Chapter 10

Per sua gratia singularePar ch' io habbi nel capo una seguenza,Una fontana, un fiume, un lago, un mare,Id est un pantanaccio d'eloquenza.5

5MATTEOFRANZESI.

Sidronius Hosschius has supplied me with a simile for this stream of recollections.

Æstuat et cursu nunquam cessante laboratEridanus, fessis irrequietus aquis;Spumeus it, fervensque, undamque supervenit unda;Hæc illam, sed et hanc non minus ista premit.Volvitur, et volvit pariter, motuque perenniTruditur à fluctu posteriore prior.

As I shall proceed

Excipiet curam nova cura, laborque laborem,Nec minus exhausto quod superabit erit.

But for stores which in this way have been received, the best compacted memory is like a sieve; more of necessity slips through than stops upon the way; and well is it, if that which is of most value be what remains behind. I have pledged myself, therefore, to no more than I can perform; and this the reader shall have within reasonable limits, and in due time, provided the performance be not prevented by any of the evils incident to human life.

At present, my business is to answer the question “Who was Mrs. Dove?”

IN WHICH THE FOURTH OF THE QUESTIONS PROPOSED IN CHAPTER II. P. I. IS BEGUN TO BE ANSWERED; SOME OBSERVATIONS UPON ANCESTRY ARE INTRODUCED, AND THE READER IS INFORMED WHY THE AUTHOR DOES NOT WEAR A CAP AND BELLS.

Boast not the titles of your ancestors,Brave youths! they're their possessions, none of yours.When your own virtues equall'd have their names,'Twill be but fair to lean upon their fames,For they are strong supporters; but till thenThe greatest are but growing gentlemen.BENJONSON.

Who was Mrs. Dove?

A woman of the oldest family in this or any other kingdom, for she was beyond all doubt a legitimate descendant of Adam. Her husband perhaps might have rather said that she was a daughter of Eve. But he would have said it with a smile of playfulness, not of scorn.

To trace her descent somewhat lower, and bring it nearer to the stock of the Courtenays, the Howards, the Manriques, the Bourbons and Thundertentronks, she was a descendant of Noah, and of his eldest son Japhet. She was allied to Ham however in another way, besides this remote niece-ship.

As how I pray you, Sir?

Her maiden name was Bacon.

Grave Sir, be not disconcerted. I hope you have no antipathy to such things: or at least that they do not act upon you, as the notes of a bagpipe are said to act upon certain persons whose unfortunate idiosyncrasy exposes them to very unpleasant effects from the sound.

Mr. Critickin,—for as there is a diminutive for cat, so should there be for critic,—I defy you! Before I can be afraid of your claws, you must leave off biting your nails.

I have something better to say to the Reader, who follows wherever I lead up and down, high and low, to the hill and to the valley, contented with his guide, and enjoying the prospect which I shew him in all its parts, in the detail and in the whole, in the foreground and home scene, as well as in the Pisgah view. I will tell him before the chapter is finished, why I do not wear a cap and bells.

To you my Lady, who may imagine that Miss Bacon was not of a good family, (Lord Verulam's line, as you very properly remark, being extinct,) I beg leave to observe that she was certainly a cousin of your own; somewhere within the tenth and twentieth degrees, if not nearer. And this I proceed to prove.

Every person has two immediate parents, four ancestors in the second degree, eight in the third, and so the pedigree ascends, doubling at every step, till in the twentieth generation, he has no fewer than one million, thirty thousand, eight hundred and ninety-six

Great, great, great,great, great, great,great, great, great,great, great, great,great, great, great,great, great, great,

grandfathers and grandmothers. Therefore my Lady, I conceive it to be absolutely certain, that under the Plantagenets, if not in the time of the Tudors, some of your ancestors must have been equally ancestors of Miss Deborah Bacon.

“At the conquest,” says Sir Richard Phillips, “the ancestry of every one of the English people was the whole population of England; while on the other hand, every one having children at that time, was the direct progenitor of the whole of the living race.”

The reflecting reader sees at once that it must be so.Plato ait, Neminem regem non ex servis esse oriendum, neminem non servum ex regibus. Omnia ista longa varietas miscuit, et sursum deorsum fortuna versavit. Quis ergo generosus? ad virtutem bene à natura compositus. Hoc unum est intuendum: alioqui, si ad vetera revocas, nemo non inde est, ante quod nihil1est.And the erudite Ihre in theProemiumto his invaluable Glossary, says,ut aliquoto cognationis gradu, sed per monumentorum defectum hodie inexplicabile, omnes homines inter se connexi sunt.

1SENECA.

Now then to the gentle reader. The reason why I do not wear a cap and bells is this.

There are male caps of five kinds which are worn at present in this kingdom; to wit, the military cap, the collegiate cap, the jockey cap, the travelling cap, and the night cap. Observe reader, I saidkinds, that is to say in scientific languagegenera,—for thespeciesand varieties are numerous, especially in the formergenus.

I am not a soldier; and having long been weaned from Alma Mater, of course have left off my college cap. The gentlemen of the ——— hunt would object to my going out with the bells on, it would be likely to frighten their horses; and were I to attempt it, it might involve me in unpleasant disputes, which might possibly lead to more unpleasant consequences. To my travelling cap the bells would be an inconvenient appendage; nor would they be a whit more comfortable upon my night-cap. Besides, my wife might object to them.

It follows that if I would wear a cap and bells, I must have a cap made on purpose. But this would be rendering myself singular; and of all things a wise man will most avoid any ostentatious appearance of singularity.

Now I am certainly not singular in playing the fool without one.

And indeed if I possessed such a cap, it would not be proper to wear it in this part of my history.

RASH MARRIAGES. AN EARLY WIDOWHOOD. AFFLICTION RENDERED A BLESSING TO THE SUFFERER; AND TWO ORPHANS LEFT, THOUGH NOT DESTITUTE, YET FRIENDLESS.

Love built a stately house; where Fortune came,And spinning fancies, she was heard to sayThat her fine cobwebs did support the frame;Whereas they were supported by the same.But Wisdom quickly swept them all away.HERBERT.

Mrs. Dove was the only child of a clergyman who held a small vicarage in the West Riding. Leonard Bacon her father had been left an orphan in early youth. He had some wealthy relations by whose contributions he was placed at an endowed grammar school in the country, and having through their influence gained a scholarship to which his own deserts might have entitled him, they continued to assist him—sparingly enough indeed—at the University, till he succeeded to a fellowship. Leonard was made of Nature's finest clay, and Nature had tempered it with the choicest dews of Heaven.

He had a female cousin about three years younger than himself, and in like manner an orphan, equally destitute, but far more forlorn. Man hath a fleece about him which enables him to bear the buffetings of the storm;—but woman when young, and lovely and poor, is as a shorn lamb for which the wind has not been tempered.

Leonard's father and Margaret's had been bosom friends. They were subalterns in the same regiment, and being for a long time stationed at Salisbury had become intimate at the house of Mr. Trewbody, a gentleman of one of the oldest families in Wiltshire. Mr. Trewbody had three daughters. Melicent the eldest was a celebrated beauty, and the knowledge of this had not tended to improve a detestable temper. The two youngest Deborah and Margaret, were lively, good-natured, thoughtless, and attractive. They danced with the two Lieutenants, played to them on the spinnet, sung with them and laughed with them,— till this mirthful intercourse became serious, and knowing that it would be impossible to obtain their father's consent they married the men of their hearts without it. Palmer and Bacon were both without fortune, and without any other means of subsistence than their commissions. For four years they were as happy as love could make them; at the end of that time Palmer was seized with an infectious fever. Deborah was then far advanced in pregnancy, and no solicitations could induce Bacon to keep from his friend's bed-side. The disease proved fatal; it communicated to Bacon and his wife, the former only survived his friend ten days, and he and Margaret were then laid in the same grave. They left an only boy of three years old, and in less than a month the widow Palmer was delivered of a daughter.

In the first impulse of anger at the flight of his daughters and the degradation of his family, (for Bacon was the son of a tradesman, and Palmer was nobody knew who) Mr. Trewbody had made his will, and left the whole sum which he had designed for his three daughters, to the eldest. Whether the situation of Margaret and the two orphans might have touched him is perhaps doubtful,—for the family were either light-hearted, or hard-hearted, and his heart was of the hard sort; but he died suddenly a few months before his sons-in-law. The only son, Trewman Trewbody, Esq. a Wiltshire fox-hunter like his father, succeeded to the estate; and as he and his eldest sister hated each other cordially, Miss Melicent left the manor-house and established herself in the Close at Salisbury, where she lived in that style which a portion of £6000. enabled her in those days to support.

The circumstance which might appear so greatly to have aggravated Mrs. Palmer's distress, if such distress be capable of aggravation, prevented her perhaps from eventually sinking under it. If the birth of her child was no alleviation of her sorrow, it brought with it new feelings, new duties, new cause for exertion, and new strength for it. She wrote to Melicent and to her brother, simply stating her own destitute situation, and that of the orphan Leonard; she believed that their pride would not suffer them either to let her starve or go to the parish for support, and in this she was not disappointed. An answer was returned by Miss Trewbody informing her that she had nobody to thank but herself for her misfortunes; but that notwithstanding the disgrace which she had brought upon the family, she might expect an annual allowance of ten pounds from the writer, and a like sum from her brother; upon this she must retire into some obscure part of the country, and pray God to forgive her for the offence she had committed in marrying beneath her birth and against her father's consent.

Mrs. Palmer had also written to the friends of Lieutenant Bacon,—her own husband had none who could assist her. She expressed her willingness and her anxiety to have the care of her sister's orphan, but represented her forlorn state. They behaved more liberally than her own kin had done, and promised five pounds a year as long as the boy should require it. With this and her pension she took a cottage in a retired village. Grief had acted upon her heart like the rod of Moses upon the rock in the desert; it had opened it, and the well-spring of piety had gushed forth. Affliction made her religious, and religion brought with it consolation and comfort and joy. Leonard became as dear to her as Margaret. The sense of duty educed a pleasure from every privation to which she subjected herself for the sake of economy; and in endeavouring to fulfil her duties in that state of life to which it had pleased God to call her, she was happier than she had ever been in her father's house, and not less so than in her marriage state. Her happiness indeed was different in kind, but it was higher in degree. For the sake of these dear children she was contented to live, and even prayed for life; while if it had respected herself only, Death had become to her rather an object of desire than of dread. In this manner she lived seven years after the loss of her husband, and was then carried off by an acute disease, to the irreparable loss of the orphans, who were thus orphaned indeed.

A LADY DESCRIBED WHOSE SINGLE LIFE WAS NO BLESSEDNESS EITHER TO HERSELF OR OTHERS. A VERACIOUS EPITAPH AND AN APPROPRIATE MONUMENT.

Beauty! my Lord,—'tis the worst part of woman!A weak poor thing, assaulted every hourBy creeping minutes of defacing time;A superficies which each breath of careBlasts off; and every humorous stream of griefWhich flows from forth these fountains of our eyes,Washeth away, as rain doth winter's snow.GOFF.

Miss Trewbody behaved with perfect propriety upon the news of her sister's death. She closed her front windows for two days; received no visitors for a week; was much indisposed, but resigned to the will of Providence, in reply to messages of condolence; put her servants in mourning, and sent for Margaret that she might do her duty to her sister's child by breeding her up under her own eye. Poor Margaret was transferred from the stone floor of her mother's cottage to the Turkey carpet of her aunt's parlour. She was too young to comprehend at once the whole evil of the exchange; but she learned to feel and understand it during years of bitter dependence, unalleviated by any hope, except that of one day seeing Leonard, the only creature on earth whom she remembered with affection.

Seven years elapsed, and during all those years Leonard was left to pass his holidays, summer and winter, at the grammar school where he had been placed at Mrs. Palmer's death: for although the master regularly transmitted with his half-yearly bill the most favourable accounts of his disposition and general conduct, as well as of his progress in learning, no wish to see the boy had ever arisen in the hearts of his nearest relations; and no feeling of kindness, or sense of decent humanity had ever induced either the foxhunter Trewman or Melicent his sister to invite him for Midsummer or Christmas. At length in the seventh year a letter announced that his school-education had been completed, and that he was elected to a scholarship at —— College, Oxford, which scholarship would entitle him to a fellowship in due course of time; in the intervening years some little assistance from hisliberal benefactorswould be required; and the liberality of thosekind friendswould be well bestowed upon a youth who bade so fair to do honour to himself, and to reflectno disgrace upon his honourable connections. The head of the family promised his part with an ungracious expression of satisfaction at thinking that “thank God there would soon be an end of these demands upon him.” Miss Trewbody signified her assent in the same amiable and religious spirit. However much her sister had disgraced her family, she replied, “please God it should never be said that she refused to do her duty.”

The whole sum which these wealthy relations contributed was not very heavy,—an annual ten pounds each: but they contrived to make their nephew feel the weight of every separate portion. The Squire's half came always with a brief note desiring that the receipt of the enclosed sum might be acknowledged without delay,—not a word of kindness or courtesy accompanied it: and Miss Trewbody never failed to administer with her remittance a few edifying remarks upon the folly of his mother in marrying beneath herself; and the improper conduct of his father in connecting himself with a woman of family, against the consent of her relations, the consequence of which was that he had left a child dependant upon those relations for support. Leonard received these pleasant preparations of charity only at distant intervals, when he regularly expected them, with his half-yearly allowance. But Margaret meantime was dieted upon the food of bitterness without one circumstance to relieve the misery of her situation.

At the time, of which I am now speaking, Miss Trewbody was a maiden lady of forty-seven, in the highest state of preservation. The whole business of her life had been to take care of a fine person, and in this she had succeeded admirably. Her library consisted of two books; Nelson's Festivals and Fasts was one, the other was “the Queen's Cabinet unlocked;” and there was not a cosmetic in the latter which she had not faithfully prepared. Thus by means, as she believed, of distilled waters of various kinds, May-dew and butter-milk, her skin retained its beautiful texture still, and much of its smoothness; and she knew at times how to give it the appearance of that brilliancy which it had lost. But that was a profound secret. Miss Trewbody, remembering the example of Jezebel, always felt conscious that she was committing a sin when she took the rouge-box in her hand, and generally ejaculated in a low voice, the Lord forgive me! when she laid it down: but looking in the glass at the same time, she indulged a hope that the nature of the temptation might be considered as an excuse for the transgression. Her other great business was to observe with the utmost precision all the punctilios of her situation in life; and the time which was not devoted to one or other of these worthy occupations, was employed in scolding her servants, and tormenting her niece. This employment, for it was so habitual that it deserved that name, agreed excellently with her constitution. She was troubled with no acrid humours, no fits of bile, no diseases of the spleen, no vapours or hysterics. The morbid matter was all collected in her temper, and found a regular vent at her tongue. This kept the lungs in vigorous health. Nay it even seemed to supply the place of wholesome exercise, and to stimulate the system like a perpetual blister, with this peculiar advantage, that instead of an inconvenience it was a pleasure to herself, and all the annoyance was to her dependants.

Miss Trewbody lies buried in the Cathedral at Salisbury, where a monument was erected to her memory worthy of remembrance itself for its appropriate inscription and accompaniments. The epitaph recorded her as a woman eminently pious, virtuous and charitable, who lived universally respected, and died sincerely lamented by all who had the happiness of knowing her. This inscription was upon a marble shield supported by two Cupids, who bent their heads over the edge, with marble tears larger than grey pease, and something of the same colour, upon their cheeks. These were the only tears which her death occasioned, and the only Cupids with whom she had ever any concern.

A SCENE WHICH WILL PUT SOME OF THOSE READERS WHO HAVE BEEN MOST IMPATIENT WITH THE AUTHOR, IN THE BEST HUMOUR WITH HIM.

There is no argument of more antiquity and elegancy than is the matter of Love; for it seems to be as old as the world, and to bear date from the first time that man and woman was: therefore in this, as in the finest metal, the freshest wits have in all ages shewn their best workmanship.

ROBERTWILMOT.

When Leonard had resided three years at Oxford, one of his college-friends invited him to pass the long vacation at his father's house, which happened to be within an easy ride of Salisbury. One morning therefore he rode to that city, rung at Miss Trewbody's door, and having sent in his name, was admitted into the parlour, where there was no one to receive him, while Miss Trewbody adjusted her head-dress at the toilette, before she made her appearance. Her feelings while she was thus employed were not of the pleasantest kind toward this unexpected guest; and she was prepared to accost him with a reproof for his extravagance in undertaking so long a journey, and with some mortifying questions concerning the business which brought him there. But this amiable intention was put to flight, when Leonard as soon as she entered the room informed her that having accepted an invitation into that neighbourhood from his friend and fellow-collegian, the son of Sir Lambert Bowles, he had taken the earliest opportunity of coming to pay his respects to her, and acknowledging his obligations, as bound alike by duty and inclination. The name of Sir Lambert Bowles acted upon Miss Trewbody like a charm; and its mollifying effect was not a little aided by the tone of her nephew's address, and the sight of a fine youth in the first bloom of manhood, whose appearance and manners were such that she could not be surprized at the introduction he had obtained into one of the first families in the county. The scowl therefore which she brought into the room upon her brow past instantly away, and was succeeded by so gracious an aspect, that Leonard if he had not divined the cause might have mistaken this gleam of sunshine for fair weather.

A cause which Miss Trewbody could not possibly suspect had rendered her nephew's address thus conciliatory. Had he expected to see no other person in that house, the visit would have been performed as an irksome obligation, and his manner would have appeared as cold and formal as the reception which he anticipated. But Leonard had not forgotten the playmate and companion with whom the happy years of his childhood had been passed. Young as he was at their separation his character had taken its stamp during those peaceful years, and the impression which it then received was indelible. Hitherto hope had never been to him so delightful as memory. His thoughts wandered back into the past more frequently than they took flight into the future; and the favourite form which his imagination called up was that of the sweet child, who in winter partook his bench in the chimney corner, and in summer sate with him in the porch, and strung the fallen blossoms of jessamine upon stalks of grass. The snow-drop and the crocus reminded him of their little garden, the primrose of their sunny orchard-bank, and the blue bells and the cowslip of the fields wherein they were allowed to run wild and gather them in the merry month of May. Such as she then was he saw her frequently in sleep, with her blue eyes, and rosy cheeks, and flaxen curls: and in his day dreams he sometimes pictured her to himself such as he supposed she now might be, and dressed up the image with all the magic of ideal beauty. His heart, therefore, was at his lips when he enquired for his cousin. It was not without something like fear, and an apprehension of disappointment that he awaited her appearance; and he was secretly condemning himself for the romantic folly which he had encouraged, when the door opened and a creature came in,—less radiant indeed, but more winning than his fancy had created, for the loveliness of earth and reality was about her.

“Margaret,” said Miss Trewbody, “do you remember your cousin Leonard?”

Before she could answer, Leonard had taken her hand. “'Tis a long while Margaret since we parted!—ten years!—But I have not forgotten the parting,—nor the blessed days of our childhood.”

She stood trembling like an aspen leaf, and looked wistfully in his face for a moment, then hung down her head, without power to utter a word in reply. But he felt her tears fall fast upon his hand, and felt also that she returned its pressure.

Leonard had some difficulty to command himself, so as to bear a part in conversation with his aunt, and keep his eyes and his thoughts from wandering. He accepted however her invitation to stay and dine with her with undissembled satisfaction, and the pleasure was not a little heightened when she left the room to give some necessary orders in consequence. Margaret still sate trembling and in silence. He took her hand, prest it to his lips, and said in a low earnest voice, “dear dear Margaret!” She raised her eyes, and fixing them upon him with one of those looks the perfect remembrance of which can never be effaced from the heart to which they have been addressed, replied in a lower but not less earnest tone, “dear Leonard!” and from that moment their lot was sealed for time and for eternity.

A STORY CONCERNING CUPID WHICH NOT ONE READER IN TEN THOUSAND HAS EVER HEARD BEFORE; A DEFENCE OF LOVE WHICH WILL BE VERY SATISFACTORY TO THE LADIES.

They do lie,Lie grossly who say Love is blind,—by himAnd Heaven they lie! he has a sight can pierceThro' ivory, as clear as it were horn,And reach his object.BEAUMONTand FLETCHER.

The Stoics who called our good affections eupathies, did not manage those affections as well as they understood them. They kept them under too severe a discipline, and erroneously believed that the best way to strengthen the heart was by hardening it. The Monks carried this error to its utmost extent, falling indeed into the impious absurdity that our eupathies are sinful in themselves. The Monks have been called the Stoics of Christianity; but the philosophy of the Cloister can no more bear comparison with that of the Porch, than Stoicism itself with Christianity pure and undefiled. Van Helmont compares even the Franciscans with the Stoics, “paucis mutatis,” he says, “videbam Capucinum esse Stoicum Christianum.” He might have found a closer parallel for them in the Cynics both for their filth and their extravagance. And here I will relate a Rabbinical tradition.

On a time the chiefs of the Synagogue, being mighty in prayer, obtained of the Lord that the Evil Spirit who had seduced the Jews to commit idolatry, and had brought other nations against them to overthrow their city and destroy the Temple, should be delivered into their hands for punishment; when by advice of Zachariah the prophet they put him in a leaden vessel, and secured him there with a weight of lead upon his face. By this sort ofpeine forte et dure, they laid him so effectually that he has never appeared since. Pursuing then their supplications while the ear of Heaven was open, they entreated that another Evil Spirit by whom the people had continually been led astray, might in like manner be put into their power. This prayer also was granted; and the Demon with whom Poets, Lovers and Ladies are familiar, by his heathen name of Cupid, was delivered up to them.

————folle per luiTutto il mondo si fa. Perisca Amore,E saggio ognun sarà.1

The prophet Zachariah warned them not to be too hasty in putting him to death, for fear of the consequences;

——You shall seeA fine confusion in the country; mark it!

But the prophet's counsel was as vain as the wise courtier's in Beaumont and Fletcher's tragedy, who remonstrated against the decree for demolishing Cupid's altars. They disregarded his advice; because they were determined upon destroying the enemy now that they had him in their power; and they bound their prisoner fast in chains, while they deliberated by what death he should die. These deliberations lasted three days; on the third day it happened that a new-laid egg was wanted for a sick person, and behold! no such thing was to be found throughout the kingdom of Israel, for since this Evil Spirit was in durance not an egg had been laid; and it appeared upon enquiry, that the whole course of kind was suspended. The chiefs of the Synagogue perceived then that not without reason Zachariah had warned them; they saw that if they put their prisoner to death, the world must come to an end; and therefore they contented themselves with putting out his eyes, that he might not see to do so much mischief, and let him go.

1METASTASIO.

Thus it was that Cupid became blind,—a fact unknown to the Greek and Roman Poets and to all the rhymesters who have succeeded them.

The Rabbis are coarse fablers. Take away love, and not physical nature only, but the heart of the moral world would be palsied;

This is the salt unto HumanityAnd keeps it sweet.2

Senza di luiChe diverrian le sfere,Il mar, la terra? Alla sua chiara faceSi coloran le stelle; ordine e lumeEi lor ministra; egli mantiene in paceGli' elemente discordi; unisce insiemeGli opposti eccessi; e con eterno giro,Che sembra caso, ed è saper profondo,Forma, scompone, e riproduce il mondo.3

2BEAUMONT& FLETCHER.

3METASTASIO.

It is with this passion as with the Amreeta in Southey's Hindoo tale, the most original of his poems; its effects are beneficial or malignant according to the subject on which it acts. In this respect Love may also be likened to the Sun, under whose influence one plant elaborates nutriment for man, and another poison; and which while it draws up pestilence from the marsh and jungle, and sets the simoom in motion over the desert, diffuses light, life, and happiness over the healthy and cultivated regions of the earth.

It acts terribly upon Poets. Poor creatures, nothing in the whole details of the Ten Persecutions, or the history of the Spanish Inquisition, is more shocking than what they have suffered from Love, according to the statements which they have given of their own sufferings. They have endured scorching, frying, roasting, burning, sometimes by a slow fire, sometimes by a quick one; and melting,—and this too from a fire, which while it thus affects the heart and liver, raises not a blister upon the skin; resembling in this respect that penal fire which certain theological writers describe as being more intense because it is invisible,—existing not in form, but in essence, and acting therefore upon spirit as material and visible fire acts upon the body. Sometimes they have undergone from the same cause all the horrors of freezing and petrifaction. Very frequently the brain is affected; and one peculiar symptom of the insanity arising from this cause, is that the patients are sensible of it, and appear to boast of their misfortune.

Hear how it operated upon Lord Brooke, who is called the most thoughtful of poets, by the most bookful of Laureates. The said Lord Brooke in his love, and in his thoughtfulness, confesseth thus;

I sigh; I sorrow;I do play the fool!

Hear how the grave—the learned Pasquier describes its terrible effects upon himself!

Ja je sens en mes os une flamme nouvelleQui me mine, qui m'ard, qui brusle ma möuelle.

Hear its worse moral consequences, which Euphues avowed in his wicked days! “He that cannot dissemble in love is not worthy to live. I am of this mind, that both might and malice, deceit and treachery, all perjury and impiety, may lawfully be committed in love, which is lawless.”

Hear too how Ben Jonson makes the Lady Frampul express her feelings!

My fires and fears are met: I burn and freeze;My liver's one great coal, my heart shrunk upWith all the fibres; and the mass of bloodWithin me, is a standing lake of fire,Curl'd with the cold wind of my gelid sighs,That drive a drift of sleet through all my body,And shoot a February through my veins.

And hear how Artemidorus, not the oneirologist, but the great philosopher at the Court of the Emperor Sferamond, describes the appearances which he had observed in dissecting some of those unfortunate persons, who had died of love. “Quant à mon regard,” says he, “j'en ay veu faire anatomie de quelques uns qui estoient morts de cette maladie, qui avoient leurs entrailles toutes retirées, leur pauvre cœur tout bruslé, leur foye toute enfumé, leurs poulmons tout rostis, les ventricules de leurs cerveaux tous endommagez; et je croy que leur pauvre ame etoit cuite et arse à petite feu, pour la vehemence et excessif chaleur et ardeur inextinguible qu'ils enduroient lors que la fievre d'amour les avoit surprins.”4

3AMADIS DEGAULE. Liv. 23.

But the most awful description of its dangerous operation upon persons of his own class is given by the Prince of the French Poets, not undeservedly so called in his own times. Describing the effect of love upon himself when he is in the presence of his mistress, Ronsard says,

Tant s'en faut que je sois alors maistre de moy,Que je ni'rois les Dieux, et trahirois mon Roy,Je vendrois mon pay, je meurtrirois mon pere;Telle rage me tient après que j'ay tastéA longs traits amoureux de la poison amèreQui sort de ces beaux yeux dont je suis enchanté.

Mercy on us! neither Petrarch, nor poor Abel Shufflebottom himself was so far gone as this!

In a diseased heart it loses its nature, and combining with the morbid affection which it finds produces a new disease.

When it gets into an empty heart, it works there like quicksilver in an apple dumpling, while the astonished cook ignorant of the roguery which has been played her, thinks that there is not Death, but the Devil in the pot.

In a full heart, which is tantamount to saying a virtuous one, (for in every other, conscience keeps a void place for itself, and the hollow is always felt;) it is sedative, sanative, and preservative: a drop of the true elixir, no mithridate so effectual against the infection of vice.

How then did this passion act upon Leonard and Margaret? In a manner which you will not find described in any of Mr. Thomas Moore's poems; and which Lord Byron is as incapable of understanding, or even believing in another, as he is of feeling it in himself.

MORE CONCERNING LOVE AND THE DREAM OF LIFE.

Happy the bonds that hold ye;Sure they be sweeter far than liberty.There is no blessedness but in such bondage;Happy that happy chain; such links are heavenly.BEAUMONTand FLETCHER.

I will not describe the subsequent interviews between Leonard and his cousin, short and broken but precious as they were; nor that parting one in which hands were plighted, with the sure and certain knowledge that hearts had been interchanged. Remembrance will enable some of my readers to pourtray the scene, and then perhaps a sigh may be heaved for the days that are gone: Hope will picture it to others,—and with them the sigh will be for the days that are to come.

There was not that indefinite deferment of hope in this case at which the heart sickens. Leonard had been bred up in poverty from his childhood: a parsimonious allowance, grudgingly bestowed, had contributed to keep him frugal at College, by calling forth a pardonable if not a commendable sense of pride in aid of a worthier principle. He knew that he could rely upon himself for frugality, industry and a cheerful as well as a contented mind. He had seen the miserable state of bondage in which Margaret existed with her Aunt, and his resolution was made to deliver her from that bondage as soon as he could obtain the smallest benefice on which it was possible for them to subsist. They agreed to live rigorously within their means however poor, and put their trust in Providence. They could not be deceived in each other, for they had grown up together; and they knew that they were not deceived in themselves. Their love had the freshness of youth, but prudence and forethought were not wanting; the resolution which they had taken brought with it peace of mind, and no misgiving was felt in either heart when they prayed for a blessing upon their purpose. In reality it had already brought a blessing with it; and this they felt; for love when it deserves that name produces in us what may be called a regeneration of its own,—a second birth,— dimly but yet in some degree resembling that which is effected by Divine Love when its redeeming work is accomplished in the soul.

Leonard returned to Oxford happier than all this world's wealth or this world's honours could have made him. He had now a definite and attainable hope,—an object in life which gave to life itself a value. For Margaret, the world no longer seemed to her like the same earth which she had till then inhabited. Hitherto she had felt herself a forlorn and solitary creature, without a friend; and the sweet sounds and pleasant objects of nature had imparted as little cheerfulness to her as to the debtor who sees green fields in sunshine from his prison, and hears the lark singing at liberty. Her heart was open now to all the exhilarating and all the softening influences, of birds, fields, flowers, vernal suns and melodious streams. She was subject to the same daily and hourly exercise of meekness, patience, and humility; but the trial was no longer painful; with love in her heart, and hope and sunshine in her prospect, she found even a pleasure in contrasting her present condition with that which was in store for her.

In these our days every young lady holds the pen of a ready writer, and words flow from it as fast as it can indent its zigzag lines, according to the reformed system of writing,—which said system improves handwritings by making them all alike and all illegible. At that time women wrote better and spelt worse: but letter writing was not one of their accomplishments. It had not yet become one of the general pleasures and luxuries of life,—perhaps the greatest gratification which the progress of civilization has given us. There was then no mail coach to waft a sigh across the country at the rate of eight miles an hour. Letters came slowly and with long intervals between; but when they came, the happiness which they imparted to Leonard and Margaret lasted during the interval,—however long. To Leonard it was as an exhilarant and a cordial which rejoiced and strengthened him. He trod the earth with a lighter and more elated movement on the day when he received a letter from Margaret, as if he felt himself invested with an importance which he had never possessed till the happiness of another human being was inseparably associated with his own;

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