FOOTNOTES:

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 prideWhich 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 growthA 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 beenFrom 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!

How like a winter hath my absence beenFrom 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 historyIs 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 queenThe basest jewel will be well esteemed:So are those errors that in thee are seenTo 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!

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 moreThe 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 chideThe 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'dTo 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 bellGive warning to the world that I am fledFrom this vile earth, with vilest worms to dwell:Nay, if you read this line, remember notThe hand that writ it; for I love you soThat 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 thePoet 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.

[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.

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 sayWas like enchantment, that through both the earsAnd both the eyes, did steal the heart away.

And as Surrey had his Fair Geraldine, Sydney had hisStella.

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 "Phœnix-Stella" be less popularly celebrated than the Fair Geraldine,—her name less intimate with our fancy,—it is not becauseher 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; darksparkling 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 themodestyof 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 himbashfully, 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 delightAnd humbleness doth dwell with majesty:Whatever may ensue, O let me beCopartner 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 anddesesperé, by their vague andcareless 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 Phœnix-Stella's state,You say, forsooth, "You left her well of late."O God! think you that satisfiesmycare?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!

Be your words made, good Sir, of Indian ware,That you allow me them at so small rate?

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

When I demand of Phœnix-Stella's state,You say, forsooth, "You left her well of late."O God! think you that satisfiesmycare?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 andcaptivating 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 suchAs 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!"

But her hand, his hands repelling,Gave repulse—all grace excelling!

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

Then she spake! her speech was suchAs 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, andlay 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 ofbienséanceand 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 breathOut 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, consideringall 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;—shewaylaid 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 yearafter: "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'sStella.

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.

[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.

The voluminous Drayton[109]has left a collection of sonnets under the fantastic title of hisIdeas. 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 thingsThat 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 liveUpon 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.

How many paltry, foolish, painted thingsThat 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 liveUpon 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; forhewas 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 readLines 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, whohad 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 skiesWith 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 containsA 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 givenAs 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 steepedin 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 meadWhere she was wont to pass the pleasant hours?Is this the goodly elm did us o'erspread,Whose tender rind, cut forth in curious flowersBy 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 thefirst 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 shehad 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 hertime, 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.

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