THE ARGUMENT.

It lives, it breathes, it speaks what love inspires,Warm from the soul, and faithful to its fires;

and as long as the English language remains, it will

Call down tears through every age.

Pope I have no doubt wrote the Epistle to Sappho, and this of Eloisa, under the impression of strong personal feelings. It is supposed the subject was suggested by the unfortunate young lady going into a convent, whose untimely death occasioned the beautiful Elegy, "What beck'ning ghost;" but I cannot help thinking the real circumstance that occasioned these touching effusions was his early attachment to Lady Mary W. Montagu. The concluding lines allude to her, as I think is evident from his letter. Speaking of a volume he had sent her when abroad, he adds, "Among the rest you have all I am worth, that is, my works. There are few things in them but what you have already seen, except the Epistle of Eloisa to Abelard, in which you will find one passage that I cannot tell whether to wish you should understand or not." The lines could not be meant for the unfortunate lady, for she was dead and forgotten—could not relate to Martha Blount, for he was not "condemned whole years in absence to deplore," and therefore they could be addressed only to Lady Mary; and "he best shall paint them who shall feel them most," was a direct allusion to his own ardent but hopeless passion.—Bowles.

Mr. Bowles has represented the Epistle from Eloisa to Abelard as being of an immoral tendency. It must however be observed, that if this construction be put upon the poem, it is what the author never intended. On the contrary, his object is to show the fatal consequences of an ungovernable passion; and if he has done this in natural and even glowing language, it must be remembered that such are not his own sentiments, but those of the person he has undertaken to represent, and are in general given in nearly her own words. That many expressions and passages may be pointed out which are inconsistent with the established order and regulations of society, may be fully admitted. Such, for instance, as the lines

How oft, when pressed to marriage, have I said,Curse on all laws but those which love has made!

But surely it is not likely that such sentiments can impose upon the weakest and most inexperienced minds. It is indeed highly probable that Pope has in some few instances intentionally exaggerated the sentiments and expressions of Eloisa in order to render it impossible for any person of common capacity to be misled by such statements.—Roscoe.

In 1693 there appeared at the Hague a French translation of the Latin letters of Abelard and Heloisa. The work was several times reprinted, and a later editor, M. Du Bois, informs the reader that the translator had taken the liberty to omit, to add, and to transpose at his pleasure. "Some of the thoughts and expressions which are ascribed to Heloisa," continues M. Du Bois, "are so well imagined that if we are disappointed at not finding them in the original, and at her not having said the things she has been made to say, we are agreeably forced to acknowledge that they might have been said by her, and it is impossible not to be grateful to the paraphrast for his boldness." The original correspondence contains some interesting facts, much spurious rhetoric, and many dull pedantic quotations. The work in its integrity was not adapted for popular reading, but as the whole value of the letters depended on their genuineness, they were nearly worthless in their altered form. In 1714 Hughes, the author of the Siege of Damascus, translated the adulterate French concoction, and from the phraseology and substance of Pope's Epistle, it is manifest that he followed the English version of Hughes. Wakefield and Warton have only looked for parallel passages in the Latin, where they will often be sought in vain.

The authenticity of the Latin letters has usually been taken for granted, but I have a strong belief that they are a forgery. The first letter is addressed by Abelard to a friend in misfortune, for the purpose of consoling him with a tale of greater woes. The sequel isnot in keeping with the ostensible object. The autobiographical epistle is full of vain-glorious, irrelevant matter, which no one would have recorded whose intention was merely to soothe a sorrow-stricken man. The particulars relative to Abelard's intercourse with Heloisa are worse than gratuitous; they are abominable. The intrigue might be public; he might avow and deplore it; but some reserve was due to decency and his paramour. She was not an anonymous phantom who could not be reached by his revelations. He told her name, and her connections which, according to his narrative, were notorious already, and he was, therefore, forbidden by such honour as even exists among profligates to expose the secret details of her shame. But honour was unknown to him. The veil which rakes who gloated over past misdeeds would have scorned to draw aside was torn away by this pious penitent with treacherous baseness.[567]The disguise is thinly worn. The Abelard of the letter is not the contrite, sorrowing philosopher who is speaking of a gifted woman he had enthusiastically loved, and against whom he had deeply sinned. He is an unimpassioned author who founds a fiction upon a true story, and realising imperfectly the sentiments proper to the situation, relates what he thinks was likely to have happened without perceiving that the confessions would have been infamy in Abelard.

His letter in some unexplained manner got round to Heloisa. She might be expected to be filled with rage and humiliation, and she sends a glowing response to the degrading recital. She outstripped Abelard in shameless frankness. Madame Guizot asserts that "she expresses much more in saying much less, that she recalls, but does not specify,"[568]the truth being that some particulars in her second letter are grosser and more precise than anything which proceeded from the pen of Abelard. The plea that her confessions were made to a husband is no extenuation, since she left his previous revelations unrebuked, and the approval ofhisdisclosures was a licence to show abouthers. What is more, her champions discover ample evidence in her letters that they were intended for publication. "Heloisa," says Madame Guizot, "supplies details with the exactness of a dramatic personage obliged to give an account of certain facts to theaudience. There are few letters of the period which have not the stamp of a literary composition destined to a public sufficiently large to render it necessary to put them in possession of the circumstances. If any persons are surprised that Heloisa could design the revelations in her first and especially in her second letter, for any eye but that of Abelard, let them read the incidents she could see recounted without offence in theHistoria Calamitatum, and they will be convinced of the existence of a state of manners in which elevated and even delicate sentiments in a distinguished and naturally modest woman might be allied to the strangest forms of language."[569]The case is put inaccurately. The "sentiments" are not "delicate;" they are coarser than the language. The reasoning of Madame Guizot is equally defective. An immodest act is declared to be modest because Heloisa had committed a previous act of immodesty. Her toleration of Abelard's grossness is the evidence of her purity in imitating his freedoms. The appeal should have been to independent works of the time, and these are opposed to the theory of Madame Guizot. Language was often plainer than at present, but only creatures of the disgusting type of the Wife of Bath proclaimed the hidden details of theirownsexual licentiousness. The reputable classes had risen high above the point at which elemental decency and self-respect become extinct. Heloisa must, indeed, have been a woman of an "unbashful forehead," to use the expression of Shakespeare, if she deliberately placed herself before the public as she appears in the letters. It is far more likely that they are the fabrication of an unconcerned romancer, who speaks in the name of others with a latitude which people, not entirely degraded, would never adopt towards themselves. The suspicion is strengthened when the second party to the correspondence, the chief philosopher of his generation, exhibits the same exceptional depravity of taste. The improbability is great that both should have courted a disgraceful notoriety. The correspondence was coined in one mint; the impress it bears is male, and not female; and we may apply to Heloisa the words of Rosalind,—

I say she never did invent these letters,This is a man's invention, and his hand.[570]

No portion of them, if they are genuine, can do honour to her memory. The coarse particulars she divulged to the public would prove that she was debased, and any sentiments which might have been creditable in an artless effusion addressed to Abelard lose their value when they are a studied rhetorical manifesto, got up to produce an impression on the world.

According to theHistoria CalamitatumAbelard was the eldest son of a soldier in Brittany. His father, who had a tincture of learning, imbued him with a passion for study. He renounced the weapons of war for those of logic, resigned his paternal inheritance to his brothers, and traversed the kingdom that he might engage in scholastic tournaments at the towns on his road. He arrived at Paris about the year 1100, when he was twenty-one. There he frequented the lectures of William of Champeaux, the most famous dialectician of the day. Soon the pupil questioned the doctrines of his master, and was often victorious in their public disputations. He established a rival school, and the credit of all other teachers was lost in his renown. William of Champeaux, devoured with envy, struggled for years to drive his antagonist from the field. The invincible Abelard never failed to defeat him, and finally reigned without a competitor.

When his supremacy was recognised in the domain of metaphysical logic, he turned his attention to theology, and proceeding to Laon he sat under Anselm, who was esteemed the foremost divine in the church. The author of the letter affirms that his instruction consisted of fine words without matter, smoke without flame, leaves without fruit. Abelard soon relaxed in his attendance, and expressed his surprise to his fellow-students that any aid should be used beyond the text and the gloss in interpreting the Bible. With a derisive laugh they enquired if he would be bold enough, on these terms, to become the expositor. He accepted the challenge, and they thought to baffle him by allotting him the book of Ezekiel. He replied by inviting them to hear his commentary the following morning. They recommended him to take time, and he answered that his habit was to prevail by force of mind, and not by labour. His audience was small the next day, for it was considered ridiculous that a young man, who had hardly looked into the Bible, should extemporise an explanation of its obscurest prophecies. The few who went were fascinated, and their praises caused his lecture-room to be thronged. The old story was re-enacted. The pupil who had vanquished the most celebrated metaphysician of his generation, now at the first onset eclipsed the greatest theologian in Europe. Anselm, like William of Champeaux, was filled with jealousy, and forbade him to continue his disquisitions at Laon.

He returned to Paris, and taught dialectics and divinity with equal distinction. He had money and glory, he says, in profusion; he imagined that he was the only philosopher on earth; and in the words of the letter which bears his name, he was consumed by the fever of pride and luxury. In this state of worldly prosperity he reached his thirty-sixth year, when he formed his connection with Heloisa, who was barely eighteen. His qualifications for amorous intrigue are related by him with just the same boastful assurancewith which he describes his dictatorship in the schools. He declares that his youth, his fame, and his handsome person gave him such a superiority over all other men, that no woman could resist him. Whoever she might be she would have thought herself honoured by his love; and the context shows that the love he meant was illicit. The learning of Heloisa obtained her the preference, and he deliberately formed a plan to seduce her. She resided with her uncle Fulbert, a canon of the cathedral at Paris, who doated on money and his niece. Abelard appealed to the double passion. Professing to desire a release from household cares, he offered to board and lodge with the canon on any terms he chose to ask, and to devote his leisure hours to the instruction of Heloisa. Fulbert was delighted. He confided, to use the language of the letter, the tender lamb to the ravenous wolf, and enjoined the tutor to administer corporal punishment when his pupil neglected her studies. The comment of Abelard, or his representative, is extraordinary. He marvels at the simplicity of the canon in entrusting him with an authority which would enable him, if Heloisa resisted his fondness, to subdue her by blows. He thinks Fulbert childishly credulous for not divining that the grand luminary of philosophy and divinity was a wretch of fiendish depravity—a demon who would adopt the brutal expedient of beating an innocent girl into submission to his wicked designs. In his third letter he acknowledges that he had put the method in practice when the temporary scruples of his victim prevailed.

During the frenzy of his passion Abelard was indifferent to literary glory. His lectures were a burthen to him, and he only cared to compose amatory songs, which he informs his friend are still popular in numerous countries. Heloisa says in her reply that, as the greater part of these poems celebrated their love, her name became famous, and the jealousy of the women was roused. This is one of the many improbabilities of the story. At the exact period that Abelard, by his own acknowledgment, was anxious to conceal his passion from Fulbert, he published it in popular ballads to the world. The inconsistency is too glaring. A second statement is more consonant with human nature. The nerveless lectures, and preoccupied air of Abelard betrayed his infatuation to his disciples. They divined the truth; the intrigue was noised abroad, and the rumour at last got round to Fulbert. Abelard asserts that he and his concubine were overwhelmed with anguish and shame on their detection; Heloisa that her amour was the envy of princesses and queens. The apocryphal writer, after the manner of his tribe, overlooked these discrepancies.

When the first shock of disgrace was past, the lovers disregarded appearances, and carried on their intercourse without disguise. The poor canon was nearly mad between grief and rage, and Abelardto appease him led Heloisa to the altar, on the understanding that their union should be kept a secret; but the relations of the bride broke their promise, and proclaimed that she was married. She protested it was false, and Fulbert, exasperated by her denial, treated her harshly. Her husband removed her to the abbey of Argenteuil, near Paris, that she might be safe from persecution. Her friends conjectured that his object was to get rid of her, and in revenge for his former treachery and present heartlessness, Fulbert bribed some miscreants to mutilate him when he was asleep. Overwhelmed with mortification, he resolved to hide his head in a convent, and selected St. Denis. His jealousy would not suffer him to leave Heloisa free, and before he bound himself by an irrevocable vow he obliged her to take the veil.

The monks in Abelard's new retreat led the dissolute life in which he himself had indulged up to the moment of his disaster. He provoked their hostility by his remonstrances, and to get rid of him they joined in the entreaties of his disciples that he would leave his cell, and resume his lectures. The concourse of hearers was so great that the district where he set up his chair could not afford them food and lodging. The popularity of his teaching is attested by independent evidence, although his extant treatises are bald in style, prolix and cloudy in exposition, abstruse and barren in substance. But manuscripts were scarce; the multitude were chiefly dependent upon oral instruction; literature was almost unknown, and the subtleties of a meagre metaphysical system applied to theology, had a charm for active intellects when theology, logic, and metaphysics had undivided possession of the schools. Controversy lent its powerful aid, animating the dry bones with the fiery life of human passion. The superiority of Abelard in the verbal strife was due to the comparative feebleness of his adversaries, and not to the absolute greatness of his acute, but narrow and unprolific mind. "How is it," said a nobleman to Lely, "that you are so celebrated, when you know, as well as I do, that you are no painter?" "True," replied Lely, "but I am the best you have."

The revival of Abelard's popularity was attended by the old results. Rival schools were deserted, envy, malice, and hatred were inflamed. Applying his metaphysical logic to the doctrines of the Bible he produced a treatise on the Trinity, which he asserts solved every difficulty; and the more transcendent was the mystery, the greater, he says, was the admiration at the acuteness of his solution. But it was by altering the dogma that he brought it down to the level of human reason, and a council at Soissons accused him of heresy. If the letter is to be credited, his antagonists paid him the compliment of refusing to hear his defence, on the plea that his arguments would confound the united world. The assembly voted him guilty, and the troubles which grew out of his condemnation ended in his withdrawingto an uninhabited district on the banks of the river Ardusson, where he constructed an oratory of reeds and mud. Admiring crowds pursued him into his desolate retreat. Sleeping in rude huts, and subsisting on bread and herbs, they abjured the physical luxuries of existence for the mental feast of listening to the arid speculations in vogue. His auditors replaced his oratory by a larger building of wood and stone, which might serve for a lecture-room, and he named it the Paraclete, or the Comforter, because Providence had sent him consolation to the spot whither he had fled in despair. He, or his personator on his behalf, cannot suppress the usual vaunts. His body, he says, was concealed by his seclusion, but he filled the universe by his word and his renown. His enemies were enraged, and groaned inwardly, "Behold the world is gone after him, and our persecution has increased his glory." He admits that the sentiment did not fall from their lips, and it is merely the form in which his vanity embodied their feelings. The celebrated St. Bernard entered the lists against him, and Abelard began to be deserted by his adherents. He completely lost heart, and when the monks of a remote abbey on the coast of Brittany appointed him their head, he was glad to embrace a banishment which removed him from the midst of his increasing foes. New enmities awaited him. As at St. Denis, he soon became odious to his brethren by reproving their laxity. Their vindictive rage knew no bounds. They poisoned his food, but he forbore to taste it. They poisoned the chalice at the altar, but he did not drink of it. They suborned a servant to poison his victuals when he was on a visit to his brother, and again he happened not to eat of the dish, while a monk who partook of it died on the spot. Wherever he went they posted hired assassins on the road, and for some untold reason he always escaped. He procured the expulsion of the most desperate of his bloodthirsty children, and when the remainder were about to stab him he eluded their daggers. The sword, when he wrote, was still hanging over his head, and he passed his days in almost breathless fear. The early novelist who composed the apocryphal correspondence had the art to leave him in this critical situation. But the Abelard of the autobiography is a repulsive hero of romance, since even the penitent is boastful, coarse, and callous.

The abbey of Argenteuil, where Heloisa was prioress, was a dependency of the abbey of St. Denis. The parent monastery reclaimed the building and turned out Heloisa and the nuns. Abelard invited them to meet him at the Paraclete, and he established them in the oratory and its appurtenances, which had remained unoccupied since he settled in Brittany. He took frequent journeys from his abbey to instruct and console them, till finding that his visits gave rise to scandal, he went no more. Heloisa had not seen him or heard fromhim for a considerable period, when his letter to the unknown friend fell by accident into her hands, and she immediately replied to it. Her character, whether drawn by herself or some fabricator who wrote in her name, comes out clearly in the correspondence. Abelard states that she laboured to dissuade him from marriage when he informed her of his promise to Fulbert after the detection of the intrigue. She said that it would be dishonourable for a philosopher, whom nature had created for the world, to be enslaved to a woman, and submitted to the ignominious yoke of matrimony. She said that his renown would be diminished, that his future career would be checked, that the church would be injured, and that she could have no pride in a union which would degrade both of them by tarnishing his glory. In her answer she confirms his representations; and adds, that if the name of wife was holier, she held that of mistress, concubine, or harlot, to be sweeter, not only for the reasons which Abelard had recapitulated, but because she hoped that the less she made herself the more she would rise in his favour. Dean Milman is in error when he asserts that she "resisted the marriage in an absolute, unrivalled spirit of devotion, so wonderful that we forget to reprove."[571]She did not overlook her personal interests, but believed that the concubine would enjoy more love and consideration than the wife. The theory of her willingness to be sacrificed that her admirer might be elevated has arisen from the inference, contradicted by her language, that she felt the disgrace of her illicit connection. Nothing could be more remote from her thoughts. She was proud of the distinction.

At the date of her letters Heloisa had been leading for years a monastic life, which she embraced against her will at the command of her husband. She had not been refined by misfortune, time, and religion. She continued to bewail her sensual deprivations, and the picture she draws of her subjection to her voluptuous imagination, exceeds anything which could have been expected from the most dissolute libertine. But none of these things repel the partisans of historic romance, and the frail unhappy woman seduced by Abelard is held up as a signal example of feminine excellence. "This noble creature," says M. Cousin, "loved as Saint Theresa, and sometimes wrote as Seneca."[572]"Her contemporaries," says M. Rémusat, "placed her above all women, and I do not know that posterity has belied her contemporaries"[573]"France," says M. Henri Martin, "has always felt the grandeur of Heloisa, and the just instinct of the public has numbered the mistress of Abelard among our nationalglories."[574]Her admirers would be puzzled to explain in what her pre-eminence consists. Her devotion to her lover is a quality which she shares with myriads of women, bad as well as good, and her distinctive moral traits are those in which she differs from the majority of her sex by being vastly worse instead of better. A modern Heloisa who pursued the same conduct and avowed the same principles and passions would be branded with infamy.

The Epistle of Pope purports to be Heloisa's reply to Abelard's letter to his friend; but the poet has blended in his composition whatever topics were suited to his purpose, and ascribed sentiments to the wife which he had copied from the husband. There is nothing in the work to indicate that the author had read the Latin text, since he always adheres to the English rendering of the corrupted French version. Bishop Horne held that the original prose was finer than Pope's verse.[575]I cannot assent to this judgment. The poem has the superiority in every particular—in the beauty of the language, in the picturesqueness of the descriptions, in the fervour of the contrasted passions, in the animation of the transitions, in the solemnity of the accompaniments, and above all, in the pathos. The singularity of Horne's estimate may be explained by his imperfect recollection of the productions he criticised. To the allegation of Sir John Hawkins, that matrimony was depreciated and concubinage justified in the poetical epistle, he replies, that the censure "is founded on a false fact, because Abelard was married." The observation is a proof that Horne had forgotten the argument in favour of concubinage which occurs alike in the English verse and the Latin prose. Hallam accuses Pope of having "done great injustice to Eloisa by putting the sentiments of a coarse and abandoned woman into her mouth."But the licentious doctrines which Pope utters in her name are in the original Latin, except that when she asserts that love is inconsistent with marriage, she speaks of her individual case, and does not avowedly lay down a general maxim. Nor can Pope be charged with misrepresentation because the language in which he expresses her sensual cravings is not always borrowed from her pretended confessions. As he has not exaggerated the dominion of her appetite, nor the plainness with which she avows it, he cannot be said to have degraded the copy below the model by an occasional variation in the forms of speech. In fact the increased fervour he has imparted to her religious aspirations renders his portrait the more elevated of the two. The censure to which he lies open is not for deviating from his text but for following it too faithfully.

"The Epistle of Heloisa," says Wordsworth, "may be considered as a species of monodrama," and he classes it under the head of dramatic poetry. The painter of an ideal countenance omits the subordinate details which do not contribute to the special expression he desires to convey. By isolating he intensifies it. The holy calm of Raphael's Madonnas would be marred by the introduction of all those minutiæ in the living face which are not concerned in the dominant sentiment. A monodramatic poem which turns upon a single conflict of feeling possesses a kindred advantage. The one absorbing struggle has undivided sway, and there is nothing to distract attention from the pervading emotion. This unity of purpose was present to Pope's mind with absolute distinctness, and he has executed his conception with wonderful force. The combat between Heloisa's earthly inclinations and heavenly convictions, the impetuosity with which she passes from one to the other, the tempest in her soul whichever mood prevails, deep alternately calling to deep, are depicted with concentrated energy, and continuous pathos. Her glowing thoughts are vehement without exaggeration, and the natural outbursts are untainted by spurious artifice.

"Mr. Pope's Eloisa to Abelard is," says Mason, "such achef-d'œuvrethat nothing of the kind can be relished after it. Yet it is not the story itself, nor the sympathy it excites in us, as Dr. Johnson would have us think, that constitutes the principal merit in that incomparable poem. It is the happy use he has made of the monastic gloom of the Paraclete, and of what I will call papistical machinery, which gives it its capital charm, so that I am almost inclined to wonder (if I could wonder at any of that writer's criticisms) that he did not take notice of this beauty, as his own superstitious turn certainly must have given him more than a sufficient relish for it."[577]The buildings and scenery, solemn and sombre, undoubtedly heighten the effect. There is an impressive harmony between the over-cast mind of Heloisa, and the objects around her, which deepens the sadness. But the comment of Mason is unfounded. Johnsondid"notice" the "beauty" derived from the gloom of the convent, while the assertion that this is the "principal merit" of the poem is an extravagant subordination of the human interest, which is the main subject of the Epistle, to the comparatively brief though exquisite description of the local accompaniments. Mason disliked and dreaded Johnson, and avenged himself when Johnson was dead, by feeble expressions of contempt.

The Rape of the Lock and the Epistle to Eloisa stand alone in Pope's works. He produced nothing else which resembled them. They have the merit of being master-pieces in opposite styles. Thefirst is remarkable for its delicious fancy and sportive satire; the second for its fervid passion and tender melancholy. Two poems of such rare and such different excellence would alone entitle Pope to his fame. Like most great authors he published not a little which is mediocre, but he is to be estimated by the qualities in which he soared above the herd, and not by the lower range of mind he possessed in common with inferior men. The Rape of the Lock is a higher effort of genius than the Epistle. Pope's adaptation of his aery, refulgent sylphs to the ephemeral trivialities of fashionable life, the admirable art with which he fitted his fairy machinery to the follies and common-places of a giddy London day, the poetic grace which he threw around his sarcastic narrative, and which unites with it as naturally as does the rose with its thorny stem, are all unborrowed beauties, and consummate in their kind. The story and sentiments of Heloisa were prepared to his hand, and the power is limited to the strength and sweetness of his language and versification, and to the vigour with which he appropriated and expanded a single leading idea. His imagination was not prolific, and his thoughts seldom sprung from within. Sir William Napier said to Moore, "You are a poet by force of will; Byron by force of nature," which Moore acknowledged to be true. Pope, like Moore, was a poet because from his childhood he had assiduously cultivated poetry. The bulk of his works are either direct translations, or freer renderings under the name of imitations, and putting aside the Rape of the Lock, and parts of his satires, the materials of his original pieces, such as the Essay on Criticism, and Essay on Man, are mostly taken from other authors. The thoughts in the Epistle of Eloisa are not more his own than his critical rules, and ethical philosophy, but the passionate emotions are more poetical, and the execution more finished. Of Pope's better qualities the chief appears to have been a certain tenderness of heart, and this enabled him to enter into the feelings of Heloisa. He employed all the resources of his choicest verse to perfect the picture, and though the details he transferred from the letters deprived him of the credit of invention, the supposed historic truth of the representation increased the effect. The difference between legitimate and worthless imitation could not be more forcibly illustrated than by comparing the tame landscape, and affected love-babble of his Pastorals with the local descriptions and impassioned strains in his Epistle of Eloisa.

Abelard and Eloisa flourished in the twelfth century. They were two of the most distinguished persons of their age in learning and beauty, but for nothing more famous than for their unfortunate passion. After a long course of calamities, they retired each to a several convent, and consecrated the remainder of their days to religion. It was many years after this separation, that a letter of Abelard's to a friend, which contained the history of his misfortune, fell into the hands of Eloisa. This, awakening all her tenderness, occasioned those celebrated letters (out of which the following is partly extracted) which give so lively a picture of the struggles of grace and nature, virtue and passion.

ELOISA TO ABELARD.

In these deep solitudes and awful cells,Where heav'nly-pensive contemplation dwells,And ever-musing melancholy reigns,What means this tumult in a vestal's veins?Why rove my thoughts beyond this last retreat?5Why feels my heart its long-forgotten heat?Yet, yet I love!—From Abelard it came,[578]And Eloisa yet must kiss the name.[579]Dear fatal name! rest ever unrevealed,Nor pass these lips in holy silence sealed:10Hide it, my heart, within that close disguise,Where, mixed with God's, his loved idea[580]lies:O write it not, my hand—the name appearsAlready written[581]—wash it out, my tears![582]In vain lost Eloisa weeps and prays,15Her heart still dictates, and her hand obeys.Relentless walls! whose darksome round contains[583]Repentant sighs, and voluntary pains:Ye rugged rocks, which holy knees have worn;Ye grots and caverns, shagged with horrid thorn![584]20Shrines! where their vigils pale-eyed virgins keep,[585]And pitying saints, whose statues learn to weep![586]Though cold like you, unmoved and silent grown,I have not yet forgot myself to stone.[587]All is not heaven's while Abelard has part;[588]25Still rebel nature holds out half my heart;Nor pray'rs nor fasts its stubborn pulse restrain,Nor tears, for ages taught to flow in vain.Soon as thy letters trembling I unclose,That well-known name awakens all my woes.[589]30Oh name for ever sad! for ever dear![590]Still breathed in sighs, still ushered with a tear.[591]I tremble too, where'er my own I find,Some dire misfortune follows close behind.[592]Line after line my gushing eyes o'erflow,35Led through a sad variety of woe:[593]Now warm in love, now with'ring in my bloom,[594]Lost in a convent's solitary gloom!There stern religion quenched th' unwilling flame,There died the best of passions, love and fame.[595]40Yet write, oh write me all, that I may joinGriefs to thy griefs, and echo sighs to thine.[596]Nor foes nor fortune take this pow'r away;[597]And is my Abelard less kind than they?Tears still are mine, and those I need not spare;45Love but demands what else were shed in pray'r;[598]No happier task these faded eyes pursue;To read and weep is all they now can do.[599]Then share thy pain, allow that sad relief;Ah, more than share it, give me all thy grief.[600]50Heav'n first taught letters for some wretch's aid,[601]Some banished lover, or some captive maid;They live, they speak, they breathe what love inspires,Warm from the soul, and faithful to its fires,The virgin's wish without her fears impart,55Excuse the blush, and pour out all the heart,[602]Speed the soft intercourse from soul to soul,And waft a sigh from Indus to the Pole.[603]Thou know'st how guiltless first I met thy flame,[604]When love approached me under friendship's name;[605]60My fancy formed thee of angelic kind,Some emanation of th' all-beauteous Mind,[606]Those smiling eyes, attemp'ring ev'ry ray,Shone sweetly lambent with celestial day;[607]Guiltless I gazed; heav'n listened while you sung;[608]65And truths divine came mended from that tongue.[609]From lips like those, what precept failed to move?Too soon they taught me 'twas no sin to love:Back through the paths of pleasing sense I ran,[610]Nor wished an angel whom I loved a man.[611]70Dim and remote the joys of saints I see:Nor envy them that heav'n I lose for thee.How oft, when pressed to marriage, have I said,Curse on all laws but those which love has made![612]Love, free as air, at sight of human ties,75Spreads his light wings, and in a moment flies.[613]Let wealth, let honour, wait the wedded dame,August her deed, and sacred be her fame;[614]Before true passion all those views remove;Fame, wealth, and honour! what are you to love?80The jealous god, when we profane his fires,Those restless passions in revenge inspires,And bids them make mistaken mortals groan,Who seek in love for aught but love alone.[615]Should at my feet the world's great master fall,85Himself, his throne, his world, I'd scorn them all;Not Cæsar's empress would I deign to prove;[616]No, make me mistress to the man I love;If there be yet another name more free,[617]More fond than mistress,[618]make me that to thee.90Oh! happy state! when souls each other draw,When love is liberty, and nature, law:[619]All then is full, possessing and possessed,No craving void left aching in the breast:[620]Ev'n thought meets thought, ere from the lips it part,95And each warm wish springs mutual from the heart.This sure is bliss, if bliss on earth there be,And once the lot of Abelard and me.[621]Alas, how changed! what sudden horrors rise!A naked lover bound and bleeding lies![622]100Where, where was Eloise? her voice, her hand,Her poniard, had opposed the dire command.[623]Barbarian, stay! that bloody stroke[624]restrain;The crime was common, common be the pain.[625]I can no more; by shame, by rage suppressed,[626]105Let tears, and burning blushes speak the rest.[627]Canst thou forget that sad, that solemn day,When victims at yon[628]altar's foot we lay?Canst thou forget what tears that moment fell,When, warm in youth, I bade the world farewell?[629]110As with cold lips I kissed the sacred veil,[630]The shrines all trembled, and the lamps grew pale:[631]Heav'n scarce believed the conquest it surveyed,And saints with wonder heard the vows I made.Yet then, to those dread altars as I drew,115Not on the cross my eyes were fixed, but you;[632]Not grace, or zeal, love only was my call,And if I lose thy love, I lose my all.Come! with thy looks, thy words, relieve my woe;[633]Those still at least are left thee to bestow.[634]120Still on that breast enamoured let me lie,Still drink delicious poison from thy eye,[635]Pant on thy lip, and to thy heart be pressed;Give all thou canst—and let me dream the rest.Ah no! instruct me other joys to prize,125With other beauties charm my partial eyes,Full in my view set all the bright abode,And make my soul quit Abelard for God.Ah, think at least thy flock deserves thy care,[636]Plants of thy hand, and children of thy pray'r;130From the false world in early youth they fled,By thee to mountains, wilds, and deserts led.[637]You raised these hallowed walls;[638]the desert smiled,And Paradise was opened in the wild.[639]No weeping orphan saw his father's stores135Our shrines irradiate, or emblaze the floors:[640]No silver saints, by dying misers giv'n,Here bribed the rage of ill-requited heav'n:But such plain roofs as piety could raise,[641]And only vocal with the Maker's praise.[642]140In these lone walls (their day's eternal bound),These moss-grown domes with spiry turrets crowned,Where awful arches make a noon-day night,And the dim windows shed a solemn light,[643]Thy eyes diffused a reconciling ray,[644]145And gleams of glory brightened all the day.[645]But now no face divine contentment wears,'Tis all blank sadness, or continual tears.See how the force of others' pray'rs I try,[646]O pious fraud of am'rous charity!150But why should I on others' pray'rs depend?[647]Come thou, my father, brother, husband, friend!Ah, let thy handmaid, sister, daughter, move,[648]And all those tender names in one, thy love![649]The darksome pines that, o'er yon rocks reclined,[650]155Wave high, and murmur to the hollow wind,[651]The wand'ring streams that shine between the hills,[652]The grots that echo to the tinkling rills,[653]The dying gales that pant upon the trees,[654]The lakes that quiver to the curling breeze;[655]160No more these scenes my meditation aid,Or lull to rest the visionary maid.[656]But o'er the twilight groves[657]and dusky caves,Long-sounding aisles, and intermingled graves,Black Melancholy sits, and round her throws165A death-like silence, and a dread repose:[658]Her gloomy presence saddens all the scene,Shades ev'ry flow'r, and darkens ev'ry green,[659]Deepens the murmur of the falling floods,And breathes a browner horror on the woods.[660]170Yet here for ever, ever must I stay;Sad proof how well a lover can obey![661]Death, only death, can break the lasting chain;And here, ev'n then, shall my cold dust remain;[662]Here all its frailties, all its flames resign,175And wait till 'tis no sin to mix with thine.[663]Ah wretch! believed the spouse of God in vain,Confessed within the slave of love and man.Assist me, heav'n! but whence arose that pray'r?Sprung it from piety, or from despair?[664]180Ev'n here, where frozen chastity retires,Love finds an altar for forbidden fires.[665]I ought to grieve, but cannot what I ought;I mourn the lover, not lament the fault;[666]I view my crime, but kindle at the view,185Repent old pleasures, and solicit new;[667]Now turned to heav'n, I weep my past offence,Now think of thee, and curse my innocence.Of all affliction taught a lover yet,'Tis sure the hardest science to forget![668]190How shall I lose the sin, yet keep the sense,And love th' offender, yet detest th' offence?[669]How the dear object from the crime remove,Or how distinguish penitence from love?[670]Unequal task! a passion to resign,195For hearts so touched, so pierced, so lost as mine.Ere such a soul regains its peaceful state,How often must it love, how often hate![671]How often hope, despair, resent, regret,Conceal, disdain,—do all things but forget.200But let heav'n seize it, all at once 'tis fired;Not touched, but rapt; not wakened, but inspired![672]Oh come! oh teach me nature to subdue,Renounce my love, my life, myself—and you.[673]Fill my fond heart with God alone, for he205Alone can rival, can succeed to thee.[674]How happy is the blameless vestal's lot!The world forgetting, by the world forgot:[675]Eternal sun-shine of the spotless mind!Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resigned;210Labour and rest, that equal periods keep;"Obedient slumbers that can wake and weep;"[676]Desires composed, affections ever even;Tears that delight, and sighs that waft to heav'n.Grace shines around her, with serenest beams,215And whisp'ring angels prompt her golden dreams.For her, th' unfading rose of Eden blooms,And wings of seraphs shed divine perfumes,For her the spouse prepares the bridal ring,For her white virgins hymeneals sing,220To sounds of heav'nly harps she dies away,[677]And melts in visions of eternal day.[678]Far other dreams my erring soul employ,Far other raptures, of unholy joy:When at the close of each sad, sorrowing day,225Fancy restores what vengeance snatched away,Then conscience sleeps, and leaving nature free,All my loose soul unbounded springs to thee.Oh cursed, dear horrors of all-conscious night!How glowing guilt exalts the keen delight![679]230Provoking demons all restraint remove,And stir within me ev'ry source of love.I hear thee, view thee, gaze o'er all thy charms,And round thy phantom glue my clasping arms.I wake:—no more I hear, no more I view,235The phantom flies me, as unkind as you.I call aloud; it hears not what I say:I stretch my empty arms; it glides away.To dream once more I close my willing eyes;Ye soft illusions, dear deceits, arise;[680]240Alas, no more!—methinks we wand'ring goThrough dreary wastes, and weep each other's woe,[681]Where round some mould'ring tow'r pale ivy creeps,And low-browed rocks hang nodding o'er the deeps.Sudden you mount, you beckon from the skies;245Clouds interpose, waves roar, and winds arise.I shriek, start up, the same sad prospect find,And wake to all the griefs I left behind.For thee the fates, severely kind,[682]ordainA cool suspense from pleasure and from pain;250Thy life a long dead calm of fixed repose;No pulse that riots, and no blood that glows;[683]Still as the sea, ere winds were taught to blow,Or moving spirit bade the waters flow;[684]Soft as the slumbers of a saint forgiv'n,255And mild as op'ning gleams of promised heav'n.[685]Come, Abelard! for what hast thou to dread?The torch of Venus burns not for the dead.[686]Nature stands checked; religion disapproves;Ev'n thou art cold—yet Eloisa loves.260Ah hopeless, lasting flames! like those that burnTo light the dead, and warm th' unfruitful urn.[687]What scenes appear where'er I turn my view?The dear ideas, where I fly, pursue,Rise in the grove, before the altar rise,[688]265Stain all my soul, and wanton in my eyes.I waste the matin lamp in sighs for thee,Thy image steals between my God and me,[689]Thy voice I seem in ev'ry hymn to hear,With ev'ry bead I drop too soft a tear.[690]270When from the censer clouds of fragrance roll,And swelling organs lift the rising soul,One thought of thee puts all the pomp to flight,Priests, tapers, temples, swim before my sight;[691]In seas of flame my plunging soul is drowned,275While altars blaze, and angels tremble round.[692]While prostrate here in humble grief I lie,Kind, virtuous drops just gath'ring in my eye,While praying, trembling, in the dust I roll,And dawning grace is op'ning on my soul:280Come, if thou dar'st, all charming as thou art!Oppose thyself to heav'n; dispute my heart:Come, with one glance of those deluding eyesBlot out each bright idea of the skies;Take back that grace, those sorrows, and those tears;285Take back my fruitless penitence and pray'rs;Snatch me, just mounting, from the bless'd abode;Assist the fiends, and tear me from my God![693]No, fly me, fly me, far as pole from pole;[694]Rise alps between us! and whole oceans roll![695]290Ah, come not, write not, think not once of me,Nor share one pang of all I felt for thee.Thy oaths I quit, thy memory resign;[696]Forget, renounce me, hate whate'er was mine.Fair eyes, and tempting looks, (which yet I view!)295Long loved, adored ideas, all adieu!Oh grace serene! oh virtue heav'nly fair![697]Divine oblivion of low-thoughted care![698]Fresh-blooming hope, gay daughter of the sky!And faith, our early immortality![699]300Enter, each mild, each amicable guest:Receive, and wrap me in eternal rest.See in her cell sad Eloisa spread,Propped on some tomb, a neighbour of the dead.[700]In each low wind methinks a spirit calls,305And more than echoes talk along the walls.[701]Here, as I watched the dying lamps around,From yonder shrine I heard a hollow sound."Come, sister, come! (it said, or seemed to say).[702]"Thy place is here, sad sister, come away;[703]310"Once like thyself, I trembled, wept, and prayed,Love's victim then, though now a sainted maid:[704]But all is calm in this eternal sleep;[705]Here grief forgets to groan, and love to weep,Ev'n superstition loses every fear:315For God, not man, absolves our frailties here."I come, I come![706]prepare your roseate bow'rs,Celestial palms, and ever-blooming flow'rs;Thither, where sinners may have rest, I go,Where flames refined in breasts seraphic glow:320Thou, Abelard! the last sad office pay,[707]And smooth my passage to the realms of day:[708]See my lips tremble, and my eye-balls roll,Suck my last breath, and catch my flying soul![709]Ah no—in sacred vestments may'st thou stand,325The hallowed taper trembling in thy hand,Present the cross before my lifted eye,Teach me at once, and learn of me to die.[710]Ah then, thy once-loved Eloisa see!It will be then no crime to gaze on me.330See from my cheek the transient roses fly![711]See the last sparkle languish in my eye!'Till ev'ry motion, pulse, and breath be o'er;And ev'n my Abelard be loved no more.Oh death all-eloquent! you only prove335What dust we doat on, when 'tis man we love.[712]Then too, when fate shall thy fair fame destroy,(That cause of all my guilt, and all my joy)[713]In trance ecstatic may thy pangs be drowned,Bright clouds descend, and angels watch thee round,340From op'ning skies may streaming glories shine,And saints embrace thee with a love like mine.May one kind grave unite each hapless name,[714]And graft my love immortal on thy fame!Then, ages hence, when all my woes are o'er,345When this rebellious heart shall beat no more;If ever chance two wand'ring lovers bringsTo Paraclete's white walls and silver springs,O'er the pale marble shall they join their heads,And drink the falling tears each other sheds;[715]350Then sadly say, with mutual pity moved,"Oh may we never love as these have loved!"From the full choir[716]when loud hosannas rise,And swell the pomp of dreadful sacrifice,[717]Amid that scene if some relenting eye355Glance on the stone where our cold relics lie,Devotion's self shall steal a thought from heav'n,One human tear shall drop, and be forgiv'n.And sure if fate some future bard shall joinIn sad similitude of griefs to mine,360Condemned whole years in absence to deplore,And image charms he must behold no more;Such if there be, who loves so long, so well;Let him our sad, our tender story tell;The well-sung woes will sooth my pensive ghost;[718]365He best can paint them who shall feel them most.[719]

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