THE LOVES OF THE POETS. So interesting a subject ought not to be hastily dismissed; we are therefore induced to resume it. Some poets, with all their genius and accomplishments, have failed in point of attraction, and have not made the desired impression on the objects of their regard; while others, who have drawn their mistresses within the circle of their fascinations, have not been so happy as they expected to become, and have perhaps wished, when it was too late, that they had never made any impression on the hearts of the fair seducers. "It must be confessed (says Mrs. Jamieson) that the aspiring loves of some of our poets have not proved auspicious even when successful. Dryden married lady Elizabeth Howard, the daughter of the earl of Berkshire; but not all the blood of all the Howards' could make her either wise or amiable: he had [would] better have married a milkmaid. She was weak in intellect, and violent in temper. Sir Walter Scott observes, very feelingly, that the wife of one who is to gain his livelihood by poetry, or by any labor (if any there be) equally exhausting, must either have taste enough to relish her husband's performances, or good nature sufficient to pardon his infirmities.' It was Dryden's misfortune that lady Elizabeth had neither one nor the other. "Of all our really great poets, Dryden is the one least indebted to woman, and to whom, in return, women are least indebted; he is almost devoid of sentiment in the true meaning of the word: his idea of the female character was low; his homage to beauty was not of that kind which beauty should be proud to receive. When he attempted the praise of women, it was in a strain of fulsome, far-fetched, labored adulation, which betrayed his insincerity; but his genius was at home when we were the subjects of licentious tales and coarse satire. "It was through this inherent want of refinement and of true respect for our sex, that he deformed Boccaccio's lovely tale of Gismunda; and, as the Italian novelist has sins enough of his own to answer for, Dryden might have left him the beauties of this tender story, unsullied by the profane coarseness of his own taste. In his tragedies, his heroines on stilts, and his drawcansir heroes, whine, rant, strut and rage, and tear passion to tatters-to very rags; but love, such as it exists in gentle, pure, unselfish bosoms - love, such as it glows in the pages of Shakspeare and Spenser, Petrarch and Tassosuch love As doth become mortality he could not imagine or appreciate, far "Dryden was the original of the famous repartee, to be found, I believe, in every jest-book. Shortly after his marriage, lady Elizabeth, being rather annoyed at her husband's very studious habits, wished herself a book, that she might have a little more of his attention. · Yes, my dear,' replied Dryden, an almanac. Why an almanac ?' asked the wife, innocently..- Because then, my dear, I should change you once a year.' The laugh, of course, is on the side of the wit; but lady Elizabeth was a young spoiled beauty of rank, married to a man she loved; and her wish was very feminine and natural; if it was spoken with petulance and bitterness, it deserved the repartee; if with tenderness and playfulness, the wit of the reply can scarcely excuse its ill-nature. "Addison married the countess of Warwick. Poor man! I believe his patrician bride did every thing but beat him. His courtship had been long, timid, and anxious; and at length the lady was persuaded to marry him, on terms much like those on which a Turkish princess is espoused, to whom the sultan is reported to pronounce, 'Daughter, I give thee this man to be thy slave.' They were only three years married, and those were years of bitterness. 66 Young, the author of the NightThoughts, married lady Elizabeth Lee, daughter of the earl of Lichfield, and grand-daughter of the too famous, or more properly infamous, duchess of Cleveland;-the marriage was not a happy one. I think, however, in the two last instances, the ladies were not entirely to blame." The lady's remarks on poetical bachelors are both pertinent and amusing. "There is a certain class of poets, not a very numerous one, whom I would call poetical old bachelors. They are such as enjoy a certain degree of fame and popularity themselves, without sharing their celebrity with any fair piece of excellence, but walk each on his solitary path to glory, wearing their lonely honors with more dignity than grace; for instance, Corneille, Racine, Boileau, the classical names of French poetry, were all poetical old bachelors. Racinele tendre Racine-as he is called par excellence, is said never to have been in love in his life; nor has he left us a single verse in which any of his personal feelings can be traced. He was, however, the kind and faithful husband of a cold, bigoted woman, who was persuaded, and at length persuaded him, that he would be grille in the other world, for writing heathen tragedies in this, and made it her boast that she had never read a single line of her husband's works! Peace be with her! Oh, let not her by whom the muse was scorn'd, "Our own Gray was in every sense, real and poetical, a cold, fastidious, old bachelor, who buried himself in the recesses of his college; at once shy and proud, sensitive and selfish. I cannot, on looking through his memoirs, letters, and poems, discover the slightest trace of passion, or one proof or even indication that he was ever under the influence of woman. He loved his mother, and was dutiful to two tiresome old aunts, who thought poetry one of the seven deadly sins-et voilà tout. He spent his life in amassing an inconceivable quantity of knowlege, which lay as buried and useless as a miser's treasure; but with this difference, that, when the miser dies, his wealth flows forth into its natural channels, and enriches others; Gray's learning was entombed with him; his genius survives in his elegy and his odes; what became of his heart I know not. He is generally supposed to have possessed one, though none can guess what he did with it; he might well moralise on his bachelorship, and call himself' a solistary fly.' Thy joys no glitt'ring female meets ; Collins was never a lover, and never married. His odes, with all their exquisite fancy and splendid imagery, have not much interest in their subjects, and no pathos derived from feeling or passion. He is reported to have been once in love; and, as the lady was a day older than himself, he used to say jestingly, that he came into the world a day after the fair.' He was not deeply smitten; and though he led in his early years a dissipated life, his heart never seems to have been really touched. He wrote an ode on the passions, in which, after dwelling on hope, fear, anger, despair, pity, and describing them with many picturesque circumstances, he dismisses love with a couple of lines, as dancing to the sound of the sprightly viol, and forming with joy the light fantastic round. Such was Collins' idea of love! "To these we may add Goldsmith. Of his loves we know nothing; they were probably the reverse of poetical, and may have had some influence on his purse and respectability, but none on his literary character and productions. He also died unmarried. "Shenstone, if he was not a poetical old bachelor, was little better than a poetical dangler. He was not formed to captivate; his person was clumsy, his manners disagreeable, and his temper feeble and vacillating. The Delia who is introduced into his elegies, and the Phillis of his pastoral ballad, was Charlotte Graves, sister to the Graves, who wrote the Spiritual Quixote. There was nothing warm or earnest in his admiration, and all his gallantry is as vapid as his character. He never gave the lady who was supposed, and supposed herself, to be the object of his serious pursuit, an opportunity of accepting or rejecting him; and his conduct has been blamed as ambiguous and unmanly. His querulous declamations against women in general had neither cause nor excuse, and his complaints of infidelity and coldness are equally without foundation. He died unmarried. "When we look at a picture of Thomson, we wonder how a man with that heavy pampered countenance, and awkward mien, could ever have written the Seasons, or have been in love. I think it is Barry Cornwall, who says strikingly, that Thomson's figure was a personification of the Castle of Indolence, without its romance.' Yet Thomson, though he has not given any popularity or interest to the name of a woman, is said to have been twice in love, after his own lack-a-daisical fashion. He was first attached to Miss Stanley, who died young, and upon whom he wrote the little elegy Tell me, thou soul of her I love, &c. assertion, or of sympathising in the dull invectives and monotonous lamentations of the slighted lover. "Thus the six poets, who, in the history of our literature, fill up the period which intervened between the death of He alludes to her also in Summer, in the Pope and the first publications of passage beginning— Burns and Cowper, all died old ba chelors!" THE DIARY AND CORRESPONDENCE OF Humphreys. And art thou, Stanley, of the sacred band, &c. "His second love was long, quiet, andconstant; but whether the lady's coldness, or want of fortune, prevented an union, is not clear; probably the latter. edited by his Great-Grandson, Mr. J. D. The object of this attachment was a Miss Young, who resided at Richmond; and his attentions to her were continued through a long series of years, and even till within a short time before his death, in his forty-eighth year. She was his Amanda; and, if she at all answered the description of her in his Spring, she must have been a lovely and amiable woman; and, if his attachment to her suggested that beautiful description of domestic happiness with which his Spring concludes, who would not grieve at the destiny which denied to Thomson pleasures he could so eloquently describe, and so feelingly appreciate? "Truth, however, obliges me to add one little trait. A lady who did not know Thomson personally, but was enchanted with his Seasons, said she could gather from his works three parts of his character; that he was an amiable lover, an 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 shrank from cold water like a cat; and whose habits were those of a goodnatured bon-vivant, who indulged himself in every possible luxury that could be obtained without trouble! He also died unmarried. "Hammond, the favorite 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, bedchamber-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 AMONG the dissenting ministers of the last century, Dr. Doddridge rose to preeminent distinction. His talents were considerable, his learning respectable; his disposition was frank and friendly; he was a man of integrity and virtue, pious without bigotry, and correct in his morals, without puritanical precision or sectarian formality. The portion of correspondence now published extends only to the writer's twenty-seventh year, and contains little of the grave matters and graver discussions which the reader might anticipate from so venerable a name as that of Doddridge. The topics are chiefly relative to matters of personal interest, to the course of his education, the subjects of his lighter readings, the affairs of his friends, the state of his feelings and affections, and his solitude in an obscure village. He was not yet in conflict with much of the important business of life. In a subsequent portion, we shall find him in correspondence with all the more influential of his own class, and with many of the distinguished personages of the day, appealed to as authority, and respected as a sage and a saint; but with this we have nothing at present to do. If the reader be disappointed by lack of incidents, or the absence of weighty topics, his attention will be amply repaid by the truth and nature which reign through the whole of the communications. The youth writes with warmth and vivacity, free from all affectation, and unrestrained by any mistrust. He has no misgivings, no apprehension of misconstruction, in the midst of what has occasionally an air of levity. Light-hearted and unsophisticated, he indulges his natural gaiety and turn for humor, and gives expression to the promptings of a playful fancy, in a tone of innocent badinage, that appears to be perfectly guileless. Among the more liberal class of dis senters, Doddridge was born and bred; and piety and principle were among the first feelings excited and confirmed in him. His grandfather had been ejected from the living of Shepperton by the act of uniformity; and his father, a man engaged in mercantile pursuits in London, married the only daughter of a German, who had fled from Prague to escape the persecution which raged in Bohemia. The family connection was thus on both sides of the same character. The religious principles instilled into his mind at home were confirmed by the instructions of Mr. Mayo; and, when he had been sent after the death of both his parents to a school at St. Alban's, he was introduced to the notice and regard of Mr. Samuel Clark, the pastor of a nonconformist meeting-house in that town; and into that minister's congregation, according to the custom of those days and of the party, after due preparation, he was solemnly admitted a member, in his sixteenth year. While at this school, his piety and benevolence were early conspicuous; when only fourteen, though still mingling eagerly in the amusements of his age, he was, for the most part, quite a little man, methodising his time, and keeping exact accounts of the disposal of it. He assisted his school-fellows, selecting those especially who, he knew, had not the same advantages as himself, and visited the neighbouring cottages, reading the Bible to the inmates, and expending his pocketmoney for the relief of their necessities. At this period the desire of devoting himself to the ministry became the settled purpose of his soul, and he accordingly set himself (for he needed no prompting) to a more diligent study of Greek and Latin, wrote commentaries on portions of Scripture night and morning, and made abstracts of the sermons he heard, and occasional reflections on them. Scarcely, however, had he entered upon this course of preparation, when it was suddenly broken in upon by the failure of his guardian, in whose bankruptcy was involved, and utterly wrecked, the whole of the family property. In this ruin of his fortunes, he took refuge with his sister at Hampstead, where his thoughts were necessarily turned toward the means of future subsistence. While thus in anxious suspense, the duchess of Bedford offered to place him at either of the universities, if he would adopt the church as his future profession. This offer he declined on the ground of subscription, to which he already felt he could never bring himself to accede. The ministry, however, was still the first object of his wishes, and his hope of assistance for the accomplishment of it naturally rested upon the dissenters. An appeal was accordingly made to Dr. Edmund Calamy, from whom he met with nothing but a cold repulse, and advice to turn his attention to some other pursuit. As he was thus checked in the attainment of his wishes, the law seemed his only resource, and, through the recommendation of a friend of the family, an advantageous proposal was made to him in a solicitor's office, with which he was on the point of closing, when he received a letter from Mr. Clark, with a frank offer to take him under his own care. After living with that minister for a few months, he was placed, in 1719, at an academy established at Kibworth, in Leicestershire, a leading place of edu cation among dissenters, ably conducted by Mr. Jennings. Here were nearly three years spent by the youth in the diligent prosecution of his studies, under the friendly guidance of a man of no common attainments, in the simple society of his tutor's family, and a few fellow-students of the same class and the same views, apart from all that could distract or corrupt. Mr. Clark, though in narrow circumstances, undertook the discharge of his expenses; and the influence of his tutor occasionally obtained him a guinea or two, for books, from dissenting societies and private friends; and sometimes came a trifle from lady Jane Russell, to whom at stated seasons he paid formal visits, and with whom, in the subsequent part of his life, he kept up a frequent and confidential intercourse by letters. During his residence at Kibworth be gins the correspondence, which is con tinued with one or other of his friends so uninterruptedly, that it presents a full account of his fortunes and course of life for ten years, the period of his final removal to Northampton, where he set tled as the pastor of that congregation, and the principal of the dissenting academy. The correspondence from Kib worth is addressed chiefly to Mr. Clark, and a sister of that gentleman, and occasionally to his own sister, and two or three other ladies. The letters to Mr. Clark are descriptive of his studies and readings. His opinions of the books he was perusing, though at so early an age, are marked by sound judgement, and by that liberality of sentiment which characterised him through life. His letters to his sister are full, as occasion called forth his feelings, of affectionate sympathy or playful complaint, while those which are addressed to his fair friends testify the warmth of his affections and the kindness of his nature, and exhibit him in the most amiable and attractive light, with a pleasing degree of gaiety and liveliness. Of this gaiety the reader shall have some specimens. He is addressing the lady whom he calls Mamma, and whom he expects shortly to visit at Bethnal-green, and, being perplexed on some points, asks her advice. "I never walked with a lady but I am frequently at a loss to know whether I ought to go before or after her. I think, according to the rules of nature and philosophy, a man should lead the way. But there is one terrible objection against this that I cannot surmount, and that is, that, when a lady is going down stairs, the petticoat, emphatically so called, may discover charms it was perhaps her intention to conceal; and I'must frankly confess, that, though I look upon good breeding as a very valuable accomplishment, yet I consider modesty as a quality of more importance, so that, to answer my own question, I would rather transgress the laws of etiquette than encounter so seductive a temptation, which I blush to own I might not always resist with the philosophy of St. Augustine. In the next place, madam, I would seriously know how far kissing is in fashion, and whether, when a young man is just come out of the country, he is actually obliged to kiss all his female acquaintance, or whether that ceremony be confined only to the nearest relations, as mothers, aunts, and sisters." To a lady whom he calls his aunt, he says, "Your rules of behaviour are certainly very judicious. But the business of kissing wants a little farther explanation. You tell me, the ladies have resigned their claim to formal kisses at the beginning and end of visits. But I sup VOL. X. pose they still allow extemporary kissing, which you know a man may be led into by a thousand circumstances which he does not foresee. I cannot persuade myself that this pretty amusement is entirely banished out of the polite world, because, as the apostle says in another case, even nature itself teaches it. I would not for the world be so unmannerly as to ask my aunt, whether she has not been kissed within this fortnight: but I hope I may rely on her advice, and that she will not deceive me in a matter of such vast importance. For my own part, I can safely say, I look upon this, as well as the other enjoyments of life, with a becoming moderation and indif ference. Perhaps, madam, I could give you such instances of my abstinence as would make your hair stand on end! I will assure you, aunt, which is a most amazing thing, I have not kissed a woman since Monday, July 10th, 1721, about twelve o'clock at night; and yet I have had strong temptations both from within and from without. I have just been drinking tea with a very pretty lady, who is about my own age. Her temper and conversation are perfectly agreeable to mine, and we have had her in the house about five weeks. My own conscience upbraids me with a neglect of a thousand precious opportunities that may never return. But then I consider, that it may be a prejudice to my future usefulness, and help me into farther irregu larities (not to say, that she has never discovered any inclination of that nature), and so I refrain. But to-morrow I am to wait upon her to a village about a mile and a half from Kibworth, and I am sensible it will be a trying time. How. ever, I shall endeavour to fortify my mind against the temptations of the way by a very careful perusal of your letter." In the following epistle, he indulges in a fine yein of compliment.-" You see, madam, I treat you with rustic sim plicity, and perhaps talk more like an uncle than a nephew. But I think it is a necessary truth, that ought not to be concealed, because it may possibly disoblige. In short, madam, I will tell you roundly, that, if a lady of your character cannot bear to hear a word in her own commendation, she must rather resolve to go out of the world, or not attend to any thing that is said in it. And if you are determined to indulge this unaccount 3 x |