Mrs. Jameson

“ I am a man and mourn,—
Support me though unseen!
And he foretells that, even in distant ages,—"in times perhaps more virtuous than ours," his grief would be remembered, and the name of his Meta revered. And shall it not be so?—it must—it will:—as long as truth, virtue, tenderness, dwell in woman's breast—so long shall Meta be dear to her sex; for she has honoured us among men on earth, and among saints in Heaven! ”

“ It was just sufficient to pique the ardour of the lover, and prove the worth and constancy of her he loved. The history of their attachment has none of the painful interest which hangs round that of Donne and his wife: it is a picture of pure and peaceful happiness, and of mutual tenderness, on which the imagination dwells with a soft complacency and unalloyed pleasure; with nothing of romance but what was borrowed from the elegant mind and playful fancy, which heightened and embellished the delightful reality. ”

“ It is for the sake of one, beloved "beyond ambition and the light of song,"—and worthy to be so loved, that he approaches all women with the most graceful, delicate, and reverential homage ever expressed in sweet poetry. His fancy is indeed so luxuriant, that he makes whatever he touches appear fanciful: but the beauty adorned by his verse, and adorning his home, is not imaginary; and though he has almost hidden his divinity behind a cloud of incense, she is not therefore less real. ”

“ May my Lady Dorothea, if we may yet call her so, suffer as much, and have the like passion, for this young Lord, whom she has preferred to the rest of mankind, as others have had for her; and may this love, before the year come about, make her taste of the first curse imposed on womankind—the pains of becoming a mother. May her first-born be none of her own sex, nor so like her, but that he may resemble her Lord as much as herself. ”

“ She laments the horrors of war which have torn him from her; but in a strain of eloquent poetry, and in the spirit of a high-souled woman, to whom her husband's honour was dear as his life, she calls on him to perform all that his duty as a brave knight, and his loyalty to his sovereign require. She reminds him, with enthusiasm, of the motto of French chivalry, "mourir plutôt que trahir son devoir;" then suddenly breaking off, with a graceful and wife-like modesty, she wonders at her own presumption thus to address her lord, her husband, the son of a race of heroes,—
Mais que dis! ”

“ Then I know that you're woman again.
"There's a passion and pride,
In our sex," she replied;
"And thus, might I gratify both, I would do,—
Still an angel appear to each lover beside,
But still be a woman for you!"
This amiable and beloved wife died after a union of five or six years, and left her husband broken-hearted. Her sweetness and loveliness, and the general sympathy caused by her death, drew a touch of deep feeling from the pen of Swift, who mentions the event in his journal to Stella: every one, he says, grieved for her husband, "they were so happy together." ”

“ Vittoria Colonna, and her famed friend and contemporary, Veronica, Countess of Correggio, are inseparable names in the history of Italian literature, as living at the same time, and equally ornaments of their sex. They resembled each other in poetical talent, in their domestic sorrows and conjugal virtues: in every other respect the contrast is striking. Vittoria, with all her genius, seems to have been as lovely, gentle, and feminine a creature as ever wore the form of woman. ”

“ One would think that the sight of a woman, whom he had last seen in the full bloom of youth and glow of happiness,—who had endured, since they parted, such extremity of affliction, as far more than avenged his wounded vanity, might have awakened some tender thoughts, and called forth a gentler reply. When some one expressed surprise to Petrarch, that Laura, no longer young, had still power to charm and inspire him, he answered, "Piaga per allentar d'arco non sana,"—"The wound is not healed though the bow be unbent." ”

“ And apropos to Rousseau, I shall merely observe, that there is, and can be but one opinion with regard to his conduct in the affair of Madame d'Houdetot: it was abominable. She thought, as every one who ever was connected with that man, found sooner or later, that he was all made up of genius and imagination, and as destitute of heart as of moral principle. I can never think of his character, but as of something at once admirable, portentous and shocking; the most great, most gifted, most wretched;—worst, meanest, maddest of mankind! ”

“ What is good, is the result of truth, of passion, of a strong mind, and a brilliant wit: what is bad, is the effect of a most perverse taste, and total want of harmony. No sooner has he kindled the fancy with a splendid thought, than it is as instantly quenched in a cloud of cold and obscure conceits: no sooner has he touched the heart with a feeling or sentiment, true to nature and powerfully expressed, than we are chilled or disgusted by pedantry or coarseness. ”

“ They sleep, but only for a while: they shall rise again—the grave shall yield them up, "even in the loveliest looks they wore," for a poet's love has redeemed them from death and from oblivion! Methinks I see them even now with the prophetic eye of fancy, go floating over the ocean of time, in the light of their beauty and their fame, like Galatea and her nymphs triumphing upon the waters! ”

“ But the most remarkable of all Monti's conjugal effusions, is a canzone written a short time before his death, and when he was more than seventy years of age. Nothing can be more affecting than the subdued tone of melancholy tenderness, with which the grey-haired poet apostrophises her who had been the love, the pride, the joy of his life for forty years. In power and in poetry, this canzone will bear a comparison with many of the more rapturous effusions of his youth. ”

“ The charm by which this woman seized and kept the hearts, not of lovers only, but of friends, was a character the very reverse of that of Madame du Châtelet, who would have deemed it an insult to be compared to her either in mind or beauty:—the absence of all pretension, all coquetry; the total surrender of her own feelings, thoughts, interests, where another was concerned; the frankness which verged on giddiness and imprudence; the temper which nothing could ruffle; the warm kindness which nothing could chill ”

“ The muse of French poetry never swept a lyre; she grinds a barrel-organ in her serious moods, and she scrapes a fiddle in her lively ones; and as for the distinguished French women, whose memory and whose characters are blended with the literature, and connected with the great names of their country,—they are often admirable, and sometimes interesting; but with all their fascinations, their charms, their esprit, their graces, their amabilité, and their sensibilité, it was not in the power of the gods or their lovers to make them poetical. ”

“ The garland which poesy has suspended on the grave of Meta, was wreathed by no fabled muse; it is not of laurel, "meed of conqueror and sage;" nor of roses blooming and withering among their thorns; nor of myrtle shrinking and dying away before the blast: but of flowers gathered in Paradise, pure and bright, and breathing of their native Eden; which never caught one blighting stain of earth, and though dewed with tears,—"tears such as angels shed!"
The name of Klopstock forms an epoch in the history of poetry. Goëthe, Schiller, Wieland, have since adorned German literature ”

“ Amid all the changes of his various life, and all the trying vicissitudes of spirits—the wear and tear of mind which attend a poet by profession, tasked to almost constant exertion, Monti possessed two enviable treasures;—a lovely and devoted wife, with a soul which could appreciate his powers and talents, and exult in his fame; and a daughter equally amiable, and yet more beautiful and highly gifted. ”

“ Others, perhaps, (the widow of Burns, and the widow of Monti, for instance,) are declining into wintry age: sorrow and thought have quenched the native beauty on their cheek, and furrowed the once polished brow; yet crowned by poetry with eternal youth and unfading charms, they will go down to posterity among the Lauras, the Geraldines, the Sacharissas of other days;—Nature herself shall feel decrepitude,
And, palsy-smitten, shake her starry brows,
ere these grow old and die! ”

“ A feeling so hallowed lingers round the memory of [Pg 155] this angelic creature, that it is rather a subject to blend with our most sacred and most serious thoughts,—to muse over in hours when the heart communes with itself and is still, than to dress out in words, and mingle with the ideas of earthly fame and happiness. Other loves might be poetical, but the love of Klopstock and his Meta was in itself poetry. ”

“ These sweet and musical lines, which fall on the ear with such a lulling harmony, are dashed with discord when we remember that the same woman who inspired them, was afterwards malignantly and coarsely designated as the Sappho of his satires. The generous heart never coolly degraded and insulted what it has once loved; but Pope could not be magnanimous,—it was not in his spiteful nature to forgive. ”

“ But a female sceptic, profligate from temperament and principle; a termagant, "qui voulait furieusement tout ce qu'elle voulait; "a woman with all the suffisance of a pedant, and all the exigeance, caprices, and frivolity of a fine lady,—grands dieux! what a heroine for poetry!
To a taste for Newton and the stars, and geometry and algebra, Madame du Châtelet added some other tastes, not quite so sublime;—a great taste for bijoux—and pretty gimcracks—and old china—and watches—and rings—and diamonds—and snuff-boxes—and—puppet-shows! ”

“ Saint-Lambert, from being her lover, became her tyrant. He behaved with a peevish jealousy, a petulance, a bitterness, which sometimes drove her beyond the bounds of a woman's patience; and when ever this happened, the accommodating husband, M. d'Houdetot would interfere to reconcile the lovers, and plead for the recall of the offender.
When Saint-Lambert's health became utterly broken, she watched over him with a patient tenderness, unwearied by all his exigeance, and unprovoked by his detestable temper ”

“ And joy, the poet's eye! [38]
Antiquity may boast its heroines; but it required virtues of a higher order to be a Vittoria Colonna, or a Lady Russel, than to be a Portia [Pg 80] or an Arria. How much more graceful, and even more sublime, is the moral strength, the silent enduring heroism of the Christian, than the stern, impatient defiance of destiny, which showed so imposing in the heathen! How much more difficult is it sometimes to live than to die!
Più val d' ogni vittoria un bel soffirire.
Or as Campbell has expressed nearly the same sentiment,
To bear, is to conquer our fate! ”

“ It was during this second-hand honeymoon, happier and more endeared than many have proved in their first gloss, that Burns wrote several of the sweetest effusions ever inspired by his Jean; even in the days of their early wooing, and when their intercourse had all the difficulty, all the romance, all the mystery, a poetical lover could desire. ”

“ Here then we have the most abandoned libertine of his profligate times reduced at last in his old age, in disgrace and exile, to throw himself, for sympathy and consolation, into the arms of a tender and amiable wife; and this, after spending his life and talents in deluding the tenderness, corrupting the virtue, and reviling the characters of women. In truth, half a dozen volumes in praise of our sex could scarce say more than this.
Every one, I believe, recollects the striking story of Paulina, the wife of Seneca. ”

“ Is it not singular that in a country which was the cradle, if not the birth-place of modern poetry and romance, the language, the literature, and the women, should be so essentially and incurably prosaic? ”

“ When Lady Sunderland, after a retirement of thirty years, re-appeared in the court she had once adorned, she met Waller at Lady Wharton's, and addressing him with a smiling courtesy, she reminded him of their youthful days:—"When," said she, "will you write such fine verses on me again?"—"Madam," replied Waller, "when your Ladyship is young and handsome again." This was contemptible and coarse,—the sentiment was not that of a well-bred [Pg 31] or a feeling man, far less that of a lover or a poet,—no!
Love is not love,
That alters where it alteration finds. ”

“ Carew spent his life in the Court of Charles the First, who admired and loved him for his wit and amiable manners, though he reproved his libertinage. In the midst of that dissipation, which has polluted some of his poems, he was full of high poetic feeling, and a truly generous lover: for even while he wooes his fair one in the most soul-moving terms of flowery adulation and tender entreaty, he puts her on her guard against his own arts, and thus sweetly pleads against himself ”

“ We find Vittoria designated in Italian biography, as Diva, divina, maravigliosa, elettissima, illustrissima, virtuosissima, dottissima, castissima, gloriosissima, &c.
But immortality on earth, as in heaven, must be purchased at a certain price; and Vittoria, rich in all the gifts which heaven, and nature, and fortune combined, ever lavished on one of her sex, paid for her celebrity with her happiness: for thus it has ever been, and must ever be, in this world of ours, "où les plus belles choses ont le pire destin." ”

“ Such was Klopstock as a poet. As a man, he is described as one of the most amiable and affectionate of human beings;—"good in all the foldings of his heart," as his sweet wife expressed it; free from all petty vanity, egotism, and worldly ambition. ”