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were the artifices, and curious the cosmetics which he employed to recall the lovelocks, which each succeeding day saw straggling more and more from his forehead; but alas! all were vain; for no Macassar oil then existed to repair the ravages of disease and time, and no bears were imported into Italy from regions" beyond the Gaurometa and the icy ocean," to bring resurrec tion and life to departed ringlets. A scratch from Truefitt's, had he lived in our days, would have concealed his baldness much better than the crown of laurel, which the Senate permitted him to wear in public, and would have likewise saved him from the misfortune of having grey hairs prematurely attributed to him by Petrarca, in order to render his own early greyness less remarkable. But, whilst on this subject, let me not forget, that, though the snows of age were showered before their time on the youthful head of the enamoured poet, his mind remained free from their power to the latest moment of his long protracted existence, and that the death, which at last overtook him in the midst of his studies, found him as eager and enthusiastic in the pursuit of knowledge, as he was at the first moment of youth, when he commenced it. His friend Boccaccio was the admired and beloved of the fair sex, no less on account of the readiness of his wit and the felicity of his imagination, than on account of the exquisite beauty of his face and person. The princess Maria of Naples, whom he celebrated in his writings under the name of Fiametta, and whom he loved so passionately, though not quite so purely as Petrarca loved Laura, could not look upon his eloquent eyes without being infected by their melting softness; and it is to the influence which she exercised over him, that Italy is indebted, if not for the first, at least for the best, collection of novels it possesses. She willed that the Decameron should be written; and her lover was but too happy in writing it to please her.

In the days of Castiglione, if a courtier could run well, dance well, leap well, fence well, ride well, joust well, swim well, and play the noble game of tenuis well, (nobile esercitio et giuco di palla,) he had no occasion to care about his ignorance of tumbling, rope-dancing, fire-eating, and other such mountebank performances, which were not so proper for a gentleman. It was necessary, however, if he aspired to be a model for others, that he should be distinguished by great beauty of person and peculiar gracefulness of air and demeanour. Castiglione, who was shrewdly suspected of having drawn the picture of his Cortegiano from himself, had from nature a face and figure, which rendered him agreeable in the eyes of all spectators. So too had his friend Cardinal Bembo, the writer of the most obscene elegance or of the most elegant obscenity,—the phrase is Scaliger's and not mine,-that ever yet came from the pen of man. Ariosto, who was the friend of them both, had an exterior as graceful as his character was mild and his mind was polished. Alonzo de Ercilla, who wrote his " Araucana," the only epic poem which Spain possesses, with the sword in one hand and the pen in the other, amid the perilous scenes which he described and celebrated, was a tall noble-looking man, whose dark eye penetrated into the utmost core of those upon whom its glance of fire descended. Ronsard, who excelled in all the military and gentlemanly exercises of his time, was of a fine, august, and

*The directions of Castiglione upon this subject are in the first book of his "Cortegiano," and run thus :-" Essendo adunque il nostro Cortegiano in questi esercitii più che mediocrimence esperto, penso che debba lasciar gli alteri da canto, comme volteggiar in terra, andar in su la corda, et tai cose che quasi hanno del giocolare, et poco sono a gentilhuomo convenienti."-In his third book, he lays down in general terms the various accomplishments which a court lady ought to possess, but refuses to descend into particulars, stating that no woman of .sense would think it decent, "armeggiare, cavalcare, giuocare alla palla, lottare, sonar tamburi, piffari, o trombi, o altri tali instrumenti ;" though he admits that ladies of rank in Italy did in his time pride themselves on the performance of these exercises.

martial size, had limbs strong and well proportioned, and a visage noble, liberal, and, as his biographer adds, truly French. His eyes were full of a sweet gravity, which captivated all who came within the sphere of its influence. To counterbalance these advantages, he laboured from his youth upwards under an almost total loss of hearing, a misfortune which is said to have been occasioned by the excessive hardships which he suffered, whilst making his first campaign with the French army in Italy. Out of evil, however, unexpected good sometimes arises. He who would have been nothing but a gallant soldier or a seductive courtier, had he retained his hearing, was transformed by the loss of it into a studious, erudite, and yet elegant poet. Montaigne, who for a feudal baron was no mean scholar, assures us that he himself once had a tolerable aspect in form and interpretation, and with that candid garrulity, which converts his essays into memoirs, and renders them both entertaining and instructive, gives us a minute description of his own personal appearance. "My face," says he, "is not puffed but full, and my complexion is between jovial and melancholic, moderately sanguine and hot, unde rigent setis mihi crura et pectora villis.' My hands are so clumsy, that I cannot so much as write so as to read it myself, and I do not read much better than I write. I cannot handsomely fold up a letter, neither could I ever make a pen." He proceeds after some further details to mention with his usual self-complacency two instances, in which he had received "rare and singular favours from those, who had no manner of knowledge of him, upon the mere credit of his person and of the air of his face." The first was, when a partizan officer, who had surprised his castle and him in it, was induced to forego his intention of plundering it, " on account of his countenance, and the liberty and boldness of his speech, which made him unworthy of such mischance;" and the second, when another officer, who had plundered him and divided his property among his followers, was induced for the same reason to collect it again, and to return it to him uninjured. If a handsome face could produce such effects upon the savage warriors of France, during the animosities of civil warfare, we cannot be surprised at finding that it produced effects equally powerful upon the milder spirits of our own country in time of peace. To say nothing of the Gavestones, the Despensers, the Carrs, and the Buckinghams, the weak minions of weaker princes, it led Henry the Eighth to heap honours and employments upon the witty and fascinating Wyatt, and his daughter Elizabeth to promote Christopher Hatton, who was no lawyer, to the woolsack, and to send Philip Sidney, whilst yet a stripling, in the honourable character of her representative, to Vienna. Lord Herbert of Cherbury, who was one of the first public ministers of his age, owed his elevation in some degree to a happy concatenation, not of circumstances, but of features. According to Granger, who has hit off his character with more than usual felicity, it is hard to say whether his person, his understanding, or his courage were the most extraordinary. Donne, the quaint and rugged Donne, obtained his preferment in the church by the comeliness of his aspect and the elegant smoothness of his manners. The niece of Lord Chancellor Ellesmere, in whose house he lived as chaplain, fell in love with him, and, regardless of her "pride of place," left her family, and married him. Í should conceive that Jack Donne had been vain of his person in his youth, from a curious vagary that seized on Dr. Donne a few months before his death. In a fit of sickness, by which he was much emaciated, he caused

* The biography, prefixed to the early editions of Ronsard's works, contains the following sarcastic account of this transformation.-" Ronsard, considerant, qu'il étoit malaisé avec le vice d'oreilles de s'avancer à la cour, et d'y être agreable, où l'entretien et les discours sont plus necessaires que la vertu, et où il faut plutot être muet que sourd, pensa de transferer l'office des oreilles à celle des yeux par la lecture des bons livres."

himself to be wrapped up in a sheet, which was gathered over his head like a shroud, and, having closed his eyes, had his portrait taken in that deathlike habit, for the purpose, as he alleged, of reminding him of his mortality when he recovered. The personal qualities of Waller stood him in equal stead; and by enabling him to contract a prosperous marriage, added as niuch to his fortune, as his poetical qualities did to his fame. Sir Kenelm Digby, who was the friend of all the witty and fair personages who flourished in the reign of the first Charles, was esteemed such a just model of manly beauty, that one of the princes of Italy, who had no child, was so complaisant as to let his consort intrigue with him, in the hope of having an heir born to him of an appearance equally noble and commanding. Colonel Lovelace, the only poet of feeling-Suckling and Denham are poets of art-of whom the Cavaliers could boast during all their struggle in behalf of the absolute king, was, whilst at Oxford, the admired of all beholders. His mistress, Lucy Sacheverell," the divine Althea," who was scarcely more beautiful than her accomplished suitor, was utterly unworthy of him ;-for, upon hearing a report that he was dead of a wound, which he received in the service of the King of France before Dunkirk, she precipitately married one of his rivals, without staying to inquire whether it was true or not. The surpassing beauty of Milton's countenance acquired for him at Cambridge the title of "the Lady of his College," and gave the Marquis of Manso, who had the singular good fortune of being praised, loved, and honoured by his muse, as well as by that of Tasso, an opportunity of turning into a compliment to him, the jingling compliment which Gregory the Great had formerly paid to the comeliness of our Saxon ancestors :

"Ut mens, forma, decor, facies, mos, si pietas sic,

Non Anglus, verùm herclè Angelus ipse fores."

The romantic story of the Italian lady, who became violently enamoured of him, from seeing him asleep under a tree, though a palpable fiction, is a tribute which credulity is still proud of paying to the superiority of his personal charms. Sir Matthew Hale, whose incorruptible integrity in the worst of times, renders him worthy to be placed by the side of the independent and patriotic Milton, was a man, in whose person strength of limb and beauty of feature were exquisitely combined. He was, however, such a sloven in dress, that he was once seized, and would have been carried away by a press-gang, if a gentleman, who knew him, had not rescued him from their tender mercies, by giving them notice who he was. Sir Charles Sedley, whose conduct was as profligate as that of Milton and of Hale was correct and virtuous, was a handsome man, though somewhat inclined to corpulency. Kynaston, the actor, was very like him, and so proud of the resemblance, that he got a suit of clothes made after the same pattern, and appeared in it in public. This circumstance annoyed Sir Charles so much, that he took very summary means to cure the actor of his vanity. A bully was hired to accost Kynaston, as Sir C. Sedley, in the Park, and to give him under that character a very sound drubbing for some insulting message which he was to pretend that he had received from him. In vain did Kynaston, when attacked, protest that he was not the person he was taken for; the more he protested, the harder were the blows laid on, as a punishment for his endeavouring to escape chastisement by an impudent falsehood. The story, on getting wind, covered the belaboured actor with so much ridicule, that he stripped himself forthwith of his feathers, and never ventured to strut abroad again in the obnoxious suit. He was wise enough, however, to allow the outrage to pass unnoticed; for what chance of redress could a poor actor have against a rich and influential courtier when Scroggs was on the bench, who was himself indicted for an assault and riot after he was elevated to it? The times, thank God, are now altered, and the performance of a similar frolic,-for so it was then called,-would at present disqualify the performer for the society of gentlemen, and consign him to the

careful custody of the Marshal of the King's Bench. It was, however, no uncommon incident in the days of the second Charles. Lord Rochester, not content with giving to Dryden, who in his youth was a handsome man and of a pleasing countenance, though he afterwards became corpulent and florid, the nickname of Poet Squob, hired sundry ruffians to give him a good beating, as he returned home in the evening from the theatre in Drury-lane. They executed their commission in Cross-street, and so well, that a Crossstreet salutation became for a time synonimous with a sound cudgelling. With the exception of Rowe and Savage, Dryden is the last of our eminent poets, for I meddle not with the genus irritabile of the present day-who can lay claim to personal beauty. Pope and Swift, and Johnson and Goldsmith, and Churchill and Shenstone, and all the disciples of that school, were men of awkward and ungainly shape, and of coarse and homely features; and though they may figure in another compartment of my cabinet, inust not be allowed to introduce their faces into this. Moliere, however, must be admitted into it, if upon no other authority, at least upon that of an actress of his troop,-no indifferent judge, by the by, on such a subject,who describes him as a handsome man, neither too fat, nor too lean, "with a noble carriage and a fine leg." Our own philosophic writers, with the exception of Lord Bolingbroke, who had an exterior eminently seductive, have destroyed their claim to the title of good-looking, by an ugly habit which they contracted in early life of studying deeply and thinking intensely. The French philosophers have for the most part been more fortunate in this respect than our own. Two instances will prove it as well as a thousand. The president Montesquieu, to the close of his life, was as much admired by the fair for the symmetry of his person, as by the grave for the truth, penetration, and terseness of his political aphorisms, whilst Helvetius owed a constant succession of bonnes fortunes to the perfect regularity of his figure, and to the gentleness and benevolence which shone in his features. A beautiful actress, of the name of Gaussin, evinced her admiration of him in a very pointed manner, by the reply which she gave to one of her admirers in the saloon of the Comedie Française. Having no other means of seduction but his riches, the fellow offered her six hundred louis-d'ors for her consent to his proposals. She instantly rejected them, adding in a tone loud enough to be overheard by all the bystanders, "Sir, I will give you twelve hundred, if you will only bring me a countenance like that of M. Helvetius."

But it is time that I should bring this rambling, disjointed, and gossiping article to a close; and, as I have now gone through my list of beautiful countenances and graceful forms, the sooner I withdraw myself from the presence of my reader, the more kindly will he be inclined to judge of my efforts to entertain him. A large collection of ugly faces,—“ vile casks containing excellent wine," are still expecting commemoration from my pen. At another time their expectations may perhaps be gratified; but, at present, Discretion commands me to be silent, and leaves me no choice but to obey her behests. I retire therefore from the scene, and leave my place in it to be filled by more learned and experienced actors. "Claudo jam rivos, pueri;— sat prata biberunt." N. S.

THE WISH.

OH, it is not on lip or brow

On which you may read change; But it is in the heart below

That much of new and strange Lies hidden. Woe the hour betide

That ever they had aught to hide!

My step is in the lighted hall,
Roses are round my hair,
And my laugh rings as if of all
I were the gayest there;
And tell me, if 'mid these around,
Lighter word or smile be found.
But come not on my solitude,
Mine after-hour of gloom,
When silent lip and sullen brow
Contrast the light and bloom,
Which seem'd a short while past to be
As if they were a part of me.

As the red wreaths that bind my hair
Are artificial flowers,

Made for, and only meant to wear
When amid festal hours:

Just so the smiles that round me play
Are false,' and flung aside, as they.
And when the reckless crowd among
I speak of one sweet art,

How lightly can I name the song,
Which yet has wrung my heart!
That lute and heart alike have chords
Not to be spoken of in words—

Or spoken but when the dew goes
On its sweet pilgrimage,

Or when its ray the moonbeam throws
Upon the lighted page,

On which the burning heart has pour'd The treasures of its secret hoard.

These are the poet's hours! oh! these,— Secret, and still, and deep

The hot noon lull'd by singing bees

Or the blue midnight's sleep.

When odour, wind, and star, and flower

Are ruling, is the poet's hour.

But ill betide the time when he
Shall wish to hear his song
Borne from its own sweet secrecy
On words of praise along:

Alas for fame! 'tis as the sun

That withers what it shines upon.

My lute is but a humble lute,

Yet o'er it have been thrown

Those laurel leaves, that well might suit

With one of loftier tone.

And yet is there one chord appears

Unwet with sad and secret tears?

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