FOOTNOTES:

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 inspiredTasso, 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 theblondebeauties he had admired in his youth.

Diodati! e te 'l diro con maraviglia, &c.Charles,—and I say it wondering,—thou must knowThat 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 flowOf golden locks, or damask rose; more rareThe heartfelt beauties of my foreign fair!A mien majestic, with dark brows, that showThe 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 fillMine ears with wax, she would enchant me still!

Diodati! e te 'l diro con maraviglia, &c.

Charles,—and I say it wondering,—thou must knowThat 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 flowOf golden locks, or damask rose; more rareThe heartfelt beauties of my foreign fair!A mien majestic, with dark brows, that showThe 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 fillMine ears with wax, she would enchant me still!

In this translation, though elegant and faithful, the lines

A mien majestic, with dark brows, that showThe tranquil lustre of a lofty mind,

have much diluted the energy of Milton's

Portamenti alti onesti, e nelle cigliaQuel 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.

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.

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 leavehim. 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 faultsAcknowledged and deplored, in Adam wroughtCommiseration; soon his heart relentedTow'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 memorywith what Johnson (out upon him!) calls apoorsonnet; it is the one beginning

Methought I saw my late espoused saintBrought 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 foregoThy sweet converse and love so dearly joined,To live again in these wild woods forlorn?Should God create another Eve, and IAnother rib afford, yet loss of theeWould never from my heart!

After her death,—blind, disconsolate, and helpless—he was abandoned to petty wrongs and domestic discord; and suffered from the disobedienceand 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 hertender 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. Johnsonwroteis known;—he was accustomed tosaythat the admiration expressed for Milton was allcant.[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:ThyselfArt skilful to associate verse with airsHarmonious, and to give the human voiceA thousand modulations.—Such distribution of himself to usWas Phœbus' choice;thouhast thy gift, and IMine 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, exposedTo daily fraud, contempt, abuse, and wrong,Within doors or without, still as a foolIn 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.

[137]What Dr. Johnsonwroteis known;—he was accustomed tosaythat the admiration expressed for Milton was allcant.

[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.

[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.

[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:ThyselfArt skilful to associate verse with airsHarmonious, and to give the human voiceA thousand modulations.—Such distribution of himself to usWas Phœbus' choice;thouhast thy gift, and IMine also; and between us we receive,Father and Son, the whole inspiring God!ad patrem.

[145]Milton alludes to his father's talent for music:

ThyselfArt skilful to associate verse with airsHarmonious, and to give the human voiceA thousand modulations.—Such distribution of himself to usWas Phœbus' choice;thouhast thy gift, and IMine 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, exposedTo daily fraud, contempt, abuse, and wrong,Within doors or without, still as a foolIn power of others, never in my own, &c.samson agonistes.

[148]

—I, dark in light, exposedTo daily fraud, contempt, abuse, and wrong,Within doors or without, still as a foolIn 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.

LONDON:PRINTED BY S. AND R. BENTLEY,Dorset Street, Fleet Street.

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