FOOTNOTES:

La prima volta ch'io m'avenni in quellaNinfa, che il cor m'accese, e ancor l'accende,Io dissi, è donna o dea, ninfa si bella?Giunse dal prato, o pur dal ciel discende?La fronte inchinò in umil atto, ed ellaLa mercè pur d'un sguardo a me non rende;Qual vagheggiata in cielo, o luna, o stella,Che segue altera il suo viaggio, e splende.Chi detto avesse a me, "costei ti sprezza,Ma un di ti riderai del suo rigore!Che nacque sol per te tanta bellezza."Chi detto avesse ad ella: "Il tuo bel coreSai chi l'avra? Costui ch'or non t'apprezza"Or negate i miracoli d'Amore!

La prima volta ch'io m'avenni in quellaNinfa, che il cor m'accese, e ancor l'accende,Io dissi, è donna o dea, ninfa si bella?Giunse dal prato, o pur dal ciel discende?

La fronte inchinò in umil atto, ed ellaLa mercè pur d'un sguardo a me non rende;Qual vagheggiata in cielo, o luna, o stella,Che segue altera il suo viaggio, e splende.

Chi detto avesse a me, "costei ti sprezza,Ma un di ti riderai del suo rigore!Che nacque sol per te tanta bellezza."

Chi detto avesse ad ella: "Il tuo bel coreSai chi l'avra? Costui ch'or non t'apprezza"Or negate i miracoli d'Amore!

The first Sonnet in Faustina's Canzoniere,

Dolce sollievo delle umane cure,

is an eulogium on her husband, and describes her own confiding tenderness. It is full of grace and sweetness, and feminine feeling:

Soave cortesìa, vezzosi accenti,Virtù, senno, valor d'alma gentile,Spogliato hanno 'l mio cor d'ogni timore;Or tu gli affetti miei puri innocentiPasci cortese, e non cangiar tuo stileDolce sollievo de' miei mali, amore!

Soave cortesìa, vezzosi accenti,Virtù, senno, valor d'alma gentile,Spogliato hanno 'l mio cor d'ogni timore;

Or tu gli affetti miei puri innocentiPasci cortese, e non cangiar tuo stileDolce sollievo de' miei mali, amore!

Others are of a melancholy character; and one or two allude to the death of an infant son, whom she tenderly laments. But the most finished of all her poems is a Sonnet addressed to a lady whom her husband had formerly loved;[61]the sentiment of which is truly beautiful and feminine: never was jealousy so amiably, or so delicatelyexpressed. There is something very dramatic and picturesque in the apostrophe which Faustina addresses to her rival, and in the image of the lady "casting down her large bright eyes:" as well as affecting in the abrupt recoil of feeling in the last lines.

Donna! che tanto al mio bel sol piacesti!Che ancor de' pregi tuoi parla sovente,Lodando, ora il bel crine, ora il ridenteTuo labbro, ed ora i saggi detti onesti.Dimmi, quando le voci a lui volgestiTacque egli mai, qual uom che nulla sente?O le turbate luci alteramente,(Come a me volge) a te volger vedesti?De tuoi bei lumi, a le due chiare faciIo so ch'egli arse un tempo, e so che allora—Ma tu declini al suol gli occhi vivaci!Veggo il rossor che le tue guance infiora;Parla, rispondi! Ah non rispondi! taciTaci! se mi vuoi dir ch'ei t'ama ancora!

Donna! che tanto al mio bel sol piacesti!Che ancor de' pregi tuoi parla sovente,Lodando, ora il bel crine, ora il ridenteTuo labbro, ed ora i saggi detti onesti.

Dimmi, quando le voci a lui volgestiTacque egli mai, qual uom che nulla sente?O le turbate luci alteramente,(Come a me volge) a te volger vedesti?

De tuoi bei lumi, a le due chiare faciIo so ch'egli arse un tempo, e so che allora—Ma tu declini al suol gli occhi vivaci!

Veggo il rossor che le tue guance infiora;Parla, rispondi! Ah non rispondi! taciTaci! se mi vuoi dir ch'ei t'ama ancora!

Lady, that once so charm'd my life's fair Sun,[62]That of thy beauties still he talketh oft,—Thy mouth, fair hair, and words discreet and soft.Speak! when thou look'dst, was he from silence won?Or, did he turn those sweet and troubled eyesOn thee, and gaze as now on me he gazeth?(For ah! I knowthylove was then the prize,And then hefeltthe grace that still he praiseth.)But why dost thou those beaming glances turnThus downwards? Ha! I see (against thy will)All o'er thy cheek the crimsoning blushes burn.Speak out! oh answer me!—yet, no, no,—stay!Be dumb, be silent, if thou need'st must sayThat he who once adored thee, loves thee still.[63]

Neither Zappi nor his wife were authors by profession: her poems are few; and all seem to flow from some incident or feeling, which awakened her genius, and caused that "craving of the heart and the fancy to break out into voluntary song, which men call inspiration." She became a member ofthe Arcadia, under the pastoral name of Aglaura Cidonia; and it is remarkable, that though she survived her husband many years, I cannot find any poem referring to her loss, nor of a subsequent date: neither did she marry again, though in the prime of her life and beauty.

Zappi was a great and celebrated lawyer, and his legal skill raised him to an office of trust, under the Pontificate of Clement XI. In one of his Sonnets, which has great sweetness and picturesque effect, he compares himself to the Venetian Gondolier, who in the calm or the storm pours forth his songs on the Lagune, careless of blame or praise, asking no auditors but the silent seas and the quiet moon, and seeking only to "unburthen his full soul" in lays of love and joy—

Il Gondolier, sebben la notte imbruna,Remo non posa, e fende il mar spumante;Lieto cantando a un bel raggio di Luna—"Intanto Erminia infra l'ombrose piante."

That Zappi could be sublime, is proved by his well-known Sonnet on the Moses of Michel Angelo; but his forte is the graceful and the gay.His Anacreontics, and particularly his little drinking song,

Come farò? Farò così!

are very elegant, and almost equal to Chiabrera. It is difficult to sympathize with English drinking songs, and all the vulgar associations of flowing bowls, taverns, three times three, and the table in a roar. An ItalianBrindisitransports us at once among flasks and vineyards, guitars and dances, a dinneral fresco, a groupà la Stothard. It is all the difference between the ivy-crowned Bacchus, and the bloated Silenus. "Bumper, Squire Jones," or, "Waiter, bring clean glasses," do notsoundso well as

DamigellaTutta bellaVersa, versa, il bel vino! &c.

FOOTNOTES:[59]Born at Imola, 1668; died at Rome, 1719.[60]See the Epithalamium on her marriage with Zappi, prefixed to their works.[61]Probably the same he had celebrated under the name of Filli, and who married another. Zappi's Sonnet to this lady, "Ardo per Filli," is elaborately elegant; sparkling and pointed as a pyramid of gems.[62]"Il mio bel sol" is a poetical term of endearment, which it is not easy to reduce gracefully into English.[63]Translated by a friend.

[59]Born at Imola, 1668; died at Rome, 1719.

[60]See the Epithalamium on her marriage with Zappi, prefixed to their works.

[61]Probably the same he had celebrated under the name of Filli, and who married another. Zappi's Sonnet to this lady, "Ardo per Filli," is elaborately elegant; sparkling and pointed as a pyramid of gems.

[62]"Il mio bel sol" is a poetical term of endearment, which it is not easy to reduce gracefully into English.

[63]Translated by a friend.

Lord Lyttelton has told us in a very sweet line,

How much thewifeis dearer than thebride.

But his Lucy Fortescue deserves more than a mere allusion,en passant. That Lord Lyttelton is still remembered and read as a poet, is solely for her sake: it is she who has made the shades of Hagley classic ground, and hallowed its precincts by the remembrance of the fair and gentle being, the tender woman, wife, and mother, who in the prime of youth and loveliness, melted like acreature of air and light from her husband's arms,

"And left him on this earth disconsolate!"

That the verses she inspired are still popular, is owing to the power oftruth, which has here given lasting interest to what were otherwisemediocre. Lord Lyttelton was not much of a poet; but his love was real; its object was real, beautiful, and good: thus buoyed up, in spite of his own faults and the change of taste, he has survived the rest of the rhyming gentry of his time, who wrote epigrams on fans and shoe-buckles,—songs to the Duchess ofthisand the Countess ofthat—and elegies to Miras, Delias, and Chloes.

Lucy Fortescue, daughter of Hugh Fortescue, Esq. of Devonshire, and grand-daughter of Lord Aylmer, was born in 1718. She was about two-and-twenty when Lord Lyttelton first became attached to her, and he was in his thirty-first year: in person and character she realized all he had imagined in his "Advice to Belinda."[64]

Without, all beauty—and all peace within.....*....*....*....*Blest is the maid, and worthy to be blest,Whose soul, entire by him she loves possest,Feels every vanity in fondness lost,And asks no power, but that of pleasing most:Her's is the bliss, in just return to proveThe honest warmth of undissembled love;For her, inconstant man might cease to range,And gratitude forbid desire to change.

Without, all beauty—and all peace within.

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

Blest is the maid, and worthy to be blest,Whose soul, entire by him she loves possest,Feels every vanity in fondness lost,And asks no power, but that of pleasing most:Her's is the bliss, in just return to proveThe honest warmth of undissembled love;For her, inconstant man might cease to range,And gratitude forbid desire to change.

To the more peculiar attributes of her sex—beauty and tenderness,—she united all the advantages of manner,—

Polite as she in courts had ever been;

and wit—the only wit that becomes a woman,—

That temperately brightWith inoffensive lightAll pleasing shone, nor ever pastThe decent bounds that wisdom's sober handAnd sweet benevolence's mild command,And bashful modesty before it cast.

Her education was uncommon for the time; forthen, a woman, who to youth and elegance and beauty united a familiar acquaintance with theliterature of her own country, French, Italian, and the classics, was distinguished among her sex. She had many suitors, and her choice was equally to her own honour and that of her lover. Lord Lyttelton was not rich; his father, Sir Thomas Lyttelton, being still alive. He had perhaps never dreamed of the coronet which late in life descended on his brow: and far from possessing a captivating exterior, he was extremely plain in person, "of a feeble, ill-compacted figure, and a meagre sallow countenance."[65]But talents, elegance of mind, and devoted affection, had the influence they ought to have, and generally do possess, in the mind of a woman. We are told that our sex's "earliest, latest care,—our heart's supreme ambition," is "to be fair." Even Madame de Stael would have given half her talents for half Madame Recamier's beauty! and why? because the passion of our sex is to please and to be loved; and men have taught us, that in nine cases out of ten we are valued merely forour personal advantages: they can scarce believe that women, generally speaking, are so indifferent to the mere exterior of a man,—that it has so little power to interest their vanity or affections. Let there be something for their hearts to honour, and their weakness to repose on, and feeling and imagination supply the rest. In this respect, the "gentle lady married to the Moor," who saw her lover's visage in his mind, is the type of our sex;—the instances are without number. The Frenchman triumphs a little too muchen petit maitre, who sings,

Grands Dieux, combien elle est jolie!Et moi, je suis, je suis si laid!

He might have spared his exultation: if he had sense, and spirit, and tenderness, he had all that is necessary to please a woman, who is worthy to be pleased.

Personal vanity in a woman, however misdirected, arises from the idea, that our power with those we wish to charm, is founded on beauty as a female attribute; it is never indulged but with a reference to another—it is ameans, not anend. Personal vanity in a man is sheer unmingledegotism, and an unfailing subject of ridicule and contempt with all women—be they wise or foolish.

To return from this longtiradeto Lucy Fortescue.—After the usual fears and hopes, the impatience and anxious suspense of a long courtship,[66]Lord Lyttelton won his Lucy, and thought himself blest—and was so. Five revolving years of happiness seemed pledges of its continuance, and "the wheels of pleasure moved without the aid of hope:"—it was at the conclusion of the fifth year, he wrote the lines on the anniversary of his marriage, in which he exults in his felicity, and in the possession of a treasure, which even then, though he knew it not, was fading in his arms.

Whence then this strange increase of joy?He, only he can tell, who matched like me,(If such another happy man there be,)Has by his own experience triedHow much thewifeis dearer than thebride!

Six months afterwards, his Lucy was seized with the illness of which she died in her twenty-ninth year, leaving three infants, the eldest not four years old.[67]As there are people who strangely unite, as inseparable, the ideas of fiction and rhyme, and doubt the sincerity of her husband's grief, because he wrote a monody on her memory, he shall speak for himself in prose. The following is an extract from his letter to his father, written two days before her death.

"I believe God supports me above my own strength, for the sake of my friends who are concerned for me, and in return for the resignation with which I endeavour to submit to his will. Ifit please Him, in his infinite mercy, to restore my dear wife to me, I shall most thankfully acknowledge his goodness; if not, I shall most humbly endure his chastisement, which I have too much deserved. These are the sentiments with which my mind is replete; but as it is still a most bitter cup, how my body will bear it, if it must not pass from me, it is impossible for me to foretell; but I hope the best.—Jan. 17th, 1747."

I imagine Dr. Johnson meant a sneer at Lord Lyttelton, when he says laconically,—"his wife died, and hesolacedhimself by writing a long monody on her memory."—In these days we might naturally exclaim against a widowed husband who shouldsolacehimself by apostrophes to the Muses and Graces, and bring in the whole Aonian choir,—Pindus and Castalia, Aganippe's fount, and Thespian vales; the Clitumnus and the Illissus, and such Pagan and classical embroidery.—What should we have thought of Lord Byron's famous "Fare thee well," if conceived in this style?—but such was the poetical vocabulary ofLord Lyttelton's day: and that he had not sufficient genius and originality to rise above it, is no argument against the sincerity of his grief. Petrarch and his Laura (aproposto all that has ever been sung or said of love for five hundred years) are called, in a very common-place strain, from their "Elysian bowers;" and then follow some lines of real and touching beauty, because they owe nothing to art or effort, but are the immediate result of truth and feeling. He is still apostrophising Petrarch.

What were, alas! thy woes compar'd to mine?To thee thy mistress in the blissful bandOf Hymen never gave her hand;The joys of wedded love were never thine!In thy domestic careShe never bore a share;Nor with endearing artWould heal thy wounded heartOf every secret grief that fester'd there:Nor did her fond affection on the bedOf sickness watch thee, and thy languid headWhole nights on her unwearied arm sustain,And charm away the sense of pain:Nor did she crown your mutual flameWith pledges dear, and with a father's tender name.....*....*....*....*How in the world, to me a desert grown,Abandon'd and alone,Without my sweet companion can I live?Without her lovely smile,The dear reward of every virtuous toil,What pleasures now can pall'd Ambition give?

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

How in the world, to me a desert grown,Abandon'd and alone,Without my sweet companion can I live?Without her lovely smile,The dear reward of every virtuous toil,What pleasures now can pall'd Ambition give?

One would wish to think that Lord Lyttelton was faithful to the memory of his Lucy: but he was neither more nor less than man; and in the impatience of grief, or unable to live without that domestic happiness to which his charming wife had accustomed him, he married again, about two years after her death, and too precipitately. His second choice was Elizabeth Rich, eldest daughter of Sir Robert Rich. Perhaps he expected too much; and how few women could have replaced Lucy Fortescue! The experimentproved a most unfortunate one, and added bitterness to his regrets. He devoted the rest of his life to politics and literature.

About ten years after his second marriage, Lord Lyttelton made a tour into Wales with a gay party. On some occasion, while they stood contemplating a scene of uncommon picturesque beauty, he turned to a friend, and asked him, with enthusiasm, whether it was possible to behold a more pleasing sight? Yes, answered the other—the countenance of the woman one loves! Lord Lyttelton shrunk, as if probed to the quick; and after a moment's silence, replied pensively—"once, I thought so!"[68]

Lord Lyttelton brings to mind his friend and patron, Frederick Prince of Wales (grandfather of the present King). From the impression whichhistoryhas given of his character, no one, I believe, would suspect him of being a poet, though he was known as the patron of poets. He sometimes amused himself with writing French and English songs, &c. in imitation of the RegentDuc d'Orleans. But, assuredly, it was not in imitation of the Regent he chose his own wife for the principal subject of his ditties. In the same manner, and in the same worthy spirit of imitation of the same worthy person, he tried hard to be a libertine, and laid siege to the virtue of sundry maids of honour; preferring all the time, in his inmost soul, his own wife to the handsomest among her attendants. His flirtations with Lady Archibald Hamilton and Miss Vane had not half the grace or sincerity of some of his effusions to the Princess, whom he tenderly loved, and used to call, with a sort of pastoral gallantry, "ma Sylvie." One of his songs has been preserved by that delicious retailer of court-gossip, Horace Walpole; and I copy it from the Appendix to his Memoirs, without agreeing in his flippant censure.

'Tis not the languid brightness of thine eyes,That swim with pleasure and delight,Nor those fair heavenly arches which ariseO'er each of them, to shade their light:—'Tis not that hair which plays with every wind,And loves to wanton o'er thy face,Now straying o'er thy forehead, now behindRetiring with insidious grace:—....*....*....*....*'Tis not the living colours over each,By Nature's finest pencil wrought,To shame the fresh-blown rose and blooming peach,And mock the happiest painter's thought;But 'tis that gentle mind, that ardent loveSo kindly answering my desire,—That grace with which you look, and speak, and move!That thus have set my soul on fire.

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

'Tis not the living colours over each,By Nature's finest pencil wrought,To shame the fresh-blown rose and blooming peach,And mock the happiest painter's thought;But 'tis that gentle mind, that ardent loveSo kindly answering my desire,—That grace with which you look, and speak, and move!That thus have set my soul on fire.

To Dr. Parnell's[69]love for his wife (Anne Minchin), we owe two of the most charming songs in our language; "My life hath been so wondrous free," and that most beautiful lyric, "When your beauty appears," which, as it is less known, I give entire,

When your beauty appearsIn its graces and airs,All bright as an angel new dropt from the skies,At distance I gaze, and am aw'd by my fears,So strangely you dazzle my eyes.But when without art,Your kind thoughts you impart,When your love runs in blushes through every vein;When it darts from your eyes, when it pants at your heart,Then I know that you're woman again."There's a passion and pride,In our sex," she replied;"And thus, might I gratify both, I would do,—Still an angel appear to each lover beside,But still be a woman for you!"

"There's a passion and pride,In our sex," she replied;"And thus, might I gratify both, I would do,—Still an angel appear to each lover beside,But still be a woman for you!"

This amiable and beloved wife died after a union of five or six years, and left her husband broken-hearted. Her sweetness and loveliness, and the general sympathy caused by her death, drew a touch of deep feeling from the pen of Swift, who mentions the event in his journal to Stella: every one, he says, grieved for her husband, "they were so happy together." Poor Parnell did not, in his bereavement, try Lord Lyttelton's specifics: he did not write an elegy, nor a monody, nor did he marry again;—and, unfortunately for himself, he could not subdue his mindto religious resignation. His grief and his nervous irritability proved too much for his reason: he felt what all have felt under the influence of piercing anguish,—a dread, a horror of being left alone: he flew to society; when that was not at hand, he sought relief from excesses which his constitution would not bear, and died, unhappy man! in the prime of life; "a martyr," as Goldsmith tells us, "to conjugal fidelity."

FOOTNOTES:[64]See his Poems.[65]Johnson's Life of Lord Lyttelton.[66]See in his Poems,—the lines beginningOn Thames's banks a gentle youthFor Lucy sighed with matchless truth,AndYour shape, your lips, your eyes are still the same.[67]Her son was that eccentric and profligate Lord Lyttelton, whose supernatural death-bed horrors have been the subject of so much speculation. He left no children.The present Earl of Mountnorris, (so distinguished for his Oriental travels when Lord Valentia,) is the grandson of Lucy Fortescue.[68]Lord Lyttelton's Works, 4to.[69]Born in Dublin, 1679; died 1717.

[64]See his Poems.

[65]Johnson's Life of Lord Lyttelton.

[66]See in his Poems,—the lines beginningOn Thames's banks a gentle youthFor Lucy sighed with matchless truth,AndYour shape, your lips, your eyes are still the same.

[66]See in his Poems,—the lines beginning

On Thames's banks a gentle youthFor Lucy sighed with matchless truth,

And

Your shape, your lips, your eyes are still the same.

[67]Her son was that eccentric and profligate Lord Lyttelton, whose supernatural death-bed horrors have been the subject of so much speculation. He left no children.The present Earl of Mountnorris, (so distinguished for his Oriental travels when Lord Valentia,) is the grandson of Lucy Fortescue.

[67]Her son was that eccentric and profligate Lord Lyttelton, whose supernatural death-bed horrors have been the subject of so much speculation. He left no children.

The present Earl of Mountnorris, (so distinguished for his Oriental travels when Lord Valentia,) is the grandson of Lucy Fortescue.

[68]Lord Lyttelton's Works, 4to.

[69]Born in Dublin, 1679; died 1717.

Then is there not the German Klopstock and his Meta,—his lovely, devoted, angelic Meta? As the subject of some of her husband's most delightful and popular poems, both before and after her marriage,—when living, she formed his happiness on earth; and when, as he tenderly imagined, she watched over his happiness from heaven—how pass her lightly over in a work like this? Yet how do her justice, but by borrowing her own sweet words? or referring the reader at once to the memoirs and fragments of her letters, which never saw the light till sixty years after her death?—for in her there was no vain-glory, no effort, no display. A feeling so hallowed lingers round the memory ofthis angelic creature, that it is rather a subject to blend with our most sacred and most serious thoughts,—to muse over in hours when the heart communes with itself and is still, than to dress out in words, and mingle with the ideas of earthly fame and happiness. Other loves might be poetical, but the love of Klopstock and his Meta was in itselfpoetry. They were mutually possessed with the idea, that they had been predestined to each other from the beginning of time, and that their meeting on earth was merely a kind of incidental prelude to an eternal and indivisible union in heaven: and shall we blame their fond faith?

It is a gentle and affectionate thought,That in immeasurable heights above us,Even at our birth, the wreath of love was wovenWith sparkling stars for flowers![70]

All the sweetest images that ever were grouped together by fancy, dreaming over the golden age; beauty, innocence, and happiness; the fervourof youthful love, the rapture of corresponding affection; undoubting faith and undissembled truth;—these were so bound together, so exalted by the highest and holiest associations, so confirmed in the serenity of conscious virtue, so sanctified by religious enthusiasm; and in the midst of all human blessedness, so wrapt up in futurity,—that the grave was not the close, but the completion and the consummation of their happiness. The garland which poesy has suspended on the grave of Meta, was wreathed by no fabled muse; it is not of laurel, "meed of conqueror and sage;" nor of roses blooming and withering among their thorns; nor of myrtle shrinking and dying away before the blast: but of flowers gathered in Paradise, pure and bright, and breathing of their native Eden; which never caught one blighting stain of earth, and though dewed with tears,—"tears such as angels shed!"

The name of Klopstock forms an epoch in the history of poetry. Goëthe, Schiller, Wieland, have since adorned German literature; but Klopstockwas the first to impress on the poetry of his country the stamp of nationality. He was a man of great and original genius,—gifted with an extraordinary degree of sensibility and imagination; but these being united to the most enthusiastic religious feeling, elevated and never misled him. His life was devoted to the three noblest sentiments that can fill and animate the human soul,—religion, patriotism and love. To these, from early youth, he devoted his faculties and consecrated his talents. He had, even in his boyhood, resolved to write a poem, "which should do honour to God, his country, and himself;" and he produced the Messiah. It would be difficult to describe the enthusiasm this work excited when the first three cantos appeared in 1746. "If poetry had its saints," says Madame de Stael, "then Klopstock would be at the head of the calendar;" and she adds, with a burst of her own eloquence, "Ah, qu'il est beau le talent, quand on ne l'a jamais profané! quand il n'a servi qu'a revèler aux hommes, sous la forme attrayante des beaux arts, les sentiments géneréux, et les esperancesréligieuses obscurcies au fond de leur cœur!"

Such was Klopstock as a poet. As a man, he is described as one of the most amiable and affectionate of human beings;—"good in all the foldings of his heart," as his sweet wife expressed it; free from all petty vanity, egotism, and worldly ambition. He was pleasing, though not handsome in person, with fine blue animated eyes.[71]The tone of his voice was at first low and hesitating, but soft and persuasive; and he always ended by captivating the entire attention of those he addressed. He was, to his latest moments, fond of the society of women, and an object of their peculiar tenderness and veneration.

Klopstock's first serious attachment was to his cousin, the beautiful Fanny Schmidt, the sister of his intimate friend and brother poet, Schmidt. He loved her constantly for several years. His correspondence with Bodmer gives us an interesting picture of a fine mind struggling with native timidity, and of the absolute terror with which this gentle and beautiful girl could inspire him, till his heart seemed to wither and sicken within him from her supposed indifference. The uncertainty of his future prospects, and his sublime idea of the merits and beauties of her he loved, kept him silent; nor did he ever venture to declare his passion, except in the beautiful odes and songs which she inspired. Speaking of one of those to his friend Bodmer, he says, "She who could best reward it, has not seen it; so timid does her apparent insensibility make me."

Whether this insensibility was more than apparent is not perfectly clear: the memoirs of Klopstock are not quite accurate or satisfactory in this part of his history. It should seem from the published correspondence, that his love was distinctlyavowed, though he never had courage to make a direct offer of himself. Fanny Schmidt appears to have been a superior woman in point of mind, and full of admiration for his genius. She writes to him in terms of friendship and kindness, but she leaves him, after three years' attachment on his part, still in doubt whether her heart remain untouched,—and even whether shehada heart to be touched. He intimates, but with a tender and guarded delicacy, that he had reason to complain of her coquetry;[72]and, with the sensibility of a proud but wounded heart, he was anxious to prove to himself that his romantic tenderness had not been unworthily bestowed. "All the peace and consolation of my after life depends on knowing whether Fannyreallyhas a heart?—a heart thatcouldhave sympathised with mine?"[73]He had commissioned his friend Gleim to plead his cause, to sound her heart in its inmost depths; and in return, received the intelligence of her approaching union with another. "When (as he expressesit) not a hope was left to be destroyed," he became calm; but he suffered at first acutely; and this ill-fated attachment tinged with a deep gloom nearly four years of his life. While in suspense, he continually repeats his conviction that he can never love again. "Had I never seen her, I might have attached myself to another object, and perhaps have known the felicity of mutual love! But now it is impossible; my heart is steeled to every tender impression." The sentiment was natural; but, fortunately for himself, he was deceived.

In passing through Hamburgh, in April 1751, and while he was still under the influence of this heart-wearing attachment to Fanny, he was introduced to Meta Möller. The impression she made on him is thus described, in a letter to his friend and confidant, Gleim.

"You may perhaps have heard Gisecke mention Margaret Möller of Hamburgh. I was lately introduced to this girl, and passed in her society most of the time I lately spent at Hamburgh. I found her, in every sense of the word,so lovely, so amiable, so full of attractions, that I could at times scarcely forbear to give her the name which is to me the dearest in existence. I was often with her alone; and in those moments of unreserved intercourse, was insensibly led to communicate my melancholy story. Could you have seen her in those moments, my Gleim! how she looked and listened,—and how often she interrupted me, and how tenderly she wept! and if you knew how much she is my friend; and yet it was not forherthat I had so long suffered. What a heart must she possess to be thus touched for a stranger! At this thought I am almost tempted to make a comparison; but then does a mist gather before mine eyes, and if I probe my heart, I feel that I am more unhappy than ever." Again he writes from Copenhagen, "I have reread the little Möller's letters; sweet artless creature she is! She has already written to me four times, and writes in a style so exquisitely natural! Were you to see this lovely girl, and read her letters, you would scarce conceive it possible that she should be mistress of the French, English,and Italian languages, and even conversant with Greek and Italian literature." But it were wronging both, to give the history and result of this attachment to Meta in any language but her own. Since the publication of Richardson's correspondence, the letters addressed to him, in English, by Meta Klopstock, have become generally known; but this account would be incomplete were they wholly omitted; and those who have read them before, will not be displeased at the opportunity of re-perusing them: her sweet lisping English is worth volumes of eloquence.

"You will know all what concerns me. Love, dear Sir, is all what me concerns, and love shall be all what I will tell you in this letter. In one happy night I read my husband's poem—the Messiah. I was extremely touched with it. The next day I asked one of his friends who was the author of this poem? and this was the first time I heard Klopstock's name. I believe I fell immediately in love with him; at the least, my thoughts were ever with him filled, especially becausehis friend told me very much of his character. But I had no hopes ever to see him, when quite unexpectedly I heard that he should pass through Hamburgh. I wrote immediately to the same friend, for procuring by his means that I might see the author of the Messiah, when in Hamburg. He told him that a certain girl in Hamburg wished to see him, and, for all recommendation, showed him some letters in which I made bold to criticize Klopstock's verses. Klopstock came, and came to me. I must confess, that, though greatly prepossessed of his qualities, I never thought him the amiable youth that I found him. This made its effect. After having seen him two hours, I was obliged to pass the evening in company, which never had been so wearisome to me. I could not speak; I could not play; I thought I saw nothing but Klopstock. I saw him the next day, and the following, and we were very seriously friends; on the fourth day he departed. It was a strong hour, the hour of his departure. He wrote soon after, and from that time our correspondence began to be a verydiligent one. I sincerely believed my love to be friendship. I spoke with my friends of nothing but Klopstock, and showed his letters. They rallied me, and said I was in love. I rallied them again, and said they must have a very friendship-less heart, if they had no idea of friendship to a man as well as a woman. Thus it continued eight months, in which time my friends found as much love in Klopstock's letters as in me. I perceived it likewise, but I would not believe it. At the last, Klopstock said plainly that he loved; and I startled as for a wrong thing. I answered that it was no love, but friendship, as it was what I felt for him; we had not seen one another enough to love; as if love must have more time than friendship! This was sincerely my meaning; and I had this meaning till Klopstock came again to Hamburg. This he did a year after we had seen one another the first time. We saw, we were friends; we loved, and we believed that we loved; and a short time after I could even tell Klopstock that I loved. But we were obliged to part again, and wait two years for our wedding.My mother would not let me marry a stranger. I could marry without her consentment, as by the death of my father my fortune depended not on her; but this was an horrible idea for me; and thank Heaven that I have prevailed by prayers! At this time, knowing Klopstock, she loves him as her son, and thanks God that she has not persisted. We married, and I am the happiest wife in the world. In some few months it will be four years that I am so happy; and still I dote upon Klopstock as if he was my bridegroom. If you knew my husband, you would not wonder. If you knew his poem, I could describe him very briefly, in saying he is in all respects what he is as a poet. This I can say with all wifely modesty; I am all raptures when I do it. And as happy as I am in love, so happy am I in friendship;—in my mother, two elder sisters, and five other women. How rich I am! Sir, you have willed that I should speak of myself, but I fear that I have done it too much. Yet you see how it interests me."

I have somewhere seen or heard it observed, that there is nothing in the Romeo and Juliet more finely imagined or more true to nature than Romeo's previous love for another. It is while writhing under the coldness and scorn of his proud, inaccessible Rosaline, she who had "forsworn to love," that he meets the soft glances of Juliet, whose eyes "do comfort, and not burn;" and he takes refuge in her bosom, for she

Doth grace for grace, and love for love allow;The other did not so.

With such a grateful and gratified feeling must Klopstock have gathered to his arms the devoted Meta, who came, with healing on her lips, to suck forth the venom of a recent wound. He has himself beautifully expressed this in one of the poems addressed to her, and which he has entitled the Recantation. He describes the anguish he had suffered from an unrequited affection, and the day-spring of renovated hope and rapture which now dawned in his heart.

At length, beyond my hope the night retires,'Tis past, and all my long lost joys awake,Smiling they wake, my long forgotten joys,O, how I wonder at my altered fate! &c.

and exults in the charms and tenderness of her who had wiped away his tears, and whom he had first "taught to love."

I taught thee first to love, and seeking thee,I learned what true love was; it raised my heartFrom earth to heaven, and now, through Eden's groves,With thee it leads me on in endless joy.

This little poem has been translated by Elizabeth Smith, with one or two of the graceful little songs addressed to Meta, under the name ofCidli. This is the appellation given to Jairus' daughter in the "Messiah;" and Meta, who was fond of the character, probably chose it for herself. The first cantos of this poem had been published long before his marriage, and it was continued after his union with Meta, and at her side. Nothing can be more charming than the picture of domestic affection and happiness contained in the following passage of one of her letters toRichardson:—apparently, she had improved in English, since the last was written.—"It will be a delightful occupation for me to make you more acquainted with my husband's poem. Nobody can do it better than I, being the person who knows the most of that which is not published; being always present at the birth of the young verses, which begin by fragments here and there, of a subject of which his soul is just then filled. He has many great fragments of the whole work ready. You may think that persons who love as we do, have no need of two chambers; we are always in the same: I, with my little work,—still—still—only regarding sometimes my husband's sweet face, which is so venerable at that time, with tears of devotion, and all the sublimity of the subject. My husband reading me his young verses, and suffering my criticisms."

And for the task of criticism, Meta was peculiarly fitted, not less by her fine cultivated mind and feminine delicacy of taste, than by her affectionate enthusiasm for her husband's glory."How much," says Klopstock, writing after her death, "how much do I lose in her even in this respect! How perfect was her taste, how exquisitely fine her feelings! she observed every thing, even to the slightest turn of the thought. I had only to look at her, and could see in her face when a syllable pleased or displeased her: and when I led her to explain the reason of her remarks, no demonstration could be more true, more accurate, or more appropriate to the subject. But in general this gave us very little trouble, for we understood each other when we had scarcely begun to explain our ideas."

And that not a stain of the selfish or earthly should rest on the bright purity of her mind and heart, it must be remarked that we cannot trace in all her letters, whether before or after marriage, the slightest feeling of jealousy or doubt, though the woman lived whom Klopstock had once exalted into a divinity, and though she loved her husband with the most impassioned enthusiasm. She expresses frankly her admiration of the odes and songs addressed to Fanny:and her only sentiment seems to be a mixture of grief and astonishment, that any woman could be so insensible as not to love Klopstock, or so cruel as to give him pain.

Though in her letters to Richardson she speaks with rapture of her hopes of becoming a mother, as all that was wanting to complete her happiness,[74]she had long prepared herself for a fatal termination to those hopes. Her constant presentiment of approaching death, she concealed, in tenderness to her husband. When we consider the fond and entire confidence which existed between them, this must have cost no small effort of fortitude: "she was formed," said Klopstock,"to say, like Arria, 'My Pætus,' 'tis not painful:" but her husband pressed her not to allow any secret feeling to prey on her mind; and then, with gratitude for his "permission to speak," she avowed her apprehensions, and at the same time her strong and animated trust in religion. This whole letter, to which I must refer the reader, (for any attempt I should make to copy it entire, would certainly be illegible,) is one of the most beautiful pieces of tender eloquence that ever fell from a woman's pen: and that is saying much. She is writing to her husband during a short absence. "I well know," she says, "that all hours are not alike, and particularly the last, since death, in my situation, must be far from an easy death; but let the last hour make no impression on you. You know too well how much the body then presses down the soul. Let God give what he will, I shall still be happy. A longer life with you, or eternal life with Him! But can you as easily part from me as I from you? You are to remain in this world, in a world withoutme! You know I have always wished to be the survivor,because I well know it is the hardest to endure; but perhaps it is the will of God that you should be left; and perhaps you have most strength."

This last letter is dated September 10th, 1754. Her confinement took place in November following; and after the most cruel and protracted sufferings, it became too certain that both must perish,—mother and child.

Klopstock stood beside her, and endeavoured, as well as the agony of his feelings would permit, to pray with her and to support her. He praised her fortitude:—"You have endured like an angel! God has been with you! hewillbe with you! were I so wretched as not to be a Christian, I should now become one." He added with strong emotion, "Be my guardian angel, if God permit!" She replied tenderly, "You have ever been mine!" He repeated his request more fervently: she answered with a look of undying love, "Who would not be so!" He hastened from the room, unable to endure more. After he was gone, her sister,[75]who attended her through her sufferings,said to her, "God will help you!"—"Yes, to heaven!" replied the saint. After a faint struggle, she added, "It is over!" her head sunk on the pillow, and while her eyes, until glazed by death, were fixed tenderly on her sister,—thus with the faith of a Christian, and the courage of a martyr, she resigned into the hands of her Creator, a life which had been so blameless and so blessed, so intimate with love and joy, that only such a death could crown it, by proving what an angel a womancanbe, in doing, feeling, and suffering.[76]

It was by many expected that Klopstock would have made the loss of his Meta the subject of a poem; but he early declared his resolution not to do this, nor to add to the collection of odes and songs formerly addressed to her. He gives hisreasons for this silence. "I think that before the public a man should speak of his wife with the same modesty as of himself; and this principle would destroy the enthusiasm required in poetry. The reader too, not without reason, would feel himself justified in refusing implicit credit to the fond eulogium written on one beloved; and my love for her who made me the happiest among men, is too sincere to let me allow my readers to call it in question." Yet in a little poem[77]addressed afterwards to his friend Schmidt, and probably not intended for publication, he alludes to his loss, in a tone of deep feeling, and complains of the recollections which distract his sleepless nights.

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