excellent swimmer, and extremely abstemious. Savage, who knew the poet, could not help laughing at this picture of a man who scarcely knew what love was; who shrunk from cold water like a cat; and whose habits were those of a good-natured bon vivant, who indulged himself in every possible luxury, which could be attained without trouble! He also died unmarried. 66 Hammond, the favourite of our sentimental great-grandmothers, whose "Love Elegies" lay on the toilettes of the Harriet Byrons and Sophia Westerns of the last century, was an amiable youth, very melancholy and gentlemanlike,' who being appointed equerry to Prince Frederic, cast his eyes on Miss Dashwood, bed-chamber woman to the Princess, and she became his Delia. The lady was deaf to his pastoral strains; and though it has been said that she rejected him on account of the smallness of his fortune, I do not see the necessity of believing this assertion, or of sympathising in the dull invectives and monotonous lamentations of the slighted lover. Miss Dash wood never married, and was, I believe, one of the maids of honour to the late Queen. Thus the six poets, who, in the history of our literature, fill up the period which intervened between the death of Pope and the first publications of Burns and Cowper-all died old bachelors! 317 CHAPTER XVIII. FRENCH POETS. VOLTAIRE AND MADAME DU CHATELET. IF we take a rapid view of French literature, from the reign of Louis the Fourteenth, down to the Revolution, we are dazzled by the record of brilliant and celebrated women, who protected or cultivated letters, and obtained the homage of men of talent. There was Ninon; and there was Madame de Rambouillet; the one galante, the other precieuse. One had her St. Evremond; the other her Voiture. Madame de Sablière protected La Fontaine; Madame de Montespan protected Molière; Madame de Maintenon protected Racine. It was all patronage and protection on one side, and dependance and servility on the other. Then we have the intrigante Madame de Tencin ;* the good-natured, but rather bornée Madame de Géoffrin; the Duchesse de Maine, who held a little court of bel esprits and small poets at Sceaux, and is best known as the patroness of Mademoiselle de Launay. Madame d'Epinay, the amie of Grimm, and the patroness of Rousseau; the clever, selfish, witty, ever ennuyée, never ennuyeuse Madame du Deffand; the ardent, talented Mademoiselle de l'Espinasse, who would certainly have been a poetess, if she had not been a philosopheress and a Frenchwoman: Madame Neckar, the patroness of Marmontel and Thomas:-e tutt? quante. If we look over the light French literature of those times, we find an inconceivable heap of vers galans, and jolis couplets, licentious songs, pretty, well *Madame de Tencin used to call the men of letters she assembled at her house "mes bêtes," and her society went by the name of Madame de Tencin's ménagerie. Her advice to Marmontel, when a young man, was excellent. See his Memoirs, vol. i. turned compliments, and most graceful badinage; but we can discover the names of only two distinguished women, who have the slightest pretensions to a poetical celebrity, derived from the genius, the attachment, and the fame of their lovers. These were Madame du Châtelet, Voltaire's "Immortelle Emilie:" and Madame d'Houdetot, the Doris of Saint-Lambert. Gabrielle-Emilie le Tonnelier de Bréteuil, was the daughter of the Baron de Bréteuil, and born in 1706. At an early age she was taken from her convent, and married to the Marquis du Châtelet; and her life seems thenceforward to have been divided between two passions, or rather two pursuits rarely combined,-love, and geometry. Her tutor in both is said to have been the famous mathematician Clairaut; and between them they rendered geometry so much the fashion at one time, that all the women, who were distinguished either for rank or beauty, thought it indispensable to have a geometrician in their train. The "Poëtes de Société" hid for a while their di |