lips ever after: the look with which her eyes first met
+his, never passed away. The image of his mistress still haunted his
+mind, and was recalled by every object in nature. Even death could not
+dissolve the fine illusion; for that which exists in the imagination is
+alone imperishable. As our feelings become more ideal, the impression of
+the moment indeed becomes less violent; but the effect is more general
+and permanent. The blow is felt only by reflection; it is the rebound
+that is fatal. We are not here standing up for this kind of Platonic
+attachment, but only endeavouring to explain the way in which the
+passions very commonly operate in minds accustomed to draw their
+strongest interests from constant contemplation."--_Edinburgh Review._
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+ON THE LOVE OF DANTE FOR BEATRICE PORTINARI.
+
+
+Had I taken chronology into due consideration, Dante ought to have
+preceded Petrarch, having been born some forty years before him,--but I
+forgot it. "Truth," says Wordsworth, "has her pleasure-grounds,
+
+                  Her haunts of ease
+    And easy contemplation;--gay parterres
+    And labyrinthine walks; her sunny glades
+    And shady groves for recreation framed."
+
+And such a haunted pleasure-ground of beautiful recollections, would I
+wish my subject to be to myself and to my readers; where we shall be
+priviledged to wander at will; to pause or turn back; to deviate to
+this side or to that, as memory may prompt, or imagination lead, or
+illustration require.
+
+Dante and his Beatrice are best exhibited in contrast to Petrarch and
+Laura. Petrarch was in his youth an amiable and accomplished courtier,
+whose ambition was to cultivate the arts, and please the fair. Dante
+early plunged into the factions which distracted his native city, was of
+a stern commanding temper, mingling study with action. Petrarch loved
+with all the vivacity of his temper; he took a pleasure in publishing,
+in exaggerating, in embellishing his passion in the eyes of the world.
+Dante, capable of strong and enthusiastic tenderness, and early
+concentrating all the affections of his heart on one object, sought no
+sympathy; and solemnly tells us of himself,--in contradistinction to
+those poets of his time who wrote of love from fashion or fancy, not
+from feeling,--that he wrote as love inspired, and as his heart
+dictated.
+
+          "Io mi son un che, quando
+    Amore spira, noto, ed in quel modo
+    Ch'ei detta dentro, vo significando."
+
+                        PURGATORIO, c. 24.
+
+A coquette would have triumphed in such a captive as Petrarch; and in
+truth, Laura seems to have "sounded him from the top to the bottom of
+his compass:"--a tender and impassioned woman would repose on such a
+heart as Dante's, even as his Beatrice did. Petrarch had a gay and
+captivating exterior; his complexion was fair, with sparkling blue eyes
+and a ready smile. He is very amusing on the subject of his own
+coxcombry, and tells us how cautiously he used to turn the corner of a
+street, lest the wind should disorder the elaborate curls of his fine
+hair! Dante, too, was in his youth eminently handsome, but in a style of
+beauty which was characteristic of his mind: his eyes, were large and
+intensely black, his nose aquiline, his complexion of a dark olive, his
+hair and beard very much curled, his step slow and measured, and the
+habitual expression of his countenance grave, with a tinge of melancholy
+abstraction. When Petrarch walked along the streets of Avignon, the
+women smiled, and said, "there goes the lover of Laura!" The impression
+which Dante left on those who beheld him, was far different. In allusion
+to his own personal appearance, he used to relate an incident that once
+occurred to him. When years of persecution and exile had added to the
+natural sternness of his countenance, the deep lines left by grief, and
+the brooding spirit of vengeance, he happened to be at Verona, where
+since the publication of the Inferno, he was well known. Passing one day
+by a portico, where several women were seated, one of them whispered,
+with a look of awe,--"Do you see that man? that is he who goes down to
+hell whenever he pleases, and brings us back tidings of the sinners
+below!" "Ay, indeed!" replied her companion,--"very likely; see how his
+face is scarred with fire and brimstone, and blackened with smoke, and
+how his hair and beard have been singed and curled in the flames!"
+
+Dante had not, however, this forbidding appearance when he won the young
+heart of Beatrice Portinari. They first met at a banquet given by her
+father, Folco de' Portinari, when Dante was only nine years old, and
+Beatrice a year younger. His childish attachment, as he tells us
+himself, commenced from that hour; it became a passion, which increased
+with his years, and did not perish even with its object.
+
+Beatrice has not fared better at the hands of commentators than Laura.
+Laura, with her golden hair scattered to the winds, "i capei d'oro al
+aura sporsi," her soft smiles, and her angel-like deportment, was to be
+Repentance; and the more majestic Beatrice, in whose eyes dwelt love,
+
+    E spiriti d'amore infiammati,
+
+was sublimated into _Theology_: with how much reason we shall examine.
+
+In one of his canzoni, called il Ritratto, (the Portrait) Dante has left
+us a most minute and finished picture of his Beatrice, "which," says Mr.
+Carey, "might well supply a painter with a far more exalted idea of
+female beauty, than he could form to himself from the celebrated Ode of
+Anacreon, on a similar subject." From this canzone and some lines
+scattered through his sonnets, I shall sketch the person and character
+of Beatrice. She was not in form like the slender, fragile-looking
+Laura, but on a larger scale of loveliness, tall and of a commanding
+figure;[38]--graceful in her gait as a peacock, upright as a crane,
+
+    Soava a guisa va di un bel pavone,
+    Diritta sopra se, come una grua.
+
+Her hair was fair and curling,
+
+    "Capegli crespi e biondi,"
+
+but not _golden_,--an epithet I do not find once applied to it: she had
+an ample forehead, "spaciosa fronte," a mouth that when it smiled
+surpassed all things in sweetness; so that her Poet would give the
+universe to hear it pronounce a kind "yes."
+
+    Mira che quando ride
+    Passa ben di dolcezza ogni altra cosa.
+    Cosi di quella bocca il pensier mio
+    Mi sprona, perche io
+    Non ho nel mondo cosa che non desse
+    A tal ch'un si, con buon voler dicesse.
+
+Her neck was white and slender, springing gracefully from the bust--
+
+    Poi guarda la sua svelta e bianca gola
+    Commessa ben dalle spalle e dal petto.
+
+A small, round, dimpled chin,
+
+    Mento tondo, fesso e piccioletto:
+
+and thereupon the Poet breaks out into a rapture, any thing but
+theological,
+
+                      Il bel diletto
+    Aver quel collo fra le braccia stretto
+    E far in quella gola un picciol segno!
+
+Her arms were beautiful and round; her hand soft, white, and polished;
+
+    La bianca mano morbida e pulita:
+
+her fingers slender, and decorated with jewelled rings as became her
+birth; fair she was as a pearl;
+
+    Con un color angelica di perla:
+
+graceful and lovely to look upon, but disdainful where it was becoming:
+
+    Graziosa a vederla,
+    E disdegnosa dove si conviene.
+
+And as a corollary to these traits, I will quote the eleventh Sonnet as
+a more general picture of female loveliness, heightened by some tender
+touches of mental and moral beauty, such as never seem to have occurred
+to the debased imaginations of the classic poets:
+
+      Negli occhi porta la mia Donna Amore;
+    Perche si fa gentil ciocch' ella mira:
+    Ov' ella passa, ogni uom ver lei si gira;
+    E cui saluta, fa tremar lo core,
+      Sicche bassando 'l viso tutto smuore,
+    Ed ogni suo difetto allor sospira;
+    Fugge dinanzi a lei superbia ed ira.
+    Ajutatemi, donne, a farle onore!
+      Ogni dolcezza, ogni pensiero umile
+    Nasce nel core a chi parlar la sente;
+    Onde e laudato chi prima la vide.
+      Quel ch' ella par, quando un poco sorride
+    No si puo dicer, ne tenera mente;
+    Si e nuovo miracolo e gentile.
+
+
+TRANSLATION.
+
+     "Love is throned in the eyes of my Beatrice! they ennoble
+     every thing she looks upon! As she passes, men turn and
+     gaze; and whomsoever she salutes, his heart trembles within
+     him; he bows his head, the colour forsakes his cheek, and he
+     sighs for his own unworthiness. Pride and anger fly before
+     her! Assist me, ladies, to do her honour! All sweet thoughts
+     of humble love and good-will spring in the hearts of those
+     who hear her speak, so that it is a blessedness first to
+     behold her, and when she faintly and softly smiles--ah! then
+     it passes all fancy, all expression, so wondrous is the
+     miracle, and so gracious!"
+
+The love of Dante for his Beatrice partook of the purity, tenderness,
+and elevated character of her who inspired it, and was also stamped with
+that stern and melancholy abstraction, that disposition to mysticism,
+which were such strong features in the character of her lover. He does
+not break out into fond and effeminate complaints, he does not sigh to
+the winds, nor swell the fountain with his tears; his love does not,
+like Petrarch's, alternately freeze and burn him, nor is it "un dolce
+amaro," "a bitter sweet," with which his fancy can sport in good set
+terms. No; it shakes his whole being like an earthquake; it beats in
+every pulse and artery; it has dwelt in his heart till it has become a
+part of his life, or rather his life itself.[39] Though we are not told
+so expressly, it is impossible to doubt, on a consideration of all those
+passages and poems which relate to Beatrice, that his love was approved
+and returned, and that his character was understood and appreciated by a
+woman too generous, too noble-minded, to make him the sport of her
+vanity. He complains, indeed, _poetically_, of her disdain, for which he
+excuses himself in another poem: "We know that the heavens shine on in
+eternal serenity, and that it is only our imperfect vision, and the
+rising vapours of the earth, that make the ever-beaming stars appear
+clouded at times to our eye." He expresses no fear of a rival in her
+affections; but the native jealousy as well as delicacy of his temper
+appears in those passages in which he addresses the eulogium of Beatrice
+to the Florentine ladies and her young companions.[40] Those of his own
+sex, as he assures us, were not worthy to listen to her praises; or must
+perforce have become enamoured of this picture of female excellence, the
+fear of which made a coward of him--
+
+    Ma trattero del suo stato gentile
+    Donne e donzelle amorose, con vui;
+    Che non e cosa da parlarne altrui.
+
+Among the young companions of Beatrice, Dante particularly distinguishes
+one, who appears to have been her chosen friend, and who, on account of
+her singular and blooming beauty, was called, at Florence, Primavera,
+(the Spring.) Her real name was Giovanna. Dante frequently names them
+together, and in particular in that exquisitely fanciful sonnet to his
+friend Guido Cavalcanti; where he addresses them by those familiar and
+endearing diminutives, so peculiarly Italian--
+
+    E Monna Vanna e Monna Bice poi.[41]
+
+It appears from the 7th and 8th Sonnets of the Vita Nuova, that in the
+early part of their intercourse, Beatrice, indulging her girlish
+vivacity, smiled to see her lover utterly discountenanced in her
+presence, and pointed out her triumph to her companions. This offence
+seems to have deeply affected the proud, susceptible mind of Dante: it
+was under the influence of some such morose feeling, probably on this
+very occasion, that his dark passions burst forth in the bitter lines
+beginning,
+
+    Io maledico il di ch' io vidi imprima
+    La luce de' vostri occhi traditori.
+
+"I curse the day in which I first beheld the splendour of those traitor
+eyes," &c. This angry sonnet forms a fine characteristic contrast with
+that eloquent and impassioned effusion of Petrarch, in which he
+multiplies blessings on the day, the hour, the minute, the season, and
+the spot, in which he first beheld Laura--
+
+    Benedetto sia l' giorno, e 'l mese, e l' anno, &c.
+
+This fit of indignation was, however, short-lived. Every tender emotion
+of Dante's feeling heart seems to have been called forth when Beatrice
+lost her excellent father. Folco Portinari died in 1289; and the
+description we have of the inconsolable grief of Beatrice and the
+sympathy of her young companions,--so poetically, so delicately touched
+by her lover,--impress us with a high idea both of her filial tenderness
+and the general amiability of her disposition, which rendered her thus
+beloved. In the 12th and 13th Sonnets, we have, perhaps, one of the most
+beautiful groups ever presented in poetry. Dante meets a company of
+young Florentine ladies, who were returning from paying Beatrice a visit
+of condolence on the death of her father. Their altered and dejected
+looks, their downcast eyes, and cheeks "colourless as marble," make his
+heart tremble within him; he asks after Beatrice--"_our_ gentle lady,"
+as he tenderly expresses it: the young girls raise their downcast eyes,
+and regard him with surprise. "Art thou he," they exclaim, "who hast so
+often sung to us the praises of our Beatrice? the voice, indeed, is his;
+but, oh! how changed the aspect! Thou weepest!--why shouldest _thou_
+weep?--thou hast not seen _her_ tears;--leave _us_ to weep and return to
+our home, refusing comfort; for we, indeed, have heard her speak, and
+seen her dissolved in grief; so changed is her lovely face by sorrow,
+that to look upon her is enough to make one die at her feet for
+pity."[42]
+
+It should seem that the extreme affliction of Beatrice for the loss of
+her father, acting on a delicate constitution, hastened her own end, for
+she died within a few months afterwards, in her 24th year. In the "Vita
+Nuova" there is a fragment of a canzone, which breaks off at the end of
+the first strophe; and annexed to it is the following affecting note,
+originally in the handwriting of Dante.
+
+"I was engaged in the composition of this Canzone, and had completed
+only the above stanza, when it pleased the God of justice to call unto
+himself this gentlest of human beings; that she might be glorified
+under the auspices of that blessed Queen, the Virgin Maria, whose name
+was ever held in especial reverence by my sainted Beatrice."
+
+Boccaccio, who knew Dante personally, tells us, that on the death of
+Beatrice, he was so changed by affliction that his best friends could
+scarcely recognise him. He scarcely eat or slept; he would not speak; he
+neglected his person, until he became "una cosa selvatica a vedere," _a
+savage thing to the eye_: to borrow his own strong expression, he seems
+to have been "grief-stung to madness." To the first Canzone, written
+after the death of Beatrice, Dante has prefixed a note, in which he
+tells us, that after he had long wept in silence the loss of her he
+loved, he thought to give utterance to his sorrow in words; and to
+compose a Canzone, in which he should write, (weeping as he wrote,) of
+the virtues of her who through much anguish had bowed his soul to the
+earth. "Then," he says, "I thus began:--gli occhi dolenti,"--which are
+the first words of this Canzone. It is addressed, like the others, to
+her female companions, whom alone he thought worthy to listen to her
+praises, and whose gentle hearts could alone sympathise in his grief.
+
+      Non vo parlare altrui
+    Se non a cor gentil, che 'n donna sia!
+
+One stanza of this Canzone is unequalled, I think, for a simplicity at
+once tender and sublime. The sentiment, or rather the meaning, in homely
+English phrase, would run thus:--
+
+"Ascended is our Beatrice to the highest Heaven, to those realms where
+angels dwell in peace; and you, her fair companions, and Love and me,
+she has left, alas! behind. It was not the frost of winter that chilled
+her, nor was it the heat of summer that withered her; it was the power
+of her virtue, her humility, and her truth, that ascending into Heaven
+moved the ETERNAL FATHER to call her to himself, seeing that this
+miserable life was not worthy of any thing so fair, so excellent!"
+
+On the anniversary of the death of Beatrice, Dante tells us that he was
+sitting alone, thinking upon her, and tracing, as he meditated, the
+figure of an angel on his tablets.[43] Can any one doubt that this
+little incident, so natural and so affecting,--his thinking on his lost
+Beatrice, and by association sketching the figure of an angel, while his
+mind dwelt upon her removal to a brighter and better world,--must have
+been real? It gave rise to the 18th Sonnet of the Vita Nuova, which he
+calls "Il doloroso annovale," (the mournful anniversary.)
+
+Another little circumstance, not less affecting, he has beautifully
+commemorated in two Sonnets which follow the one last mentioned. They
+are addressed to some kind and gentle creature, who from a window beheld
+Dante abandon himself, with fearful vehemence, to the agony of his
+feelings, when he believed no human eye was on him. "She turned pale,"
+he says, "with compassion; her eyes filled with tears, as if she had
+loved me: then did I remember my noble-hearted Beatrice, for even thus
+she often looked upon me," &c. And he confesses that the grateful, yet
+mournful pleasure with which he met the pitying look of this fair being,
+excited remorse in his heart, that he should be able to derive pleasure
+from anything.
+
+Dante concludes the collection of his _Rime_, (his miscellaneous poems
+on the subject of his early love) with this remarkable note:--
+
+"I beheld a marvellous vision, which has caused me to cease from writing
+in praise of my blessed Beatrice, until I can celebrate her more
+worthily; which that I may do, I devote my whole soul to study, as _she_
+knoweth well; in so much, that if it please the Great Disposer of all
+things to prolong my life for a few years upon this earth, I hope
+hereafter to sing of my Beatrice what never yet was said or sung of
+woman.'"
+
+And in this transport of enthusiasm, Dante conceived the idea of his
+great poem, of which Beatrice was destined to be the heroine. It was to
+no Muse, called by fancy from her fabled heights, and feigned at the
+poet's will; it was not to ambition of fame, nor literary leisure
+seeking a vent for overflowing thoughts; nor to the wish to aggrandise
+himself, or to flatter the pride of a patron;--but to the inspiration of
+a young, beautiful, and noble-minded woman, we owe one of the grandest
+efforts of human genius. And never did it enter into the imagination of
+any lover, before or since, to raise so mighty, so vast, so enduring, so
+glorious a monument to the worth and charms of a mistress. Other poets
+were satisfied if they conferred on the object of their love an
+immortality on earth: Dante was not content till he had placed _his_ on
+a throne in the Empyreum, above choirs of angels, in presence of the
+very fountain of glory; her brow wreathed with eternal beams, and
+clothed with the ineffable splendours of beatitude;--an apotheosis,
+compared to which, all others are earthly and poor indeed.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[38] "Membra formosi et grandi."
+
+[39] It borrows even the solemn language of Sacred Writ to express its
+intensity:
+
+    Nelle man vostre, o dolce donna mia!
+    Raccomando lo spirito che muore.
+
+                     SON. 34.
+
+[40] I refer particularly to that sublime Canzone addressed to the
+ladies of Florence, and beginning
+
+    "Donne ch' avete intelletto d' amore."
+
+[41] Monna Vanna, for _Madonna Giovanna_; and Monna Bice, _Madonna
+Beatrice_.
+
+This famous sonnet has been translated by Hayley and by Shelley. I
+subjoin the version of the latter, as truer to the spirit of the
+original.
+
+THE WISH.--TO GUIDO CAVALCANTI.
+
+    Guido! I would that Lapo, thou, and I,
+      Led by some strong enchantment, might ascend
+    A magic ship, whose charmed sails should fly
+      With winds at will, where'er our thoughts might wend:
+    And that no change, nor any evil chance
+      Should mar our joyous voyage; but it might be
+    That even satiety should still enhance
+      Between our hearts their strict community,
+    And that the bounteous wizard there would place
+      Vanna and Bice, and thy gentle love,
+    Companions of our wanderings, and would grace
+      With passionate talk, wherever we might rove
+    Our time!--and each were as content and free
+    As I believe that thou and I should be!
+
+[42] Sonnetto 13 (Poesie della Vita Nuova.)
+
+[43] Vita Nuova, p. 268.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+DANTE AND BEATRICE CONTINUED.
+
+
+Through the two first parts of the Divina Commedia, (Hell and
+Purgatory,) Beatrice is merely announced to the reader--she does not
+appear in person; for what should the sinless and sanctified spirit of
+Beatrice do in those abodes of eternal anguish and expiatory torment?
+Her appearance, however, in due time and place, is prepared and shadowed
+forth in many beautiful allusions: for instance, it is she, who
+descending from the empyreal height, sends Virgil to be the deliverer of
+Dante in the mysterious forest, and his guide through the abysses of
+torment.
+
+    Io son Beatrice che ti faccio andare;
+    Vegno di loco ove tornar disio:
+    Amor mi mosse che mi fa parlare.
+
+                  INFERNO, c. 2.
+
+    "I who now bid thee on this errand forth
+    Am Beatrice; from a place I come
+    Revisited with joy; love brought me thence,
+    Who prompts my speech."
+
+                    CAREY'S TRANS.
+
+And she is _indicated_, as it were, several times in the course of the
+poem, in a manner which prepares us for the sublimity with which she is
+at length introduced, in all the majesty of a superior nature, all the
+dreamy splendour of an ideal presence, and all the melancholy charm of a
+beloved and lamented reality. When Dante has left the confines of
+Purgatory, a wondrous chariot approaches from afar, surrounded by a
+flight of angelic beings, and veiled in a cloud of flowers ("un nuvola
+di fiori," is the beautiful expression.)--A female form is at length
+apparent in the midst of this angelic pomp, seated in the car, and
+"robed in hues of living flame:" she is veiled: he cannot discern her
+features, but there moves a hidden virtue from her,
+
+                At whose touch
+    The power of ancient love was strong within him.
+
+He recognises the influence which even in his childish days had smote
+him--
+
+        Che gia m'avea trafitto
+    Prima ch' io fuor della puerizia fosse;
+
+and his failing heart and quivering frame confess the thrilling presence
+of his Beatrice--
+
+    Conosco i segni dell'antica fiamma!
+
+The whole passage is as beautifully wrought as it is feelingly and truly
+conceived.
+
+Beatrice,--no longer the soft, frail, and feminine being he had known
+and loved upon earth, but an admonishing spirit,--rises up in her
+chariot,
+
+              And with a mien
+    Of that stern majesty which doth surround
+    A mother's presence to her awe-struck child,
+    She looked--a flavour of such bitterness
+    Was mingled with her pity!
+
+                     CAREY'S TRANS.
+
+Dante then puts into her mouth the most severe yet eloquent accusation
+against himself: while he stands weeping by, bowed down by shame and
+anguish. She accuses him before the listening angels for his neglected
+time, his wasted talents, his forgetfulness of her, when she was no
+longer upon earth to lead him with the light of her "youthful eyes,"
+(gli occhi giovinetti.)
+
+          Soon as I had changed
+    My mortal for immortal, then he left me,
+    And gave himself to others; when from flesh
+    To spirit I had risen, and increase
+    Of beauty and of virtue circled me,
+    I was less dear to him and valued less!
+
+                  PURGATORY, C. 30.--CAREY'S TRANS.
+
+This praise of herself and stern upbraiding of her lover, would sound
+harsh from woman's lips, but have a solemnity, and even a sublimity, as
+uttered by a disembodied and angelic being. When Dante, weeping, falters
+out a faint excuse--
+
+                Thy fair looks withdrawn,
+    Things present with deceitful pleasures turned
+    My steps aside,--
+
+she answers by reproaching him with his inconstancy to her memory:--
+
+                  Never didst thou spy
+    In art or nature aught so passing sweet
+    As were the limbs that in their beauteous frame
+    Enclosed me, and are scattered now in dust.
+    If sweetest thing thus failed thee with my death,
+    What afterward of mortal should thy wish
+    Have tempted?
+
+                     PURGATORY, c. 31.
+
+And she rebukes him, for that he could stoop from the memory of her love
+to be the thrall of a _slight girl_. This last expression is supposed to
+allude either to Dante's unfortunate marriage with Gemma Donati,[44] or
+to the attachment he formed during his exile for a beautiful Lucchese
+named Gentucca, the subject of several of his poems. But,
+notwithstanding all this severity of censure, Dante, gazing on his
+divine monitress, is so rapt by her loveliness, his eyes so eager to
+recompence themselves for "their ten years' thirst," (Beatrice had been
+dead ten years) that not being yet freed from the stain of his earthly
+nature, he is warned not to gaze "too fixedly" on her charms. After a
+farther probation, Beatrice introduces him into the various spheres
+which compose the celestial paradise; and thenceforward she certainly
+assumes the characteristics of an allegorical being. The true
+distinction seems this, that Dante has not represented Divine Wisdom
+under the name and form of Beatrice, but the more to exalt his Beatrice,
+he has clothed her in the attributes of Divine Wisdom.
+
+She at length ascends with him into the Heaven of Heavens, to the source
+of eternal and uncreated light, without shadow and without bound; and
+when Dante looks round for her, he finds she has quitted his side, and
+has taken her place throned among the supremely blessed, "as far above
+him as the region of thunder is above the centre of the sea:" he gazes
+up at her in a rapture of love and devotion, and in a sublime apostrophe
+invokes her still to continue her favour towards him. She looks down
+upon him from her effulgent height, smiles on him with celestial
+sweetness, and then fixing her eyes on the eternal fountain of glory, is
+absorbed in ecstasy. Here we leave her: the poet had touched the limits
+of permitted thought; the seraph wings of imagination, borne upwards by
+the inspiration of deep love, could no higher soar,--the audacity of
+genius could dare no farther!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Dante died at Ravenna in 1321, and was sumptuously interred at the cost
+of Guido da Polenta, the father of that unfortunate Francesca di Rimini,
+whose story he has so exquisitely told in the fifth canto of the
+Inferno. He left several sons and an only daughter, whom he had named
+Beatrice, in remembrance of his early love: she became a nun at Ravenna.
+
+Now where, in the name of all truth and all feeling, were the heads, or
+rather the hearts, of those commentators, who could see nothing in the
+Beatrice thus beautifully pourtrayed, thus tenderly lamented, and thus
+sublimely commemorated, but a mere allegorical personage, the creation
+of a poet's fancy? Nothing can come of nothing; and it was no unreal or
+imaginary being who turned the course of Dante's ardent passions and
+active spirit, and burning enthusiasm, into one sweeping torrent of love
+and poetry, and gave to Italy and to the world the Divina Commedia!
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[44] This marriage was one of policy, and negociated by the friends of
+Dante and of Gemma Donati: her temper was violent and harsh, and their
+domestic peace was, probably, not increased by Dante's obstinate regret
+for his first love.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+CHAUCER AND PHILIPPA PICARD.
+
+
+After Italy, England,--who has ever trod in her footsteps, and at length
+outstript her in the race of intellect,--was the next to produce a great
+and prevailing genius in poetry, a master-spirit, whom no change of
+customs, manners, or language, can render wholly obsolete; and who was
+destined, like the rest of his tribe, to bow before the influence of
+woman, to toil in her praise, and soar by her inspiration.
+
+Seven years after the death of Dante, Chaucer was born, and he was
+twenty-four years younger than Petrarch, whom he met at Padua in 1373;
+this meeting between the two great poets was memorable in itself, and
+yet more interesting for having first introduced into the English
+language that beautiful monument to the virtue of women,--the story of
+Griselda.
+
+Boccaccio had lately sent to his friend the MS. of the Decamerone, of
+which it is the concluding tale: the tender fancy of Petrarch, refined
+by a forty years' attachment to a gentle and elegant female, passed over
+what was vicious and blameable, or only recommended by the wit and the
+style, and fixed with delight on the tale of Griselda; so beautiful in
+itself, and so honourable to the sex whom he had poetically deified in
+the person of one lovely woman. He amused his leisure hours in
+translating it into Latin, and having finished his version, he placed it
+in the hands of a citizen of Padua, and desired him to read it aloud.
+His friend accordingly began; but as he proceeded, the overpowering
+pathos of the story so affected him, that he was obliged to stop; he
+began again, but was unable to proceed; the gathering tears blinded
+him, and choked his voice, and he threw down the manuscript. This
+incident, which Petrarch himself relates in a letter to Boccaccio,
+occurred about the period when Chaucer passed from Genoa to Padua to
+visit the poet and lover of Laura--
+
+    Quel grande, alla cui fama angusto e il mondo.
+
+Petrarch must have regarded the English poet with that wondering,
+enthusiastic admiration with which we should now hail a Milton or a
+Shakspeare sprung from Otaheite or Nova Zembla; and his heart and soul
+being naturally occupied by his latest work, he repeated the experiment
+he had before tried on his Paduan friend. The impression which the
+Griselda produced upon the vivid, susceptible imagination of Chaucer,
+may be judged from his own beautiful version of it in the Canterbury
+Tales; where the barbarity and improbability of the incidents are so
+redeemed by the pervading truth and purity and tenderness of the
+sentiment, that I suppose it never was perused for the first time
+without tears. Chaucer, as if proud of his interview with Petrarch, and
+anxious to publish it, is careful to tell us that he did not derive the
+story from Boccaccio, but that it was
+
+    Learned at Padua of a worthy clerk,
+    As proved by his wordes and his work;
+    Francis Petrark, the Laureat Poete;
+
+which is also proved by internal evidence.
+
+Chaucer so far resembled Petrarch, that, like him, he was at once poet,
+scholar, courtier, statesman, philosopher, and man of the world; but
+considered merely as poets, they were the very antipodes of each other.
+The genius of Dante has been compared to a Gothic cathedral, vast and
+lofty, and dark and irregular. In the same spirit, Petrarch may be
+likened to a classical and elegant Greek temple, rising aloft in its
+fair and faultless proportions, and compacted of the purest Parian
+marble; while Chaucer is like the far-spreading and picturesque palace
+of the Alhambra, with its hundred chambers, all variously decorated,
+and rich with barbaric pomp and gold: he is famed rather as the animated
+painter of character, and manners, and external nature, than the poet of
+love and sentiment; and yet no writer, Shakspeare always excepted, (and
+perhaps Spenser) contains so many beautiful and tender passages relating
+to, or inspired by, women. He lived, it is true, in rude times, times
+strangely deficient in good taste and decorum; but when all the
+institutions of chivalry, under the most chivalrous of our kings and
+princes,[45] were at their height in England. As a poet, Chaucer was
+enlisted into the service of three of the most illustrious, most
+beautiful, and most accomplished women of that age--Philippa, the
+high-hearted and generous Queen of Edward the Third; the Lady Blanche of
+Lancaster, first wife of John of Gaunt; and the lovely Anne of Bohemia,
+the Queen of Richard the Second;[46] for whom, and at whose command, he
+wrote his "Legende of Gode Women," as some amends for the scandal he had
+spoken of us in other places. The Countess of Essex, the Countess of
+Pembroke, and that beautiful Lady Salisbury, the ancestress of the
+Montagu family, whose famous mischance gave rise to the Order of the
+Garter, were also among Chaucer's patronesses. But the most
+distinguished of all, and the favourite subject of his poetry, was the
+Duchess Blanche. The manner in which he has contrived to celebrate his
+own loves and individual feelings with those of Blanche and her royal
+suitor, has given additional interest to both, and has enabled his
+commentators to fix with tolerable certainty the name and rank of the
+object of his love, as well as the date and circumstances of his
+attachment.
+
+In the earliest of Chaucer's poems, "The COURT OF LOVE," he describes
+himself as enamoured of a fair mistress, whom in the style of the time,
+he calls Rosial, and himself Philogenet: the lady is described as
+"sprung of noble race and high," with "angel visage," "golden hair," and
+eyes orient and bright, with figure "sharply slender,"
+
+    So that from the head unto the foot all is sweet womanhead,
+
+and arrayed in a vest of green, with her tresses braided with silk and
+gold. She treats him at first with disdain, and the Poet swoons away at
+her feet: satisfied by this convincing proof of his sincerity, she is
+induced to accept his homage, and becomes his "liege ladye," and the
+sovereign of his thoughts. In this poem, which is extremely wild, and
+has come down to us in an imperfect state, Chaucer quaintly admonishes
+all lovers, that an absolute faith in the perfection of their
+mistresses, and obedience to her slightest caprice, are among the first
+of duties; that they must in all cases believe their ladye faultless;
+that,
+
+    In every thing she doth but as she should.
+    Construe the best, believe no tales new,
+    For many a lie is told that seem'th full true;
+    But think that she, so bounteous and so fair,
+    Could not be false; imagine this alway.
+
+    ....*....*....*....*
+
+    And tho' thou seest a fault right at thine eye,
+    Excuse it quick, and glose it prettily.[47]
+
+Nor are they to presume on their own worthiness, nor to imagine it
+possible they can earn
+
+    By right, her mercie, nor of equity,
+    But of her grace and womanly pitye.[47]
+
+There is, however, no authority for supposing that at the time this poem
+was written, Chaucer really aspired to the hand of any lady of superior
+birth, or was very seriously in love; he was then about nineteen, and
+had probably selected some fair one, according to the custom of his age,
+to be his "fancy's queen," and in the same spirit of poetical
+gallantry, he writes to do her honour; he says himself,
+
+    My intent and all my busie care
+    Is for to write this treatise as I can,
+    Unto my ladye, stable, true, and sure;
+    Faithful and kind sith firste that she began
+    Me to accept in service as her man;
+    To her be all the pleasures of this book,
+    That, when her like, she may it rede and look.[48]
+
+Mixed up with all this gallantry and refinement are some passages
+inconceivably absurd and gross; but such were those times,--at once rude
+and magnificent--an odd mixture of cloth of frieze and cloth of gold!
+
+The "Parliament of Birds," entitled in many editions, the "_Assembly of
+Fowls_," celebrates allegorically the courtship of John of Gaunt and
+Blanche of Lancaster.
+
+Blanche, as the greatest heiress of England, with a duchy for her
+portion, could not fail to be surrounded by pretenders to her hand; but,
+after a year of probation, she decided in favour of John of Gaunt, who
+thus became Duke of Lancaster in right of his bride. This youthful and
+princely pair were then about nineteen.
+
+The "Parliament of Birds" being written in 1358, when Blanche had
+postponed her choice for a year, has fixed the date of Chaucer's
+attachment to the lady he afterwards married; for, here he describes
+himself as one who had not yet felt the full power of love--
+
+    For albeit that I know not love indeed,
+    Ne wot how that he quitteth folks their hire,
+    Yet happeth me full oft in books to read
+    Of his miracles.----
+
+But the time was come when the poet, now in his thirty-second year, was
+destined to feel, that a strong attachment for a deserving object--for
+one who will not be obtained unsought, "was no sport," as he expresses
+it, but
+
+    Smart and sorrow, and great heavinesse.
+
+During the period of trial which Lady Blanche had inflicted on her
+lover, it was Chaucer's fate to fall in love in sad earnest.--The object
+of this passion, too beautifully and unaffectedly described not to be
+genuine, was Philippa Picard de Rouet, the daughter of a knight of
+Hainault, and a favourite attendant of Queen Philippa. Her elder sister
+Catherine, was at the same time maid of honour to the Duchess Blanche.
+Both these sisters were distinguished at Court for their beauty and
+accomplishments, and were the friends and companions of the Princesses
+they served: and both are singularly interesting from their connection,
+political and poetical, with English history and literature.
+
+Philippa Picard is one of the principal personages in the poem entitled
+"Chaucer's Dream," which is a kind of epithalamium celebrating the
+marriage of John of Gaunt with the Lady Blanche, which took place at
+Reading, May 19, 1359. It is a wild, fanciful vision of fairy-land and
+enchantments, of which I cannot attempt to give an analysis. In the
+opening lines, written about twelve months after the "Parliament of
+Birds," we find Chaucer in deep love according to all its forms. He is
+lying awake,
+
+    About such hour as lovers weep
+    And cry after their lady's grace,
+
+thinking on his mistress--all her goodness and all her sweetness, and
+marvelling how heaven had formed her so exceeding fair,
+
+              And in so litel space
+    Made such a body and such a face;
+    So great beauty, and such features,
+    More than be in other creatures!
+
+He falls into a dream as usual, and in the conclusion fancies himself
+present at the splendid festivities which took place at the marriage of
+his patron. The ladye of his affection is described as the beloved
+friend and companion of the bride. She is sent to grace the marriage
+ceremony with her presence; and Chaucer seizes the occasion to plead his
+suit for love and mercy. Then the Prince, the Queen, and all the rest of
+the Court, unite in conjuring the lady to have pity on his pain, and
+recompence his truth; she smiles, and with a pretty hesitation at last
+consents.
+
+    Sith his will and yours are one,
+    Contrary in me shall be none.
+
+They are married: the ladies and the knights wish them
+
+         ----Heart's pleasance,
+    In joy and health continuance!
+
+The minstrels strike up,--the multitude send forth a shout; and in the
+midst of these joyous and triumphant sounds, and in the troubled
+exultation of his own heart, the sleeper bounds from his couch,--
+
+    Wening to have been at the feast,
+
+and wakes to find it all a dream. He looks around for the gorgeous
+marriage-feast, and instead of the throng of knights and ladies gay, he
+sees nothing but the figures staring at him from the tapestry.
+
+    On the walls old portraiture
+    Of horsemen, of hawks and hounds,
+    And hurt deer all full of wounds;
+    Some like torn, some hurt with shot;
+    And as my dream was, _that_ was not![49]
+
+He is plunged in grief to find himself thus reft of all his visionary
+joys, and prays to sleep again, and dream thus for aye, or at least "a
+thousand years and ten."
+
+    Lo, here my bliss!--lo, here my pain!
+    Which to my ladye I complain,
+    And grace and mercy of her requere,
+    To end my woe and all my fear;
+    And me accept for her service--
+    That of my dream, the substance
+    Might turnen, once, to cognisance.[50]
+
+And the whole concludes with a very tender "envoi," expressly addressed
+to Philippa, although the poem was written in honour of his patrons, the
+Duke and Duchess. It has been well observed, that nothing can be more
+delicate and ingenious than the manner in which Chaucer has complimented
+his mistress, and ventured to shadow forth his own hopes and desires;
+confessing, at the same time, that they were built on air and ended in a
+dream: it may be added, that nothing can be more picturesque and
+beautiful, and vigorous, than some of the descriptive parts of this
+poem.
+
+There is no reason to suppose that Philippa was absolutely deaf to the
+suit, or insensible to the fame and talents of her poet-lover. The delay
+which took place was from a cause honourable to her character and her
+heart; it arose from the declining health of her royal mistress, to whom
+she was most strongly and gratefully attached, and whose noble qualities
+deserved all her affection. It appears, from a comparison of dates, that
+Chaucer endured a suspense of more than nine years, during which he was
+a constant and fervent suitor for his ladye's grace. In this interval he
+translated the Romaunt of the Rose, the most famous poetical work of the
+middle ages. He addressed it to his mistress; and it is remarkable that
+a very elaborate and cynical satire on women, which occurs in the
+original French, is entirely omitted by Chaucer in his version; perhaps
+because it would have been a profanation to her who then ruled his
+heart: on other occasions he showed no such forbearance.
+
+In the year 1369, Chaucer lost his amiable patroness, the Duchess
+Blanche; she died in her thirtieth year; he lamented her death in a long
+poem, entitled the "Booke of the Duchesse." The truth of the story, the
+virtues, the charms, and the youth of the Princess, the grief of her
+husband, and the simplicity and beauty of many passages, render this one
+of the most interesting and striking of all Chaucer's works.
+
+The description of Blanche, in the "Booke of the Duchesse," shows how
+trifling is the difference between a perfect female character in the
+thirteenth century, and what would now be considered as such. It is a
+very lively and animated picture. Her golden hair and laughing eyes; her
+skill in dancing, and her sweet carolling; her "goodly and friendly
+speech;" her debonair looks; her gaiety, that was still "so womanly;"
+her indifference to general admiration; her countenance, "that was so
+simple and so benigne," contrasted with her high-spirited modesty and
+consciousness of lofty birth,
+
+    No living wight might do her shame,
+    _She loved so well her own name_;
+
+her disdain of that coquetterie which holds men "in balance,"
+
+    By half-word or by countenance;
+
+her wit, "without malice, and ever set upon gladnesse;" and her
+goodness, which the Poet, with a nice discrimination of female virtue,
+distinguishes from mere ignorance of evil--for though in all her actions
+was perfect innocence, he adds,
+
+    I say not that she had no knowing
+    What harm was; for, else, she
+    Had known no good--so thinketh me;
+
+are all beautifully and happily set forth, and are charms so appropriate
+to woman, as _woman_, that no change of fashion or lapse of ages can
+alter their effect. Time
+
+    "Can draw no lines there with his antique pen."
+
+But afterwards follows a trait peculiarly characteristic of the women of
+that chivalrous period. She was not, says Chaucer, one of those ladies
+who send their lovers off
+
+                  To Walachie,
+    To Prussia, and to Tartary,
+    To Alexandria, ne Turkie;
+
+and on other bootless errands, by way of displaying their power.
+
+    She used no such _knacks small_.
+
+That is, she was superior to such frivolous tricks.
+
+John of Gaunt, who is the principal speaker and chief mourner in the
+poem, gives a history of his courtship, and tells with what mixture of
+fear and awe, he then "right young," approached the lovely heiress of
+Lancaster: but bethinking him that Heaven could never have formed in any
+creature so great beauty and bounty "withouten mercie,"--in that hope he
+makes his confession of love; and he goes on to tell us, with exquisite
+_naivete_,--
+
+    I wot not well how I began,
+    Full evil rehearse it, I can:
+
+    ....*....*....*....*
+
+    For many a word I overskipt
+    In telling my tale--for pure fear,
+    Lest that my words misconstrued were.
+    Softly, and quaking for pure dred,
+    And shame,--
+    Full oft I wax'd both pale and red;
+    I durst not once look her on,
+    For wit, manner, and all was gone;
+    I said, "Mercie, sweet!"--and no more.
+
+Then his anguish at her first rejection, and his rapture when, at last,
+he wins from his ladye
+
+    The noble gift of her mercie;
+
+his domestic happiness--his loss, and his regrets, are all told with the
+same truth, simplicity, and profound feeling. For such passages and such
+pictures as these, Chaucer will still be read, triumphant as the poet of
+nature, over the rust and dust of ages, and all the difficulties of
+antique style and obsolete spelling; which last, however, though
+repulsive, is only a difficulty to the eye, and easily overcome.
+
+To return to Chaucer's own love.--In the opening lines of the "Booke of
+the Duchesse," he describes himself as wasted with his "eight years'
+sicknesse," alluding to his long courtship of the coy Philippa:
+
+    I have great wonder, by this light,
+    How that I live!--for day nor night
+    I may not sleepen well-nigh nought:
+    I have so many an idle thought
+    Purely for the default of sleep;
+    That, by my troth, I take no keep
+    Of nothing--how it com'th or go'th,
+    To me is nothing liefe or lothe;[51]
+    All is equal good to me,
+    Joy or sorrow--whereso it be;
+    For I have feeling in no thing,
+    But am, as 'twere, a mazed[52] thing,
+    All day in point to fall adown
+    For sorrowful imagination, &c.
+
+In the same year with the Duchess died the good Queen of Edward the
+Third; and Philippa Picard being thus sadly released from her attendance
+on her mistress, a few months afterwards married Chaucer, then in his
+forty-second year.
+
+In consequence of her good service, Philippa had a pension for her life;
+and I regret that little more is known concerning her: but it should
+seem that she was a good and tender wife, and that long years of wedded
+life did not weaken her husband's attachment for her; for she
+accompanied Chaucer when he was exiled, about fifteen years after his
+marriage, though every motive of prudence and selfishness, on both
+sides, would then have induced a separation.[53] Neither was the poet
+likely to be easily satisfied on the score of conjugal obedience; he was
+rather _exigeant_ and despotic, if we may trust his own description of a
+perfect wife. The chivalrous and poetical lover was the slave of his
+mistress; but once married, it is all _vice versa_.
+
+    She saith not once _nay_, when he saith _yea_
+    "Do this," saith he, "all ready, Sir," saith she!
+
+The precise date of Philippa's death is not known, but it took place
+some years before that of her husband. Their residence at the time of
+their marriage, was a small stone building, near the entrance of
+Woodstock Park; it had been given to Chaucer by Edward the Third;
+afterwards they resided principally at Donnington Castle, that fine and
+striking ruin, which must be remembered by all who have travelled the
+Newberry road. In the domain attached to this castle were three oaks of
+remarkable size and beauty, to which Chaucer gave the names of the
+Queen's oak, the King's oak, and Chaucer's oak; these venerable trees
+were felled in Evelyn's time, and are commemorated in his Sylva, as
+among the noblest of their species.
+
+Philippa's eldest son, Thomas Chaucer, had a daughter, Alice, who became
+the wife of William de la Pole, Duke of Suffolk, the famous favourite of
+Margaret of Anjou. The grandson of Alice Chaucer, by the Duke of
+Suffolk, John Earl of Lincoln, was declared heir to the crown by Richard
+the Third;[54] and had the issue of the battle of Bosworth been
+different, would undoubtedly have ascended the throne of England;--as it
+was, the lineage of Chaucer was extinguished on a scaffold.
+
+The fate of Catherine Picard de Rouet, the sister of Chaucer's wife, was
+still more remarkable,--she was destined to be the mother of a line of
+kings.
+
+She had been _domicella_, or maid of honour to the Duchess Blanche,
+after whose death, the infant children of the Princess were committed to
+her care.[55] In this situation she won the heart of their father, the
+Duke of Lancaster, who on the death of his second wife, Constance of
+Castile, married Catherine, and his children by her were solemnly
+legitimatized. The conduct of Catherine, except in one instance, had
+been irreproachable: her humility, her prudence, and her various
+accomplishments, not only reconciled the royal family and the people to
+her marriage, but added lustre to her rank: and when Richard the Second
+married Isabella of France, the young Queen, then only nine years old,
+was placed under the especial care and tuition of the Duchess of
+Lancaster.
+
+One of the grand-daughters of Catherine, Lady Jane Beaufort, had the
+singular fortune of becoming at once the inspiration and the love of a
+great poet, the queen of an accomplished monarch, and the common
+ancestress of all the sovereigns of England since the days of
+Elizabeth.[56]
+
+Never, perhaps, was the influence of woman on a poetic temperament more
+beautifully illustrated, than in the story of James the First of
+Scotland, and Lady Jane Beaufort. It has been so elegantly told by
+Washington Irving in the Sketch-Book, that it is only necessary to refer
+to it.--James, while a prisoner, was confined in Windsor Castle, and
+immediately under his window there was a fair garden, in which the Lady
+Jane was accustomed to walk with her attendants, distinguished above
+them all by her beauty and dignity, even more than by her state and the
+richness of her attire. The young monarch beheld her accidentally, his
+imagination was fired, his heart captivated, and from that moment his
+prison was no longer a dungeon, but a palace of light and love. As he
+was the best poet and musician of his time, he composed songs in her
+praise, set them to music, and sang them to his lute. He also wrote the
+history of his love, with all its circumstances, in a long poem[57]
+still extant; and though the language be now obsolete, it is described,
+by those who have studied it, as not only full of beauties both of
+sentiment and expression, but unpolluted by a single thought or allusion
+which the most refined age, or the most fastidious delicacy, could
+reject;--a singular distinction, when we consider that James's only
+models must have been Gower and Chaucer, to whom no such praise is due:
+we must rather suppose that he was no imitator, but that he owed his
+inspiration to modest and queenly beauty, and to the genuine tenderness
+of his own heart. His description of the fair apparition who came to
+bless his solitary hours, is so minute and peculiar, that it must have
+been drawn from the life:--the net of pearls, in which her light tresses
+were gathered up; the chain of fine-wrought gold about her neck; the
+heart-shaped ruby suspended from it, which glowed on her snowy bosom
+like a spark of fire; her white vest looped up to facilitate her
+movements; her graceful damsels who followed at a respectful distance;
+and her little dog gambolling round her with its collar of silver
+bells,--these, and other picturesque circumstances, were all noted in
+the lover's memory, and have been recorded by the poet's verse. And he
+sums up her perfections thus:
+
+    In her was youth, beauty, and numble port,
+      Bountee, richesse, and womanly feature.
+    God better knows than my pen can report,
+      Wisdom, largesse,[58] estate,[59] and cunning[60] sure:
+    In every point so guided her measure,
+    In word, in deed, in shape, in countenance,
+    That nature could no more her child advance.
+
+The account of his own feelings as she disappears from his charmed
+gaze,--his lingering at the window of his tower, till Phoebus
+
+    Had bid farewell to every leaf and flower,--
+
+then resting his head pensively on the cold stone, and the vision which
+steals upon his half-waking, half-dreaming fancy, and shadows forth the
+happy issue of his love,--are all conceived in the most lively manner.
+It is judged from internal evidence, that this poem must have been
+finished after his marriage, since he intimates that he is blessed in
+the possession of her he loved, and that the fair vision of his solitary
+dungeon is realised.
+
+When the King of Scots was released, he wooed and won openly, and as a
+monarch, the woman he had adored in secret. The marriage was solemnized
+in 1423, and he carried Lady Jane to Scotland where she was crowned soon
+after his bride and queen.
+
+How well she merited, and how deeply she repaid the love of her devoted
+and all-accomplished husband, is told in history. When James was
+surprised and murdered by some of his factious barons, his queen threw
+herself between him and the daggers of the assassins, received many of
+the wounds aimed at his heart, nor could they complete their purpose
+till they had dragged her by force from his arms. She deserved to be a
+poet's queen and love! These are the souls, the deeds which inspire
+poetry,--or rather which are themselves poetry, its principle and its
+essence. It was on this occasion that Catherine Douglas, one of the
+queen's attendants, thrust her arm into the stanchion of the door to
+serve the purpose of a bolt, and held it there till the savage
+assailants forced their way by shattering the frail defence. What times
+were those!--alas! the love of women, and the barbarity of men!
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[45] Edward III. and the Black Prince.
+
+[46] She was popularly distinguished as the "_good_ Queen Anne," and as
+dear to her husband as to her people. Richard, who with many and fatal
+faults, really possessed sensibility and strong domestic affections with
+which Shakspeare has so finely pourtrayed him, was passionately devoted
+to his amiable wife. She died young, at the Palace of Sheen; and when
+Richard afterwards visited the scene of his loss, he solemnly cursed it
+in his anguish, and commanded it to be razed to the ground, which was
+done. One of our kings afterwards rebuilt it. I think Henry the VIIth.
+
+[47] Court of Love, v. 369-412.
+
+[48] Court of Love, v. 36-42.
+
+[49] _i. e._ the tapestry, like my dream, was a representation, not a
+reality.
+
+[50] Chaucer's Dreame, v. 2185. "Here also is showed Chaucer's match
+with a certain gentlewoman, who was so well liked and loved of the Lady
+Blanche and her Lord (as Chaucer himself also was), that gladly they
+concluded a marriage between them."--_Arguments to Chaucer's Works.
+Edit._ 1597.
+
+[51] To me there is nothing dear or hateful, every thing is indifferent.
+
+[52] _Mazed_,--distracted.
+
+[53] Godwin's Life of Chaucer, v. iii. p. 5.
+
+[54] In right of his mother, Elizabeth Plantagenet, eldest sister of
+Edward IV.
+
+[55] These were Henry of Lancaster, afterwards Henry IV. Philippa, Queen
+of Portugal, and Elizabeth, Duchess of Exeter.
+
+[56] Catherine, Duchess of Lancaster, had three sons: the second was the
+famous Cardinal Beaufort; the eldest (created Earl of Somerset,) was
+grandfather to Henry the Seventh, and consequently ancestor to the whole
+race of Tudor: thus from the sister of Chaucer's wife are descended all
+the English sovereigns, from the fifteenth century; and likewise the
+present family of Somerset, Dukes of Beaufort.
+
+[57] "The King's Quhair," (i.e. _cahier_ or book.)
+
+[58] Liberality.
+
+[59] Dignity.
+
+[60] Knowledge and discretion.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+LORENZO DE' MEDICI AND LUCRETIA DONATI.
+
+
+To Lorenzo de' Medici,--or rather to the preeminence his personal
+qualities, his family possessions, and his unequalled talents, gave him
+over his countrymen,--some late travellers and politicians have
+attributed the downfall of the liberties of Florence, and attacked his
+memory as the precursor of tyrants and the preparer of slaves. It may be
+so:--yet was it the fault of Lorenzo, if his collateral posterity
+afterwards became the oppressors of that State of which he was the
+father and the saviour? And since in this world some must command and
+some obey, what power is so legitimate as that derived from the
+influence of superior virtue and talent? from the employ of riches
+obtained by honourable industry, and expended with princely munificence,
+and subscribed to by the will and the affections of the people?
+
+But I forget:--these are questions foreign to our subject. Politics I
+never could understand in my life, and history I have forgotten,--or
+would wish to forget,--perplexed by its conflicting evidence, and
+shocked by its interminable tissue of horrors. Let others then scale the
+height while we gather flowers at the foot; let others explore the mazes
+of the forest; ours be rather
+
+    The gay parterre, the chequered shade,
+    The morning bower, the evening colonnade,
+    Those soft recesses of uneasy minds,
+
+whence the din of doleful war, the rumour of cruelty and suffering, and
+all the "fitful stir unprofitable" of the world are shut out, and only
+the beautiful and good, or the graceful and the gay, are admitted. There
+have been pens enough, Heaven knows, to chronicle the wrongs, the
+crimes, the sorrows of our sex: why should I add an echo to that voice,
+which from the beginning has cried aloud in the wilderness of this
+world, upon women betrayed, and betraying in self-defence? A nobler and
+more grateful task be mine, to show them how much of what is most fair,
+most excellent, most sublime among the productions of human genius, has
+been owing to their influence, direct or indirect; and call up the
+spirits of the dead,--those who from their silent urns still rule the
+pulses of our hearts--to bear witness to this truth.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It is not, then, Lorenzo the MAGNIFICENT, the statesman, and the chief
+of a great republic, who finds a place in these pages,--but Lorenzo the
+lover and the poet, round whose memory hover a thousand bright
+recollections connected with the revival of arts and literature, and the
+golden age of Italy. Let politicians say what they will, there is a
+spell of harmony, there is music in his very name! how softly the
+vowelled syllables drop from the lips--LORENZO DE' MEDICI!--it even
+looks elegant when written. Yes, there is something in the mere sound of
+a name. I remember once taking up a book, and a very celebrated book,
+in which, after turning over some of the pages with pleasure, I came to
+_Peter_ and _Laurence Medecis_,--I shut it hastily, as I would have
+covered my ears to protect them from a sudden discord in music.
+
+Between Petrarch and Lorenzo de' Medici, there occurs not a single great
+name in Italian poetry. The century seemed to lie fallow, as if
+preparing for the great birth of various genius which distinguished the
+succeeding age. The sciences and the classics were chiefly studied, and
+philosophy and Greek seemed to have banished love and poetry.
+
+In such a state of things, it is rather surprising to find in Lorenzo
+de' Medici the common case reversed; for by his own confession, it
+appears that it was not love which made him a poet, but poetry which
+made him a lover.
+
+Giuliano, the brother of Lorenzo,--he who was afterwards assassinated by
+the Pazzi, and was so beloved at Florence for his amiable character and
+personal accomplishments, had been seized with a passion for a lady
+named Simonetta, who was esteemed the most beautiful woman in Florence,
+and is scarcely ever mentioned but with the epithet, "La bella
+Simonetta."--She died in the bloom of early youth, and all the wit and
+eloquence of her native city were called forth in condolences addressed
+to Giuliano, or elegies to her memory, in prose and verse, Latin, Greek,
+and Italian. Among the rest, Lorenzo, who had already made several
+attempts in Italian poetry, pressed forward to celebrate the love and
+the loss of his amiable brother:--in his zeal to do justice to so dear a
+subject, he worked himself up into a fit of amorous and poetical
+enthusiasm which soon found a real and living beauty for its object. But
+to give this romantic tale its proper effect, it must be related in
+Lorenzo's own words. He has left us a most circumstantial and elegant as
+well as interesting and fanciful account of the birth and progress of
+his poetic passion, and I extract it at length from Mr. Roscoe's
+translation.
+
+"A young lady of great personal attractions happened to die at Florence;
+and as she had been very generally admired and beloved, so her death
+was as generally lamented. Nor was this to be much wondered at; for,
+independent of her beauty, her manners were so engaging, that almost
+every person who had any acquaintance with her flattered himself that he
+had obtained the chief place in her affections." (In other words, this
+beautiful Simonetta was an exquisite coquette.)
+
+"This fatal event excited the extreme regret of her admirers; and as she
+was carried to the place of burial, with her face uncovered, those who
+had known her when living, pressed for a last look at the object of
+their adoration, and accompanied her funeral with their tears.
+
+"On this occasion, all the eloquence, and all the wit of Florence were
+exerted in paying due honours to her memory, both in prose and verse.
+Amongst the rest, I also composed a few sonnets; and in order to give
+them greater effect, I endeavoured to convince myself, that I too had
+been deprived of the object of my love, and to excite in my own mind all
+those passions that might enable me to move the affections of
+others.--Under the influence of this delusion, I began to think how
+severe was the fate of those by whom she had been beloved; and from
+thence was led to consider, whether there was any other lady in this
+city deserving of such honour and praise, and to imagine the happiness
+that must be experienced by any one, whose good fortune could procure
+him such a subject for his pen. I accordingly sought for some time
+without having the satisfaction of finding any one, who in my judgment
+was deserving of a sincere and constant attachment. But when I had
+nearly resigned all expectations of success, chance threw in my way that
+which had been denied to my most diligent inquiry; as if the God of Love
+had selected this hopeless period, to give me a more decisive proof of
+his power.--A public festival was held in Florence, to which all that
+was noble and beautiful in the city resorted. To this I was brought by
+some of my companions (I suppose as my destiny led) against my will, for
+I had for some time past avoided such exhibitions; or if at times I
+attended them, it proceeded rather from a compliance with custom, than
+from any pleasure I experienced in them. Among the ladies there
+assembled, I saw one of such sweet and attractive manners, that while I
+regarded her, I could not help saying, 'If this person were possessed of
+the delicacy, the understanding, the accomplishments of her who is
+lately dead--most certainly she excels her in the charms of her
+person.--"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Resigning myself to my passion, I endeavoured to discover, if possible,
+how far her manners and her conversation agreed with her appearance; and
+here I found such an assemblage of extraordinary endowments, that it was
+difficult to say whether she excelled more in person or in mind. Her
+beauty was, as I have before mentioned, astonishing. She was of a just
+and proper height. Her complexion extremely fair, but not
+pale,--blooming but not ruddy. Her countenance was serious, without
+being severe,--mild and pleasant without levity or vulgarity. Her eyes
+were lively, without any indication of pride or conceit. Her whole
+shape was so finely proportioned, that amongst other women she appeared
+with superior dignity, yet free from the least degree of formality or
+affectation. In walking, in dancing, or in other exercises which display
+the person, every motion was elegant and appropriate. Her sentiments
+were always just and striking, and have furnished materials for some of
+my sonnets; she always spoke at the proper time, and always to the
+purpose, so that nothing could be added, nothing taken away. Though her
+remarks were often keen and pointed, yet they were so tempered as not to
+give offence. Her understanding was superior to her sex, but without the
+appearance of arrogance or presumption; and she avoided an error too
+common among women, who, when they think themselves sensible, become for
+the most part insupportable.[61] To recount all her excellencies would
+far exceed my present limits, and I shall therefore conclude with
+affirming, that there was nothing which could be desired in a beautiful
+and an accomplished woman, which was not in her most abundantly found.
+By these qualities I was so captivated, that not a power or faculty of
+my body or mind remained any longer at liberty, and I could not help
+considering the lady who had died, as the star of Venus, which at the
+approach of the sun is totally overpowered and extinguished."
+
+The real name of this beautiful and accomplished creature, Lorenzo was
+too discreet to reveal; but from contemporary authors, we learn that she
+was Lucretia Donati--a noble lady, distinguished at Florence for her
+virtue and beauty, and of the same illustrious family which had given a
+wife to Dante.
+
+When Lorenzo undertook to fall in love thus poetically, he was only
+twenty: the experiment was perilous; and it is not wonderful that this
+imaginary passion had at first in his ardent and susceptible mind all
+the effects of a real one: he neglected society--abandoned himself to
+musing and solitude--affected the rural shades, and gave up his time,
+and devoted all his powers, to celebrate, in the richest colouring of
+poetry, her whom he had selected to be the mistress of his heart, or
+rather the presiding goddess of his fancy.
+
+The result is exactly what may be imagined, and a proof of the theory on
+which I insist, that "nothing but what arises from the heart goes to the
+heart, and that the verse which never quickened a pulse in the bosom of
+the poet, never awakened a throb in that of his reader." If I were
+required to express in one word the distinguishing character of
+Lorenzo's amatory poems, I should say _grace_: they are full of refined
+sentiment, elegant simplicity, the most exquisite little touches of
+description, and illustrations, drawn either from external nature, or
+from the refined mysteries of platonism; but there is a want of passion,
+of power, and of pathos; there is no genuine emotion; no overflow of the
+heart, bursting with its own intense feeling; no voice that cries aloud
+for our sympathy, and echoes to our inmost bosom. What true lover ever
+thought of apologising for having given his time to celebrate the object
+of his love?
+
+"Persecuted as I have been from my youth," says Lorenzo, "some
+indulgence may perhaps be allowed me for having sought consolation in
+these pursuits."--And again, in allusion to his political
+situation,--"It is not to be wondered at if I endeavoured to alleviate
+my anxiety by turning to more agreeable subjects of meditation; and in
+celebrating the charms of my mistress, sought a temporary refuge from my
+cares."--Thus Lorenzo tells us that it was not in obedience to the
+dictates of his own overflowing heart, nor yet to celebrate the charms
+of his mistress, and win her favour, that he wrote in her praise, but to
+amuse himself and distract his mind from those cares and anxieties into
+which he was so early plunged. It has followed as a natural consequence,
+that elegant as are the amatory effusions of Lorenzo, they are less
+celebrated, less popular, than his descriptive and moral poems. His
+Ambra, La Nencia, and his songs for the carnival, have all in their
+respective style a higher stamp of excellence and originality than his
+love poetry. His forte seems to have been lively description,
+philosophical illustration, and brilliant and sportive fancy, combined
+with a classic taste and polished versification. Some of those sonnets,
+which, though addressed to Madonna Lucretia, turn chiefly on some
+beautiful thought or description, are finished like gems; as that on
+Solitude--
+
+    Cerchi chi vuol le pompe e gli alti onori;
+
+and that well known and charming one, "Sopra Violetti,"
+
+    Non di verdi giardin, ornati e colti, &c.
+
+both of which have been happily translated by Roscoe; and to these may
+be added the address to Cytherea--
+
+    Lascia l' isola tua tanta diletta!
+    Lascia il tuo regno delicato e bello
+    Ciprigna Dea! &c.
+
+There is another, not so well known, distinguished by its peculiar fancy
+and elegance--
+
+    Spesso mi torna a mente, anzi gia mai, &c.
+
+In this he recalls to mind the time and the place, and even the vesture
+in which his gentle lady first appeared to him--
+
+    Quanto vaga, gentil, leggiadra, e pia
+    Non si puo dir, ne imaginar assai;
+
+and he beautifully adds,
+
+    Quale sopra i nevosi, ed alti monti
+    Apollo spande il suo bel lume adorno,
+    Tal' i crin suoi sopra la bianca gonna!
+    Il tempo e 'l luogo non convien ch' io conti,
+    Che dov' e si bel sole e sempre giorno;
+    E Paradiso, ov' e si bella Donna!
+
+"As over the snowy summits of the high mountains Apollo sheds his golden
+beams, so flowed her golden tresses over her white vest.--But for the
+_time_ and the _place_, is it necessary that I should note them? Where
+shines so fair a sun, can it be other than day? Where dwells so
+excellent a beauty, can it be other than Paradise?"
+
+It happened in the midst of Lorenzo's visions of love and poetry, that
+he was called upon to give his hand to a wife chosen by his father for
+political reasons. His inclinations were not consulted, as is plain
+from the blunt amusing manner in which he has noted it down in his
+memoranda. "I, Lorenzo, took to wife Donna Clarice Orsini,--or rather
+she was given to me, (ovvero mi fu data) on such a day." Yet a union
+thus inauspiciously contracted, was rendered, by the affectionate
+disposition of Lorenzo, and the amiable qualities of his wife, rather
+happy than otherwise; it is true, we have no poetical compliments
+addressed by Lorenzo to Donna Clarice, but there is extant a little
+billet written to her a few months after their marriage, from the tone
+of which it is fair to suppose, that Lorenzo had exchanged his poetic
+flame for a real attachment to an amiable woman.[62]
+
+There is a very beautiful and elegant passage in the beginning of
+Lorenzo's commentary on his own poems, in which he enlarges on the
+theory of love. "The conditions (he says) which appear necessarily to
+belong to a true, exalted, and worthy love, are two. First,--_to love
+but one_: secondly,--_to love that one always_. Not many lovers have
+hearts so generous as to be capable of fulfilling these two conditions;
+and exceedingly few women display sufficient attractions to withhold men
+from the violation of them; yet without these there is no true love."
+And afterwards, enumerating those charms of person and mind which
+inspire affection, he adds, "and yet these estimable qualities are not
+enough, unless the lover possess sensibility of heart to discern them,
+and elevation and generosity of soul to appreciate them."
+
+This in the original is very elegantly expressed, and the sentiment is
+as true as it is exalted and graceful; but that Lorenzo was not always
+thus philosophically refined, that he could descend from these
+Platonics to be impassioned and in earnest, and that when touched to the
+heart, he could pour forth the language of the heart, we have a single
+instance, which it is impossible to allude to without feeling some
+emotion of curiosity, which can never now be gratified.
+
+We find among Lorenzo's poems, written later in life than those
+addressed to Lucretia Donati, one entitled simply "An Elegy;" the style
+is different from that of his earlier poetry, and has more of the
+terseness and energy of Dante than the sweetness and flow of Petrarch.
+It begins
+
+    "Vinto dagli amorosi, empi martiri."
+
+"Subdued by the fierce pangs of my love, a thousand times have I taken
+up the pen, to tell thee, O gentle lady mine, all the sighs of my sick
+heart. Then fearing thy displeasure, I have, on a second thought, flung
+it from me. * * * Yet must I speak, for if words were wanting, my pallid
+cheek would betray my suffering."
+
+He then tells her that he does not seek her dishonour, but only her kind
+thoughts, and that he may find a place within her gentle heart.
+
+    Perche non cerco alcun tuo disonore,
+    Ma sol la grazia tua, e che piaci
+    Che'l mio albergo sia dentro al tuo core!
+
+He wishes that he might be once permitted to twine his fingers in her
+fair hair; to gaze into her eyes;--but he complains that she will not
+even meet his look,--that she resolutely turns her eyes another way at
+his approach.--"But do with me what thou wilt: while I live upon this
+earth, still I must love thee, since it so pleaseth Heaven--I swear it!
+and my hand writes it!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Come then! oh come, while yet thy gracious looks may avail me, for
+delay is death to one who loves likes me! Would I could send with this
+scroll all the torture of heart, the tears and sighs, the gesture and
+the look, that should accompany it!"
+
+    Ma s' egli avvien, che soletti ambo insieme,
+    Posso il braccio tenerti al collo avvolto,
+    Vedrai come d'amore alto arde e geme,
+    Vedrai cader dal mio pallido volto,
+    Nel tuo candido sen lagrime tante.
+
+(I leave these lines untranslated for the benefit of the Italian
+reader). After a few more stanzas, we have this very unequivocal
+passage:
+
+"O would to Heaven, lady, that marriage had made us one! ah, why didst
+thou not come into this world a little sooner?--or I a little later? Yet
+why these vain thoughts? since I am doomed to see thee the bride of
+another, and am myself fettered in these marriage bonds!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Thou knowest, Madonna, that these sighs, these burning words, are not
+feigned; for even as Love dictates does my hand write.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"My life and death are with thee;--grant me but a few words, and I am
+content to live;--if not, let me die! and let my poor remains be laid in
+some forlorn and sequestered spot. Let none whisper the cause of my
+death, lest it should grieve thee! enough if some kind hand engrave upon
+my tomb,--'_He perished through too much love and too much cruelty._'"
+
+I have given, literally, the leading sentiments of this little poem, but
+have left untranslated many of the stanzas. There are one or two
+concetti; but as Ginguene truly observes on a different occasion, "Dans
+les poetes Italiens, souvent la passion est vraie, meme quand
+l'expression ne l'est pas."
+
+The style is so natural, the transitions so abrupt, the expressions so
+energetic, and there are so few of those descriptive ornaments which are
+plentifully scattered through Lorenzo's other poems, that I should
+pronounce it the real effusion of a heart, touched,--and deeply touched.
+It is to be regretted that we know nothing of the name or real character
+of an object who, deserving or not, could call forth such strong lines
+as these; and in the plenitude of his power and fame, and in the midst
+of his great and serious avocations, deeply, though secretly, tyrannise
+over the peace of Lorenzo.
+
+He is accused,--I regret that I must allude to it,--of considerable
+licence of manners with regard to women;--a reproach from which Roscoe
+has fairly vindicated him. United, at the age of twenty-one, to a woman
+he had never seen; residing in a dissipated capital, surrounded by
+temptation, and from disposition peculiarly sensible to the influence of
+women, it is not matter of astonishment if Lorenzo's conjugal faith was
+not preserved immaculate,--if he occasionally became the thrall of
+beauty, and--(since he was not likely to be caught by vulgar
+charms,)--if he sighed, _par hazard_, for one who was not to be tempted
+by power or gold: such a one as his Elegy indicates. Two points are
+certain,--that his uniform respect and kindness to his wife Clarice,
+left her no reason to complain; while his discretion was such, that
+though historians have hazarded a general accusation against him in this
+one particular, there exists not in any contemporary writer one
+scandalous anecdote of his private life, nor the name of any woman to
+whom he was attached, except that of his poetical love, Lucretia Donati.
+
+Lorenzo de' Medici was not handsome in face, nor graceful in form; but
+he was captivating in his manners, and excelled in all manly exercises.
+The engraving prefixed to Roscoe's life of him, does not do justice to
+his countenance. I remember the original picture in the gallery of
+Florence, on which I have looked day after day for many minutes
+together, with an interest that can only be felt on the very spot where
+the memory of Lorenzo is "wherever we look, wherever we move." In spite
+of the stoop in the shoulders, the unbecoming dress, and the harsh
+features, I was struck by the grand simplicity of the head, and the
+mingled expression of acuteness, benevolence, and earnest thought in the
+countenance; the imagination filled with the splendid character of the
+man, might possibly have perceived more than the eye,--but such was my
+impression.
+
+Lorenzo died in his forty-fourth year, in 1492. He is not interred in
+that celebrated chapel of his family, rich with the sublimest
+productions of Michael Angelo's chisel: he lies at the opposite side of
+the church, in a magnificent sarcophagus of bronze, which contains also
+the ashes of his murdered brother, Giuliano.--Among the recollections,
+sweet and bitter, which I brought from Florence, is the remembrance of a
+day when retiring, from the glare of an Italian noontide, I stood in the
+church of San Lorenzo, sketching the tomb of Lorenzo and Giuliano de'
+Medici. The spot whence I viewed it was so obscure, that I could scarce
+see the lines traced by my pencil; but immediately behind the
+sarcophagus, there flowed from above a stream of strong light, relieving
+with added effect the dark outline of the sculptured ornaments. Through
+the grating which formed the background, I could see the figures of
+shaven monks and stoled priests gliding to and fro, like apparitions;
+and while I thought more,--O much more,--of the still and cold repose
+which wrapped the dead, than of their high deeds and far-spread fame,
+the plaintive music of a distant choir, chanting the _Via crucis_,
+floated through the pillared aisles, receding or approaching as the
+singers changed their station; swelling, sinking, and at length dying
+away on the ear.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[61] Lorenzo tells us in the original, that the ladies who rendered
+themselves thus insupportable, were called (_vulgarly_)
+_Saccenti_:--query--_vulgarly, Blue-stockings_?
+
+[62] Lorenzo de' Medici to his wife Clarice:--
+
+"I arrived here in safety, and am in good health: this, I believe, will
+please thee better than any thing else, except my return, at least so I
+judge from my own desire to be once more with thee. Associate as much as
+possible with my father and sisters. I shall make all possible speed to
+return to thee, for it appears a thousand years till I see thee again.
+Pray to God for me--if thou want any thing from this place write in
+time. From Milan, 22d July, 1469. THY LORENZO."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+THE FAIR GERALDINE.
+
+
+In the reign of the second Grand Duke of Tuscany, of Lorenzo's family,
+(Cosmo I.) Florence, it is said, beheld a novel and extraordinary
+spectacle: a young traveller, from a court and a country which the
+Italians of that day seemed to regard much as we now do the
+Esquimaux,[63] combining the learning of the scholar and the amiable
+bearing of the courtier, with all the rash bravery of youthful romance,
+astonished the inhabitants of that queenly city, first, by rivalling her
+polished nobles in the splendour of his state, and gallantry of his
+manners, and next, by boldly proclaiming that his "lady love" was
+superior to all that Italy could vaunt of beauty, that she was "oltre le
+belle, bella," fair beyond the fairest,--and maintaining his boast in a
+solemn tourney held in her honour, to the overthrow of all his
+opponents.
+
+This was our English Surrey; one of the earliest and most elegant of our
+amatory poets, and the lover of the Fair Geraldine.
+
+It must be admitted that the fame of the Earl of Surrey does not rest
+merely on title, and that if the fair Geraldine had never existed, he
+would still have lived in history as an accomplished scholar, soldier,
+courtier, and been lamented as the noble victim of a suspicious tyrant.
+But if some fair object of romantic gallantry had not given the impulse
+to his genius, and excited him to try his powers in a style of which no
+models yet existed in his native language,[64]--it may be doubted
+whether his name would have descended to us with all those poetical and
+chivalrous associations which give a charm and an interest to his
+memory, far beyond that of a mere historical character. As for the
+fair-haired, blue-eyed Geraldine, the mistress of his fancy and
+affections, and the subject of his verse, her identity long lay
+_entombed_, as it were, in a poetical name; but Surrey had loved her,
+had maintained her beauty at the point of his lance--had made her
+"famous by his pen, and glorious by his sword." This was more than
+enough to excite the interest and the inquiries of posterity, and lo!
+antiquaries and commentators fell to work, archives were searched,
+genealogies were traced, and at length the substance of this beautiful
+poetical shadow was detected: she was proved to have been the Lady
+Elizabeth Fitzgerald, afterwards the wife of a certain Earl of Lincoln,
+of whom little is known--but that he married the woman Surrey had loved.
+
+Surrey has ingeniously contrived to compress, within the compass of a
+sonnet, some of the most interesting particulars of the personal and
+family history of his mistress. The Fitzgeralds derive their origin
+from the Geraldi of Tuscany,--hence
+
+    From Tuscan came my ladye's worthy race,
+    Fair Florence was sometime their ancient seat.
+
+She was born and nurtured in Ireland--
+
+    Fostered she was with milk of Irish breast.
+
+Her father was the Earl of Kildare, her mother allied to the blood
+royal.
+
+    Her sire an Earl, her dame of Prince's blood.
+
+She was brought up (through motives of compassion, after the misfortunes
+of her family,) at Hunsdon, with the Princesses Mary and Elizabeth,
+where Surrey, who frequently visited them in company with the young Duke
+of Richmond,[65] first beheld her.
+
+    Hunsdon did first present her to mine eyes.
+
+She was then extremely young, not above fourteen or fifteen, as it
+appears from comparative dates; and Surrey says very clearly,
+
+    She wanted years to understand
+    The grief that he did feel.
+
+But even then her budding charms made him confess as he beautifully
+expresses it--
+
+    How soon a look can print a thought
+      That never may remove!
+
+It was during the festivals held at Hampton Court, whither she
+accompanied the Princesses, that her conquest was completed; and Surrey
+being afterwards confined at Windsor,[66] was deprived of her society.
+
+    Bright is her hue, and Geraldine she hight;
+    Hampton me taught to wish her first for mine,
+    Windsor, alas! doth chase me from her sight.
+
+Hampton Court was the scene of their frequent interviews. Surrey
+mentions a certain recessed or bow window, in which, retired apart from
+the gay throng around them, they held "converse sweet." Here she gave
+him, as it seems, some encouragement; too proud of such a distinguished
+suitor to let him escape. He in the same moment confesses himself a very
+slave, and betrays an indignant consciousness of the arts by which she
+keeps him entangled in her chain.
+
+    In silence tho' I keep to such secrets myself,
+    Yet do I see how she sometime, doth yield a look by stealth;
+    As tho' it seemed, I wis,--"I will not lose thee so!"
+    When in her heart so sweet a thought did never truly grow.
+
+He accuses her expressly of a love of general admiration, and of giving
+her countenance and favour to unworthy rivals. In "The Warning to a
+Lover how he is abused by his Love," he thus addresses himself as the
+deceived lover:--
+
+    Where thou hast loved so long, with heart and all thy power,
+    I see thee fed with feigned words, &c.
+    I see her pleasant cheer in chiefest of thy suit:
+    When thou art gone, I see him come who gathers up the fruit;
+    And eke in thy respect, I see the base degree
+    Of him to whom she gives the heart, that promised was to thee![67]
+
+The fair Geraldine must have been a practised coquette to have sat for a
+picture so finished and so strongly marked: yet before we blame her for
+this disdainful trifling, it should be remembered that Lord Surrey, at
+the time he was wooing her with "musicke vows," was either married or
+contracted to another,[68]--a circumstance quite in keeping with the
+fashionable system of Platonic gallantry introduced from Italy--
+
+    O Plato! Plato! you have been the cause, &c.
+
+and so forth. I forbear to continue the apostrophe.
+
+According to the old tradition, repeated by all Surrey's biographers, he
+visited on his travels the famous necromancer Cornelius Agrippa, who in
+a magic mirror revealed to him the fair figure of his Geraldine, lying
+dishevelled on a couch, and, by the light of a taper, reading one of his
+tenderest sonnets.
+
+    Fair all the pageant, but how passing fair
+      The slender form that lay on couch of Ind!
+    O'er her white bosom strayed her hazel hair,
+      Pale her dear cheek, as if for love she pined.
+    All in her night-robe loose, she lay reclined,
+      And pensive read from tablet eburnine,
+    Some strain that seemed her inmost soul to find;--
+      That favoured strain was Surrey's raptured line,
+    That fair and lovely form, the Lady Geraldine![69]
+
+This beautiful incident is too celebrated, too touching, not to be one
+of the articles of our poetical faith. It was believed by Surrey's
+contemporaries, and in the age immediately following was gravely related
+by a grave historian. It shows at least the celebrity which his poetry,
+unequalled at that time, had given to his love, and the object of it. In
+fact, when divested of the antique spelling, which, at the first glance,
+revolts by the impression it gives of difficulty and obscurity, some of
+the lyrics of Surrey have not since been surpassed either in elegance of
+sentiment, or flowing grace of expression:--for example--
+
+    A Praise of his Love, wherein he reproveth them that compare
+    their Ladies with his.
+
+    Give place ye lovers here before,
+    That spent your boastes and braggs in vain,
+    My ladye's beauty passeth more
+    The best of yours, I dare well sayne,
+    Then doth the sun the candle light,
+    Or brightest day the darkest night.
+    And thereto hath a truth as just,
+    As had Penelope the fair:
+    For what she sayeth you may it trust.
+      As it by writing sealed were;
+    And virtues hath she many moe,
+    Than I with pen have skill to show.
+
+The following sonnet is rather a specimen of versification than of
+sentiment: the subject is borrowed from Petrarch.
+
+
+A COMPLAINT, BY NIGHT, OF A LOVER NOT BELOVED.
+
+    Alas! so all things now do hold their peace,
+      Heaven and earth disturbed in no thing;
+    The beasts, the air, the birds their song do cease,
+      And the night's car the stars about doth bring:
+    Calm is the sea, the waves work less and less:
+      So am not I, whom love, alas! doth wring,
+    Bringing before my face the great increase
+      Of my desires, whereas I weep and sing,
+    In joy and woe, as in a doubtful case.
+      For my sweet thoughts, some time do pleasure bring;
+    But by and by, the cause of my disease,
+      Gives me a pang, that inwardly doth sting,
+    When that I think, what grief it is again
+      To live, and lack the thing should rid my pain.
+
+Geraldine was so beautiful as to authorise the raptures of her poetical
+lover. Even in her later years, when as Countess of Lincoln, she
+attended on Queen Elizabeth, she retained so much of her excelling
+loveliness, that the adoration paid to her in youth, was not wondered
+at; and her celebrity as Surrey's early love, is alluded to by
+cotemporary writers.[70] There can be no doubt that she was an
+accomplished woman: the learned education the Princesses received at
+Hunsdon, (in the advantages of which she participated,) is well known.
+Her father, Lord Kildare, was a man of vigorous intellect and uncommon
+attainments for the age in which he lived. He was the eighth Earl of his
+noble family, and being engaged in the disturbances of Ireland, then a
+scene of eternal dissension and bloodshed between the native princes and
+the lords of the English pale, he fell under the displeasure of Henry
+the Eighth: his eldest son, and his five brothers, who had been seized
+as hostages, were executed on the same day at Tyburn, and the "stout old
+Earl," as he is called in history, died broken-hearted in the Tower.
+The mother of Geraldine is rendered interesting to us by a little family
+trait, related by one of our old Chroniclers.[71] Lord Kildare, he tells
+us, "was so well affected to his wife, as he would not at anie time buy
+a suite of apparel for himself, but he would suite her with the same
+stuffe; the which gentlenesse she recompensed with equal kindnesse; for
+after that he, the said Earle, deceased in the Tower, she did not onely
+live a chaste and honourable widow, but also nightly, before she went to
+bed, she would resorte to his picture, and there, with a solemn _conge_,
+she would bid her Lorde good nighte."
+
+This Countess of Kildare was Lady Elizabeth Grey, granddaughter of that
+famous Lady Elizabeth Grey, whose virtue made her the queen of Edward
+the Fourth. Thus the fair Geraldine was cousin to the young princes who
+were smothered in the Tower, and may truly be said to have been of
+"Prince's blood."
+
+It must be admitted that the general tone of Surrey's poems does not
+give us a favourable idea of the fair Geraldine's manners and character.
+She was variable, coquetish, and fond of admiration;--on this point I
+have offered some apology for her. She is accused also of marrying
+twice, from _mercenary_ motives, and thus forfeiting the attachment of
+her noble and poetical lover.[72] This is unfair, I think; there is no
+_proof_ that Geraldine married solely from _mercenary_ motives. Surrey
+was himself married, and both the men to whom she was successively
+united,[73] were eminent in their day for high personal qualities,
+though in comparison with Surrey, they have been reduced to hide their
+diminished heads in peerages and genealogies.
+
+The Earl of Surrey was beheaded in 1547. The fair Geraldine was living
+forty years afterwards: she survived for a short time her second
+husband, Lord Lincoln; and with him lies buried under a sumptuous tomb
+at Windsor: she left no descendants. Her youngest brother, Edward
+Fitzgerald, was the lineal ancestor of the present Duke of Leinster.
+
+The only original portrait of the fair Geraldine, now extant, is in the
+gallery of the Duke of Bedford, at Woburn; and I am told that it is
+sufficiently beautiful to justify Surrey's admiration.[74]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[63] "Those bears of English--those barbarous islanders," are common
+phrases in the Italian writers of that age.
+
+[64] Surrey introduced the sonnet, and the use of blank verse into our
+literature. It is a curious fact, that the earliest blank verse extant
+was written by Saint Francis.
+
+[65] Natural brother of the princesses: he was the son of Henry VIII. by
+Lady Talbot.
+
+[66] He was imprisoned for eating meat in Lent.
+
+[67] Lady Frances Vere.
+
+[68] Surrey's Works: Nott's Edit. 4to.
+
+[69] Lay of the Last Minstrel.
+
+[70] Queen Elizabeth's Progresses, vol. i.
+
+[71] Holinshed.
+
+[72] See Nott's edition of Surrey's Works.
+
+[73] She was the second wife of Sir Anthony Browne, and the third wife
+of the Earl of Lincoln, ancestor to the Duke of Newcastle.
+
+[74] Those who are curious about historic proofs, may consult Anecdotes
+of the family of Howard, Memoirs and works of Henry Howard Earl of
+Surrey, edited by Dr. Nott, Park's Royal and Noble Authors, and Collins'
+Peerage, by Brydges.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+GINEVRA, AND ALESSANDRA STROZZI.
+
+
+While the sagacity of Horace Walpole was tracking the identity of the
+fair Geraldine, through the mazes of poetry and probability,--through
+parchments, through peerages, through papers, and through patents, he
+must now and then have been annoyed by the provoking discretion of her
+chivalrous adorer, which had led him such a chase. But of all the
+discreet lovers that ever baffled commentators or biographers, commend
+me to Ariosto! though one of the last from whom discretion might have
+been expected on such a subject. He is known to have been particularly
+susceptible to the power of beauty; passionate in his attachments; and
+though pensive and abstracted in his general habits, almost irresistibly
+captivating in his intercourse with women. Yet such was his fine
+chivalrous feeling for the honour of those who, won by his rare
+qualities, yielded it to his keeping--"such his marvellous secrecy and
+modesty," say his Italian biographers, that although the public gaze was
+fixed upon him in his lifetime, and although, since his death, the
+minutest circumstances relative to him have been subjects of as much
+curiosity and research in Italy, as Shakspeare among us; yet a few
+scattered notices are all that can be brought together to illustrate his
+charming lyrics.
+
+This mystery was not in Ariosto the effect of chance or affectation; it
+arose from a principle of conduct faithfully adhered to from youth to
+age; in behalf of which, and the many beautiful passages expressive of
+devotion and reverential tenderness towards our sex, scattered through
+his great poem, we will endeavour, (though at some little sacrifice of
+the pride and delicacy of women,) to pardon him, for having treated us
+most wickedly, on sundry other occasions. As an emblem of the reserve he
+had imposed on himself, a little bronze Cupid, with his finger on his
+lip, in token of silence, ornamented his inkstand, which is still
+preserved at Ferrara.
+
+Of Ariosto's amatory poems, so full of spirit, grace, and a sort of
+earnest triumphant tenderness, it is impossible to doubt that the
+objects were real. The earliest of his serious attachments, was to a
+young girl of the Florentine family of the Lapi, but residing at Mantua,
+or in its vicinity. Her name was Ginevra,--a name he has tenderly
+commemorated in the Orlando Furioso, by giving it to one of his most
+charming and interesting heroines,--Ginevra di Scozia. He has also,
+after Petrarch's fashion, _played_ upon this name in one or two of his
+sonnets; _Ginevro_ signifying a juniper-tree:
+
+    Non voglio (e Febo e Bacco mi perdoni)
+    Che lor frondi mi mostrino poeta,
+    Ma che un _Ginevro_ sia che mi coroni!
+
+     "I wish not, (may Bacchus and Phoebus pardon me!) either
+     the laurel or the ivy to crown my brows; let my wreath be
+     rather of the thorny juniper!"
+
+His love for Ginevra (which was fondly returned,) began in very early
+youth; their first interview occurred at a _Festa di Ballo_,--a
+fete-champetre, where Ginevra excelled all her young companions in the
+dance, as much as she surpassed them in her blooming beauty. He alludes
+to stolen interviews, in a grove of laurels, and on the banks of the
+Mincio: and on the whole, confesses that he had no reason to complain of
+cruelty from the fair Ginevra.[75] This attachment lasted long; for,
+four years after their first meeting, Ariosto addresses her in a most
+impassioned strain, and vows that she was then "dearer to him than his
+own soul, and fairer than ever in his eyes." She seems to have left that
+permanent impression on his memory and fancy, that shade of tender
+regret with which a man of strong sensibility and ardent imagination
+always recurs to the first love of his youth, even when the passion
+itself is past. He says himself, when revisiting Mantua many years
+afterwards, that the scene revived all his former tenderness--
+
+    Quel foco ch' io pensai che fosse estinto,
+    Dal tempo, dagli affanni, ed il star lunge
+    Signor pur arde.----
+
+I cannot discover what became of Ginevra ultimately: her fate was a
+common one: she was loved by a celebrated man, was forsaken, and in
+exchange for happiness and for love, she has enjoyed for some time a
+shadowy renown. Her name was usually connected with that of Ariosto,
+till the researches of later biographers discovered the object of that
+more celebrated, more serious, and more lasting passion which inspired
+Ariosto's finest lyrics, which was subsequently sealed by a private
+marriage, and ended only with the poet's life. In this instance, the
+modesty of the lady and the discretion of Ariosto have proved in vain,
+for the name of _Alessandra Strozzi_ is now so inseparably linked with
+that of her poet, that Beatrice is not more identified with Dante, nor
+Laura with Petrarch; though their names be more popular, and their fame
+more widely spread.
+
+    Minor di grido, ma del vanto altera,
+    (E cio le basta) che suo saggio amante
+    Fu'l grande che canto l'armi e gli amori--
+    Vedi Alessandra![76]
+
+Alessandra Strozzi was the daughter of Filippo Benucci, and the widow of
+Tito Strozzi, a noble Florentine and famous Latin poet. At the period of
+her first acquaintance with Ariosto, she must have been about
+six-and-twenty, and a beautiful woman, on a very magnificent scale.
+Though I cannot find that she was distinguished for talents, or any
+particular taste for literature, she seems to have possessed higher and
+more loveable qualities, which won Ariosto's admiration and secured his
+respect to the last.
+
+It was on his return from Rome in 1515, that Ariosto visited Florence,
+intending merely to witness the grand festival which was then celebrated
+in honour of St. John the Baptist, and lasted several days. With what
+animation, what graphic power, he has described in one of his canzoni,
+the scene and occasion in which he first beheld his mistress! The
+magnificence of Florence left, he says, few traces on his memory: he
+could only recollect that in all that fair city, he saw nothing so fair
+as herself.
+
+        Sol mi resta immortale
+    Memoria, ch'io non vidi in tutta quella
+    Bella citta, di voi, cosa piu bella.
+
+He had arrived just in time to be present at a fete, to which both were
+invited, and which Alessandra, notwithstanding her recent widowhood,
+condescended to adorn with her presence, "da preghi vinta"--conquered by
+the entreaties of her friends. The whole scene is set forth like some of
+the living and moving pictures which glow before us in the Orlando.
+
+    Porte, finestre, vie, templi, teatri,
+    Vidi pieni di Donne,
+    A giochi, a pompe, a sacrifici intenti.
+
+The portrait of Alessandra in her festal attire, and all her matronly
+loveliness, looks forth, as it were, from this gorgeous frame, like one
+of Titian's breathing, full-blown beauties. Her dress is minutely
+described: it was black, embroidered over with wreaths of vine-leaves
+and bunches of grapes, in purple and gold; her fair luxuriant hair,
+gathered in a net behind and parted in front, fell down on either side
+of her face, in long curls which touched her shoulders.
+
+    In aurei nodi, il biondo e spesso crine
+    In rara e sottil rete, avea raccolto;
+      Soave ombra di drieto
+    Rendea al collo, e dinanzi alle confine
+      Delle guance divine;
+    E discendea fin a l' avorio bianco
+      Del destro omero, e manco;
+    Con queste reti, insidiosi amori
+      Preser quel giorno, piu de mille cori!
+
+    "In golden braids, her fair
+    And richly flowing hair
+    Was gather'd in a subtle net behind,--
+    (A subtle net and rare!)
+    And cast sweet shadows there
+    Over her neck, whilst parted ringlets, twined
+    In beauty, from her forehead fell away,
+    And hung adown her cheek where roses lay,
+    Touching the ivory pale, (how pale and white!)
+    Of both her rounded shoulders, left and right.
+    O crafty Loves! no more ye need your darts;
+    For well ye know, how many thousand hearts,
+      (Willing captives on that day,)
+      In those golden meshes lay!"[77]
+
+On her brow, just where her hair is parted, she wears a sprig of laurel,
+wondrously wrought in gems and gold;
+
+                  Quel gemmato
+    Alloro, tra la serena fronte e l' calle assunto.
+
+After a rapturous, but general description of the lady's surpassing
+beauty, this animated and admirable canzone concludes with the fine
+comparison of himself to the wild falcon, tamed at length to a master's
+hand and voice:--
+
+    La libertade apprezza,
+    Fin che perduta ancor non l' ha il falcone;
+    Preso che sia, depone
+    Del gire errando si l' antica voglia,
+    Che sempre che si scioglia,
+    Al suo Signor a render con veloci
+    Ali s' andra, dove udira le voci!
+
+Ariosto, thus enamoured, forgot the flight of time; instead of remaining
+at Florence a few days, his stay was prolonged to six months; and as he
+resided in the house of his friend Vespucci, who was the brother-in-law
+of Alessandra, he had daily opportunities of seeing her, without in any
+way compromising her matronly dignity. On a certain occasion he finds
+her employed at her embroidery. She is working a robe, with wreaths of
+lilies and amaranthes; these emblems of purity and love suggest, of
+course, the obvious compliments, but in a spirit that places the whole
+scene before us: Alessandra, gracefully bending at her embroidery-frame,
+and listening, with veiled lids and suspended needle, to the tender
+homage of Ariosto, who repeats, as he hangs over her,--
+
+    Non senza causa il giglio e l' amaranto,
+    L' uno di fede, e l' altro fior d' amore, &c.
+
+Even the pattern from which she is working, the silk, the gold, the
+lawn, made happy by her touch, are sanctified, are envied,--
+
+    Avventuroso man! beato ingegno!
+    Beata seta! beatissimo oro!
+    Ben nato lino! inclito bel lavoro,
+    Da chi vuol la mia dea prender disegno,
+    Per far a vostro esempio un vestir degno,
+    Che copra avorio, e perle ed un tesoro![78]
+
+And he adds, "Ah, that she would rather take pattern after me, and
+imitate the constant love I bear her!"
+
+Alessandra must have excelled in needle-work, for we find frequent
+mention of her favorite occupation; and it is even alluded to in the
+Orlando, where describing the wound of Zerbino, Ariosto uses a
+comparison rather too fanciful for the occasion.
+
+    Cosi talora un bel purpureo nastro
+    Ho veduto partir tela d'argento,
+    Da quel bianca man piu ch'alabastro
+    Da cui partire il cor spesso mi sento.
+
+    And so, I sometimes have been wont to view
+    A hand more white than alabaster, part
+    The silver cloth, with ribbons red of hue,
+    A hand I often feel divide my heart.[79]
+
+Among the personal charms of Alessandra, the most striking was the
+beauty and luxuriance of her hair. In the days of Ariosto, fair hair,
+with a golden tinge, was so much admired that it became a fashion; we
+are even informed that the Venetian women had invented a dye, or
+extract, by which they discharged the natural colour of their tresses,
+and gave them this admired hue. Almost all Titian's and Giorgione's
+beauties have fair hair; the "richissima capellatura bionda" of
+Alessandra, was a principal charm in the eyes of her lover, but it was
+one she was destined to lose prematurely; during a dangerous illness,
+some rash and luckless physician ordered all her beautiful tresses to be
+cut off. The remedy, it seems, was equally unnecessary and unfortunate;
+but here was a fine theme for an indignant lover! and Ariosto has,
+accordingly, lavished on it some of his most graceful and poetical
+ideas. Of the three elegant sonnets[80] in which he has commemorated the
+incident, it is difficult to decide which is the finest--the last,
+perhaps, is the most spirited: the poet bursts at once into his subject,
+as in a transport of grief and rage.
+
+"When I think, as I do, a thousand, thousand times a-day, upon those
+golden tresses, which neither wisdom nor necessity, but hasty folly,
+tore, alas! from that fair head, I am enraged,--my cheek burns with
+anger,--even tears gush forth, bathing my face and bosom;--I could die
+to be revenged on the impious stupidity of that rash hand! O Love, if
+such wrong goes unpunished, thine be the reproach! Remember how Bacchus
+avenged on the Thracian King,[81] the clusters torn from his sacred
+vines: wilt thou, who art greater far than he, do less? Wilt thou suffer
+the loveliest and dearest of thy possessions to be audaciously ravished,
+and yet bear it in silence?"[82]
+
+This is powerful enough to be in downright earnest: and unsoftened by
+the flowing harmony of the verse and rhyme, appears even harsh, both in
+sentiment and expression: but the poetry and spirit being inherent, have
+not, I trust, quite escaped in the _transfusion_. When Ariosto, after a
+long absence, revisits the scene in which he first beheld the lady of
+his thoughts, he addresses those "marble halls, and lofty and stately
+roofs,
+
+    "Marmoree logge, alti e superbi tetti,"
+
+in a strain which leaves the issue of his suit something less than
+doubtful:--
+
+"Well do ye remember, ye scenes, when I left ye a captive sick at
+heart, and pierced with Love's sweet pain: but ye know not perhaps how
+sweetly I died, and was restored again to life: how my gentlest Lady,
+seeing that my soul had forsaken me, sent me hers in return to dwell
+with me for ever!"
+
+    "Ben vi sovvien, che di qui andai captivo,
+    Trafitto il cor! ma non sapete forse
+    Com' io morissi, e poi tornassi in vita.
+
+    E che madonna, tosto che s' accorse
+    Esser l' anima in lei da me fuggita,
+    La sua mi diede, e ch' or con questa vivo!"
+
+The exact date of Ariosto's marriage cannot be ascertained, but the
+marriage itself is proved beyond a doubt:[83] it must have taken place
+about 1522. The reasons which induced Ariosto to involve in doubt and
+mystery his union with this admirable woman, can only be
+conjectured,[84] their intercourse was so carefully concealed, and the
+discretion and modesty of Alessandra so remarkable, that no suspicion of
+the ties which bound them to each other, existed during the life of the
+poet; nor did the slightest imputation ever sully the fair fame of her
+he loved.
+
+It were endless to point out the various beauties of Ariosto's
+lyrics,--beauties which, as they spring from feeling, are _felt_. We
+have few sonnets in a dolorous strain, few complaints of cruelty; and
+even these seem inspired, not by the habitual coldness of Alessandra,
+but by some occasional repulses which he confesses to have deserved.
+
+    Per poco consiglio, e troppo ardire.
+
+But we have, in their place, all the glow of sensibility, the sparkling
+of hope, the grateful rapture of returned affection, and that power of
+imagery, by which, with one vivid stroke, he turns his emotions into
+pictures: these predominate throughout. As an instance of the latter,
+there is the apostrophe to Hope, "now bounding and leaping along, now
+creeping with coward steps and slow:"
+
+    O speranza! che ancor dietro si mena
+    Quando a gran salti, e quando a passi lenti!
+
+In one of his madrigals, he says, with an elegance which is perhaps a
+little quaint, "my wishes soar so high, that my hopes shrink back, and
+dare not follow them." In the same spirit, when he is blest with the
+presence of his love, grief is not only banished, but "flies with the
+rapidity of a falcon before the wind,"
+
+    Vola, com' un falcone che ha seco il vento!
+
+Merely to compare his mistress to a rose, would have been common-place.
+She is a rose "unfolding her _paradise_ of leaves,"--a charming
+expression, which has been adopted, I think, by one of our living poets.
+Mingled with the most rapturous praise of Alessandra's triumphant
+beauty, we have constantly the most delightful impression of her
+tenderness, her frank and courteous bearing, and the gladness which her
+presence diffuses through his heart, which, after the sentimental
+lamentations of former poets, are really a relief.
+
+I can understand the self-congratulation, the secret enjoyment, with
+which Ariosto dwelt on the praises of Alessandra, celebrated her charms,
+and exulted in her love, while her name remained an impenetrable secret,
+
+    Nor pass'd his lips in holy silence seal'd!
+
+But when once he had introduced her into the Orlando, he must have had a
+very modest idea of his own future renown, not to have anticipated the
+consequences. A famous passage in the 42d canto, is now universally
+admitted to be a description of Alessandra.[85] She is very strikingly
+introduced, and yet with the usual characteristic mystery; so that while
+nothing is omitted that can excite interest and curiosity, every means
+are taken to baffle and disappoint both. Rinaldo, while travelling in
+Italy, arrives at a splendid palace on the banks of the Po. It is
+minutely described, with all the prodigal magnificence of the Arabian
+Nights', and all the taste of an architect; and among other riches, is
+adorned with the statues of the most celebrated women of that age, all
+of whom are named at length; but among them stands the effigy of one so
+preeminent in majesty, and beauty, and intellect, that though she is
+partly veiled, and habited in modest black, (alluding to her recent
+widowhood,) though she wears neither jewels nor chains of gold, she
+eclipses all the beauties around her, as the evening star outshines all
+others.
+
+    Che sotto puro velo, in nera gonna
+    Senza oro e gemme, in un vestire schietto,
+    Fra le piu adorne non parea men bella
+    Che sia tra l'altre la ciprigna stella![86]
+
+At her side stands the image of one, who in humble strains had dared to
+celebrate her virtues and her beauty (meaning himself). "But," adds the
+poet modestly, "I know not why he alone should be placed there, nor what
+he had done to be so honoured; of all the rest, the names were
+sculptured beneath; but of these two, the names remained unknown."--No,
+not so! for those whom Love and Fame have joined together, who shall
+henceforth sunder?
+
+The Orlando Furioso was completed and published shortly after Ariosto's
+visit to Florence; and this passage must have been written apparently
+not only before his marriage with Alessandra, but before he was even
+secure of her affection; perhaps he read it aloud to her, and while his
+stolen looks and faltering voice betrayed the true object of this most
+beautiful and refined homage, she must have felt the delicacy which had
+suppressed her name. In such a moment, how little could she have heeded
+or thought of the voice of future fame, while the accents of her lover
+thrilled through her heart!
+
+Alessandra removed from Florence to Ferrara, about 1519, and inhabited
+the Casa Strozzi, in the street of Santa Maria in Vado. The residence
+of Ariosto was in the Via Mirasole, at some distance. Both houses are
+still standing. She died in 1552, having survived the poet about
+nineteen years; and she was buried in the church of San Rocco at
+Ferrara.
+
+She bore no children to Ariosto; and her son, by her first marriage
+(Count Guido Strozzi), died before her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Ariosto left two sons, whom he tenderly loved, and had educated with
+extreme care. The eldest, Virginio, was the son of a beautiful
+Contadinella, whose name was Orsolina; the mother of the youngest,
+Giovanbattista, was also a girl of inferior rank; her name was Maria.
+Neither are once mentioned or alluded to by Ariosto; but the mischievous
+industry of the poet's commentators has immortalized their names and
+their frailty.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[75]
+    ----Non ebbe unqua pastore
+    Di me piu lieto, o piu felice amore!
+
+See the canzone to Ginevra, quoted by Baruffaldi. Vita, p. 148.
+
+[76] Monti. Poesie varie, p. 88.
+
+[77] Translated by a friend.
+
+[78] Sonnet 27.
+
+[79] Stewart Rose's translation.
+
+[80] The 26th, 27th, and 28th.
+
+[81] Lycurgus, King of Thrace.
+
+[82] Ariosto. Rime.
+
+[83] The proofs may be consulted in Baruffaldi, "Vita di M. Ludovico
+Ariosto," published in 1807; and also in Frizzi, "Memorie della Famiglia
+Ariosto."
+
+[84] Baruffaldi gives some family reasons, but they are far from being
+satisfactory.--See VITA, in p. 159.
+
+[85] Ruscelli, Fabroni, Baruffaldi, and the late poet Monti, are all
+agreed on this point.
+
+[86] Orlando Furioso, c. 42, st. 93.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+SPENSER'S ROSALIND AND SPENSER'S ELIZABETH.
+
+
+Pass we from the Ariosto of Italy, to Spenser, our English Ariosto; the
+transition is natural:--they resemble each other certainly, but with a
+difference, and this difference reigns especially in their minor poems.
+
+The tender heart and luxuriant fancy of Spenser have thrown round his
+attachments all the strong interest of reality and all the charm of
+romance and poetry; and since we know that the first developement of his
+genius was owing to female influence, his Rosalind ought to have been
+deified for what her beauty achieved, had she possessed sufficient soul
+to appreciate the lustre of her conquest.
+
+Immediately on leaving college, Spenser retired to the north of England,
+where he first became enamoured of the fair being to whom, according to
+the fashion of the day, he gave the fanciful appellation of Rosalind. We
+are told that the letters which form this word being "well ordered,"
+(that is, _transposed_) comprehend her real name; but it has hitherto
+escaped the penetration of his biographers. Two of his friends were
+entrusted with the secret, and they, with a discretion more to be
+regretted than blamed, have kept it. One of these, who speaks from
+personal knowledge, tells us, in a note on the Eclogues, that she was
+the daughter of a widow; that she was a gentlewoman, and one "that for
+her rare and singular gifts of person and mind, Spenser need not have
+been ashamed to love." We can believe this of a poet, whose delicate
+perception of female worth breathes in almost every page of his works;
+but after having, as he hoped, made some progress in her heart, a rival
+stept in, whom Spenser accuses expressly of having supplanted him by
+treacherous arts;[87] and on this obscure and nameless wight, Rosalind
+bestowed the hand which had been coveted,--the charms which had been
+sung by Spenser! He suffered long and deeply, wounded both in his pride
+and in his love: but her beauty and virtue had made a stronger
+impression than her cruelty; and her lover, with a generous tenderness,
+not only pardoned, but found excuses for her disdain.
+
+                      "I have often heard,
+    Fair Rosalind of divers foully blam'd,
+      For being to that swain too cruel hard;
+    But who can tell what cause had that fair maid
+      To use him so, that loved her so well?
+    Or who with blame can justly her upbraid,
+      For loving not; for who can love compel?
+    And (sooth to say) it is full handy thing
+      Rashly to censure creatures so divine;
+    For demi-gods they be; and first did spring
+      From heaven, though graft in frailness feminine."[88]
+
+The exquisite sentiment of these lines is worthy of him who sung of
+"heavenly Una and her milk-white lamb."
+
+To the memory of Rosalind,--to the long felt influence of this first
+passion, and to the melancholy shade which his early disappointment cast
+over a mind naturally cheerful, we owe some of the most tender and
+beautiful passages scattered through his later poems:--for instance--the
+bitter sense of recollected suffering, seems to have suggested that fine
+description of a lover's life, which may almost rank as a _pendant_ to
+the miseries of the courtier, so well known and often quoted.
+
+    Full little know'st thou that hast not tied, &c.
+
+It occurs in the "Hymn to Love."
+
+    The gnawing envy, the heart-fretting fear,
+    The vain surmises, the distrustful shows,
+    The false reports that flying tales do bear,
+    The doubts, the dangers, the delays, the woes,
+    The feigned friends, the unassured foes,
+    With thousands more than any tongue can tell--
+    Do make a lover's life, a wretch's hell!
+
+And again in the Fairey Queen:--
+
+    What equal torment to the grief of mind.
+      And pining anguish, hid in gentle heart,
+    That inly foods itself with thoughts unkind,
+    And nourisheth its own consuming smart;
+    And will to none its malady impart!
+
+The effects produced in a noble and gentle spirit, by virtuous love for
+an exalted object, are not less elegantly described in another stanza of
+the Hymn to Love; and must have been read with rapture in that
+chivalrous age. The last line is particularly beautiful.
+
+    Then forth he casts in his unquiet thought,
+    What he may do, her favour to obtain;
+    What brave exploit, what peril hardly wrought,
+    What puissant conquest, what adventurous pain,
+    May please her best, and grace unto him gain;
+    He dreads no danger, nor misfortune fears,--
+    His faith, his fortune, in his breast he bears!
+
+And in what a fine spirit of poetry, as well as feeling, is that
+description of the power of true beauty, which forms part of his second
+Hymn! It is indeed imitated from the refined Platonics of the Italian
+school, which then prevailed in the court, the camp, the grove, and is a
+little diffuse in style, a little redundant; but how rich in poetry, and
+in the most luxuriant and graceful imagery!
+
+    How vainly then do idle wits invent,
+    That beauty is nought else but mixture made
+    Of colours fair, and goodly temperament
+    Of pure complexions, that shall quickly fade
+    And pass away, like to a summer's shade;
+    Or that it is but comely composition
+    Of parts well measured, with meet disposition!
+
+    Hath white and red in it such wondrous power,
+    That it can pierce through th' eyes into the heart,
+    And therein stir such rage and restless stowre,
+    As nought but death can stint his dolor's smart?
+    Or can proportion of the outward part
+    Move such affection in the inward mind,
+    That it can rob both sense, and reason blind?
+
+    Why do not then the blossoms of the field,
+    Which are array'd with much more orient hue,
+    And to the sense most dainty odours yield,
+    Work like impression in the looker's view?
+    Or why do not fair pictures like power show,
+    In which oft-times we Nature see of Art
+    Excell'd, in perfect limming every part?
+
+    But ah! believe me, there is more than so,
+    That works such wonders in the minds of men,
+    I, that have often prov'd, too well it know.
+    And who so list the like essaies to ken,
+    Shall find by trial, and confess it then,
+    That beauty is not, as fond men misdeem,
+    An outward show of things that only seem.
+
+    For that same goodly hue of white and red,
+    With which the cheeks are sprinkled, shall decay,
+    And those sweet rosy leaves, so fairly spread
+    Upon the lips, shall fade and fall away,
+    To that they were, even to corrupted clay:--
+    That golden wire, those sparkling stars so bright
+    Shall turn to dust, and lose their goodly light.
+
+    But that fair lamp, from whose celestial ray
+    That light proceeds, which kindleth lovers' fire,
+    Shall never be extinguished nor decay;
+    But, when the vital spirits do expire,
+    Unto her native planet shall retire;
+    For it is heavenly born and cannot die,
+    Being a parcel of the purest sky!
+
+At a late period of Spenser's life, the remembrance of this cruel piece
+of excellence,--his Rosalind, was effaced by a second and a happier
+love. His sonnets are addressed to a beautiful Irish girl, the daughter
+of a rich merchant of Cork. She it was who healed the wound inflicted by
+disdain and levity, and taught him the truth he has expressed in one
+charming line--
+
+    Sweet is that love alone, that comes with willingnesse!
+
+Her name was Elizabeth, and her family (as Spenser tells us himself,)
+obscure; but, in spite of her plebeian origin, the lady seems to have
+been a very peremptory and Juno-like beauty. Spenser continually dwells
+upon her pride of sex, and has placed it before us in many charming
+turns of thought, now deprecating it as a fault, but oftener celebrating
+it as a virtue. For instance,--
+
+    Rudely thou wrongest my dear heart's desire,
+    In finding fault with her too portly pride:
+    The thing which I do most in her admire,
+    Is of the world unworthy most envied;
+    For in those lofty looks is close implied,
+    Scorn of base things, disdain of foul dishonour;
+    Threatening rash eyes which gaze on her so wide,
+    That loosely they ne dare to look upon her.
+    Such pride is praise; such portliness is honour.[89]
+
+And again, in the thirteenth sonnet,--
+
+    In that proud port, which her so goodly graceth,
+    Whiles her fair face she rears up to the sky,
+    And to the ground, her eyelids low embaseth,
+    Most goodly temperature ye may descry;
+    Mild humblesse, mixt with awful majesty!
+
+This picture of the deportment erect with conscious dignity, and the
+eyelids veiled with feminine modesty, is very beautiful. We have the
+figure of his Elizabeth before us in all her maidenly dignity and proud
+humility. The next is a softened repetition of the same characteristic
+portrait:
+
+    Was it the work of Nature or of Art,
+    Which temper'd so the features of her face,
+    That pride and meekness, mixt by equal part,
+    Do both appear to adorn her beauty's grace![90]
+
+He rebukes her with a charming mixture of reproof and flattery, in the
+lines--
+
+    Fair Proud! now tell me, why should fair be proud? &c.
+
+This imperious and high-souled beauty at length gives some sign of
+relenting; and pursuing the train of thought and feeling through the
+latter part of the collection, we can trace the vicissitudes of the
+lady's temper, and how the lover sped in his wooing. First, she grants a
+smile, and it is hailed with rapture--
+
+    Sweet smile! the daughter of the Queen of Love,
+    Expressing all thy mother's powerful art,
+    With which she wont to temper angry Jove,
+    When all the gods he threats with thundering dart:
+    Sweet is thy virtue, as thyself sweet art!
+    For, when on me thou shinedst late in sadness,
+    A melting pleasance ran through every part,
+    And me revived with heart-robbing gladness![91]
+
+The effect of a first relenting and affectionate smile, from a being of
+this character, must, in truth, have been irresistible. He tells us how
+lovely she appeared in his eyes,--how surpassing fair:
+
+    When that the cloud of pride which oft doth dark
+    Her goodly light, with smiles she drives away!
+
+He finds her one day embroidering in silk a bee and a spider,
+
+                        Woven all about,
+    With woodbynd flowers and fragrant eglantine,
+
+and he playfully compares himself to a spider, and her to the bee, whom,
+after long and weary watching, he has at length caught in his snare.
+This pretty incident is the subject of the 71st Sonnet. The rapture of
+grateful affection is more eloquent in the Sonnet beginning
+
+    Joy of my life! full oft for loving you
+    I bless my lot, that was so lucky placed, &c.
+
+When he is allowed to hope, the pride which had before checked and
+chilled him, seems to change its character. He feels all the exultation
+of being beloved of one, not easily gained, and "assured unto herself."
+
+    Thrice happy she that is so well assured
+    Unto herself, and settled so in heart, &c.[92]
+
+After a courtship of about three years, he sues for the possession of
+the fair hand to which he had so long aspired; promising her (and not
+vainly,) all the immortality his verse could bestow,--
+
+    Even this verse, vowed to eternity,
+    Shall be of her immortal monument,
+    And tell her praise to all posterity!
+
+The fair Elizabeth at length confesses herself won; but expresses some
+fears at the idea of relinquishing her maiden freedom. His reply is,
+perhaps, the most beautiful of all the Sonnets. It has all the
+tenderness, elegance, and fancy, which distinguish Spenser in his
+happiest moments of inspiration.
+
+    The doubt which ye misdeem, fair love, is vain,
+      That fondly fear to lose your liberty;
+    When, losing one, two liberties ye gain,
+      And make him bound that bondage erst did fly.
+    Sweet be the bands, the which true love doth tye
+      Without constraint, or dread of any ill:
+    The gentle bird feels no captivity
+      Within her cage; but sings, and feeds her fill:
+    There pride dare not approach, nor discord spill
+      The league 'twixt them, that loyal love hath bound:
+    But simple Truth, and mutual Good-will,
+      Seeks, with sweet peace, to salve each other's wound:
+    There Faith doth fearless dwell is brazen tower,
+    And spotless Pleasure builds her sacred bower.[93]
+
+The _Amoretti_, as Spenser has fancifully entitled his Sonnets, are
+certainly tinctured with a good deal of the verbiage and pedantry of the
+times; but I think I have shown that they contain passages of earnest
+feeling, as well as high poetic beauty. Spenser married his Elizabeth,
+about the year 1593, and he has crowned his amatory effusions with a
+most impassioned and triumphant epithalamion on his own nuptials, which
+he concludes with a prophecy, that it shall stand a perpetual monument
+of his happiness, and thus it has been. The passage in which he
+describes his youthful bride, is perhaps one of the most beautiful and
+vivid _pictures_ in the whole compass of English poetry.
+
+    Behold, while she before the altar stands,
+    Hearing the holy priest that to her speaks,
+    And blesses her with his two happy hands.
+    How the red roses flush up in her cheeks.
+    And the pure snow, with goodly vermeil stain,
+    Like crimson died in grain!
+    That even the angels, which continually
+    About the sacred altar do remain,
+    Forget their service, and about her fly,
+    Oft peeping in her face, which seems more fair,
+    The more they on it stare.
+    But her sad eyes, still fastened on the ground,
+    Are governed with a goodly modesty
+    That suffers not a look to glance away,
+    Which may let in a little thought unsound.
+    Why blush ye, love! to give to me your hand
+    The pledge of all our band!
+      Sing! ye sweet angels! Hallelujah sing!
+    That all the woods may answer, and their echoes ring!
+
+And the rapturous apostrophe to the evening star is in a fine strain of
+poetry.
+
+    Late, though it be, at last I see it gloom,
+    And the bright evening star, with golden crest,
+    Appear out of the west!
+    Fair child of beauty! glorious lamp of love!
+    That all the host of heaven in ranks dost lead,
+    And guidest lovers through the night's sad dread,
+    How cheerfully thou lookest from above,
+    And seem'st lo laugh atween thy twinkling light!
+
+As Ariosto has contrived to introduce his personal feelings, and the
+memory of his love, into the Orlando Furioso, so Spenser has enshrined
+_his_ in the Fairy Queen; but he has not, I think, succeeded so well in
+the _manner_ of celebrating the woman he delighted to honour. Ariosto
+has the advantage over the English poet, in delicacy and propriety of
+feeling as well as power. Spenser's picture of the swelling eminence,
+the lawn, the clustering trees, the cascade--
+
+    Whose silver waves did softly tumble down,
+
+haunted by nymphs and fairies; the bevy of beauties who dance in a
+circle round the lady of his love, while he himself, in his character of
+Colin Clout, sits aloof piping on his oaten reed, remind us of one of
+Claude's landscapes: and the difference between the pastoral luxuriance
+of this diffuse description, and the stately magnificence of Ariosto's,
+is very characteristic of the two poets. Were I to choose, however, I
+would rather have been the object of Ariosto's compliment than of
+Spenser's. The passage in the Fairy Queen occurs in the 10th canto of
+the Legend of Sir Calidore; and all his commentators are agreed that the
+allusion is to his Elizabeth, and not to Rosalind.
+
+Both are mentioned in "Colin Clout's come home again." Rosalind, and her
+disdainful rejection of the poet's love, are alluded to near the end, in
+some lines already quoted; but a very beautiful passage, near the
+commencement of the poem, clearly alludes to Elizabeth, under whose
+thrall he was at the time it was written.
+
+    Ah! far be it, (quoth Colin Clout,) fro me,
+    That I, of gentle maids, should ill deserve,
+    For that myself I do profess to be
+    Vassal to one, whom all my days I serve;
+    The beam of Beauty, sparkled from above,
+    The flower of virtue and pure chastitie;
+    The blossom of sweet joy and perfect love;
+    The pearl of peerless grace and modesty!
+    To her, my thoughts I daily dedicate;
+    To her, my heart I nightly martyrise;
+    To her, my love I lowly do prostrate;
+    To her, my life I wholly sacrifice:
+    My thought, my heart, my life, my love, is she! &c.
+
+Spenser married his Elizabeth about the year 1593. He resided at this
+time at the Castle of Kilcolman, in the south of Ireland, a portion of
+the forfeited domains of the Earl of Desmond having been assigned to
+him: but the adherents of that unhappy chief saw in Spenser only an
+invader of their rights,--a stranger living on their inheritance, while
+they were cast out to starvation or banishment. He and his family dwelt
+in continual fears and disturbance from the distracted state of the
+country; and at length, about two years after his marriage, he was
+attacked in his castle by the native Irish. He and his wife escaped with
+difficulty, and one of their children perished in the flames. After this
+catastrophe they came to England, and Spenser died in 1598, about five
+years after his marriage with Elizabeth. The short period of their
+union, though disturbed by misfortunes, losses, and worldly cares, was
+never clouded by domestic disquiet. This haughty beauty,
+
+    Whose lofty countenance seemed to scorn
+    Base thing, and think how she to heaven might climb,
+
+became the tenderest and most faithful of wives. How long she survived
+her husband is not known; but though scarce past the bloom of youth at
+the period of her loss, we have no account of her marrying again.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[87] Eclogue 6.
+
+[88] Colin Clout.
+
+[89] Sonnet 5.
+
+[90] Sonnet 21.
+
+[91] Sonnet 39.
+
+[92] Sonnet 39.
+
+[93] Sonnet 65.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+ON THE LOVE OF SHAKSPEARE.
+
+
+Shakspeare--I approach the subject with reverence, and even with
+fear,--is the only poet I am acquainted with and able to appreciate, who
+appears to have been really heaven-inspired: the workings of his
+wondrous and all-embracing mind were directed by a higher influence than
+ever was exercised by woman, even in the plenitude of her power and her
+charms. Shakspeare's genius waited not on Love and Beauty, but Love and
+Beauty ministered to _him_; he perceived like a spirit; he was created,
+to create; his own individuality is lost in the splendour, the reality,
+and the variety of his own conceptions. When I think what those are, I
+feel how needless, how vain it were to swell the universal voice with
+one so weak as mine. Who would care for it that knows and feels
+Shakspeare? Who would listen to it that does not, if there be such?
+
+It is not Shakspeare as a great power bearing a great name,--but
+Shakspeare in his less divine and less known character,--as a lover and
+a man, who finds a place here. The only writings he has left, through
+which we can trace any thing of his personal feelings and affections,
+are his Sonnets. Every one who reads them, who has tenderness or taste,
+will echo Wordsworth's denunciation against the "flippant insensibility"
+of some of his commentators, who talked of an Act of Parliament not
+being strong enough to compel their perusal, and will agree in his
+opinion, that they are full of the most exquisite feelings, most
+felicitously expressed; but as to the object to whom they were
+addressed, a difference of opinion prevails. From a reference, however,
+to all that is known of Shakspeare's life and fortunes, compared with
+the internal presumptive evidence contained in the Sonnets, it appears
+that some of them are addressed to his amiable friend, Lord Southampton;
+and others, I think, are addressed in Southampton's name, to that
+beautiful Elizabeth Vernon, to whom the Earl was so long and ardently
+attached.[94] The Queen, who did not encourage matrimony among her
+courtiers, absolutely refused her consent to their union. She treated
+him as she did Raleigh in the affair of Elizabeth Throckmorton; and
+Southampton, after four years of impatient submission and still
+increasing love, as tenderly returned by his mistress, married without
+the Queen's knowledge, lost her favour for ever, and had nearly lost his
+head.[95]
+
+That Lord Southampton is the subject of the first fifty-five Sonnets is
+sufficiently clear; and some of these are perfectly beautiful,--as the
+30th, 32d, 41st, 54th. There are others scattered through the rest of
+the volume, on the same subject; but there are many which admit of no
+such interpretation, and are without doubt inspired by the real object
+of a real passion, of whom nothing can be discovered, but that she was
+dark-eyed[96] and dark-haired,[96] that she excelled in music;[97] and
+that she was one of a class of females who do not always, in losing all
+right to our respect, lose also their claim to the admiration of the sex
+who wronged them, or the compassion of the gentler part of their own,
+who have rejected them. This is so clear from various passages, that
+unhappily there can be no doubt of it.[98] He has flung over her,
+designedly it should seem, a veil of immortal texture and fadeless hues,
+"branched and embroidered like the painted Spring," but almost
+impenetrable even to our imagination. There are few allusions to her
+personal beauty, which can in any way individualise her, but bursts of
+deep and passionate feeling, and eloquent reproach, and contending
+emotions, which show, that if she could awaken as much love and impart
+as much happiness as woman ever inspired or bestowed, he endured on her
+account all the pangs of agony, and shame, and jealousy;--that our
+Shakspeare,--he who, in the omnipotence of genius, wielded the two
+worlds of reality and imagination in either hand, who was in conception
+and in act scarce less than a GOD, was in passion and suffering not more
+than MAN.
+
+Instead of any elaborate description of her person, we have, in the only
+sonnet which sets forth her charms, the rich materials of a picture,
+rather than the picture itself.
+
+      The forward violet thus did I chide:
+    Sweet thief, whence didst thou steal thy sweet that smells,
+      If not from my Love's breath? The purple pride
+    Which on thy soft cheek for complexion dwells,
+      In my Love's veins thou hast too grossly dy'd.
+    The lily I condemned for thy hand,
+      And buds of marjoram had stolen thy hair:
+    The roses fearfully on thorns did stand,
+      One blushing shame, another white despair:
+    A third, nor red nor white, had stolen of both,
+      And to his robbery had annex'd thy breath;
+    But for his theft, in pride of all his growth
+      A vengeful canker eat him up to death.
+    More flowers I noted, yet I none could see,
+    But sweet, or colour, it had stolen from thee.
+
+He intimates that he found a rival in one of his own most intimate
+friends, who was also a poet.[99] He laments her absence in this
+exquisite strain;--
+
+    How like a winter hath my absence been
+    From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year!
+    What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen,
+    What old December's bareness everywhere!
+
+    ....*....*....*....*
+
+    For Summer and his pleasures wait on thee,
+    And thou away, the very birds are mute!
+
+He dwells with complacency on her supposed truth and tenderness, her
+bounty, like Juliet's, "boundless as the sea, her love as deep."
+
+    Kind is my love to-day, to-morrow kind,
+    Still constant in a wondrous excellence.
+
+Then, as if conscious upon how unstable a foundation he had built his
+love, he expresses his fear lest he should be betrayed, yet remain
+unconscious of the wrong.
+
+    For there can live no hatred in thine eye,
+      Therefore in that I cannot know thy change!
+    In many looks, the false heart's history
+      Is writ in moods and frowns, and wrinkles strange.
+    But heaven in thy creation did decree,
+      That in thy face sweet love should ever dwell.
+
+He bitterly reproaches her with her levity and falsehood, and himself
+that he can be thus unworthily enslaved,--
+
+    What potions have I drunk of Syren tears, &c.
+
+Then, with lover-like inconsistency, excuses her,--
+
+    As on the finger of a throned queen
+      The basest jewel will be well esteemed:
+    So are those errors that in thee are seen
+      To truths translated, and for true things deem'd.
+
+And the following are powerfully and painfully expressive:--
+
+    How sweet and lovely dost thou make the shame,
+      Which, like the canker in a fragrant rose,
+    Doth spot the beauty of thy budding name!
+      Oh, in what sweets dost thou thy sins enclose!
+
+    And what a mansion have those vices got,
+      Which for their habitation chose out thee,
+    Where Beauty's veil doth cover every blot,
+      And all things turn to fair that eyes can see!
+
+"Who taught thee," he says in another sonnet,
+
+      --to make me love thee more
+    The more I hear, and see just cause for hate?
+
+He who wrote these and similar passages was certainly under the full and
+irresistible influence of female fascination. But who it was that thus
+ruled the universal heart and mighty spirit of our Shakspeare, we know
+not. She stands beside him a veiled and a nameless phantom. Neither dare
+we call in Fancy to penetrate that veil; for who would presume to trace
+even the faintest outline of such a being as Shakspeare could have
+loved?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I think it doubtful to whom were addressed those exquisite lines,
+
+    Then hate me when thou wilt, if ever, now! &c.[100]
+
+but probably to this very person.
+
+The Sonnets in which he alludes to his profession as an actor; where he
+speaks of the brand, "which vulgar scandal stamped upon his brow," and
+of having made himself "a motley to men's view,"[101] are undoubtedly
+addressed to Lord Southampton.
+
+    O, for my sake, do you with fortune chide
+      The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds,
+    That did not better for my life provide,
+      Than publick means, which public manners breeds;
+    Thence comes it that my name receives a brand,
+      And almost thence my nature is subdu'd
+    To what it works in, like the dyer's hand.
+      Pity me then, and wish I were renew'd.
+
+The last I shall remark, perhaps the finest of all, and breathing the
+very soul of profound tenderness and melancholy feeling, must, I think,
+have been addressed to a female.
+
+    No longer mourn for me when I am dead,
+      Than you shall hear the surly sullen bell
+    Give warning to the world that I am fled
+      From this vile earth, with vilest worms to dwell:
+    Nay, if you read this line, remember not
+      The hand that writ it; for I love you so
+    That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot,
+      If thinking on me then should make you woe.
+    O if (I say) you look upon this verse,
+      When I perhaps compounded am with clay,
+    Do not so much as my poor name rehearse;
+      But let your love even with my life decay:
+    Lest the wise world should look into your moan,
+      And mock you with me after I am gone.
+
+The period assigned to the composition of these Sonnets, and the
+attachment which inspired them, is the time when Shakspeare was living a
+wild and irregular life, between the court and the theatre, after his
+flight from Stratford. He had previously married, at the age of
+seventeen, Judith Hathaway, who was eight or ten years older than
+himself: he returned to his native town, after having sounded all depths
+of life, of nature, of passion, and ended his days as the respected
+father of a family, in calm, unostentatious privacy.
+
+One thing I will confess:--It is natural to feel an intense and
+insatiable curiosity relative to great men, a curiosity and interest for
+which nothing can be too minute, too personal.--And yet when I had
+ransacked all that had ever been written, discovered, or surmised,
+relative to Shakspeare's private life, for the purpose of throwing some
+light upon his Sonnets, I felt no gratification, no thankfulness to
+those whose industry had raked up the very few particulars which can be
+known. It is too much, and it is not enough: it disappoints us in one
+point of view--it is superfluous in another: what need to surround with
+common-place, trivial associations, registers of wills and genealogies,
+and I know not what,--the mighty spirit who in dying left behind him not
+merely a name and fame, but a perpetual being, a presence and a power,
+identified with our nature, diffused through all time, and ruling the
+heart and the fancy with an uncontrollable and universal sway!
+
+I rejoice that the name of no one woman is popularly identified with
+that of Shakspeare. He belongs to us all!--the creator of Desdemona, and
+Juliet, and Ophelia, and Imogen, and Viola, and Constance, and Cornelia,
+and Rosalind, and Portia, was not the poet of one woman, but the POET OF
+WOMANKIND.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[94] She was the grandmother of Lady Russell.
+
+[95] Elizabeth Vernon was first cousin to Essex. "Was it treason?" asks
+Essex indignantly, in one of his eloquent letters; "Was it treason in my
+Lord of Southampton to marry my poor kinswoman, that neither long
+imprisonment, nor any punishment besides that hath been usual in such
+cases can satisfy or appease?"
+
+[96] Sonnets 127, 130
+
+[97] Sonnet 128.
+
+[98] See "Douce's Illustrations of Shakspeare."
+
+[99] Sonnets 80, 83.
+
+[100] Sonnet 172.
+
+[101] Sonnets 110, 111.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+SYDNEY'S STELLA.
+
+
+At the very name of Sir Philip Sydney,--the generous, gallant,
+all-accomplished Sydney,--the roused fancy wakes, as at the sound of a
+silver trumpet, to all the gay and splendid associations of chivalry and
+romance. He was in the court of Elizabeth, what Surrey had been in that
+of her father, Henry the Eighth; and like his prototype. Sir Calidore in
+the Fairy Queen,--
+
+    Every look and word that he did say
+    Was like enchantment, that through both the ears
+    And both the eyes, did steal the heart away.
+
+And as Surrey had his Fair Geraldine, Sydney had his STELLA.
+
+Simplicity was not the fashion of Elizabeth's age in any particular: the
+conversation and the poetry addressed by her stately romantic courtiers
+to her and her maids of honour, were like the dresses they wore,--stiff
+with jewels and standing on end with embroidery, gorgeous of hue and
+fantastic in form; but with many a brilliant gem of exceeding price,
+scattered up and down, where one would scarce think to find them; losing
+something of their effect by being misplaced, but none of their inherent
+beauty and value. The poetry of Sir Philip Sydney was extravagantly
+admired in his own time, and it has since been less read than it
+deserves. It contains much of the pedantic quaintness, the laboured
+ornament, the cumbrous phraseology, which was the taste, the language of
+the day: but he had elegance of mind and tenderness of feeling; above
+all, he was in earnest, and accordingly, there are beautiful and
+brilliant things scattered through both his poetry and prose. If his
+"Phoenix-Stella" be less popularly celebrated than the Fair
+Geraldine,--her name less intimate with our fancy,--it is not because
+her poet lacked skill to immortalize her in superlatives: it is the
+recollection of the mournful fate and darkened fame of that beautiful
+but ill-starred woman, contrasted with the brilliant career and spotless
+glory of her lover, which strikes the imagination with a painful
+contrast, and makes us reluctant to dwell on her memory.
+
+The Stella of Sydney's poetry, and the Philoclea of his Arcadia, was the
+Lady Penelope Devereux, the elder sister of the favourite Essex. While
+yet in her childhood, she was the destined bride of Sydney, and for
+several years they were considered as almost engaged to each other: it
+was natural, therefore, at this time, that he should be accustomed to
+regard her with tenderness and unreproved admiration, and should gratify
+both by making her the object of his poetical raptures. She was also
+less openly, but even more ardently, loved by young Charles Blount,
+afterwards Lord Mountjoy, who seems to have disputed with Sydney the
+first place in her heart.
+
+She is described as a woman of exquisite beauty, on a grand and splendid
+scale; dark sparkling eyes; pale brown hair; a rich vivid complexion; a
+regal brow and a noble figure. Sydney tells us that she was at first
+"most fair, most cold;"--and the beautiful sonnet,
+
+    "With how sad steps, O moon, thou climb'st the sky![102]
+    How silently, and with how wan a face!"
+
+refers to his earlier feelings. He describes a tilting-match, held in
+presence of the Queen and Court, in which he came off victor--
+
+    Having this day my horse, my hand, my lance,
+    Guided so well, that I obtained the prize, &c.[103]
+
+"Stella looked on," he says, "and from her fair eyes sent forth the
+encouraging glance that gave him victory." These soft and brilliant eyes
+are often and beautifully touched upon; and it must be remarked, never
+without an allusion to the _modesty_ of their expression.
+
+    O eyes! that do the spheres of beauty move,
+    Which while they make Love conquer, conquer Love.
+
+And on some occasion, when she turned from him bashfully, he addresses
+her in a most impassioned strain,--
+
+    Soul's joy! bend not those morning stars from me,
+    Where virtue is made strong by beauty's might,
+    Where love is chasteness--pain doth learn delight
+    And humbleness doth dwell with majesty:
+    Whatever may ensue, O let me be
+    Copartner of the riches of that sight;
+    Let not mine eyes be hell-driven from that light.
+    O look! O shine! O let me die, and see![104]
+
+Another, "To Sleep," is among the most beautiful, and I believe more
+generally known.
+
+    Lock up, fair lids! the treasure of my heart! &c.
+
+There is also much vivacity and earnest feeling in the lines addressed
+to one who had lately left the presence of Stella, and of whom he
+inquires of her welfare. Whoever has known what it is to be separated
+from those beloved, to ask after them with anxious yet suppressed
+fondness, of some unsympathising acquaintance, to be alternately
+tantalised and _desespere_, by their vague and careless replies, will
+understand, will feel their truth and beauty. Even the quaint, petulant
+commencement is true to the sentiment:
+
+    Be your words made, good Sir, of Indian ware,
+    That you allow me them at so small rate?
+
+    ....*....*....*....*
+
+    When I demand of Phoenix-Stella's state,
+    You say, forsooth, "You left her well of late."
+    O God! think you that satisfies _my_ care?
+    I would know whether she do sit or walk,--
+    How clothed, how waited on? sighed she, or smiled?
+    Whereof--with whom--how often did she talk?
+    With what pastime, time's journey she beguiled?
+    If her lips deign'd to sweeten my poor name?
+    Say all! and all well said, still say the same!
+
+At length, after the usual train of hopes, fears, complaints, and
+raptures, the lady begins to look with pity and favour on the "ruins of
+her conquest;"[105] and he exults in an acknowledged return of love,
+though her heart be given conditionally,--
+
+    His only, while he virtuous courses takes.
+
+So far Stella appears in a most amiable and captivating light, worthy
+the romantic homage of her accomplished lover. But a dark shade steals,
+like a mildew, over this bright picture of beauty, poetry, and love,
+even while we gaze upon it. The projected union between Sydney and Lady
+Penelope was finally broken off by their respective families, for
+reasons which do not appear.[106] Sir Charles Blount offered himself,
+and was refused, though evidently agreeable to the lady; and she was
+married by her guardians to Lord Rich, a man of talents and integrity,
+but most disagreeable in person and manners, and her declared
+aversion.[107]
+
+This inauspicious union ended, as might have been expected, in misery
+and disgrace. Lady Rich bore her fate with extreme impatience. Her warm
+affections, her high spirit, and her strength of mind, so heroically
+displayed in behalf of her brother, served but to render her more
+poignantly sensible of the tyranny which had forced her into detested
+bonds. She could not forget,--perhaps never wished or sought to
+forget--that she had received the homage of the two most accomplished
+men of that time,--Sydney and Blount; "and not finding that satisfaction
+at home she ought to have received, she looked for it abroad where she
+ought not to find it."
+
+Sydney describes a secret interview which took place between himself and
+Lady Rich shortly after her marriage. I should have observed, that
+Sydney designates himself all through his poems by the name of
+Astrophel.
+
+    In a grove, most rich of shade,
+    Where birds wanton music made,
+    May, then young, his pied weeds showing,
+    New perfumed with flowers fresh growing.
+    Astrophel, with Stella sweet,
+    Did for mutual comfort meet;
+    Both within themselves opprest,
+    But each in the other blest;
+    Him great harms had taught much care,
+    _Her fair neck a foul yoke bear_;
+    But her sight his cares did banish,
+    In his sight her yoke did vanish, &c.
+
+He pleads the time, the place, the season, and their divided vows; and
+would have pressed his suit more warmly,
+
+    But her hand, his hands repelling,
+    Gave repulse--all grace excelling!
+
+    ....*....*....*....*
+
+    Then she spake! her speech was such
+    As not ear, but heart did touch.
+    "Astrophel, (said she) my love,
+    Cease in these effects to prove!
+    Now be still!--yet still believe me,
+    Thy grief more than death would grieve me.
+    Trust me, while, I thus deny,
+    In myself the smart I try:
+    Tyrant honour doth thus use thee;
+    Stella's self might not refuse thee!
+    Therefore, dear! this no more move:
+    Lest, though I leave not thy love,
+    (Which too deep in me is framed!)
+    _I should blush when thou art named!_"
+
+The sentiment he has made her express in the last line is beautiful, and
+too feminine and appropriate not to have been taken from nature; but,
+unhappily, it did not always govern her conduct. How far her coquetry
+proceeded we do not know. Sydney, about a year afterwards, married the
+daughter of Secretary Walsingham, and survived his marriage but a short
+time. This theme of song, this darling of fame, and ornament of his age,
+perished at the battle of Zutphen, in the very summer of his glorious
+youth. "He had trod," as the author of the Effigies Poeticae so
+beautifully expresses it, "from his cradle to his grave, amid incense
+and flowers--and died in a dream of glory!"
+
+His death was not only such as became the soldier and Christian;--the
+natural elegance and sensibility of his mind followed him even to the
+verge of the tomb: in his last moments, when the mortification had
+commenced, and all hope was over, he called for music into his chamber,
+and lay listening to it with tranquil pleasure. Sydney died in his
+thirty-fourth year.
+
+Among the numerous poets who lamented this deep-felt loss (volumes, I
+believe, were filled with the tributes paid to his memory), was Spenser,
+whom Sydney had early patronised. His elegy, however, is too laboured,
+too lengthy, too artificial, to please altogether, though containing
+some lines of great beauty. It is singular, and a little
+incomprehensible to our modern ideas of _bienseance_ and good taste,
+that in this elegy, which Spenser dedicates to Sydney's widow after her
+remarriage with Essex, he introduces Stella as lamenting over the body
+of Astrophel, tells us how she beat her fair bosom--"the treasury of
+joy,"--how she tore her lovely hair, wept out her eyes,--
+
+    And with sweet kisses suckt the parting breath
+    Out of his lips.
+
+At length, through excess of grief, or the compassion of the gods, she
+is changed into the flower, "by some called starlight, by others
+penthia." This might pass in those days; though, considering all the
+circumstances, it is strange that, even then, it escaped ridicule.
+
+The tears shed for Sydney, by those nearest and dearest to him, were but
+too soon dried. His widow was consoled by Essex, and his Stella, by her
+old lover Mountjoy, who returned from Ireland, flushed with victory and
+honours, and cast himself again at her feet. Their secret intercourse
+remained, for several years, undiscovered. Lady Rich, who was tenderly
+attached to her brother, was guarded in her conduct, fearing equally the
+loss of his esteem, and the renewal of those hostile feelings which had
+already caused one duel between Essex and Mountjoy. She had also
+children; and as all, without exception, lived to be distinguished men
+and virtuous women, we may give her credit for some attention to their
+education,--some compunctious visitings of nature on their account.
+
+During her brother's imprisonment, she made the most strenuous, the most
+persevering efforts to save his life: she besieged Elizabeth with the
+richest presents, the most eloquent letters of supplication;--she
+waylaid her at the door of her chamber, till commanded to remain a
+prisoner in her own house;--she bribed, or otherwise won, all whom she
+thought could plead his cause;--and when these were of no avail, and
+Essex perished, she seems, in her despair, to have thrown off all
+restraint--and at length, fled from the house of her husband.
+
+In 1605 she was legally divorced from Lord Rich; and soon after married
+Mountjoy, then Earl of Devonshire. The marriage of a divorced wife in
+the lifetime of her first husband, was in those days a thing almost
+unprecedented in the English court, and caused the most violent outcry
+and scandal. Laud (the archbishop, then chaplain to the Earl of
+Devonshire,) incurred the censure of the Church for uniting the lovers,
+and ever after fasted on the anniversary of this fatal marriage. The
+Earl, one of the most admirable and distinguished men of that chivalrous
+age, who "felt a stain as a wound," found it impossible to endure the
+infamy brought on himself and the woman he loved: he died about a year
+after: "the griefe," says a contemporary, "of this unhappie love brought
+him to his end."[108]
+
+His unfortunate Countess lingered but a short time after him, and died
+in a miserable obscurity.--Such is the history of Sydney's STELLA.
+
+Three of her sons became English earls; the eldest, Earl of Warwick; the
+second, Earl of Holland; and the third (her son by Mountjoy) Earl of
+Newport. The earldoms of Warwick and Holland were held by her lineal
+descendants, till the death of that young Lord Warwick, whose mother
+married Addison.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[102] Sonnet 31.
+
+[103] Sonnet 41.
+
+[104] Sonnet 48.
+
+[105] Sonnet 54.
+
+[106] "All the lords that wish well to the children of the Earl of
+Essex, and I suppose all the best sorte of the English lords besides,
+doe expect what will become of the treaty between Mr. Philip and my lady
+Penelope. Truly, my Lord, I must say to your lordship, as I have said it
+to my Lord of Leicester and Mr. Philip, the breaking off this match, if
+the default be on your parts, will turn to more dishonour than can be
+repaired with any other marriage in England."--_Letter of Mr. Waterhouse
+to Sir Henry Sydney, in the Sydney Papers._
+
+[107] Zouch's Life of Sir P. Sydney.
+
+[108] Memoirs of King James's Peers, by Sir E. Brydges.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+COURT AND AGE OF ELIZABETH.
+
+DRAYTON, DANIEL, DRUMMOND, &c.
+
+
+The voluminous Drayton[109] has left a collection of sonnets under the
+fantastic title of his IDEAS. Ideas they may be,--but they have neither
+poetry, nor passion, nor even elegance:--a circumstance not very
+surprising, if it be true that he composed them merely to show his
+ingenuity in a style which was then the prevailing fashion of his time.
+Drayton was never married, and little is known of his private life. He
+loved a lady of Coventry, to whom he promises an immortality he has not
+been able to confer.
+
+    How many paltry, foolish, painted things
+      That now in coaches trouble every street,
+    Shall be forgotten, whom no poet sings,
+      E'er they be well wrapp'd in their winding-sheet;
+
+    While I to thee eternity shall give,
+      When nothing else remaineth of these days,
+
+    _And Queens hereafter shall be glad to live
+      Upon the alms of thy superfluous praise;_
+
+    Virgins and matrons reading these my rhimes,
+      Shall be so much delighted with thy story,
+
+    That they shall grieve they liv'd not in these times,
+      To have seen thee, their sex's only glory:
+
+    So thou shall fly above the vulgar throng,
+    Still to survive in my immortal song.
+
+There are fine nervous lines in this Sonnet: we long to hail the exalted
+beauty who is announced by such a flourish of trumpets, and are
+proportionably disappointed to find that she has neither "a local
+habitation nor a name." Drayton's little song,
+
+    I prythee, love! love me no more,
+    Take back the heart you gave me!
+
+stands unique, in point of style, among the rest of his works, and is
+very genuine and passionate. Daniel,[110] who was munificently
+patronized by the Lord Mountjoy, mentioned in the preceding sketch, was
+one of the most graceful sonnetteers of that time; and he has touches of
+tenderness as well as fancy; for _he_ was in earnest, and the object of
+his attachment was real, though disguised under the name of Delia. She
+resided on the banks of the river Avon, and was unmoved by the poet's
+strains. Rank with her outweighed love and genius. Daniel says of his
+Sonnets--
+
+    Though the error of my youth in them appear,
+    Suffice they show I lived, and loved thee dear.
+
+The lines
+
+    Restore thy tresses to the golden ore,
+    Yield Citherea's son those arcs of love,
+
+are luxuriantly elegant, and quite Italian in the flow and imagery. Her
+modesty is prettily set forth in another Sonnet--
+
+    A modest maid, deck'd with a blush of honour,
+      Whose feet do tread green paths of youth and love,
+    The wonder of all eyes that look upon her,
+      Sacred on earth, designed a Saint above!
+
+After a long series of sonnets, elaborately plaintive, he interrupts
+himself with a little touch of truth and nature, which is quite
+refreshing;
+
+    I must not grieve my love! whose eyes should read
+      Lines of delight, whereon her youth might smile;
+    The flowers have time before they come to seed,
+      And she is young, and now must sport the while.
+    And sport, sweet maid! in season of these years,
+      And learn to gather flow'rs before they wither;
+    And where the sweetest blossom first appears,
+      Let Love and Youth conduct thy pleasures thither.
+
+If the lady could have been won by poetical flattery, she must have
+yielded. At length, unable to bear her obduracy, and condemned to see
+another preferred before him, Daniel resolved to travel; and he wrote,
+on this occasion, the most feeling of all his Sonnets.
+
+    And whither, poor forsaken! wilt thou go?
+
+Daniel remained abroad several years, and returning, cured of his
+attachment, he married Giustina Florio, of a family of Waldenses, who
+had fled from the frightful persecutions carried on in the Italian Alps
+against that miserable people. With her, he appears to have been
+sufficiently happy to forget the pain of his former repulse, and enjoy,
+without one regretful pang, the fame it had given him as a poet.
+
+Drummond, of Hawthornden,[111] is yet more celebrated, and with reason.
+He has elegance, and sweetness, and tenderness; but not the pathos or
+the passion we might have expected from the circumstances of his
+attachment, which was as real and deep, as it was mournful in its issue.
+He loved a beautiful girl of the noble family of Cunningham, who is the
+Lesbia of his poetry. After a fervent courtship, he succeeded in
+securing her affections; but she died, "in the fresh April of her
+years," and when their marriage-day had been fixed. Drummond has left us
+a most charming picture of his mistress; of her modesty, her retiring
+sweetness, her accomplishments, and her tenderness for him.
+
+    O sacred blush, empurpling cheeks, pure skies
+      With crimson wings, which spread thee like the morn;
+    O bashful look, sent from those shining eyes;
+      O tongue in which most luscious nectar lies,
+    That can at once both bless and make forlorn;
+      Dear coral lip, which beauty beautifies,
+    That trembling stood before her words were born;
+      And you her words--words! no, but golden chains,
+    Which did enslave my ears, ensnare my soul;
+      Wise image of her mind,--mind that contains
+    A power, all power of senses to controul;
+      So sweetly you from love dissuade do me,
+      That I love more, if more my love can be.
+
+The quaint iteration of the same word through this Sonnet has not an ill
+effect. The lady was in a more relenting mood when he wrote the Sonnet
+on her lips, "those fruits of Paradise,"--
+
+    I die, dear life! unless to me be given
+      As many kisses as the Spring hath flowers,
+      Or there be silver drops in Iris' showers,
+    Or stars there be in all-embracing heaven;
+      And if displeased ye of the match remain,
+      Ye shall have leave to take them back again!
+
+He mentions a handkerchief, which, in the days of their first
+tenderness, she had embroidered for him, unknowing that it was destined
+to be steeped in tears for her loss!--In fact, the grief of Drummond on
+this deprivation was so overwhelming, that he sunk at first into a total
+despondency and inactivity, from which he was with difficulty roused. He
+left the scene of his happiness, and his regrets--
+
+    Are these the flowery banks? is this the mead
+     Where she was wont to pass the pleasant hours?
+    Is this the goodly elm did us o'erspread,
+     Whose tender rind, cut forth in curious flowers
+    By that white hand, contains those flames of ours?
+     Is this the murmuring spring, us music made?
+     Deflourish'd mead, where is your heavenly hue?
+
+He travelled for eight years, seeking, in change of place and scene,
+some solace for his wounded peace. There was a kind of constancy even in
+Drummond's inconstancy; for meeting many years afterwards with an
+amiable girl, who bore the most striking resemblance to his lost
+mistress, he loved her for that very resemblance, and married her. Her
+name was Margaret Logan. I am not aware that there are any verses
+addressed to her.
+
+Drummond has been called the Scottish Petrarch: he tells us himself,
+that "he was the first in this Isle who did celebrate a dead
+mistress,"--and his resemblance to Petrarch, in elegance and sentiment,
+has often been observed: he resembles him, it is true--but it is as a
+professed and palpable imitator resembles the object of his imitation.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On glancing back at the age of Elizabeth,--so adorned by masculine
+talent, in arts, in letters, and in arms,--we are at first surprised to
+find so few distinguished women. It seems remarkable that a golden epoch
+in our literature, to which she gave her name "the Elizabethan age,"--a
+court in which a female ruled,--a period fruitful in great poets, should
+have produced only one or two women who are interesting from their
+poetical celebrity. Of these, Alice Spenser, Countess of Derby, and Mary
+Sydney, Countess of Pembroke, (the sister of Sir Philip Sydney) are the
+most remarkable; the first has enjoyed the double distinction of being
+celebrated by Spenser in her youth, and by Milton in her age,--almost
+too much honour for one woman, though she had been a muse, and a grace,
+and a cardinal virtue, moulded in one. Lady Pembroke has been celebrated
+by Spenser and by Ben Jonson, and was, in every respect, a most
+accomplished woman. To these might be added other names, which might
+have shone aloft like stars, and "shed some influence on this lower
+world:" if the age had not produced two women, so elevated in station,
+and so every way illustrious by accidental or personal qualities, that
+each, in her respective sphere, extinguished all the lesser orbs around
+her. It would have been difficult for any female to seize on the
+attention, or claim either an historical or poetical interest, in the
+age of Queen Elizabeth and Mary Stuart.
+
+In her own court, Elizabeth was not satisfied to preside. She could as
+ill endure a competitor in celebrity or charms, as in power. She
+arrogated to herself all the incense around her; and, in point of
+adulation, she was like the daughter of the horse-leech, whose cry was,
+"give! give!" Her insatiate vanity would have been ludicrous, if it had
+not produced such atrocious consequences. This was the predominant
+weakness of her character, which neutralized her talents, and was
+pampered, till in its excess it became a madness and a vice. This
+precipitated the fate of her lovely rival, Mary Queen of Scots. This
+elevated the profligate Leicester to the pinnacle of favour, and kept
+him there, sullied as he was by every baseness and every crime;[112]
+this hurried Essex to the block; banished Southampton; and sent Raleigh
+and Elizabeth Throckmorton to the Tower. Did one of her attendants, more
+beautiful than the rest, attract the notice or homage of any of the gay
+cavaliers around her,--was an attachment whispered, a marriage
+projected,--it was enough to throw the whole court into consternation.
+"Her Majesty, the Queen, was in a passion;" and, then, heaven help the
+offenders! It was the spirit of Harry the Eighth let loose again. Yet
+such is the reflected glory she derives from the Sydneys and the
+Raleighs, the Walsinghams and Cecils, the Shakspeares and Spensers of
+her time, that we can scarce look beyond it, to stigmatise the hard
+unfeminine egotism of her character.
+
+There was something extremely poetical in her situation, as a maiden
+queen, raised from a prison to a throne, exposed to unceasing danger
+from without and treason from within, and supported through all by her
+own extraordinary talents, and by the devotion of the chivalrous,
+gallant courtiers and captains, who paid to her, as their queen and
+mistress, a homage and obedience they would scarce have paid to a
+sovereign of their own sex. All this display of talent and heroism, and
+chivalrous gallantry, has a fine gorgeous effect to the
+imagination;--but for the woman herself,--as a woman, with her pedantry,
+and her absurd affectation; her masculine temper and coarse insolence;
+her sharp, shrewish, cat-like face, and her pretension to beauty, it is
+impossible to conceive any thing more anti-poetical.
+
+    Yet had she praises in all plenteousness
+    Pour'd upon her, like showers of Castalie.[113]
+
+She was a favourite theme of the poets of the time, and by right divine
+of her sceptre and her sex, an object of glorious flattery, not always
+feigned, even where it was false.
+
+She is the Gloriana of Spenser's Fairy Queen,--she is the "Cynthia, the
+ladye of the sea,"--she is the "Fair Vestal throned in the West," of
+Shakspeare--
+
+    That very time I saw, (but thou couldst not,)
+    Flying between the cold moon and the earth,
+    Cupid all arm'd: a certain aim he took
+    At a fair Vestal, throned by the West,
+    And loosed his love-shaft smartly from his bow,
+    As it should pierce a hundred thousand hearts;
+    But I might see young Cupid's fiery shaft
+    Quench'd in the chaste beams of the wat'ry moon;
+    And the imperial vot'ress passed on
+    In maiden meditation, fancy free.
+
+And the previous allusion to Mary of Scotland, as the "Sea Maid on the
+Dolphin's back,"
+
+    Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath,
+    That the rude sea grew civil at her song,
+
+is not less exquisite.
+
+It would, in truth, have been easier for Mary to have calmed the rude
+sea than her ruder and wilder subjects. These two queens, so strangely
+misplaced, seem as if, by some sport of destiny, each had dropt into the
+sphere designed for the other. Mary should have reigned over the
+Sydneys, the Essexes, the Mountjoys;--and with her smiles, and sweet
+words; and generous gifts, have inspired and rewarded the poets around
+her. Elizabeth should have been transferred to Scotland, where she might
+have bandied frowns and hard names with John Knox, cut off the heads of
+rebellious barons, and boxed the ears of ill-bred courtiers.
+
+This is no place to settle disputed points of history, nor, if it were,
+should I presume to throw an opinion in to one scale or the other; but
+take the two queens as women merely, and with a reference to apparent
+circumstances, I would rather have been Mary than Elizabeth; I would
+rather have been Mary, with all her faults, frailties, and
+misfortunes,--all her power of engaging hearts,--betrayed by her own
+soft nature, and the vile or fierce passions of the men around her, to
+die on a scaffold, with the meekness of a saint and the courage of a
+heroine, with those at her side who would willingly have bled for
+her,--than I would have been that heartless flirt, Elizabeth, surrounded
+by the oriental servility, the lip and knee homage of her splendid
+court; to die at last on her palace-floor, like a crushed wasp--sick of
+her own very selfishness--torpid, sullen, and despairing,--without one
+friend near her, without one heart in the wide world attached to her by
+affection or gratitude.
+
+There is more true and earnest feeling in some little verses written by
+Ronsard on the unhappy Queen of Scots, than in all the elegant,
+fanciful, but extravagant flattery of Elizabeth's poets. After just
+mentioning the English Queen, whom he dispatches in a single line,--
+
+    Je vis leur belle reine, honnete et vertueuse;
+
+he thus dwells on the charms of Mary:--
+
+    Je vis des Ecossais la Reine sage et belle,
+    Qui de corps et d'esprits ressemble une immortelle;
+    J'approchai de ses yeux, mais bien de deux soleils,
+    Deux soleils de beaute, qui n'ont point leurs pareils.
+    Je les vis larmoyer d'une claire rosee,
+    Je vis d'un clair crystal sa paupiere arrosee,
+    Se souvenant de France, et du sceptre laisse,
+    Et de son premier feu, comme un songe passe!
+
+And when Mary was a prisoner, he dedicated to her a whole book of poems,
+in which he celebrates her with a warmth, the more delightful that it
+was disinterested. He thanks her for selecting his poems, to amuse her
+solitary hours, and adds feelingly,--
+
+    Car, je ne veux en ce monde choisir
+    Plus grand honneur que vous donner plaisir!
+
+Mary did not leave her courteous poet unrewarded. She contrived, though
+a prisoner, to send him a casket containing two thousand crowns, and a
+vase, on which was represented Mount Parnassus, and a flying Pegasus,
+with this inscription:--
+
+    A Ronsard, l'Apollon de la source des Muses.
+
+No one understood better than Mary the value of a compliment from a
+beauty, and a queen; had she bestowed more precious favours with equal
+effect and discrimination, her memory had escaped some disparagement.
+Ronsard, we are told, was sufficiently a poet, to value the inscription
+on his vase more than the gold in the casket.
+
+Apropos to Ronsard: the history of his loves is so whimsical and so
+truly French, that it must claim a place here.
+
+Yet now I am upon French ground, I may as well take the giant's advice,
+and "begin at the beginning."[114] It seems at first view unaccountable
+that France, which has produced so many remarkable women, should scarce
+exhibit one poetical heroine of great or popular interest, since its
+language and literature assumed their present form; not one who has been
+rendered illustrious or dear to us by the praises of a poet lover. The
+celebrity of celebrated French women is, in truth, very anti-poetical.
+The memory of the kiss which Marguerite d'Ecosse[115] gave to Alain
+Chartier, has long survived the verses he wrote in her praise. Clement
+Marot, the court poet of Francis the First, was the lover, or rather one
+of the lovers, of Diana of Poictiers (mistress to the Dauphin,
+afterwards Henry the Second). She was confessedly the most beautiful and
+the most abandoned woman of her time. Marot could hardly have expected
+to find her a paragon of constancy; yet he laments her fickleness, as if
+it had touched his heart.
+
+
+A DIANE.
+
+    Puisque de vous je n'ai autre visage,
+        Je m'en vais rendre hermite en un desert,
+        Pour prier Dieu, si un autre vous sert,
+    Qu'autant que moi en votre honneur soit sage.
+
+    Adieu, Amour! adieu, gentil corsage!
+       Adieu ce teint! adieu ces friands yeux!
+    Je n'ai pas eu de vous grand avantage,--
+       Un moins aimant aura peut-etre mieux.
+
+In a _liaison_ of mere vanity and profligacy, the transition from love
+(if love it be) to hatred and malignity, is not uncommon--as Spenser
+says so beautifully,
+
+          Such love might never long endure,
+    However gay and goodly be the style,
+    That doth ill cause or evil end enure:
+    For Virtue is the band that bindeth hearts most sure!
+
+From being the lady's _lover_, Marot became her satirist; instead of
+_chansons_ in praise of her beauty, he circulated the most biting and
+insufferable epigrams on her person and character. We are told by one,
+who, I presume, speaks _avec connaissance de fait_, that a woman's
+revenge
+
+    Is like the tiger's spring,
+    Deadly and quick, and crushing.
+
+Diana was a libelled beauty, all powerful and unprincipled. Marot, in
+some moment of gaiety and overflowing confidence, had confessed to her
+that he had eaten meat on a "jour maigre:" he had better in those days
+have committed all the seven deadly sins; and when the lady revealed his
+unlucky confession, and denounced him as a heretic, he was immediately
+imprisoned. Instead, however, of being depressed by his situation, or
+moved to make any concessions, he published from his prison a most
+ludicrous lampoon on his _ci-devant_ mistress, of which the burthen was,
+"Prenez le, il a mange le lard!" He afterwards made his escape, and took
+refuge in the court of Renee, Duchess of Ferrara; and though
+subsequently recalled to France, he continued to pursue Diana with the
+most bitter satire, became a second time a fugitive, partly on her
+account, and died in exile and poverty.[116]
+
+Marot has been called the French Chaucer. He resembles the English poet
+in liveliness of fancy, picturesque imagery, simplicity of expression,
+and satirical humour; but he has these merits in a far less degree; and
+in variety of genius, pathos and power, is immeasurably his inferior.
+
+Ronsard, to whom I at length return, was the successor of Marot. In his
+time the Italian sonnetteers, as Petrarch, Bembo, Sanazzaro, were the
+prevailing models, and classical pedantry the prevailing taste. Ronsard,
+having filled his mind with Greek and learning, determined to be a
+poet, and looked about for a mistress to be the object of his songs:
+for a poet without a mistress was then an unheard-of anomaly. He fixed
+upon a beautiful woman of Blois, named Cassandre, whose Greek
+appellative, it is said, was her principal attraction in his fancy. To
+her he addressed about two hundred and twenty sonnets, in a style so
+lofty and pedantic, stuffed with such hard names and philosophical
+allusions, that the fair Cassandra must have been as wise as her
+namesake, the daughter of Priam, to have comprehended her own praises.
+
+Ronsard's next love was more interesting. Her name was Marie: she was
+beautiful and kind: the poet really loved her; and consequently, we find
+him occasionally descending from his heights of affectation and
+scholarship, to the language of truth, nature and tenderness. Marie died
+young; and among Ronsard's most admired poems are two or three little
+pieces written after her death. As his works are not commonly met with,
+I give one as a specimen of his style:--
+
+
+EPITAPHE DE MARIE.
+
+    Ci reposent les os de la belle Marie,
+    Qui me fit pour un jour quitter mon Vendomois,[117]
+    Qui m'echauffa le sang au plus verd de mes mois;
+    Qui fut toute mon tout, mon bien, et mon envie.
+
+    En sa tombe repose honneur et courtoisie,
+    Et la jeune beaute qu'en l'ame je sentois,
+    Et le flambeau d'Amour, ses traits et son carquois,
+    Et ensemble mon coeur, mes pensees et ma vie.
+
+    Tu es, belle Angevine,[117] un bel astre des cieux;
+    Les anges, tous ravis, se paissent de tes yeux,
+    La terre te regrette, O beaute sans seconde!
+
+    Maintenant tu es vive, et je suis mort d'ennui,
+    Malheureux qui se fie en l'attente d'autrui;
+    Trois amis m'ont trompe,--toi, l'amour, et le monde.
+
+Ronsard had by this time acquired a reputation which eclipsed that of
+all his contemporaries. He was caressed and patronised by Charles the
+Ninth (of hateful memory), who, like Nero, exhibited the revolting
+combination of a taste for poetry and the fine arts, with the most
+sanguinary and depraved dispositions. Ronsard, having lost his Marie,
+was commanded by Catherine de' Medicis to select a mistress from among
+the ladies of her court, to be the future object of his tuneful homage.
+He politely left her Majesty to choose for him, prepared to fall in love
+duly at the royal behest; and Catherine pointed out Helene de Surgeres,
+one of her maids of honour, as worthy to be the second Laura of a second
+Petrarch. The docile poet, with zealous obedience, warbled the praises
+of Helene for the rest of his life. He also consecrated to her a
+fountain near his chateau in the Vendomois, which has popularly
+preserved her name and fame. It is still known as the "Fontaine
+d'Helene."
+
+Helene was more witty than beautiful, and, though vain of the celebrity
+she had acquired in the verses of Ronsard, she either disliked him in
+the character of a lover, or was one of those lofty ladies
+
+    Who hate to have their dignity profaned
+    With any relish of an earthly thought.[118]
+
+She desired the Cardinal du Perron would request Ronsard (in her name)
+to prefix an epistle to the odes and sonnets addressed to her, assuring
+the world that this poetical love had been purely Platonic. "Madam,"
+said the Cardinal, "you had better give him leave to prefix your
+picture."[119]
+
+I presume my fair and gentle readers (I shall have none, I am sure, who
+are not one or the other, or both,) are as tired as myself of all this
+affectation, and glad to turn from it to the interest of passion and
+reality.
+
+"There is not," says Cowley, "so great a lie to be found in any poet, as
+the vulgar conceit of men, that lying is essential to good poetry." On
+the contrary, where there is not truth, there is nothing--
+
+    Rien n' est beau que le vrai,--le vrai seul est aimable!
+
+While the Italian school of amatory verse was flourishing in France,
+Spain, and England, almost to the extinction of originality in this
+style, the brightest light of Italian poesy had arisen, and was shining
+with a troubled splendour over that land of song. How swiftly at the
+thought does imagination shoot, "like a glancing star," over the wide
+expanse of sea and land, and through a long interval of sad and varied
+years! I am again standing within the porch of the church of San
+Onofrio, looking down upon the little slab in its dark corner, which
+covers the bones of TASSO.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[109] Died 1631
+
+[110] Died in 1619.
+
+[111] Died 1649.
+
+[112] Leicester's influence over Elizabeth appeared so unaccountable,
+that it was ascribed to magic, and to her evil stars.
+
+[113] Spenser's Daphnaida.
+
+[114]
+    Belier, mon ami! Commencez par le commencement!
+
+                     COUNT HAMILTON.
+
+[115] "La gentille Marguerite," the unhappy wife of Louis the Eleventh.
+Beautiful, accomplished, and in the very spring of life, she died a
+victim to the detestable character of her husband. When one of her
+attendants spoke of hope and life, the Queen, turning from her with an
+expression of deep disgust, exclaimed with a last effort, "Fi de la vie!
+ne m'en parlez plus!"--and expired.
+
+[116] At Althorp, the seat of Lord Spenser, there is a most curious
+picture of Diana of Poictiers, once in the Crawford collection: it is a
+small half-length; the features are fair and regular; the hair is
+elaborately dressed with a profusion of jewels; but there is no drapery
+whatever, except a curtain behind: round the head is the legend from the
+forty-second Psalm,--"Comme le cerf braie apres le decours des eaues,
+ainsi brait mon ame apres toi, O Dieu!" which is certainly a most
+extraordinary and profane application. In the days of Diana of
+Poictiers, Marot had composed a version of the Psalms, then very
+popular. It was the fashion to sing them to dance and song tunes; and
+the courtiers and beauties had each their favourite psalm, which served
+as a kind of _devise_. This may explain the very singular inscription on
+this very singular picture.
+
+[117] Ronsard was a native of the Vendomois, and Marie, of Anjou.
+
+[118] Ben Jonson.
+
+[119] V. Bayle Dictionnaire Historique.--Pierre de Ronsard was born in
+1524, and died in 1585.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+LEONORA D'ESTE.
+
+
+Leonora d'Este, a princess of the proudest house in Europe, might have
+wedded an emperor, and have been forgotten. The idea, true or false,
+that she it was who broke the heart and frenzied the brain of Tasso, has
+glorified her to future ages; has given her a fame, something like that
+of the Greek of old, who bequeathed his name to immortality, by firing
+the grandest temple of the universe.
+
+The question of Tasso's attachment to the Princess Leonora, is, I
+believe, set at rest by the acute researches and judicious reasoning of
+M. Ginguene, and those who have followed in his steps. A body of
+circumstantial evidence has been collected, which would not only satisfy
+a court of love--but a court of law, with a Lord Chancellor, to boot,
+"_perpending_" at the head of it. That which was once regarded as a
+romance, which we wished to believe, if we _could_, is now an
+established fact, which we cannot disbelieve if we would.
+
+No poet perhaps ever owed so much to female influence as Tasso, or wrote
+so much under the intoxicating inspiration of love and beauty. He paid
+most dearly for such inspiration; and yet not _too_ dearly. The high
+tone of sentiment, the tenderness, and the delicacy which pervade all
+his poems, which prevail even in his most voluptuous descriptions, and
+which give him such a decided superiority over Ariosto, cannot be owing
+to any change of manners or increase of refinement produced by the lapse
+of a few years. It may be traced to the tender influence of two elegant
+women. He for many years read the cantos of the Gerusalemme, as he
+composed them, to the Princesses Lucretia and Leonora, both of whom he
+admired--one of whom he adored.
+
+_Au reste_--the kiss, which he is said to have imprinted on the lips of
+Leonora in a transport of frenzy, as well as the idea that she was the
+primary cause of his insanity, and of his seven years' imprisonment at
+St. Anne's, rest on no authority worthy of credit; yet it is not less
+certain that she was the object of his secret and fervent admiration,
+and that this hopeless passion conspired, with many other causes, to
+fever his irritable temperament and unsettle his imagination, beyond
+that "fine madness," which we are told _ought_ "to possess the poet's
+brain."
+
+When Tasso first visited Ferrara, in 1565, he was just one-and-twenty,
+with all the advantages which a fine countenance, a majestic figure,
+(for he was tall even among the tallest,) noble birth, and excelling
+talents could bestow: he was already distinguished as the author of the
+Rinaldo, his earliest poem, in which he had celebrated (as if
+prophetically,) the Princesses d'Este--and chiefly Leonora.
+
+    Lucrezia Estense, e l'altra i cui crin d'oro,
+    Lacci e reti saran del casto amore.[120]
+
+When Tasso was first introduced to her in her brother's court, Leonora
+was in her thirtieth year; a disparity of age which is certainly no
+argument against the passion she inspired. For a young man, at his first
+entrance into life, to fall in love ambitiously--with a woman, for
+instance, who is older than himself, or with one who is, or ought to be,
+unattainable--is a common occurrence. Tasso, from his boyish years, had
+been the sworn servant of beauty. He tells us, in grave prose, "che la
+sua giovanezza fu tutta sotto-posta all' amorose leggi;"[121] but he was
+also refined, even to fastidiousness, in his intercourse with women. He
+had formed, in his own poetical mind, the most exalted idea of what a
+female ought to be, and unfortunately, she who first realised all his
+dreams of perfection, was a Princess--"there seated where he durst not
+soar." Leonora was still eminently lovely, in that soft, artless,
+unobtrusive style of beauty, which is charming in itself, and in a
+princess irresistible, from its contrast with the loftiness of her
+station and the trappings of her rank. Her complexion was extremely
+fair; her features small and regular; and the form of her head
+peculiarly graceful, if I may judge from a fine medallion I once saw of
+her in Italy. Ill health, and her early acquaintance with the sorrows of
+her unfortunate mother, had given to her countenance a languid and
+pensive cast, and sicklied all the natural bloom of her complexion; but
+"Paleur, qui marque une ame tendre, a bien son prix:" so Tasso thought;
+and this "vago Pallore," which "vanquishes the rose, and makes the dawn
+ashamed of her blushes," he has frequently and beautifully celebrated;
+as in the pretty Madrigal--
+
+    Vita della mia Vita!
+    _O Rosa scolorita!_ &c.
+
+and in those graceful lines,
+
+    Languidetta belta vinceva amore, &c.
+
+applicable only to Leonora. Her eyes were blue; her mouth of peculiar
+beauty, both in form and expression. In the seventh Sonnet, "Bella e la
+donna mia," he says it was the most lovely feature in her face; in
+another, still finer,[122] he styles this exquisite mouth "a crimson
+shell"--
+
+    Purpurea conca, in cui si nutre
+    Candor di perle elette e pellegrine;
+
+and he concludes it with one of those disguises under which he was
+accustomed to conceal Leonora's name.
+
+    E di si degno cor tuo straLE ONORA.
+
+She was negligent in her dress, and studious and retired in her habits,
+seldom joining in the amusements of her brother's court, then the gayest
+and most magnificent in Italy.[123] Her accomplished and unhappy mother,
+Renee of France,[124] had early instilled into her mind a love of
+literature, and especially of poetry. She was passionately fond of
+music, and sang admirably. One of Tasso's most beautiful sonnets was
+composed on some occasion when her physician had forbidden her to sing.
+He who had so often felt the magic of that enchanting voice, thus
+describes its power and laments his loss:--
+
+    Ahi, ben e reo destin, ch' invidia, e toglie
+        Almondo il suon de' vostri chiari accenti,
+        Onde addivien che le terrene genti
+        De' maggior pregi, impoverisca e spoglie.
+
+    Ch' ogni nebbia mortal, che 'l senso accoglie,
+         Sgombrar potea dalle piu fosche menti
+         L' armonia dolce, e bei pensieri ardenti
+         Spirar d' onore, e pure e nobil voglie.
+
+    Ma non si merta qui forse cotanto;
+         E basta ben che i sereni occhi, e 'l riso
+         N' infiammin d' un piacer celeste e santo.
+
+    Nulla fora piu bello il Paradiso,
+         Se 'l mondo udisse, in voi d' angelo il canto,
+         Siccome vede in voi d' angelo il viso.
+
+"O cruel--O envious destiny, that hast deprived the world of those
+delicious accents, that hast made earth poor in what was dearest and
+sweetest! No cloud ever gathered over the gloomiest mind, which the
+melody of that voice could not disperse; it breathed but to inspire
+noble thoughts and chaste desires.--But, no! it was more than mortals
+could deserve to possess. Those soft eyes, that smile were enough to
+inspire a sacred and sweet delight.--Nor would Paradise any longer excel
+this earth, if in your voice we heard an angel sing, as we behold an
+angel's beauty in your face!"
+
+Leonora, to a sweet-toned voice, added a gift, which, unless thus
+accompanied, loses half its value, and almost all its charm--she spoke
+well; and her eloquence was so persuasive, that we are told she had
+power to move her brother Alphonso, when none else could. Tasso says
+most poetically,
+
+    E l'aura del parlar cortese e saggio,
+    Fra le rose spirar, s'udia sovente;
+
+--meaning--for to translate literally is scarce possible,--that
+"eloquence played round her lips, like the zephyr breathing over roses."
+
+"I (he adds), beholding a celestial beauty walk the earth, closed my
+eyes in terror, exclaiming, O rashness! O folly! for any to dare to gaze
+on such charms! Alas! I quickly perceived that this was my least peril.
+My heart was touched through my ears; her gentle wisdom penetrated
+deeper than her beauty could reach."
+
+With what emotions must a young and ardent poet have listened to his own
+praises from a beautiful mouth, thus sweetly gifted! and it may be
+added, that Leonora's eloquence, and the influence she possessed over
+her brother, were ever employed in behalf of the deserving and
+unfortunate. The good people of Ferrara had such an exalted idea of her
+piety and benevolence, that when an earthquake caused a terrible
+innundation of the Po, and the destruction of the surrounding villages,
+they attributed the safety of their city entirely to her prayers and
+intercession.
+
+Leonora then was not unworthy of her illustrious conquest, either in
+person, heart, or mind. To be summoned daily into the presence of a
+Princess thus beautiful and amiable, to read aloud his verses to her, to
+hear his own praises from her lips, to bask in her approving smiles, to
+associate with her in her retirement, to behold her in all the graceful
+simplicity of her familiar life,--was a dangerous situation for Tasso,
+and surely not less so for Leonora herself. That she was aware of his
+admiration, and perfectly understood his sentiments, and that a
+mysterious intelligence existed between them, consistent with the utmost
+reverence on his part, and the most perfect delicacy and dignity on
+hers, is apparent from the meaning and tendency of innumerable passages
+scattered through his minor poems--too significant in their application
+to be mistaken. Though that application be not avowed, and even
+disguised--the very disguise, when once detected, points to the object.
+Leonora knew, as well as her lover, that a Princess "was no love-mate
+for a bard." She knew far better than her lover, until _he_ too had been
+taught by wretched experience, the haughty and implacable temper of her
+brother Alphonso, who never was known to brook an injury or forgive an
+offender. She must have remembered too well the twelve years'
+imprisonment and the narrow escape from death, of her unfortunate mother
+for a less cause. She was of a timid and reserved nature, increased by
+the extreme delicacy of her constitution. Her hand had frequently been
+sought by princes and nobles, whom she had uniformly rejected, at the
+risk of displeasing her brother; and the eyes of a jealous court were
+upon her. Tasso, on the other hand, was imprudent, hot-headed, fearless,
+ardently attached. For both their sakes, it was necessary for Leonora to
+be guarded and reserved, unless she would have made herself the fable of
+all Italy. And in what glowing verse has Tasso described all the
+delicious pain of such a situation! now proud of his fetters, now
+execrating them in despair. In allusion to his ambitious passion, he is
+Phaeton, Icarus, Tantalus, Ixion.
+
+    Se d' Icaro leggesti c di Fetonte, &c.
+
+But though presumption flung to ruin Icarus and Phaeton, did not the
+power of love bring even Dian down "from her amazing height?"
+
+                       E che non puote
+    Amor, che con catena il ciel unisce?
+    Egli gia trae delle celeste rote
+    Di terrana belta Diana accesa,
+    E d'Ida il bel Fanciul[125] al' ciel rapisce.
+
+This at least is _clearly_ significant, however poetical the allusions;
+but what a world of passion and of meaning breathes through the Sonnet
+which he has entitled "The constrained Silence," ("_Il Silenzio
+Imposto._")
+
+"She is content that I should love her; yet, O what hard restraint of
+galling silence has she imposed!"
+
+    Vuol che l' ami costei; ma duro freno
+    Mi pone ancor d' aspro silenzio; or quale
+    Avro da lei, se non conosce il male
+    O medecina, o refrigerio almeno?
+
+    ....*....*....*....*
+
+    Tacer ben posso, e tacero! ch' io toglia
+    Sangue alle piaghe, e luce al vivo foco
+    Non brami gia; questa e impossibil voglia
+    Troppo spinse pungenti a dentro i colpi,
+    E troppo ardore accolse in picciol loco:
+    S' apparira, natura, e se n' incolpi.[126]
+
+"Yes, I can, I will keep silence; but to command that the wound shall
+not bleed nor the fire burn, is to command impossibility. Too, too deep
+hath the blow been struck; too ardently glows the flame; and if
+betrayed, the fault is in nature--not in me!"
+
+And again, what can be more exquisitely tender, more beautiful in its
+fervent simplicity of expression, than the effusion which follows? How
+miserably does an inadequate prose translation halt after the glowing
+poetry, the rhythmical music, the "linked sweetness" of the original!
+
+    Io non cedo in amar, Donna gentile
+         A' chi mostra di fuor l' interno affetto;
+         Perche 'l mio si nasconda in mezzo 'l petto,
+         Ne co' fior s' apra del mio nuovo Aprile,
+    Co' vaghi sguardi, e col sembiante umile,
+        Co' detti sparsi in variando aspetto
+        Altri si veggia al vostro amor soggetto,
+        E co' sospiri, e con leggiadro stile.
+
+    E quando gela il cielo, e quando infiamma,
+        E quando parte il sole, e quando riede,
+        Vi segua; come il can selvaggia damma.
+
+    Ch' io se nel cor vi cerco, altri noi vede,
+        E sol mi vanto di nascosa fiamma,
+        E sol mi glorio di secreta fede.[127]
+
+"I yield not in love, O gentlest lady! to those who dare to show their
+love more openly, though I conceal it within the centre of my heart, nor
+suffer it to spread forth, like the other flowers of my spring. Let
+others boast themselves subjects of love for your sake, and slaves of
+your beauty, with admiring looks, with humble aspect, with sighs, with
+eloquent words, with lofty verse! whether the winter freeze or the
+summer burn,--at set of sun, and when he laughs again in heaven, let
+them still pursue you, as dogs the shy and timid deer. But I--O, I seek
+you in my own heart, where none else behold you! My hidden love be my
+only boast: my secret faith, my only glory!"
+
+Without multiplying quotations, which would extend this sketch from
+pages into volumes, it is sufficient to trace through Tasso's verses the
+little incidents which varied this romantic intercourse. The frequent
+indisposition of Leonora, her absence when she went to visit her
+brother, the Cardinal d'Este, at Tivoli, form the subjects of several
+beautiful little poems; as the Sonnets
+
+    Dianzi al vostro languir, &c.
+
+    Donna! poiche fortuna empia mi nega
+    Seguirvi, &c.
+
+    Al nobil colle, ove in antichi marmi
+    Di Greco mano opre famose ammira
+    Vaga LEONORA il mio pensier mi gira.
+
+Here he names her expressly; while in the little lament--
+
+    Lunge da voi, ben mio!
+    Non ho vita ne core! e non son io
+    Non sono, oime! non sono
+    Quel ch' altra volta fui, ma un Ombra mesta,
+    Un lagrimevol suono, &c.
+
+--the tone is too passionate to allow of it. He finds her looking up one
+night at the stars; it is sufficient to inspire that beautiful little
+song,
+
+    Mentre, mia stella, miri
+    I bei celesti giri,
+    Il cielo esser vorrei,
+    Perche negli occhi mici
+    Fiso tu rivolgessi
+    Le tue dolci faville;
+    Io vagheggiar potessi
+    Mille bellezze tue, con luci mille![128]
+
+He relates, in another little madrigal, that standing alone with her in
+a balcony, he chanced, perhaps in the eagerness of conversation, to
+extend his arm on hers. He asks pardon for the freedom, and she replies
+with sweetness, "You offended not by placing your arm there, but by
+withdrawing it." This little speech in a coquette would have been _sans
+consequence_; from such a woman as Leonora, it spoke volumes; and her
+lover felt it so. He breaks forth in a rapture at the tender
+condescension,
+
+    O parolette amorose, &c.
+
+Then comes a cloud, but whether of temper or jealousy, we know not. One
+of those luckless trifles, perhaps,
+
+                  --that move
+    Dissension between hearts that love.
+
+Tasso accompanied Lucrezia d'Este, then Duchess of Urbino, to her villa
+of Castel Durante, where he remained for some time, partaking in all the
+amusements of her gay court, without once seeing Leonora. He then wrote
+to her, and the letter fortunately has been preserved entire.
+
+Though guarded in expression, it is throughout in the tone of a lover
+piqued, and yet conscious that he has himself offended; and seeking,
+with a sort of proud humility, the reconciliation on which his happiness
+depends. He sends her a sonnet, which he admits is "far unlike the
+elegant effusions he supposes her now in the habit of receiving." He
+begs to assure her, that though it be in art and wit as poor as he is
+himself in happiness, yet in his present pitiable condition, he could do
+no better; (not that he was to all appearance so very much to be
+pitied). He adds, "do not think, however, that in this vacancy of
+thought, my heart has found leisure for love. The Sonnet is merely
+composed at the request of a certain poor lover, who has for some time
+past quarrelled with his mistress; and now no longer able to endure his
+hard fortune, is obliged to yield, and sue for grace and pardon." "Il
+quale essendo stato un pezzo in colera con la sua donna, ora non potendo
+piu, bisogna che si renda e che dimanda merce." The Sonnet enclosed in
+this letter, ("Sdegno, debil Guerrier,") appears to me one of the least
+pleasing in the collection; as if his genius and his feelings were both
+under some benumbing influence when he wrote it.
+
+In the meanwhile, there was a report that Leonora was about to be united
+to a foreign Prince. Her hand had been demanded of her brother with the
+usual formalities. On this occasion Tasso wrote the fine Canzone,
+
+    Amor, tu vedi, e non hai duolo o sdegno, &c.
+
+"Love! canst thou look on without grief or indignation, to see my gentle
+lady bow her fair neck to the yoke of another?"
+
+The expression in the 6th strophe is very unequivocal--
+
+"Nor let my mistress, though she suffer her bosom to be invaded by a
+newer flame, forget the _former_ bond."
+
+      Ne la mia Donna, perche scaldi il petto
+    Di nuovo amore, nodo _antico_ sprezzi.
+
+In one of his Sonnets, this jealous pain is yet more strongly
+expressed:--
+
+    Io sparso, ed altri miete! &c.
+
+"I sow, another reaps! I water a lovely blossom, unworthy, alas! to tend
+it; and another gathers the fruit. O rage!--yet must I, through coward
+fear, lock my grief within my own bosom!" &c.
+
+This intended marriage never took place; and Tasso, relieved from his
+fears, and restored to the confidence of Leonora, was again
+comparatively blessed. He sometimes ventured to name her openly in his
+poems,--as in the little Madrigal,
+
+    Cantava in riva al fiume
+    Tirse di LEONORA,
+    E rispondean le selve, e l'onde, _onora_.
+
+Sometimes he disguised her name as l'Aurora, l'Aura, Onor, le
+onora,[129]
+
+    Dell' Onor simulacro e'l nome vostro.
+
+To these the preceding Madrigal is a sort of _key_; or the better to
+conceal the true object of his adoration, he carried his apparent
+homage, and often his poetical gallantry, to the feet of other fair
+ladies. Lucretia d'Este, the elder sister of Leonora; Tarquinia Molza, a
+beauty and a poetess; and Lucretia Bendidio, another most accomplished
+woman, who numbered all the poets and literati of Ferrara in her train,
+frequently inspired him.
+
+The mention of Lucretia Bendidio reminds me of an incident in Tasso's
+early life, which, besides being characteristic of his times and genius,
+is extremely _apropos_ to my present purpose and subject. In the days of
+his first enthusiasm for Lucretia, when he and Guarini were rivals for
+her favour, he undertook to maintain, publicly, fifty _theses_, or
+difficult questions, in the "Science of Love." These "Conclusion!
+amorosi" may be found in the third volume of the great folio edition of
+his works; and some of them, it must be confessed, afforded matter for
+much amusing and edifying discussion; for instance,--"Amore esser piu
+nell' amata che nell' amante," "that love exists rather in the person
+beloved than in the lover," which seems to involve a nice distinction in
+metaphysics; and "Nessuna amata essere, o poter essere ingrata,"--"that
+no woman truly beloved, is or can be ungrateful," which involves a
+mystery--and a truth. And the 48th, "Se piu si patisca, o non ricevendo
+alcun premio, o ricevendo minor del desiderio,"--"whether in love, it be
+harder to receive no recompense whatever, or less than we desire,"--a
+question so difficult to settle, and so depending on individual feeling,
+that it should have been put to the vote. Others prove, that whatever
+was the practice in those days, the received and philosophical theory of
+love was sublime enough; for instance, the 14th, "That the more love is
+regulated by reason, the more noble it is in its nature." (Agreed to,
+with exceptions, of which Tasso himself might furnish the most
+prominent.) That "compassion in our sex is never a sign of reciprocal
+affection, but on the contrary." (True, generally.) The 34th, "That the
+respect of the lover for her he loves increases the value and delight of
+every favour she grants him." (I think this must have passed undisputed,
+or by acclamation.)
+
+The 38th of these curious propositions, "L'uomo in sua natura amar piu
+intentamente e stabilmente che la donna,"--that "men by nature love more
+intensely and more permanently than women," was opposed by Signora
+Orsolina Cavaletta, a woman of singular accomplishments, and who
+displayed, in defence of her sex, so much wit and talent, such various
+learning, ingenuity, and eloquence, that the young disputant, perhaps
+placed in a dilemma between his honour and his gallantry, came very
+hardly off. This singular exhibition continued for three days, and was
+conducted with infinite solemnity, in presence of the Court and the
+Princesses; all the nobility and even the superior clergy of Ferrara
+crowded to witness it; and I doubt whether any lecture at the British
+Institution, on mathematics, or electricity, or geology, was ever
+listened to by our fair bas-bleus with half as much interest as Tasso's
+"Fifty Theses on Love" excited in Ferrara.
+
+Several years after his first introduction to Leonora d'Este, and after
+some of the most impassioned and least ambiguous of his verses were
+written, the Court of Ferrara was embellished by the arrival of two of
+the most beautiful women in all Italy,--Leonora di Sanvitali, Countess
+of Scandiano, then a youthful bride, and her not less lovely
+mother-in-law, Barbara, Countess of Sala. The Countess of Scandiano is
+the _other_ LEONORA who has puzzled all the biographers, from the open
+gallantry and avowed adoration with which Tasso has celebrated her; but
+in strains,--O how different from the sentiment, the veneration, the
+tenderness, and the mystery which breathe through his verses to Leonora
+d'Este! A third Leonora was said to exist in the person of the
+Countess's favourite attendant: but this is untrue. The name of
+Leonora's waiting-maid was Laura. Tasso has addressed several little
+poems to her; and there can be no doubt that she occasionally served as
+a blind to his real attachment for her mistress. The Countess of
+Scandiano's attendant was the fair Olympia, to whom is addressed that
+exquisitely graceful Canzone,
+
+    O con le Grazie elette, e con gli amori.
+
+The Duchess of Ferrara's maid, the beautiful Livia d'Arco, and even her
+dwarf, are also immortalised in Tasso's verses, who poured forth his
+courtly gallantry with an exhaustless and splendid prodigality, fitting
+their praises to his lyre, as if it had never resounded to higher
+themes.
+
+At a court festival given by the Duke Alphonso, in honour of his
+beautiful and illustrious visitors, the Countess of Sala appeared with
+her fine hair wreathed round her head in the form of a coronet, which
+with her grand style of beauty and majestic deportment, gave her the air
+of a Juno. The young Countess of Scandiano, on the other hand, enchanted
+by her Hebe-like graces, her smiles, and the unequalled beauty of a
+pouting underlip;--nothing was talked of at Ferrara but these braided
+tresses and this lovely lip; the poets and the young cavaliers were
+divided into parties on the occasion. Tasso has celebrated both with the
+same voluptuous elegance of style in which he described his Armida. To
+the Countess of Scandiano he wrote,
+
+    Quel labbro, che le rose han colorito
+    Molle si sporge, e tumidetto in fuore, &c.
+
+To the Countess of Sala,
+
+    Barbara! maraviglia de' tempi nostri.
+
+But the Countess of Scandiano was more especially the object of his
+public adoration. It was a poetical passion, openly professed; and
+flattering, as it appears, both to the lady and to her husband, without
+in any degree implicating either her discretion or that of Tasso.
+Compare his verses to this young Countess--this _peregrina Fenice_,[130]
+as he fancifully styles her, who comes shining forth, not _to be
+consumed_, but _to consume_,--to the profound tenderness, the intense
+yet mournful feeling of some of the poems composed for the Princess
+d'Este, about the same time; when he must have daily contrasted the rich
+bloom, the smiling eyes, and sparkling graces of the youthful Countess,
+with the fading or faded beauty, the languid form, and pale cheek of his
+long-loved Leonora. See particularly the Sonnet
+
+    Tre gran Donne vid' io, &c.
+
+"Three illustrious ladies did I behold,--I sung them all--_one only_ I
+loved," &c. And another equally beautiful and significant,
+
+    Perche 'n giovenil volto amor mi mostri
+      Talor, Donna _Real_, rose e ligustri
+      Oblio non pone in me, de' miei trilustri
+      Affanni, o de miei spesi indarno inchiostri.
+
+    E 'l cor, che s' invaghi degli onor vostri
+      Da prima, e vostro fu poscia piu lustri
+      Reserba, amo in se forme piu illustri
+      Che perle e gemme, e bei coralli ed ostri.
+
+    Queste egli in suono di sospir si chiari
+    Farebbe udir, che d' amorosa face
+    Accenderebbe i piu gelati cori.
+
+    Ma oltre suo costume e fatto avaro
+      De' vostri pregi, suoi dolci tesori,
+      Che in se medesmo gli vagheggia e _tace_!
+
+
+TRANSLATION.
+
+    "Albeit in younger faces Love at times
+      May show me where a fresher rose is set,
+      Yet, _Royal_ Lady, can I not forget
+      My fifteen years of pain and useless rhymes.
+    This heart, so touch'd by all thy beauty bright,
+      After so many years is still thine own,
+      And still retaineth forms more exquisite
+      Than pearls, or purple gems, or coral stone.
+    All this my heart in soft sighs would make known,
+      And thus with fire the coldest bosom fill,
+      But that, unlike itself, that heart hath grown
+    So covetous of thy sweet charms, and thee,
+      (Its secret treasures,) that it aye doth flee
+      Inwards, and dwells upon them, and is still."[131]
+
+Lastly, that most perfect Sonnet, so well known and so celebrated, that
+I should not insert it here, but that I am enabled to give, for the
+first time, a translation equally faithful to the sentiment and the
+poetry of the original.
+
+    Negli anni acerbi tuoi, purpurea rosa
+      Sembravi tu, ch' ai rai tepidi, all' ora
+      Non apre 'l sen, ma nel suo verde ancora
+      Verginella s' asconde, e vergognosa.
+
+    O piu tosto parei (che mortal cosa,
+      Non s' assomiglia a te) celeste Aurora,
+      Che le campagne imperla, e i monti indora,
+      Lucida in ciel sereno e rugiadosa.
+
+    Or la men verde eta nulla a te toglie;
+      Ne te, benche negletta, in manto adorno
+      Giovinetta belta vince, o pareggia.
+
+    Cosi piu vago e 'l fior, poiche le foglie
+      Spiega odorate: e 'l sol nel mezzo giorno
+      Vie-piu, che nel mattin, luce e fiammeggia.
+
+
+TRANSLATION.
+
+    "Thou, in thy unripe years, wast like the rose,
+      Which shrinketh from the summer dawn, afraid,
+      And with her green veil, like a bashful maid,
+    Hideth her bosom sweet, and scarcely blows:
+    Or rather,--(for what shape ever arose
+      From the dull earth like thee,) thou didst appear
+      Heavenly Aurora, who, when skies are clear,
+    Her dewy pearls o'er all the country sows.
+      Time stealeth nought: thy rare and careless grace
+    Surpasseth still the youthful bride when neatest,--
+      Her wealth of dress, her budding blooming face,
+    So is the full-blown rose for age the sweetest,
+      So doth the mid-day sun outshine the morn,
+      With rays more beautiful and brighter born!"[132]
+
+Yet all this was too little. His minor lyrics, the unlaboured and
+spontaneous effusions of leisure, of fancy, of sentiment, would have
+been glory enough for any other poet, and fame enough for any other
+woman: but Tasso had founded his hopes of immortality on his great poem,
+The Jerusalem Delivered; and it was imperfect in his eyes unless Leonora
+were shrined in it. To convert the pale, gentle, elegant invalid into a
+heroine, seemed impossible: she was no model for his lovely amazon,
+Clorinda; nor his exquisite sorceress, Armida; nor his love-sick
+Erminia: for her, therefore, and to her honour, and to the eternal
+memory of his love for her, he composed the episode in the second Canto,
+where we have her portrait at full length as Sophronia.
+
+    Vergine era fra lor, di gia matura
+      Verginita, d'alta pensieri e regi,
+      D'alta Belta; ma sua belta non cura,
+      O tanto sol quant' onesta sen fregi;
+      E 'l suo pregio maggior che tra le mura
+      D'angusta casa, asconde i suoi gran pregi:
+      E da' vagheggiatori ella s'invola,
+      Alle lodi, agli sguardi, inculta e sola.
+
+    Non sai ben dir s'adorno, o se negletta,
+      Se caso od arte, il bel volto compose,
+      Di natura, d'amor, di cieli amici,
+      Le negligenze sue sono artifici.
+
+    Mirata da ciascun, passa, e non mira
+      L'altera donna!
+
+
+TRANSLATION.
+
+    Among them dwelt a noble maid, matured
+    In loveliness, of thoughts serene and high,
+    And loftiest beauty;--beauty which herself
+    Esteem'd not more than modesty might own.
+    Within an humble dwelling did she hide
+    Her peerless charms, and shunning lovers' eyes,
+    From flattering words and glances, lived retired.
+
+    Whether 'tis curious care, or sweet neglect,
+    Or chance, or art, that have array'd her thus,
+    One scarce can tell: for each unstudied grace
+    Has been the work of Nature, heaven, and love.
+
+    And thus admired by all, unheeding all,
+    Forth steps the noble maid.
+
+It is impossible to mistake, in this finished and exquisite portrait,
+the matured beauty, the negligent attire, and love of solitude which
+characterised Leonora: the resemblance was so perfect, as to be
+universally recognised and acknowledged. But is it not, as M. Ginguene
+remarks, equally certain that Tasso has pourtrayed himself as Olindo?
+
+        Ei che modesto e, com' essa e bella,
+        Brama, assai, poco spera, nulla chiede!
+
+    He, full of modesty and truth,
+    Loved much, hoped little, and desired nought!
+
+Has he not in the verse
+
+    Ed o mia morte avventurosa appiena,
+
+breathed forth all the smothered passion of his soul?--
+
+    Ed o mia morte avventurosa appiena!
+    Oh fortunati miei dolci martiri!
+    S'impetrero che giunto seno a seno
+    L'anima mia nella tuo bocca io spiri,
+    E venendo tu meco a un tempo meno
+    In me fuor mandi gli ultimi sospiri!
+
+    And O! how happy were my death! how blest
+    These tortures,--could I but the meed obtain,
+    That breast to breast, and lip to lip, our souls
+    Might flee together, and our latest sighs
+    Mingle in death.
+
+This episode is critically a defect in the poem: it seems to stand
+alone, unconnected in any way with the main action; he acknowledged
+this; but he absolutely, and obstinately, refused to alter it, or strike
+it out. He, who was in general amenable to criticism, even to a degree
+of weakness, willed that it should stand an everlasting monument of his
+tenderness, and of the virtues and the charms of her who inspired
+it:--and thus it has been.
+
+A cruel, and, as I think, a most unjust imputation rests on the memory
+of the Princess Leonora. She is accused of cold-heartedness, in
+suffering Tasso to remain so long imprisoned, without interceding in his
+favour, or even vouchsafing any reply to his affecting supplications for
+release, and for her mediation in his behalf. The excuse alledged by
+those who would fain excuse her,--"That she feared to compromise herself
+by any interference," is ten times worse than the accusation itself. But
+though there exists, I suppose, no _written_ proof that Leonora pleaded
+the cause of Tasso, or sought to mitigate his sufferings; neither is
+there any proof of the contrary. We know little, or rather nothing, of
+the private intrigues of Alphonso's palace: we have no "memoires
+secretes" of that day; no diaries kept by prying courtiers, to enlighten
+us on what passed in the recesses of the royal apartments: and upon mere
+negative presumption, shall we brand the character of a woman, who
+appears on every other occasion so blameless, so tender-hearted, and
+beneficent, with the imputation of such barbarous selfishness? for the
+honour of our sex, and human nature, I must believe it impossible.
+
+In no other instance was the homage which Tasso loved to pay to
+high-born beauty repaid with ingratitude; all his life he seems to have
+been an object of affectionate interest to women. They, in his misery,
+stood not aloof, but ministered to him the oil and balm, which soothed
+his vexed and distempered spirit. The Countesses of Sala and Scandiano
+never forgot him. Lucretia Bendidio, who had married into the
+Marchiavelli family, sent him in his captivity all the consolation she
+could bestow, or he receive. The Duchess of Urbino (Lucretia d'Este,)
+was munificently kind to him. The young Princess of Mantua, she for whom
+he wrote his "Torrismondo," loaded him with courtesy and proofs of her
+regard. He was ill at the Court of Mantua, after his release from
+Ferrara; and her exertions to procure him a copy of Euripides, which he
+wished to consult, (an anecdote cited somewhere, as a proof of the
+rarity of the book at that time,) is also a proof of the interest and
+attention with which she regarded him. It happened when he was at the
+Court of the Duke of Urbino, that he had to undergo a surgical
+operation; and the sister of the Duke, the young and beautiful Lavinia
+di Rovera, prepared the bandages, and applied them with her own fair and
+princely hands;--a little instance of affectionate interest, which Tasso
+has himself commemorated. If then we do not find Leonora publicly
+appearing as the benefactress of Tasso, and using her influence over her
+brother in his behalf, is it not a presumption that she was implicated
+in his punishment? What comfort or kindness she could have granted,
+must, under such circumstances, have been bestowed with infinite
+precaution; and, from gratitude and discretion, as carefully concealed.
+We know, that after the first year of his confinement, Tasso was removed
+to a less gloomy prison; and we know that Leonora died a few weeks
+afterwards; but what share she might have had in procuring this
+mitigation of his suffering, we do not know; nor how far the fate of
+Tasso might have affected her so as to hasten her own death. If we are
+to argue upon probabilities, without any preponderating proof, in the
+name of womanhood and charity, let it be on the side of indulgence; let
+us not believe Leonora guilty, but upon such authority as never has
+been,--and I trust never can be produced.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+About two years after the completion of the Jerusalem Delivered, and
+four years after the first representation of the Aminta;--when all
+Europe rung with the poet's fame, Tasso fled from the Court of Ferrara,
+in a fit of distraction. His frenzy was caused partly by religious
+horrors and scruples; partly by the petty but accumulated injuries which
+malignity and tyranny had heaped upon him; partly by a long-indulged and
+hopeless passion; and with these, other moral and physical causes
+combined. He fled, to hide himself and his sorrows in the arms of his
+sister Cornelia. The brother and sister had not met since their childish
+years; and Tasso, wild with misery, forlorn, and penniless, knew not
+what reception he was to meet with. When arrived within a league of his
+birthplace, Sorrento,[133] he changed clothes with a shepherd, and in
+this disguise appeared before his sister, as one sent with tidings of
+her brother's misfortunes. The recital, we may believe, was not coldly
+given. Cornelia, who appears to have inherited with the personal beauty,
+the sensibility and strong domestic affections of her mother,
+Portia,[134] was so violently agitated by the eloquence of the feigned
+messenger, that she fainted away; and Tasso was obliged to hasten the
+denouement by discovering himself. In the same moment he was clasped in
+her affectionate arms, and bathed with her tears. How often, when I have
+stood on my balcony at Naples, have I looked towards the white buildings
+of Sorrento, glittering afar upon the distant promontory, and thought
+upon this scene! and felt, how that which is already surpassingly
+beautiful to the eye, may be hallowed to the imagination by such
+remembrances as these!
+
+Tasso resided with his sister for three years, the object of her
+unwearied and tender attention. It was on his return to Ferrara,
+(recalled, as Manso says, by the tenor of Leonora's letters[135]) that
+he was imprisoned as a lunatic at St. Anne's. They show to travellers
+the cell in which he was confined. Over the entrance of the gallery
+leading to it, is written up in large letters, "Ingresso alla Prigione
+di Torquato Tasso," as if to blazon, in the eye of the stranger, what is
+at once the renown and disgrace of that fallen city. The cell itself is
+small, dark and low. The abhorred grate,
+
+    Marring the sun-beams with its hideous shade,
+
+is a semicircular window, strongly cross-barred with iron; it looks into
+a court-yard, so built up, if I remember rightly, that the noon-day sun
+could scarce reach it. Even without the hallowed associations connected
+with the spot, it would have chilled and saddened me. With them, the
+very air had a suffocating weight; and the cold dark walls, and
+low-bowed roof, struck a shivering awe through the blood. Upon the
+plaster outside the grated window, I observed several names written in
+pencil; among the rest, those of Byron and Rogers. I must observe here,
+that the "Lament of Tasso" is, in fact, a cento taken from Tasso's minor
+poems. Almost every sentiment there expressed, may be found in the
+Italian; but the soul of the poet has been transfused with such a
+glowing impulse into its new mould, it never seems to have been adapted
+to another; the precious metal is the same, only the impress is
+different, and it has been stamped by a kindred and a master spirit.
+Lord Byron says,
+
+    Yes, Leonora! it shall be our fate
+    To be entwined for ever; but too late!
+
+Tasso had said, that his name and that of Leonora should be united and
+soar to fame together.
+
+                  "Ella a miei versi, ed io
+    Circondava al suo nome altere piume,
+    E l'un per l'altro ando volando a prova;"
+
+--and a long list of corresponding passages and sentiments might easily
+be pointed out.
+
+The inscription on the door of Tasso's cell, _lies_, I believe, like
+many other inscriptions. Tasso was _not_ confined in this cell for seven
+years; but here it was that he addressed that affecting Canzone to
+Leonora and her sister Lucrezia, which begins "Figlie di
+Renata,"--"daughters of Renee!" Thus in the very commencement, by this
+delicate and tender apostrophe, bespeaking their compassion, by
+awakening the remembrance of their mother, like him so long a wretched
+prisoner. He reminds them of the years he spent at their side--"their
+noble servant and their dear companion,"
+
+    Gli anni miei tra voi spese,--
+    Qual son,--qual fui,--che chiedo--ove mi trovo![136]
+
+He was, after the first year, removed to a larger cell, with better
+accommodations. Here he made a collection of his smaller poems lately
+written, and dedicated them to the two Princesses. But Leonora was no
+longer in a state to be charmed by the verses, or flattered or touched
+by the admiring devotion of her lover,--her poet,--her faithful
+servant: she was dying. A slow and cureless disease preyed on her
+delicate frame, and she expired in the second year of Tasso's
+imprisonment. When the news of her danger was brought to him, he
+requested his friend Pignarola to kiss her hand in his name, and ask her
+whether there was any thing which, in his sad state, he could do for her
+ease or pleasure? We do not know how this tender message was received or
+answered; but it was too late. Leonora died in February 1581, after
+lingering from the November previous.
+
+Thus perished, of a premature decay, the woman who had been for
+seventeen years the idol of a poet's imagination--the worship of a
+poet's heart; she who was not unworthy of being enshrined in the rich
+tracery-work of sweet thoughts and bright fancies she had herself
+suggested. The love of Tasso for the Princess Leonora might have
+appeared, in his own time, something like the "desire of the night-moth
+for the star;" but what is it _now_? what was it _then_ in the eyes of
+her whom he adored? How far was it permitted, encouraged, repaid in
+secret? This we cannot know; and perhaps had we lived at the time,--in
+the very Court, and looked daily into her own soft eyes, practised to
+conceal,--we had been no wiser. Yet one more observation.
+
+When Leonora died, all the poets of Ferrara pressed forward with the
+usual tribute of elegy and eulogium; but the voice of Tasso was not
+heard among the rest. He alone flung no garland on the bier of her,
+whose living brow he had wreathed with the brightest flowers of song.
+This is adduced by Serassi as a proof that he had never loved her.
+Ginguene himself can only account for it, by the presumption that he was
+piqued by that coldness and neglect, which I have shown was merely
+supposititious. Strange reasoning! as if Tasso, while his heart bled
+over his loss, in his solitary cell, could have deigned to join this
+crowd of courtly mourners! as if, under such circumstances, in such a
+moment, the greatness of his grief could have burst forth in any terms
+that must not have exposed himself to fresh rigours, and the fame, at
+least the discretion, of her he had loved, to suspicion! No! nothing
+remained to him but silence;--and he was silent.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[120] See the Rinaldo, c. 8.
+
+[121]
+
+            ----From my very birth
+    My soul was drunk with love, &c.
+
+                     LAMENT OF TASSO.
+
+[122]
+
+    Rose, che l' arte invidiosa mira. &c.
+
+[123]
+
+    Alteremente umile
+    Te chiudi ne' tuoi cari alti soggiorni.
+
+[124] The daughter of Louis XII. She was closely imprisoned during
+twelve years, on suspicion of favouring the early reformers.
+
+[125] Ganymede.
+
+[126] Sonnet 37.
+
+[127] Sonnet 29.
+
+[128] I am told the original idea is in Plato; prettier, however, than
+either, was the speech of a modern lover, whose mistress was gazing
+pensively on a star: "Ne la regardez pas tant, chere amie!--je ne puis
+pas te la donner!"
+
+[129] The Canzono which is, I believe, esteemed the finest of those
+addressed to Leonora,
+
+    Mentre ch' a venerar muovon le gente,
+
+concludes with this play upon her name--
+
+    Costei LE ONORA col bel nome sante.
+
+    She does them HONOUR by her sacred name.
+
+[130] "Foreign Phoenix."
+
+[131] Translated by a friend.
+
+[132] Translated by a friend.
+
+[133] Near Naples: thus, in his pathetic Canzone on himself,--
+
+    Sassel la gloriosa alma Sirena
+    Appresso il cui sepolcro, ebbi la cuna!
+
+[134] The wife of Bernardo Tasso. See an account of her in Black's Life
+of Tasso.
+
+[135] Manso, Vita di T. Tasso.
+
+[136] Part of this Canzone has been elegantly translated by Mr. Wiffen
+in his Life of Tasso, p. 83.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+MILTON AND LEONORA BARONI.
+
+
+The Marquis Manso of Naples, who in his early youth had entertained
+Tasso in his palace, had cherished and honoured him when that great but
+unhappy man was wandering, brain-struck with misery, from one court to
+another,--was, in his old age, the host and admirer of Milton; thus, by
+a singular good fortune, allying his name to two of the most illustrious
+of earth's diviner sons: while theirs, linked together by the
+recollection of this common friend, follow each other in our memory by a
+natural transition. We can think of them as pressing, though at an
+interval of many years, the same friendly hand, and gracing the same
+hospitable board with "colloquy sublime." Tasso, from the romance of his
+story, and his personal character, is the most interesting of the two;
+yet Milton, besides standing highest in the scale of moral dignity, sits
+nearest to our hearts as an Englishman, whose genius, speaking through
+our native accents, strikes upon our sense,
+
+    Like the large utterance of the early gods.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We rise from reading Johnson's Biography of Milton, either with the most
+painful and indignant feeling of the malignity of the critic,[137] or
+with an impression of Milton's character, as false as it is odious. Of
+moral inconsistency and weakness, blended with splendid genius, we have
+proofs lamentable and numerous enough: to be obliged to regard the
+mighty father of English verse,--him "who rode sublime upon the seraph
+wings of ecstasy,"--him, whose harmonious soul was tuned to the music
+of the spheres, though when struck in evil times, and by an adverse
+hand, it sent forth a crash of discord,--him, who has left us the most
+exquisite pictures of tenderness and beauty--to think of such a being as
+a petty domestic tyrant, a coarse-minded fanatic, stern and unfeeling in
+all the relations of life, were enough to confound all our ideas of
+moral fitness. When we figure to ourselves the author of Rasselas
+trampling over the ashes of Milton, lending his mighty powers to degrade
+the majestic, to disfigure the beautiful, and to darken the glorious, it
+is with the same feeling of concentrated disgust with which we recall
+the violation of the poet's grave, some years ago, when vulgar savages
+defaced and carried off his sacred and venerable remains
+piece-meal.[138] Let us for a moment imagine our Milton descending to
+earth to assert his injured fame, and confronted with his great
+biographer--
+
+    Look here upon this picture, and on this--
+
+The one, like his own Adam, with fair large front and hyacinthine locks,
+serene and blooming as his own Eden; in all the dignified graces which
+temperance and self-conquest lend to youth,[139] in all the purity of
+his stainless mind, radiant like another Moses, with the reflected
+glories of the Empyreum,--and then look upon the other!--But it is an
+awful thing for little people, to meddle with great and sacred names;
+and so leaving the Hippopotamus of literature in his den--proceed we.
+
+It relieves the heart from an oppressive contradiction to behold Milton,
+such as he is represented by his other biographers, and such as
+undoubtedly he really was. It is well known, that in his youth, and
+even at a late age, he had an uncommonly fine person, almost to
+effeminacy; and was as gracefully endowed in form and manners, as he was
+highly and holily gifted in mind. His natural mildness, cheerfulness,
+and courtesy, are commemorated by all who knew him, or lived near his
+time.[140] He whom Johnson accuses of a "Turkish contempt of females, as
+inferior beings," and whom he represents in a light so ungentle and
+gloomy, that we cannot imagine him under the influence of beauty, was
+early touched by the softest passions, and during his whole life
+peculiarly sensible to the charm of female society: witness his
+successive marriages, and his friendship and intercourse with Lady
+Margaret Ley, and the all-accomplished Countess of Ranelagh, who
+supplied to him, as he says, the place of every friend:[141]--witness,
+too, a thousand most lovely and glorious passages scattered through his
+works, which women may quote with triumph, as proofs that we had no
+small influence over the imagination of our great epic poet. What but
+the most reverential and lofty feeling of the graces and virtues proper
+to our sex, could have embodied such an exquisite vision as the Lady in
+Comus? or created his delightful Eve? on whom, "as on a queen, a pomp of
+winning graces waited still."
+
+    All higher knowledge in her presence falls
+    Degraded; wisdom, in discourse with her,
+    Loses discountenanc'd, and like folly shows;
+    Authority and reason on her wait,
+    As one intended first, not after made
+    Occasionally; and to consummate all,
+    Greatness of mind and nobleness their seat,
+    Build in her loveliest, and create an awe
+    About her, as a guard angelic plac'd.
+
+And this is the being whom a lady-author calls a "great overgrown baby,
+with nothing to recommend her but her submission, and her fine
+hair!"[142]--two things, be it observed, among the most graceful of our
+feminine attributes, mental and exterior. The poet who conceived and
+wrote this description, most assuredly had not a "Turkish contempt" for
+the female character.
+
+Milton was in love, as he tells us himself, at nineteen; but the object
+cannot even be guessed at. He has celebrated this boyish passion very
+beautifully in one of his Latin elegies. One of the passages in this
+poem, in which he compares the effect produced on him by the first
+momentary view of his mistress, followed by her immediate absence to the
+Theban Oeclides,[143] swallowed up by the abyss which opens beneath
+him, and gazing back upon the parting light of day, is admired for its
+classic sublimity and appropriate beauty.
+
+There is a tradition mentioned by all his biographers, that while Milton
+was a student at Cambridge, an Italian lady of rank, who was travelling
+in England, found him sleeping one day under the shade of a tree, and,
+struck with his beauty, wrote with her pencil on a slip of paper, the
+pretty madrigal of Guarini, which Menage translated for Madame de
+Sevigne, "Occhi, stelle mortali," and leaving it in his hand, pursued
+her journey. This fair unknown is said to have been the cause of
+Milton's travels into Italy; but the story rests on no authority: and it
+is clear, that the "foreign fair" to whom the Sonnets are addressed, was
+neither imaginary nor unknown. During his stay at Rome, he was received
+with particular distinction by the Cardinal Barberini, the nephew of the
+reigning Pope, and at his palace had frequent opportunities of hearing
+Leonora Baroni, the finest singer in Italy. She was the daughter of
+Adriana of Mantua, surnamed, for her beauty, La Bella Adriana, and the
+best singer and player on the lute of her time. Leonora inherited her
+mother's extraordinary talent for music, and conquered all hearts by the
+inexpressible charm of her voice and style. She was also a poetess,
+frequently composing the words of her own songs. Though not a regular
+beauty, she had brilliant eyes, and a captivating countenance and
+manner. Count Fulvio Testi, in a Sonnet addressed to her, celebrates the
+union of so many charms:
+
+    Tra il concento e 'l fulgor, dubbio e se sia
+    L'udir piu dolce, o il rimirar piu caro.
+    Deh fammi cieco, o fammi sordo, amore!
+
+M. Maugars, himself a musician, who saw and heard Leonora at Rome,
+praises her talents generally, and adds, that she was no coquette; that
+she sang with confidence, but with modesty; that there was nothing in
+her manners that could be censured; that the effect she produced on
+those who heard her, was owing, not only to the wonderful rapidity and
+delicacy of her execution, but to the care with which she gave the exact
+sense and proper expression of the words she sang. He tells us, that on
+one occasion, she _favoured_ him by singing with her mother and her
+sister, each accompanying herself on a different instrument (in those
+days pianos were not, and Leonora's favourite instrument was the
+Theorbo, on which she excelled). This little concert so enraptured our
+musician, that, to use his own words, he forgot his mortality, "et crut
+etre deja parmi les anges, jouissant des contentemens des bienheureux."
+
+It is no wonder that the charms and talents which exalted this prosaic
+Frenchman almost into a poet, should turn the heads of poets themselves.
+The verses addressed to Leonora were collected into a volume, and
+published under the title of "Applausi poetici alle glorie della Signora
+Leonora Baroni."--"Poetical eulogies to the glory of Signora Leonora
+Baroni." A similar homage had been paid to her mother, Adriana, who
+reckoned Tasso among her panegyrists. This may seem too high a
+distinction for a species of talent, which, however admirable, can leave
+behind no durable monument, and therefore can claim no interest with
+posterity. Yet is it just, that those whom heaven has enriched with the
+gift of melody, and who have cultivated that delicious faculty to its
+height, until with angel-skill they can suspend the dominion of pain in
+aching hearts,[144]--that such should ravish with delight a whole
+generation, and then perish from the earth, they and their memory, with
+the pleasure they bestowed, and gratitude be voiceless and tuneless in
+their praise? The gift of song is fleeting as that of beauty; but while
+the painter fixes on his canvas
+
+    The vermeil-tinctur'd lip,
+    Love-darting eyes, and tresses like the morn,
+
+what shall immortalise the tones which "turned sense to soul?" what but
+poetry, which, while it preserves the memory of such excellence, gives
+back to the fancy some reflection of the delight we have felt, when the
+full tide of a divine voice is poured forth to the sense, like wine from
+an enchanted cup, making us thrill "with music's pulse in every artery."
+Leonora Baroni had her poets, and her name, linked with that of Milton,
+shall never die.
+
+It is a curious circumstance, and one but little consonant with the
+popular idea of Milton's austerity, that the object of his poetical
+homage, and even of his serious admiration, was an Italian singer; but
+it must be remembered, that Milton, the son of an accomplished
+musician,[145] was, by nature and education, peculiarly susceptible to
+the power of sweet sounds. Next to poetry, music was with him a passion;
+and the profession of a singer in those days, when the art was in its
+second infancy, was more highly estimated, in proportion as excellence
+was more rare and less publicly exhibited. I cannot find that either
+Leonora Baroni, or her mother Adriana, ever appeared on a stage; yet
+their celebrity had spread from one end of Italy to the other. Milton
+joined the crowd of Leonora's votaries at Rome, and has expressed his
+enthusiastic admiration, not only in verse but in prose.[146] He
+addressed her in Latin and Italian, the languages she understood, and
+which he had perfectly at command. In one of his Latin poems, "To
+Leonora, singing at Rome," the allusion to Leonora d'Este,
+
+    Another Leonora once inspired
+    Tasso, by hopeless love to phrenzy fired, &c.
+
+is as happy as it is beautiful, and shows the belief which then
+prevailed of the real cause of Tasso's delirium.
+
+Two of Milton's Italian sonnets are very beautiful, and have been
+translated by Cowper with singular felicity. All his biographers agree
+that Leonora Baroni is the subject of both; the first, addressed to
+Carlo Diodati, describes the lady, whose dark and foreign charms are
+opposed to those of the _blonde_ beauties he had admired in his youth.
+
+
+SONNET.
+
+    _Diodati! e te 'l diro con maraviglia, &c._
+
+    Charles,--and I say it wondering,--thou must know
+    That I, who once assumed a scornful air,
+    And scoffed at Love, am fallen into his snare;
+    (Full many an upright man has fallen so.)
+    Yet think me not thus dazzled by the flow
+    Of golden locks, or damask rose; more rare
+    The heartfelt beauties of my foreign fair!
+    A mien majestic, with dark brows, that show
+    The tranquil lustre of a lofty mind,--
+    Words exquisite, of idioms more than one;
+    And song, whose fascinating power might bind,
+    And from her sphere draw down the lab'ring moon;
+    With such fire-darting eyes, that should I fill
+    Mine ears with wax, she would enchant me still!
+
+In this translation, though elegant and faithful, the lines
+
+    A mien majestic, with dark brows, that show
+    The tranquil lustre of a lofty mind,
+
+have much diluted the energy of Milton's
+
+    Portamenti alti onesti, e nelle ciglia
+    Quel sereno fulgor d'amabil nero.
+
+In the other Sonnet, addressed to Leonora, he gives, with all the
+simplicity of conscious worth, this lofty description of himself, and of
+his claims to her preference.
+
+
+SONNET.
+
+    _Giovane, piano, e semplicetto amante, &c._
+
+    Enamour'd, artless, young, on foreign ground,
+    Uncertain whither from myself to fly,
+    To thee, dear lady, with an humble sigh,
+    Let me devote my heart, which I have found,
+    By certain proofs not few, intrepid, sound,
+    Good, and addicted to conceptions high:
+    When tempests shake the world, and fire the sky,
+    It rests in adamant, self-wrapt around,
+    As safe from envy and from outrage rude,
+    From hopes and fears that vulgar minds abuse,
+    As fond of genius and fixt solitude,
+    Of the resounding lyre and every muse.
+    Weak you will find it in one only part,
+    Now pierc'd by Love's immedicable dart.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Milton was three times married. The relations of his first wife, (Mary
+Powell,) who were violent Royalists, and ashamed or afraid of their
+connection with a republican, persuaded her to leave him. She
+absolutely forsook her husband for nearly three years, and resided with
+her family at Oxford, when that city was the head-quarters of the King's
+party. "I have so much charity for her," says Aubrey, "that she might
+not wrong his bed; but what man (especially contemplative,) would like
+to have a young wife environed and stormed by the sons of Mars, and
+those of the ennemie partie?"
+
+Milton, though a suspicion of the nature hinted at by Aubrey never rose
+in his mind, was justly incensed at this dereliction. He was on the
+point of divorcing this contumacious bride, and had already made choice
+of another[147] to succeed her, when she threw herself, impromptu, at
+his feet and implored his forgiveness. He forgave her; and when the
+republican party triumphed, the family who had so cruelly wronged him
+found a refuge in his house. This woman embittered his life for fourteen
+or fifteen years.
+
+A remembrance of the reconciliation with his wife, and of his own
+feelings on that occasion, are said to have suggested to Milton's mind
+the beautiful scene between Adam and Eve, in the tenth book of the
+Paradise Lost.
+
+    She ended weeping; and her lowly plight,
+    Immoveable, till peace obtained for faults
+    Acknowledged and deplored, in Adam wrought
+    Commiseration; soon his heart relented
+    Tow'rds her, his life so late and sole delight,
+    Now at his feet submissive in distress,
+    Creature so fair, his reconcilement seeking;
+    As one disarmed, his anger all he lost, &c.
+
+Milton's second and most beloved wife (Catherine Woodcock) died in
+child-bed, within a year after their marriage. He honoured her memory
+with what Johnson (out upon him!) calls a _poor_ sonnet; it is the one
+beginning
+
+    Methought I saw my late espoused saint
+    Brought to me, like Alcestis from the grave;
+
+which, in its solemn and tender strain of feeling and modulated harmony,
+reminds us of Dante. He never ceased to lament her, and to cherish her
+memory with a fond regret:--she must have been full in his heart and
+mind when he wrote those touching lines in the Paradise Lost--
+
+    How can I live without thee? how forego
+    Thy sweet converse and love so dearly joined,
+    To live again in these wild woods forlorn?
+    Should God create another Eve, and I
+    Another rib afford, yet loss of thee
+    Would never from my heart!
+
+After her death,--blind, disconsolate, and helpless--he was abandoned to
+petty wrongs and domestic discord; and suffered from the disobedience
+and unkindness of his two elder daughters, like another Lear.[148] His
+youngest daughter, Deborah, was the only one who acted as his
+amanuensis, and she always spoke of him with extreme affection:--on
+being suddenly shown his picture, twenty years after his death, she
+burst into tears.[149]
+
+These three daughters were grown up, and the youngest about fifteen,
+when Milton married his third wife, Elizabeth Minshull. She was a
+gentle, kind-hearted woman,[150] without pretensions of any kind, who
+watched over his declining years with affectionate care. One biographer
+has not scrupled to assert, that to her,--or rather to her tender
+reverence for his studious habits, and to the peace and comfort she
+brought to his heart and home,--we owe the Paradise Lost: if true, what
+a debt immense of endless gratitude is due to the memory of this
+unobtrusive and amiable woman!
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[137] What Dr. Johnson _wrote_ is known;--he was accustomed to _say_
+that the admiration expressed for Milton was all _cant_.
+
+[138] I have before me the pamphlet, entitled "A Narrative of the
+disinterment of Milton's coffin, on Wednesday the 4th of August, 1790,
+and of the treatment of the Corpse during that and the following day."
+The circumstances are too revolting to be dwelt upon.
+
+[139] Si les Anges, (said Madame de Stael) n'ont pas ete representes
+sous les traits de femme, c'est parceque l'union de la force avec la
+purete, est plus belle et plus celeste encore que la modestie meme la
+plus parfaite dans un etre faible.
+
+[140] See his life by Dr. Symmons, Dr. Todd, Newton, Hayley, Aubrey,
+Richardson, Warton.
+
+"She (his daughter Deborah) spoke of him with great tenderness; she said
+he was delightful company, the life of the conversation, and that on
+account of a flow of subject, and an unaffected cheerfulness and
+civility," &c.--RICHARDSON.
+
+[141] She was Catherine Boyle, the daughter of the Great Earl of Cork,
+one of the most excellent and most distinguished women of that
+time.--_See Hayley's Life of Milton._
+
+[142] Miss Letitia Hawkins.
+
+[143] Otherwise Amphiaraus: his story is told by Ovid. Met. B. 9.
+
+[144] As Milton felt when he wrote--
+
+    And ever against eating cares,
+    Lap me in soft Lydian airs.
+
+[145] Milton alludes to his father's talent for music:
+
+                            Thyself
+    Art skilful to associate verse with airs
+    Harmonious, and to give the human voice
+    A thousand modulations.--
+    Such distribution of himself to us
+    Was Phoebus' choice; _thou_ hast thy gift, and I
+    Mine also; and between us we receive,
+    Father and Son, the whole inspiring God!
+
+                     AD PATREM.
+
+[146] There is extant a prose letter from Milton to Holstentius, the
+librarian of the Vatican, in which he accounts as one of his greatest
+pleasures at Rome, that of having known and heard Leonora.
+
+[147] A Miss Davies. "The father (says Hayley) seems to have been a
+convert to Milton's arguments; but the lady had scruples. She possessed
+(according to Philips) both wit and beauty. A novelist could hardly
+imagine circumstances more singularly distressing to sensibility than
+the situation of the poet, if, as we may reasonably conjecture, he was
+deeply enamoured of this lady; if her father was inclined to accept him
+as a son-in-law, and the object of his love had no inclination to reject
+his suit, but what arose from a dread of his being indissolubly mated to
+another."--_Life of Milton_, p. 90.
+
+[148]
+
+    --I, dark in light, exposed
+    To daily fraud, contempt, abuse, and wrong,
+    Within doors or without, still as a fool
+    In power of others, never in my own, &c.
+
+                     SAMSON AGONISTES.
+
+[149] Todd's Life of Milton--See also Milton's Will, which has been
+lately recovered, and published by Warton.
+
+[150] Aubrey's Letters.
+
+
+END OF THE FIRST VOLUME.
+
+LONDON:
+PRINTED BY S. AND R. BENTLEY,
+Dorset Street, Fleet Street.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Romance of Biography (Vol 1 of 2), by
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