FOOTNOTES:

Stendi, dolce amor mio! sposa diletta!A quell' arpa la man; che la soave,Dolce fatica di tue dite aspetta.Svegliami l'armonia, ch' entro le caveLatebre alberga del sonoro legno,E de' forti pensier volgi la chiave!

There is a resemblance in thesentimentof these verses, to some stanzas addressed by a living English poet to his wife;—she who, like Monti's Teresa, can strike her harp, till, as a spirit caught in some spell of his own teaching, music itself seems to flutter, imprisoned among the chords,—to come at her will and breathe her thought, rather than obey her touch!—

Once more, among those rich and golden strings,Wander with thy white arm, dear Lady pale!And when at last from thy sweet discord springsThe aerial music,—like the dreams that veilEarth's shadows with diviner thoughts and things,O let the passion and the time prevail!—O bid thy spirit through the mazes run!For music is like love, and must be won! &c.[90]

The Italian verses have great power and beauty; but the English lines have the superiority, not in poetry only, but in rhythmical melody. They fall on the ear like a strain from the harp which inspired them—full, and rich, and thrilling sweet,—and not to be forgotten!

To return to Monti:—no man had more completely that temperament which is supposed to accompany genius. He was fond, and devoted in his domestic relations; but he was variable in spirits, ardent, restless, and subject to fits of gloom. And how often must the literary disputes and politicaltracasseriesin which he was engaged, have embittered and irritated so susceptible a mind and temper! If his wife were at his side to soothe him with her music, and her smiles, and her tenderness,—it was well,—the cloud passed away. If she were absent, every suffering seemed aggravated, and we find him—like one spoiled and pampered, withattention and love,—yielding to an irritable despondency, which even the presence of his children could not alleviate.

Che più ti resta a far per mio dispetto,Sorte crudel? mia donna è lungi, e io privo,De' suoi conforti in miserando aspettoEgro qui giaccìo, al' sofferir sol vivo![91]

But the most remarkable of all Monti's conjugal effusions, is a canzone written a short time before his death, and when he was more than seventy years of age. Nothing can be more affecting than the subdued tone of melancholy tenderness, with which the grey-haired poet apostrophises her who had been the love, the pride, the joy of his life for forty years. In power and in poetry, this canzone will bear a comparison with many of the more rapturous effusions of his youth. The occasion on which it was composed is thus related in a note prefixed to it by the editor.[92]When Monti wasrecovering from a long and dangerous illness, through which he had been tenderly nursed by his wife and daughter, he accompanied them "in villeggiatura," to a villa near Brianza, the residence of a friend, where they were accustomed to celebrate the birth-day of Madame Monti; and it was here that her husband, now declining in years, weak from recent illness and accumulated infirmities, addressed to her the poem which may be found in the recent edition of his works; it begins thus tenderly and sweetly—

Donna! dell' alma mia parte più cara!Perchè muta in pensosa atto mi guati?E di segrete stille,Rugiadose si fan le tue pupille? &c.

"Why, O thou dearer half of my soul, dost thou watch over me thus mute and pensive? Why are thine eyes heavy with suppressed tears?" &c.

And when he reminds her touchingly, that his long and troubled life is drawing to its natural close, and that she cannot hope to retain him much longer, even by all her love and care,—headds with a noble spirit,—"Remember, that Monti cannot wholly die! think, O think! I leave thee dowered with no obscure, no vulgar name! for the day shall come, when, among the matrons of Italy, it shall be thy boast to say,—"I was the love of Monti.""[93]

The tender transition to his daughter—

E tu del pari sventurata e cara mia figlia!

as alike unhappy and beloved, alludes to her recent widowhood. Costanza Monti, who inherited no small portion of her fathers genius, and all her mother's grace and beauty, married the Count Giulio Perticari of Pesaro, a man of uncommon taste and talents, and an admired poet. He died in the same year with Canova, to whom he had been a favourite friend and companion: while his lovely wife furnished the sculptor with a model for his ideal heads of vestals and poetesses. Those who saw the Countess Perticari at Rome, such as she appeared seven or eight years ago, will not easilyforget her brilliant eyes, and yet more brilliant talents. She, too, is a poetess. In her father's works may be found a little canzone written by her about a year after the death of her husband, and with equal tenderness and simplicity, alluding to her lonely state, deprived of him who once encouraged and cultivated her talents, and deserved her love.[94]

Vincenzo Monti died in October 1828:—his widow and his daughter reside, I believe, at Milan.

FOOTNOTES:[89]Worn by the young men who are intended for the Church.[90]Barry Cornwall.[91]Opere Varie v. iii. This sonnet to his wife was written when Monti was ill at the house of his son-in-law, Count Perticari.[92]Edit. 1826, vol. vi.[93]In the original, Monti designates himself by an allusion to his chef-d'œuvre—"Del Cantor di Basville."[94]Monti, Opere, vol. iii. p. 75.

[89]Worn by the young men who are intended for the Church.

[90]Barry Cornwall.

[91]Opere Varie v. iii. This sonnet to his wife was written when Monti was ill at the house of his son-in-law, Count Perticari.

[92]Edit. 1826, vol. vi.

[93]In the original, Monti designates himself by an allusion to his chef-d'œuvre—"Del Cantor di Basville."

[94]Monti, Opere, vol. iii. p. 75.

Thus, then, it appears, that love, even the most ethereal and poetical, does not always take flight "at sight of human ties;" and Pope wronged the real delicacy of Heloïse when he put this borrowed sentiment into her epistle, making that conduct the result of perverted principle, which, inher, was a sacrifice to extreme love and pride in its object. It is not the mere idea of bondage which frightens away the light-winged god;

The gentle bird feels no captivityWithin his cage, but sings and feeds his fill.[95]

It is when those bonds, which were first decreed in heaven

To keep two hearts together, which beganTheir spring-time with one love,

are abused to vilest purposes:—to link together indissolubly, unworthiness with desert, truth with falsehood, brutality with gentleness; then indeed love is scared; his cage becomes a dungeon;—and either he breaks away, with plumage all impaired,—or folds up his many-coloured wings, and droops and dies.

But then it will be said, perhaps, that the splendour and the charm which poetry has thrown over some of these pictures of conjugal affection and wedded truth, are exterior and adventitious, or, at best, short-lived:—the bands were at first graceful and flowery;—but sorrow dewed them with tears, or selfish passions sullied them, or death tore them asunder, or trampled them down. It may be so; but still I will aver that what has been,is:—that there is a power in the human heart which survives sorrow, passion, age, death itself.

Love I esteem more strong than age,And truth more permanent than time.

For happiness,c'est different!and for that bright and pure and intoxicating happiness which we weave into our youthful visions, which is of such stuff as dreams are made of,—to complain that this does not last and wait upon us through life, is to complain that earth isearth, not heaven. It is to repine that the violet does not outlive the spring; that the rose dies upon the breast of June; that the grey evening shuts up the eye of day, and that old age quenches the glow of youth: for is not such the condition under which we exist? All I wished to prove was, that the sacred tie which binds the sexes together, which gives to man his natural refuge in the tenderness of woman, and to woman her natural protecting stay in the right reason and stronger powers of man, so far from being a chill to the imagination, as wicked wits would tell us, has its poetical side. Let us look back for a moment on the array of bright names and beautiful verse, quoted or alluded to in thepreceding chapters: what is there among the mercurial poets of Charles's days, those notorious scoffers at decency and constancy, to compare with them?—Dorset and Denham, and Sedley and Suckling, and Rochester,—"the mob of gentlemen who wrote with ease,"—with their smooth emptiness, and sparkling common-places of artificial courtship, and total want of moral sentiment, have degraded, not elevated the loves they sang. Could these gallant fops rise up from their graves, and see themselves exiled with contempt from every woman's toilet, every woman's library, every woman's memory, they would choak themselves with their own periwigs, eat their laced cravats, hang themselves in their own sword-knots!—"to be discarded thence!"

Turn thy complexion there,Thou simpering, smooth-lipp'd cherub, Coxcombry,Ay, there, look grim as hell!

And such be the fate of all who dare profane the altar of beauty with adulterate incense!

For wit is like the frail luxuriant vine,Unless to virtue's prop it join;Though it with beauteous leaves and pleasant fruit be crown'd,It lies deform'd and rotting on the ground!

These lines are from Cowley,—a great name among the poets of those days; but he has sunk into aname. We may repeat with Pope, "Who now reads Cowley?" and this, not because he was licentious, but because, with all his elaborate wit, and brilliant and uncommon thoughts, he is as frigid as ice itself. "A little ingenuity and artifice," as Mrs. Malaprop would say, is well enough; but Cowley, in his amatory poetry, is all artifice. He coolly sat down to write a volume of love verses, that he might, to use his own expression, "be free of his craft, as a poet;" and in his preface, he protests "that his testimony should not be taken against himself." Here was a poet, and a lover! who sets out by begging his readers, in the first place, not to believe him. This was like the weaver, in the Midsummer Night's Dream, who was so anxious to assure hisaudience "that Pyramus was not killed indeed, and that he, Pyramus, was not Pyramus, but Bottom the weaver." But Cowley's amatory verse disproves itself, without the help of a prologue. It is, in his own phrase, "all sophisticate." Even his sparkling chronicle of beauties,

Margaretta first possest,If I remember well, my breast, &c.

is mere fancy, and in truth it is a pity. Cowley was once in love, after his querulous melancholy fashion; but he never had the courage to avow it. The lady alluded to in the last verse of the Chronicle, as

Eleonora, first of the name,Whom God grant long to reign,

was the object of this luckless attachment. She afterwards married a brother of Dr. Spratt, Bishop of Rochester,[96]who had not probably half the poet's wit or fame, but who could love as well, and speak better; and the gentle, amiable Cowley died an old batchelor.

These writers may have merit of a different kind; they may be read by wits for the sake of their wit; but they have failed in the great object of lyric poetry: they neither create sympathy for themselves; nor interest, nor respect for their mistresses: they were not in earnest;—and what woman of sense and feeling was ever touched by a compliment which no woman ever inspired? or pleased, by being addressed with the swaggering licence of a libertine? Who cares to inquire after the originals of their Belindas and Clorindas—their Chloes, Delias, and Phillises, with their pastoral names, and loves—that were any thing but pastoral? There is not one among the flaunting coquettes, or profligate women of fashion, sung by these gay coxcomb poets—

Those goddesses, so blithe, so smooth, so gay,Yet empty of all good wherein consistsWoman's domestic honour and chief praise,

who has obtained an interest in our memory, or a permanent place in the history of our literature; not one, who would not be eclipsed by BonnieJean, or Highland Mary! It is true, that the age produced several remarkable women; a Lady Russell, that heroine of heroines! a Lady Fanshawe;[97]a Mrs. Hutchinson; who needed no poet to trumpet forth their praise: and others,—some celebrated for the possession of beauty and talents, and too many notorious for the abuse of both. But there were no poetical heroines, properly so called,—no Laura, no Geraldine, no Saccharissa. Among the temporary idols of the day, (by which name we shall distinguish those women whose beauty, rank, and patronage, procured them a sort of poetical celebrity, very different from the halo of splendour which love and genius cast round a chosen divinity,) there are one or two who deserve to be particularised.

The first of these was Maria Beatrice d'Este, the daughter of the Duke of Modena, second wife of James Duke of York, and afterwards his queen. She was married, at the age of fifteen, to a profligate prince, as ugly as his brother Charles, (without any of his captivating graces of figure andmanner,) and old enough to be her grandfather. She made the best of wives to one of the most unamiable of men. All writers of all parties are agreed, that slander itself, was disarmed by the unoffending gentleness of her character; all are agreed too, on the subject of her uncommon loveliness: she was quite an Italian beauty, with a tall, dignified, graceful figure, regular features, and dark eyes, a complexion rather pale and fair, and hair and eyebrows black as the raven's wing: so that in personal graces, as in virtues, she fairly justified the rapturous eulogies of all the poets of her time. Thus Dryden:—

What awful charms on her fair forehead sit,Dispensing what she never will admit;Pleasing yet cold—like Cynthia's silver beam,The people's wonder, and the poet's theme!

She captivated hearts almost as fast as James the Second lost them;

And Envy did but look on her and died![98]

Her fall from the throne she so adorned; her escape with her infant son, under the care of the Duc de Lauzun;[99]her conduct during her retirement at St. Germains, with a dull court, and a stupid bigoted husband; are all matters of history, and might have inspired, one would think, better verses than were ever written upon her. Lord Lansdown exclaims, with an enthusiasm which was at least disinterested—

O happy James! content thy mighty mind!Grudge not the world, for still thy Queen is kind,—To lie but at whose feet, more glory brings,Than 'tis to tread on sceptres and on kings![100]

Anne Killegrew, who has been immortalised by Dryden, in the ode,[101]

Thou youngest virgin-daughter of the skies!

does not seem to have possessed any talents oracquirements which would render herveryremarkable in these days; though in her own time she was styled "a grace for beauty and a muse for wit." Her youth, her accomplishments, her captivating person, her station at court, (as maid of honour to Maria d'Este, then Duchess of York,) and her premature death at the age of twenty-four, all conspired to render her interesting to her contemporaries; and Dryden has given her a fame which cannot die. The stanza in this ode, in which the poet, for himself and others, pleads guilty of having "made prostitute and profligate the muse,"

Whose harmony was first ordain'd aboveFor tongues of angels and for hymns of love!

—the sudden turn in praise of the young poetess, whose verse flowed pure as her own mind and heart; and the burst of enthusiasm—

Let this thy vestal, heaven! atone for all!

are exceedingly beautiful. His description of her skill in painting both landscape and portraits, would answer for a Claude, or a Titian. We area little disappointed to find, after all this pomp and prodigality of praise, that Anne Killegrew's paintings were mediocre; and that her poetry has sunk, not undeservedly, into oblivion. She died of the small-pox in 1685.

The famous Tom Killegrew, jester (by courtesy) to Charles the Second, was her uncle.

There was also the young Duchess of Ormond, (Lady Mary Somerset, daughter of the Duke of Beaufort.) She married into a family which had been, for three generations, the patrons and benefactors of Dryden; and never was patronage so richly repaid. To this Duchess of Ormond, Dryden has dedicated the Tale of Palemon and Arcite, in an opening address full of poetry and compliment;—happily, both justified and merited by the object.

Lady Hyde, afterwards Countess of Clarendon and Rochester, was in her time a favourite theme of gay and gallant verse; but she maintained with her extreme beauty and gentleness of deportment, a dignity of conduct which disarmed scandal, and kept presumptuous wits as well aspresumptuous fops at a distance. Lord Lansdown has crowned her with praise, very pointed and elegant, and seems to have contrasted her at the moment, with his coquettish Mira, Lady Newburgh.

Others, by guilty artifice and arts,And promised kindness, practise on our hearts;With expectation blow the passion up;Shefans the fire without one gale of hope.[102]

Lady Hyde was the daughter of Sir William Leveson Gower, (ancestor to the Marquis of Stafford,) and mother of that Lord Cornbury, who has been celebrated by Pope and Thomson.

The second daughter of this lovely and amiable woman, lady Catherine Hyde, was Prior's famous Kitty,

Beautiful and young,And wild as colt untam'd,

the "female Phaeton," who obtained mamma's chariot for a day, to set the world on fire.

Shall I thumb holy books, confin'dWith Abigails forsaken?Kitty's for other things design'd,Or I am much mistaken.Must Lady Jenny frisk about,And visit with her cousins?At balls must she make all this rout,And bring home hearts by dozens?What has she better, pray, than I?What hidden charms to boast,That all mankind for her must die,Whilst I am scarce a toast?Dearest Mamma! for once, let meUnchain'd my fortune try:I'll have my Earl as well as she,Or know the reason why.Fondness prevail'd, Mamma gave way:Kitty, at heart's desire,Obtain'd the chariot for a day,And set the world on fire!

Shall I thumb holy books, confin'dWith Abigails forsaken?Kitty's for other things design'd,Or I am much mistaken.

Must Lady Jenny frisk about,And visit with her cousins?At balls must she make all this rout,And bring home hearts by dozens?

What has she better, pray, than I?What hidden charms to boast,That all mankind for her must die,Whilst I am scarce a toast?

Dearest Mamma! for once, let meUnchain'd my fortune try:I'll have my Earl as well as she,Or know the reason why.

Fondness prevail'd, Mamma gave way:Kitty, at heart's desire,Obtain'd the chariot for a day,And set the world on fire!

Kitty not only set the world on fire, but more than accomplished her magnanimous resolution tohave an Earl as well as her sister, Lady Jenny.[103]She married the Duke of Queensbury; and asthatDuchess of Queensbury, who was the friend and patroness of Gay, is still farther connected with the history of our poetical literature. Pope paid a compliment to her beauty, in a well-known couplet, which is more refined in the application than in the expression:—

If Queensbury to strip there's no compelling,'Tis from a handmaid we must take a Helen.

She was an amiable, exemplary woman, and possessed that best and only preservative of youth and beauty,—a kind, cheerful disposition and buoyant spirits. When she walked at the coronation of George the Third, she was still so strikingly attractive, that Horace Walpole handed to her the following impromptu, written on a leaf of his pocket-book,

To many a Kitty, Love, his car,Would for a day engage;But Prior's Kitty, ever fair,Obtained it for an age!

She is also alluded to in Thomson's Seasons.

And stooping thence to Ham's embowering walks,Beneath whose shades, in spotless peace retir'd,With her the pleasing partner of his heart,The worthy Queensb'ry yet laments his Gay.—Summer.

The Duchess of Queensbury died in 1777.[104]

Two other women, who lived about the same time, possess a degree of celebrity which, though but a sound—a name—rather than a feeling or an interest, must not pass unnoticed; more particularly as they will farther illustrate the theory we have hitherto kept in view. I allude to "Granville's Mira," and "Prior's Chloe."

For the fame of the first, a single line of Pope has done more than all the verses of Lord Lansdown: it is in the Epistle to Jervas the painter—

With Zeuxis' Helen, thy Bridgewater vie,And these be sung, till Granville's Mira die!

Now, "Granville's Mira" would have beendeadlong ago, had she not been preserved in some material more precious and lasting than the poetry of her noble admirer: she shines, however, "embalmed in the lucid amber" of Pope's lines; and we not only wonder how she got there, but are tempted to inquire who she was, or, if ever she was at all.

Granville's Mira was Lady Frances Brudenel, third daughter of the Earl of Cardigan. She was married very young to Livingstone, Earl of Newburgh; and Granville's first introduction to her must have taken place soon after her marriage, in 1690: he was then about twenty, already distinguished for that elegance of mind and manner, which has handed him down to us as "Granville the polite." He joined the crowd of Lady Newburgh'sadorers; and as some praise, and some lucky lines had persuaded him that he was a poet, he chose to consecrate his verse to this fashionable beauty.

In all the mass of poetry, or rather rhyme, addressed to Lady Newburgh, there is not a passage,—not a single line which can throw an interest round her character; all we can make out is, that she was extremely beautiful; that she sang well; and that she was a most finished, heartless coquette. Thus her lover has pictured her:

Lost in a labyrinth of doubts and joys,Whom now her smiles revived, her scorn destroys;She will, and she will not, she grants, denies,Consents, retracts; advances, and then flies.Approving and rejecting in a breath,Now proffering mercy, now presenting death!

She led Granville on from year to year, till the death of her first husband, Lord Newburgh. He then presented himself among the suitors for her hand, confiding, it seems, in former encouragement or promises; but Lady Newburgh had played the same despicablegame with others: she had no objection to the poetical admiration of an accomplished young man of fashion, who had rendered her an object of universal attention, by his determined pursuit and tuneful homage, and who was then the admired of all women. She thought, like the coquette, in one of Congreve's comedies,

If there's delight in love, 'tis when I seeThe heart that others bleed for—bleed for me!

But when free to choose, she rejected him and married Lord Bellew. Her coquetry with Granville had been so notorious, that this marriage caused a great sensation at the time and no little scandal.

Rumour is loud, and every voice proclaimsHer violated faith and conscious flames.

The only catastrophe, however, which her falsehood occasioned, was the production of a long elegy, in imitation of Theocritus, which concludes Lord Lansdown's amatory effusions. He afterwards married Lady Anne Villiers, with whom helived happily: after a union of more than twenty years, they died within a few days of each other, and they were buried together.

Lady Newburgh left a daughter by her first husband,[105]and a son and daughter by Lord Bellew: she lived to survive her beauty, to lose her admirers, and to be the object in her old age of the most gross and unmeasured satire; the flattery of a lover elevated her to a divinity, and the malice of a wit, whom she had ill-treated, degraded her into a fury and a hag—with about as much reason.

Prior's Chloe, the "nut-brown maid," was taken from the opposite extremity of society, but could scarce have been more worthless. She was a common woman of the lowest description, whose real name was, I believe, Nancy Derham,—but it is not a matter of much importance.

Prior's attachment to this woman, however unmerited, was very sincere. For her sake he quittedthe high society into which his talents and his political connexions had introduced him; and for her, he neglected, as he tells us—

Whate'er the world thinks wise and grave,Ambition, business, friendship, news,My useful books and serious muse,

to bury himself with her in some low tavern for weeks together. Once when they quarrelled, she ran away and carried off his plate; but even this could not shake his constancy: at his death he left her all he possessed, and she—his Chloe—at whose command and in whose honour he wrote his "Henry and Emma,"—married a cobler![106]Such was Prior's Chloe.

Is it surprising that the works of a poet once so popular, should now be banished from a Lady's library?—a banishment from which all his sprightly wit cannot redeem him.—But because Prior's love for this woman was real, and that he was really a man of feeling and genius, though debased by low and irregular habits, there are some sweettouches scattered through his poetry, which show how strong was the illusion in his fancy:—as in "Chloe Jealous."

Reading thy verse, "who cares," said I,"If here or there his glances flew?O free for ever be his eye,Whose heart to me is always true!"

And in his "Answer to Chloe Jealous."

O when I am wearied with wandering all day,To thee, my delight, in the evening I come.No matter what beauties I saw in my way,They were but my visits, but thou art my home!

The address to Chloe, with which the "Nut-brown Maid" commences,

Thou, to whose eyes I bend, &c.

will ever be admired, and the poem will always find readers among the young and gentle-hearted, who have not yet learned to be critics or to tremble at the fiat of Dr. Johnson. It is perhaps one of the most popular poems in the language.

FOOTNOTES:[95]Spenser.[96]Spence's Anecdotes, Sing. edit.[97]See her beautiful Memoirs, recently published.[98]Dryden's Works, by Scott, vol. xi, p. 32.[99]The Duc de Lauzun of Mademoiselle de Montpensier.[100]Granville's Works,—"Progress of Beauty".[101]"To the pious memory of the accomplished young lady, Mrs. Anne Killigrew, excellent in the two sister arts of poesy and painting."[102]See the lines on Lady Hyde's picture in Granville's poems.[103]Lady Jane Hyde married the Earl of Essex.[104]On the death of Gay, Swift had addressed to the Duchess a letter of condolence in his usual cynical style. The Duchess replied with feeling—"I differ from you, that it is possible to comfort one's self for the loss of friends, as one does for the loss of money. I think I could live on very little, nor think myself poor, nor be thought so; but alittlefriendship could never satisfy one. In almost every thing but friends, another of the same name may do as well; butfriendis more than a name,ifit be any thing."—This is true; but, as Touchstone says—"much virtue inif!"[105]Charlotte, Countess of Newburgh in her own right, from whom the present Earl of Newburgh is descended.[106]Spence's Anecdotes.

[95]Spenser.

[96]Spence's Anecdotes, Sing. edit.

[97]See her beautiful Memoirs, recently published.

[98]Dryden's Works, by Scott, vol. xi, p. 32.

[99]The Duc de Lauzun of Mademoiselle de Montpensier.

[100]Granville's Works,—"Progress of Beauty".

[101]"To the pious memory of the accomplished young lady, Mrs. Anne Killigrew, excellent in the two sister arts of poesy and painting."

[102]See the lines on Lady Hyde's picture in Granville's poems.

[103]Lady Jane Hyde married the Earl of Essex.

[104]On the death of Gay, Swift had addressed to the Duchess a letter of condolence in his usual cynical style. The Duchess replied with feeling—"I differ from you, that it is possible to comfort one's self for the loss of friends, as one does for the loss of money. I think I could live on very little, nor think myself poor, nor be thought so; but alittlefriendship could never satisfy one. In almost every thing but friends, another of the same name may do as well; butfriendis more than a name,ifit be any thing."—This is true; but, as Touchstone says—"much virtue inif!"

[105]Charlotte, Countess of Newburgh in her own right, from whom the present Earl of Newburgh is descended.

[106]Spence's Anecdotes.

It is difficult to consider Swift as a poet. So many unamiable, disagreeable, unpoetical ideas are connected with his name, that, great as he was in fame and intellectual vigour, he seems as misplaced in the temple of the muses as one of his own yahoos. But who has not heard of "Swift's Stella?" and of Cadenus and Vanessa? Though all will confess that the two devoted women, who fell victims to his barbarous selfishness, and whose names are eternally linked with the history of our literature, are far more interesting, from their ill-bestowed, ill-requited and passionate attachment tohim, than by any thing he ever sungor said ofthem.[107]Nay, his longest, his most elaborate, and his most admired poem—the avowed history of one of his attachments—with its insipid tawdry fable, its conclusion, in which nothing is concluded, and the inferences we are left to draw from it, would have given but an ignominious celebrity to poor Vanessa, if truth and time, and her own sweet nature, had not redeemed her.

I pass over Swift's early attachment to Jane Waryng, whom he deserted after a seven years' engagement: she is not in any way connected with his literary history,—and what became of her afterwards is not known. He excused himself bysome pitiful subterfuges about fortune; but it appears, from a comparison of dates, that the occasion of his breaking off with her, was his rising partiality for another.

When Swift was an inmate of Sir William Temple's family at Moor Park, he met with Esther Johnson, who appears to have been a kind of humble companion to Sir William's niece, Miss Gifford. She is said by some to have been the daughter of Sir William's steward; by others we are told that her father was a London merchant, who had failed in business. This was the interesting and ill-fated woman, since renowned as "Swift's Stella."

She was then a blooming girl of fifteen, with silky black hair, brilliant eyes, and delicate features. Her disposition was gentle and affectionate; and she had a mind of no common order. Swift sometimes employed his leisure in instructing Sir William's niece, and Stella was the companion of her studies. Her beauty, talents, and docility, interested her preceptor, who, though considerably older than herself, was in the vigourof his life and intellectual powers; and she repaid this interest with all the idolatry of a young unpractised heart, mingled with a gratitude and reverence almost filial. When he took possession of his living in Ireland, he might have married her; for she loved him, and he knew it. She was perfectly independent of any family ties, and had a small property of her own: but what were really his views or his intentions, it is impossible to guess; nor at the reasons of that most extraordinary arrangement, by which he contrived to bind this devoted creature to him for life, and to enslave her heart and soul to him for ever, without assuming the character either of a husband or a lover. He persuaded her to leave England; and, under the sanction and protection of a respectable elderly woman named Dingley, often alluded to in his humorous poems, to take up her residence near him at Laracor. Subsequently, when he became Dean of St. Patrick's, she had a lodging in Dublin. He was accustomed to spend part of every day in her society, but never without the presence of a third person; and when hewas absent, the two ladies took possession of his residence, and occupied it till his return.

Two years after her removal to Ireland, and when she was in her twentieth year, Stella was addressed by a young clergyman, whose name was Tisdal; and sensible of the humiliating and equivocal situation in which she was placed, and unable to bring Swift to any explanation of his views or sentiments, she appears to have been inclined to favour the addresses of her new admirer. He proposed in form; but Swift, without in any way committing himself, contrived to prevent the marriage. Stella found herself precisely in the same situation as before, and every year increased his influence over her young and gentle spirit, as habit confirmed and strengthened the bonds of a first affection. She lived on in the hope that he would at length marry her; bearing his sullen outbreakings of temper, soothing his morbid misanthropy, cheering and adorning his life; and giving herself every day fresh claims to his love, compassion, and gratitude, by her sufferings, her virtues, her patient gentleness, and her exclusivedevotion;—and all availed not! During this extraordinary connection, Swift was accustomed to address her in verse. Some of these poems, though worthless as poetry, derive interest from the beauty of her character, and from that concentrated vigour of expression which was the characteristic of all he wrote; as in this descriptive passage:—

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