AMERICAN QUARTERLY REVIEW. No. XIII. MARCH, 1830. ART. I.-The Loves of the Poets. By the Author of the "Diary of an Ennuyée." 2 vols. London: 1829. It was a fine idea of the Ancients, that the mind resembles the eye, capable of discerning every object around it, yet remaining invisible to itself. With a few shining exceptions, mankind are denied the faculty to turn thought inwards; and the individual not privileged beyond the ordinary lot, who by this means. would investigate his own nature, must fail in the attempt. Fortunately, however, this inability may be obviated by the exercise of powers granted in common to all: as in the above simile, the eye is impressed from the exterior world, with the image and structure of organs resembling itself, in like manner we may become acquainted with our own mental texture and capacity, from observing the phenomena of thought in others. The most pleasant mode known to us, of conducting this inquiry, is to select a single master passion, and watch its effects on the various temperaments and dispositions subjected to its influence; to detect it in a thousand disguises, conflicting, perhaps, with impulses the most opposite; and frequently displaying results as essentially different as happiness and misery. Modern novel writers derive the interest of their romances from this source. We have prefixed to this article, the name of a work by the authoress of the Diary of an Ennuyée, which contains an exhibition of this nature, though on a limited scale, and without the aid of fiction. We must be permitted, however, at the very outset, to find fault with the title. "The Loves of the Poets" conveys an impression of effeminacy, which is foreign to the graceful dignity pervading her volumes. We proceed, in our author's language, to unfold the design of her "Sketches." "They are absolutely without any other pretension than that of exhibiting in a small compass, and under one point of view, many anecdotes of biography and criticism, and many beautiful poetical portraits, scattered through a variety of works, and all tending to illustrate a subject in itself full of interest ;-the influence which the beauty and virtue of women have exercised over the characters and writings of men of genius." Poetry has been so long consecrated to the service of love, its incense so uniformly sacred to the God, that we naturally consider the recipients of bright eye'd Fancy, as oracles in all that relates to the passion. Yet Poets themselves, even in the plenitude of inspiration, have never surpassed Rochefoucauld's admirable definition: cold and penetrating, in a few lines he has exposed the very elements of the mystery. "Il est difficile de définir l'amour: ce qu'on en peut dire est que, dans l'ame, c'est une passion de regner; dans les esprits, c'est une sympathie; et dans le corps, ce n'est qu'une envie cachée et délicate de posséder ce que l'on aime, apres beaucoup de mysteres." Perhaps a superior being, in his distant paradise, might reasonably question the value of that feeling, which derives its character of joy or grief from the will of a fellow-creature: yet were the same being to view more closely the nature of our happiness, which cannot exist without an attendant alloy, he would concede, that although through the impulse of love, we become more dependent, and of course individually weaker, we are recompensed in the mere article of power, by its tendency to knit society together. Without doubt, if we except the exquisite delight which at times will come over the mind on a new perception of abstract truth, but few things in this world can be more pleasant than a passion of this kind, undefiled and unreproved. Our author devotes but a few pages to the ancient Bards of Greece and Rome: she pleads her womanly exemption from the painful research which a history of their attachments would require, and after adducing two instances of their delinquency as lovers, accuses them in the following strain: "The passion they celebrated never seems to have inspired one ennobling or generous sentiment, nor to have lifted them for one moment above the grossest They had no scruple in exhibiting their mistresses to our eyes, as doubtless they appeared in their own, degraded by every vice, and in every sense contemptible; beings, not only beyond the pale of our sympathy, but of our toAraton Targhout their works, virtue appears a mere jest. Love, stript of Es dristy, even by those who first deified him, is what we disdain to call by that name, sentiment, as we now understand the word, that is, the union of fervert love with delicacy towards its object, a thing unknown and unheard of, and an is of the earth, earthy." This is rather a sweeping denunciation, and like most other such, is not sustained by truth. We do not deny that Ovid may have beaten his mistress; and Cynthia, when overcome with liquor, thrown the cups at the head of Propertius; and, to say the least, such conduct was very unceremonious: but a more minute investigation would have apprized our author of "one" or even two "ennobling sentiments" of the classic Poets, which attest. the influence of women. We doubt that the whole range of subsequent verse has any thing of the amatory kind to compare with the Invocation to Venus, by Lucretius, in his superb poem De Rerum Natura. But as our author has taken sanctuary in her feminine privilege, and atones for this heterodoxy by many correct views, it would be ungallant to dwell upon it longer. The period of the troubadours, whence she enters fully upon. her design, together with the centuries immediately anterior, and those subsequent, form a deeply interesting epoch; as illustrating the agencies employed by a Supreme Power, when it becomes necessary to regenerate nations. From the 6th to the 12th centuries, a great portion of Europe presents but a succession of discordant and barbarous scenes. The feudal system, although beneficial to a crude association of mankind, became, after a few generations, replete with mischief. Each petty district, forming a distinct community, had an interest unnatural and separate from the surrounding mass; outrage and ignorance were the well known results. Yet throughout this saturnalia of evil passion, we may observe signal events tending to reclaim mankind, and nourish the germs of public and domestic improvement. It is true, that in some instances these lucid intervals were soon succeeded by frenzy, and their effects apparently merged; yet were they unquestionable and propitious. Who may tell how much more tempestuous the dark ages might have proved, had not the liberal genius and empire of Charlemagne been erected as a great landmark in the midst of the tumult? The rise and cultivation of the Provençal poetry, deserves to be considered as an event co-operative with the crusades, in giving a new aspect to human life, and preparing men for the discoveries of succeeding ages. By the crusades, a new channel was opened to those unquiet energies which before had expended themselves in domestic quarrel: le Gai Science modified and softened the energies themselves. Men insensibly lost their bitter feelings, when instead of brooding in their castles over some ancestral feud or personal enmity, they were absorbed in dreams. of womanly fascination. Nor was this renovation of moral feeling confined to the stronger sex;-the female character acquired intrinsic dignity with its increase of power; and though we may smile at the excessive reverence at first paid to it, and be disgusted with the absurdities of the courts of Love, we should recollect that the effervescence was natural and healthy; it was as if a new impulse had been given to a turbulent river; the element for a while disdained its limit, but gradually subsided to the just height and level. The succeeding extract from our author, is characteristic of this period. : "The extravagance of passion, and boundless devotion to the fair sex, which the troubadours sung in their lays, they not unfrequently illustrated by their actions and while the knowledge of the first is confined to a few antiquarians, the latter still survive in the history and the traditions of their province. One of these, Guillaume de la Tour, having lost the object of his love, underwent during a whole year, the most cruel and unheard of penances, in the hope that heaven might be won to perform a miracle in his favour, and restore her to his arms; at length he died broken-hearted upon her tomb. Another, beloved by a certain princess, in some unfortunate moment breaks his vow of fidelity, and unable to appease the indignation of his mistress, he retires to a forest, builds himself a cabin of boughs, and turns hermit, having first made a solemn vow, that he will never leave his solitude, till he is received into favour by his offended love. Being one of the most celebrated and popular troubadours of his province, all the knights and the ladies sympathise with his misfortunes: they find themselves terribly ennuyés in the absence of the poet who was accustomed to vaunt their charms and their deeds of prowess; at length, at the end of two years, they send a deputation, intreating him to return,-but in vain: they then address themselves to the lady, and humbly solicit the pardon of the offender, whose disgrace in her sight, has thrown a whole province into mourning. The princess at length relents, but upon conditions which appear, in these unromantic times, equally extraordinary and difficult to fulfil. She requires that a hundred brave knights, and a hundred fair dames, pledged in love to each other, should appear before her on their knees, and with joined hands supplicate for mercy. The conditions are fulfilled. The fifty pair of lovers are found to go through the ceremony, and the troubadour receives his pardon." Our author has, we think, erred in ascribing too much refinement and delicacy to this æra. Men enslaved by superstition and ignorance, were incapable of any continued elevation of thought it will be rarely found, that the expression of an enthusiastic moment, is a safe criterion by which to judge of real character. It was, indeed, no common influence which could elicit so much harmony from the discordant elements then abounding in the world; and we conceive it is only under this view, that the poetry of the troubadours merits a perusal. It is a curious and faded relic, betraying a peculiar origin, but deprived of its former miraculous energy. When the earlier troubadours had sung the pains of separation from the object of adoration, or the misery induced by even the thought of her displeasure, when they had alluded to the music of her voice, the grace of her person, with some other minutiae of passion, they exhausted the resources of their inspiration. Imagination had been too long torpid to revive immediately, and their effusions were echoed again and again, with scarcely a new thought to redeem the monotony of the strain. There were, nevertheless, a few exceptions to this mediocrity, among whom Bertrand de Born, viscount of Hautfort, stands pre-eminent. We cannot coincide with our author in believing, that "in these days he would have been another Lord Byron;" but he was certainly a fine example of the accomplished troubadour. His life, indicative of the age, passed in outrage and rapine, and in one instance was narrowly preserved from a shameful, and rather "unromantic" termination. He had been closely connected in friendship with Prince Henry, and instigated the rebellion of that prince, with his brother Richard, against their father Henry II. of England. After the suppression of the revolt, and the death of Prince Henry, Bertrand was made prisoner by the king; who, when on the point of ordering his execution, asked him if reason had not forsaken him,-"alas, it has, sire, since the death of your son Prince Henry." The parent recognised the appeal, and in the name of his dead son, awarded the criminal his life and former possessions." In each new war that he entered into," says Sismondi, "de Born animated his soldiers, encouraged his allies, and sustained his own hopes, by breathing out the passions which excited him to the contest in a sirvente." One of these warlike effusions is so finely rendered by the French author, that we will give his own text. "Que me font, les jours heureux ou malheureux ? que me font les semaines ou les années ? en tout temps je veux perdre quiconque ose me nuire. Que d'autres embellissent, s'ils le veulent, leurs maisons ; qu'ils se procurent les commodités de la vie; mais, pour moi, rassembler des lances, des casques, des epées, des chevaux, sera l'unique objet de mes desirs. Je suis fatigué des avis qu'on veut me donner, et par Jesus, se ne sais auquel entendre: on m'appelle imprudent, si je refuse la paix ; mais si je voulais la faire, quel est celui, qui ne m'appellerait lâche ?" Geffrey de Rudel, and Bertram d'Alamanon, are among the troubadours who principally claim our author's admiration. The latter has left a ballad, which we admit contains one beautiful thought, thus translated into French by Millot,-esperer aupres d'elle vaut mieux que jouir avec tout autre.-Our author confesses the coincidence between this sentiment, and two lines of Petrarch; but to save her admired sonnetteer from the stigma of having copied. without acknowledgment, she exclaims,-"it is one of those thoughts which spring in the heart, and might often be repeated without once being borrowed." It also strongly calls to mind Shenstone's exquisite inscription; Heu quanto minus est cum reliquis versari, quam tui meminisse. With all its intrinsic inferiority, we would not insinuate any thing like contempt for the poetry of the troubadours. It forms the first step of that golden ladder which has since been extended to the very heavens. The leaders of society, unacquainted with the knowledge or fancy which might dignify a common theme, yet powerless to resist its incitement, lisped in numbers; and even their lisping commanded the admiration of the people, and a respect for the efforts, however feeble, of mind. The next chapter is devoted to Guido Cavalcanti, and Cino da Pistoia, friends and associates of Dante. The former has left some ballads and songs, but is at present better known through his connexion with the great Florentine, than by his writings. "The grand work," says our author, "on which his fame long |