The Romance of Biography Volume II Part 25

but that he has given the sweet wife, seated among her children in sedate and matronly loveliness, an interest even beyond that which belongs to the young girl he has described with raven locks and cheeks of cream, driving rustic admirers to despair, or lingering with her lover at eve,

--Amid the falling dew, When looks were fond, and words were few!

Such is the charm of affection, and truth, and moral feeling, carried straight into the heart by poetry!

What a new interest and charm will be given to many of Moore's beautiful songs, when we are allowed to trace the feeling that inspired them, whether derived from some immediate and present impression; or from remembered emotion, that sometimes swells in the breast, like the heaving of the waves, when the winds are still! Several of the most charming of his lyrics are said to be inspired by "the heart so warm, and eyes so bright," which first taught him the value of domestic happiness;--taught him that the true poet need not rove abroad for themes of song, but may kindle his genius at the flame which glows on his own hearth, and make the Muses his household G.o.ddesses.[166]

Gifford, the late editor of the Quarterly Review, and the author of the Baviad and Mviad, was in early youth doomed to struggle with poverty, obscurity, ill health, and every hards.h.i.+p which could check the rise of genius. He has himself described the effect produced on his mind, under these circ.u.mstances, by his attachment to an amiable and gentle girl. "I crept on," he says, "in silent discontent, unfriended and unpitied; indignant at the present, careless of the future,--an object at once of apprehension and dislike. From this state of abjectness, I was raised by a young woman of my own cla.s.s. She was a neighbour; and whenever I took my solitary walk with my Wolfius in my pocket, she usually came to the door, and by a smile, or a short question, put in the friendliest manner, endeavoured to solicit my attention. My heart had been long shut to kindness; but the sentiment was not dead within me; it revived at the first encouraging word; and the grat.i.tude I felt for it, was the first pleasing sensation I had ventured to entertain for many dreary months."

There are two little effusions inserted in the notes to the Baviad and Mviad, which have since been multiplied by copies, and have found their way into almost all collections of lyric poetry and "Elegant Extracts;"

one of these was composed during the life of Anna; the other, written after her death, and beginning,

I wish I were where Anna lies, For I am sick of lingering here,

is extremely striking from its unadorned simplicity and profound pathos.--Such was not the prevailing style of amatory verse at the time it was written, nearly fifty years ago. Mr. Gifford never married; and the effect of this early disappointment could be traced in his mind and const.i.tution to the last moments of his life.

The same sad bereavement which tended to make Gifford a caustic critic and satirist, made Mr. Bowles a sentimental poet. The subject of his Sonnets was real; but he who has pointed out the difference between natural and fabricated feeling, should not have left a _blank_ for the name of her he laments. He gives us indeed a formal permission to fill up the blank with any name we choose. But it is not the same thing; the name of the woman who inspired a poet, is quite as important to posterity, as the name of the poet himself.

Who was the Hannah, whose fickleness occasioned that exquisite little poem which Montgomery has inscribed "To the memory of her who is dead to me?" It tells a tale of youthful love, of trusting affection, suddenly and eternally blighted,--and with such a brevity, such a simplicity, such a fervent yet heart-broken earnestness, that I fear it must be true!

At some future time, we shall, perhaps, be told who was the beautiful English girl, whose retiring charms won the heart of Hyppolito Pindemonte, when he was here some years ago. His Canzone on her is, in Italy, considered as his masterpiece,[167] and even compared to some of Petrarch's. There are indeed few things in the compa.s.s of Italian poetry more sweet in expression, more true to feeling, than the lines in which Pindemonte, describing the blooming youth, the serene and quiet grace of this fair girl, disclaims the idea of even wis.h.i.+ng to disturb the heavenly calm of her pure heart by a pa.s.sion such as agitates his own.

Il men di che pu Donna esser cortese Ver chi l'ha di s stesso a.s.sai pi cara, Da te, vergine pura, io non vorrei.

This was being very peculiarly disinterested.--We may also learn, at some future time, who was the sweet Elvire, to whom Alphonse de Lamartine has promised immortality, and not promised more than he has the power to bestow. He is one of the few French poets, who have created a real and a strong interest out of their own country. He has vanquished, by the mere force of genius and sentiment, all the difficulties and deficiencies of the language in which he wrote, and has given to its limited poetical vocabulary a charm unknown before. He thus addresses Elvire in one of the _Meditations Potiques_.

Vois, d'un oeil de piti, la vulgaire jeunesse Brillante de beaut, s'enivrant de plaisir; Quand elle aura tari sa coupe enchanteresse, Que restera-t-il d'elle? peine un souvenir: Le tombeau qui l'attend l'englout.i.t tout entire, Un silence ternel succde ses amours; Mais les sicles auront pa.s.s sur ta poussire, Elvire!--et tu vivras toujours!

Over some of the heroines of modern poetry, the tomb has recently closed; and the flowers scattered there, could not be disturbed without awakening a pang in the bosoms of those who survive. 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!

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!

And some, even now, move gracefully through the shades of domestic life, and the universe, of whose beauty they will ere long form a part, knows them not. Undistinguished among the ephemeral divinities around them, not looking as though they felt the future glory round their brow, nor swelling with antic.i.p.ated fame, they yet carry in their mild eyes, that light of love, which has inspired undying strains,

And Queens hereafter shall be proud to live Upon the alms of their superfluous praise!

FOOTNOTES:

[153] Crabbe's Poems.

[154] See the Excursion.

[155] Wordsworth.

[156]

Even so the smile of woman stamps our fates, And consecrates the love it first creates!

_Barry Cornwall._

[157] See in particular Schiller's ode, "Honour to Women," one of the most elegant tributes ever paid to us by a poet's enthusiasm. It may be found translated in Lord F. Gower's beautiful little volume of Miscellanies.

[158]

Many light lays (ah! woe is me the more) In praise of that mad fit which fools call _love_, I have i' the heat of youth made heretofore, That in light wits did loose affections move; But all these follies do I now reprove, &c.

_Spenser._

[159] Marcian Colonna.

[160] Miss Chaworth, now Mrs. Musters.

[161] Lord Byron's Works, vol. iii. p. 183, (small edit.)

[162] Campbell's Poems, vol. ii. p. 202.

[163] Barry Cornwall's Poems, "Lines on a Rose."

[164] Wordsworth's Poems, vol. i. p. 181.

[165] Wordsworth, vol. ii. p. 132.

[166] See in Moore's Lyrics the beautiful song. "I'd mourn the hopes that leave me." The concluding stanza is in point:

"Far better hopes shall win me, Along the path I've yet to roam, The mind that burns within me, And pure smiles from thee _at home_."

[167] See in the "Opere di Pindemonte," the Canzone, "O Giovanetta che la dubbia via."

THE END.