Ennuyée." 2 Vols. 12mo. Colburn. 1829.1
THE Loves of the Poets! that we may understand why the
conjunction of ideas represented by these words, presents the most resplendent image
of beauty, grace, and happiness, that the human mind can well conceive, let us
analyze them, and learn what Love, and what a Poet is.
There is much in the world afforded by nature and contrived by man, to yield
satisfaction and enjoyment to our senses and our physical wants. In this northern
clime the rich engross much of these. Carriages, horses, palaces with all their
appendages, costly dress, and luxurious tables. The poor, (i.e. the unopulent, not the absolutely poor, those shut out from nature's
table, the starving and miserable), have a counterbalance in a keener sense of the
delights of leisure—they bring appetite instead of fastidious taste to season their
plain viands, repose after labour, instead of downy beds, and silken hangings. With
the omission of the necessitous and sick, our physical nature is replete with
agreeable sensations; and yet how many ministered to, even to superfluity, are
unhappy.
The mind requires more contribution than even our corporeal frame; ennui is the
offspring of plenty and comfort; and while we contrive to shut out the evil elements,
listlessness and weariness pervade the soul and pall every enjoyment. If the poor
suffer less from this annoyance, it is not because they receive more pleasure; but
because care, anxiety, or labour, occupy them; the rich also invent employments;
books, operas, concerts, hunting, shooting, balls, picture-dealing, building,
planting, travelling, fanciful changes of dress, and gambling. Yet these suffice not,
nor professions, trades, nor ambition, to afford pleasure, though they waste the
time; even the pursuits of wisdom, and the discoveries of science, engrossing as they
are, and often delightful, are inefficient to take the sting from life, changing its
burthen to gladness: this miracle is left for the affections; and the best form of
affection, from the excess of its sympathy, is Love.
Who can feel satiety or sorrow when he loves?—"Love," Plato says, "showers benignity upon the world; before his presence, all
harsh passions flee and perish. He is the author of all soft affections, the
destroyer of all ungentle thoughts, possessed by the fortunate, and desired by the
unhappy, therefore unhappy, because they possess him not; he is the father of grace
and delicacy, and gentleness and delight and persuasion, and desire; the cherisher
of
all that is good, the abolisher of all[Page 473]that is evil, our most excellent
pilot, defence, saviour and guardian, in labour and in fear, in desire and in reason;
the ornament and governor of all things human and divine; the best, the loveliest."2
"Love," Shelley writes, "is that
powerful attraction towards all we conceive, or fear, or hope beyond ourselves, when
we find within our own thoughts the chasm of an inefficient void, and seek to awaken
in all things that are, a community with what we experience within ourselves. The
meeting with an understanding capable of clearly estimating our own, an imagination
which should enter into, and seize upon the subtle and delicate peculiarities we have
delighted to cherish and unfold in secret, with a frame whose nerves, like the chords
of two exquisite lyres strung to the accompaniment of one delightful voice, vibrate
with the vibrations of our own; this is the unattainable point to which Love tends;
and to attain which, it urges forth the powers of man to arrest the faintest shadow
of that, without the possession of which there is no rest or respite to the heart
over which it rules."3
If so imperious, intense and pervading, be the spirit of Love, most powerful in the
best and most delicate natures, how earnestly must women, whose being is formed for
tenderness and sympathy, desire to know among whom in the harder, harsher sex this
feeling exists in its greatest purity and force. And is not a poet an incarnation
of
the very essence of Love?
What is a Poet? Is he not that which wakens melody in the silent chords of the human
heart? A light which arrays in splendor things and thoughts which else were dim in
the shadow of their own insignificance. His soul is like one of the pools in the Ilex
woods of the Maremma,4 it reflects the surrounding universe, but it beautifies, groupes,
and mellows their tints, making a little world within itself, the copy of the outer
one; but more entire, more faultless. But above all, a poet's soul is Love; the
desire of sympathy is the breath that inspires his lay, while he lavishes on the
sentiment and its object, his whole treasure-house of resplendent imagery, burning
emotion, and ardent enthusiasm. He is the mirror of nature, reflecting her back ten
thousand times more lovely; what then must not his power be, when he adds beauty to
the most perfect thing in nature—even Love.
Lady Morgan who writes many things, not
because they are true, but because they come into her head, has devoted some[Page 474]pages of the "Book of the Boudoir"5 to the villifying a poet's love. Another scrap in the same
volume may serve as a comment. The few lines she has written on "Sentiment"
sufficiently show why she depreciates the breathing sentiment of love, which is a
poet's treasure and his gift.
Let us instead of refuting an opinion which this lady may already have discarded as
false, turn to the pages of the book before us, which propose to give us the history
of the Loves of the Poets, of modern poets that is, for with many declarations of
ignorance, yet with no little presumption, the fair authoress sweeps out of her list
the loves of the classic authors; she shall have her way, however, and with her we
will confine ourselves to the poets of modern Europe.
This work is the production of the authoress of
the "Diary of an Ennuyée," a book we have heard described as
the offspring of a singular union of a light head and a heavy heart—whose defect is
to have made reality and fiction, who are brother and sister, and who may not
therefore too closely unite, marry, and produce an offspring which is neither true
nor false. Yet notwithstanding this defect, which disturbs and confuses the reader
throughout, it is an interesting, clever, and graceful work.
The book dwells somewhat on the Troubadours, and then commences with the early
Italian poets. So much has been said concerning Petrarch and Laura, that we find the account here given
concise. She seems to have neglected his letters, which are abundant in testimonies
of the truth, ardour, and reality of his attachment, and to have confined herself
to
his poems only, and to repeat what is already known, without research, to every one.
Dante and Beatrice are a pair more veiled in
obscurity. Dante, like our own gentle
affectionate Milton, has been stigmatized
with the accusation of moroseness. Few know, that while bad institutions and bad men
awoke stern resistance and severe animosity in the fervent souls of both, their
hearts were the abode of Love, the realm over which sweet womanhood reigned and
ruled. Dante's "Vita Nuova" is a
beautiful and fanciful history of his love; and who that reads the vivid description
of his trembling before the beauteous girl he almost worshipped, would figure the
harsh proud Dante, so often pourtrayed to us?
The loves of Ariosto, but little known, are
on that account interesting; while the melancholy, impassioned, mysterious sentiment
of Tasso, borrowing its grace from
suffering, fascinates the imagination. In these pages this sad romance is unravelled
much to our satisfaction. An extract on this subject will serve as a specimen of the
work, and excite the curiosity of the reader to peruse the whole of[Page 475]these
little volumes, replete as they are with the beautiful and unknown.
Leonora then was not unworthy of her illustrious conquest, either in person,
heart, or mind. To be summoned daily into the presence of a princess thus
beautiful and amiable, to read aloud his verses to her, to hear his own praises
from her lips, to bask in her approving smiles, to associate with her in
retirement, to behold her in all the graceful simplicity of her familiar life, was
a dangerous situation for Tasso, and
surely not less so for Leonora herself. That she was aware of his admiration, and
perfectly understood his sentiments, and that a mysterious intelligence existed
between them, consistent with the utmost reverence on his part, and the most
perfect delicacy and dignity on hers, is apparent from the meaning and tendency of
innumerable passages scattered through his minor poems, too significant in their
application to be mistaken. Though that application be not avowed, and even
disguised, the very disguise, when once detected, points to the object. Leonora
knew, as well as her lover, that a princess "was no love-mate for a bard."6 She knew far better than her lover—until he too had been taught by wretched experience—the
haughty and implacable temper of her brother Alphonso, who was never known to
brook an injury or forgive an offender. She must have remembered too well the
twelve years imprisonment and the narrow escape from death, of her unfortunate
mother, for a less cause. She was of a timid reserved nature, increased by the
extreme delicacy of her constitution. Her hand had been frequently sought by
princes and nobles, whom she had uniformly rejected, at the risk of displeasing
her brother; and the eyes of a jealous court were upon her. Tasso, on the other hand, was
imprudent, hot-headed, fearless, and ardently attached. For both their sakes it
was necessary for Leonora to be guarded and reserved, unless she would have made
herself the fable of all Italy. —Vol. i. p. 296.
The reader must be referred to the volume itself for the proofs brought of these
premises.
Perhaps the most interesting portion of these volumes, is that dedicated to the
commemoration of conjugal poetry—the poets being for the most part women. The soft
sweetness of Clotilde de Surville,7 the impassioned grace of
Vittoria Colonna, bear the palm.
Complaint here is superseded by tender regret; solicitation by acknowledged sympathy;
jealousy and suspense by gratitude and joy. The authoress is not pleased that while
women mourn till death the loss of their companion, men usually change the elegiac
strain composed for their first love, for epithalamiums on a marriage with a second.
It is probably one among the many superstitions which rather injure than exalt the
characters of women, which makes us, in spite of ourselves, set so high a price on
their constancy even to the dead. Human beings in every stage of life need
companions;[Page 476]women protectors; and except that, for the highminded and
delicate, there are few worthy companions and protectors, and that if once a woman
find one man on whom she may bestow without sorrow her tenderness, it is very
unlikely that, losing him, she find a second, we know no cause in reason and
morality, and hardly in good taste, which should condemn the lovely, bereaved, and
ardent heart to perpetual widowhood.
A woman's love is tenderness, and may wed itself to the lost and dead. A man's is
passion, and must expend itself on the living. A woman's domesticity is of her own
making, and her home may be replete with elegance though she be alone. An unmarried
man has no home. A solitary woman is the world's victim, and there is heroism in her
consecration. A man whose fate is not allied to a female, from whatever cause, is
divested of every poetical attribute—there is something rugged, harsh, and unnatural
in the very idea. After all, the worthiness of the beloved object must always stand
as an excuse for inconstancy; or, with a poet, the fervency and truth of his passion:
since, through the force of his imagination, he may dress in jewels richer than those
that adorned the doll at Loretto, a black-visaged Madonna;8 nor be aware that the beauty
of the object resides in his eyes instead of in her mind or form.
The latter part of these volumes forms a very amusing and sentimental scandalous
chronicle. We pity Pope, who, in
default of better, lavished his verses and his poetical attentions on so
uninteresting a personage as Martha
Blount. Our authoress says, "me thinks, had I been a poet, or Pope, I would rather have been led about
in triumph by the spirited, accomplished lady Mary, than chained to the footstool
of
two paltry girls."9 [vol. ii. p. 284.] Yet as no
satisfactory account is given for the cause of the quarrel between Pope and that lady, we may believe,
judging from the hardness and peremptoriness of her character, her love of ridicule,
and her talent for sarcasm, that she first awoke the sting of the "Wasp of
Twickenham;"10 and he, with all the bitterness of one whose person was but
too open to vulgar derision, could not bear to have his genuine tenderness scoffed
at; while the spiteful, jealous, bitter disposition, usually characteristic of
deformed persons, gave poison to the wound she had provoked.
If we smile somewhat at the loves of the "Wasp" and the Sappho of the satires, whom Horace Walpole so amusingly describes
[vol. ii. p. 307], what shall we say to the French philosophers by nature—poets by
courtesy—Messrs. Du Chatelêt and Voltaire.11 Had either of them had one spark of real poetry in their
composition, it had led to different results than those[Page 477]ridiculous,
disgusting, violent and laughable scenes commemorated in these volumes [vol. ii. p.
222]. The same observations may apply to Swift. Lovers in verse are not, therefore, poets. Swift's victims were beautiful
accomplished women. He was clever, and could forge even rhythm and rhyme in his head,
but the spirit of poetry disdained to take up its abode in his coarse-grained,
ill-fashioned, hard-natured soul. Of these modern moderns the greatest portion of
interest has been thrown over the rustic loves of Burns,—thus redeeming a poet's
name,—shewing that the high born and bred, and clever lady Mary Montague, Voltaire and his femme terrible, and Swift, were lovers, but not
poets, and therefore neither gentle, imaginative, nor interesting; while the
lowly-born Burns, being instinct with
Apollo's fire, sheds a glory over the
humble objects of his attachment, which a princess might envy [vol. ii. p. 195]. Monti and his wife are also an
interesting pair [vol. ii. p. 209], and we are charmed by the sweetness displayed
in
the loves of Klopstock and Meta [vol. ii. p. 154], though there
is a Germanism about it, which, giving effeminacy to the man, dims the picture by
a
mist of what appears to us almost like affectation.
The authoress sums up her work by a glance at the poets of the day, and their loves—a
chapter as well left out, for she, fearing to tread on forbidden ground, tells us,
in
fact, nothing. Unable to throw the ideality of distance over the near and
distinct—and afraid, justly so—for the practice of shewing up our friends is the vice
and shame of our literature,—of dragging into undesired publicity the modest and
retiring,—she does not even bestow the interest of reality upon her undefined
sketches. Besides, there are certain names she dreads to mention. May we not say,
in
the somewhat hacknied phrase of Tacitus: Sed perfulgebant, eo ipso quod nomines eorum non visebantur?12