The Romance of Biography Volume II Part 24

CONCLUSION.

HEROINES OF MODERN POETRY.

Heureuse la Beaut que le pote adore!

Heureux le nom qu'il a chant!

DE LAMARTINE.

It will be allowed, I think, that women have reason to be satisfied with the rank they hold in modern poetry; and that the homage which has been addressed to them, either directly and individually, or paid indirectly and generally, in the beautiful characters and portraits drawn of them, ought to satisfy equally female sentiment and female vanity. From the half ethereal forms which float amid moonbeams and gems, and odours and flowers, along the dazzling pages of Lalla Rookh, down to Phoebe Dawson, in the Parish Register:[153] from that loveliest gem of polished life, the young Aurora of Lord Byron, down to Wordsworth's poor Margaret weeping in her deserted cottage;[154]--all the various aspects between these wide extremes of character and situation, under which we have been exhibited, have been, with few exceptions, just and favourable to our s.e.x.

In the literature of the cla.s.sical ages, we were debased into mere servants of pleasure, alternately the objects of loose incense or coa.r.s.e invective. In the poetry of the Gothic ages, we all rank as queens. In the succeeding period, when the platonic philosophy was oddly mixed up with the inst.i.tutions of chivalry, we were exalted into divinities;--"angels called, and angel-like adored." Then followed the age of French gallantry, tinged with cla.s.sical elegance, and tainted with cla.s.sical licence, when we were caressed, complimented, wooed and satirised by c.o.xcomb poets,

Who ever mix'd their song with light licentious toys.

There was much expenditure of wit and of talent, but in an ill cause;--for the feeling was, _au fond_, bad and false;--"et il n'est guere plaisant d'tre empoisonn, mme par l'esprit de rose."

In the present time a better spirit prevails. We are not indeed sublimated into G.o.ddesses; but neither is it the fashion to degrade us into the playthings of fopling poets. We seem to have found, at length, our proper level in poetry, as in society; and take the place a.s.signed to us as women--

As creatures not too bright or good, For human nature's daily food; For transient sorrows, simple wiles, Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears and smiles![155]

We are represented as ruling by our feminine attractions, moral or exterior, the pa.s.sions and imaginations of men; as claiming, by our weakness, our delicacy, our devotion,--their protection, their tenderness, and their grat.i.tude: and, since the minds of women have been more generally and highly cultivated; since a Madame de Stael, a Joanna Baillie, a Maria Edgeworth, and a hundred other names, now shining aloft like stars, have shed a reflected glory on the whole s.e.x they belong to, we possess through them, a claim to admiration and respect for our mental capabilities. We a.s.sume the right of pa.s.sing judgment on the poetical homage addressed to us, and our smiles alone can consecrate what our smiles first inspired.[156]

If we look over the ma.s.s of poetry produced during the last twenty-five years, whether Italian, French, German, or English, we shall find that the predominant feeling is honourable to women, and if not gallantry, is something better.[157] It is too true, that the incense has not been always perfectly pure. "Many light lays,--ah, woe is me there-fore!"[158] have sounded from one gifted lyre, which has since been strung to songs of patriotism and tenderness. Moore, whom I am proud, for a thousand reasons, to claim as my countryman, began his literary and amatory career, fresh from the study of the cla.s.sics, and the poets of Charles the Second's time; and too often through the thin undress of superficial refinement, we trace the grossness of his models.

It is said, I know not how truly, that he has since made the _amende honorable_. He has possibly discovered, that women of sense and sentiment, who have a true feeling of what is due to them as women, are not fitly addressed in the style of Anacreon and Catullus; have no sympathies with his equivocal Rosas, f.a.n.n.y, and Julias, and are not flattered by being a.s.sociated with tavern orgies and b.u.mpers of wine, and such "tipsey revelry." Into themes like these he has, it is true, infused a buoyant spirit of gaiety, a tone of sentiment, and touches of tender and moral feeling, which would reconcile us to them, if any thing could; as in the beautiful songs, "When time, who steals our years away,"--"O think not my spirits are always as light,"--"Farewell! but whenever you think on the hour,"--"The Legacy," and a hundred others.

But how many _more_ are there, in which the purity and earnestness of the feeling vie with the grace and delicacy of the expression! and in the difficult art (only to be appreciated by a singer) of marrying verse to sound, Moore was never excelled--never equalled--but by Burns. He seems to be gifted, as poet and musician, with a double instinct of harmony, peculiar to himself.

Barry Cornwall is another living poet who has drunk deep from the cla.s.sics and from our older writers; but with a finer taste and a better feeling, he has borrowed only what was decorative, graceful and accessory: the pure stream of his sentiment flows unmingled and untainted,--

Yet musical as when the waters run, Lapsing through sylvan haunts deliciously.[159]

It is not without reason that Barry Cornwall has been styled the "Poet of woman," _par excellence_. It enhances the value, it adds to the charm of every tender and beautiful pa.s.sage addressed to us, that we know them to be sincere and heartfelt,

Not fable bred, But such as truest poets love to write.

It is for the sake of _one_, beloved "beyond ambition and the light of song,"--and worthy to be so loved, that he approaches _all_ women with the most graceful, delicate, and reverential homage ever expressed in sweet poetry. His fancy is indeed so luxuriant, that he makes whatever he touches appear fanciful: but the beauty adorned by his verse, and adorning his home, is not imaginary; and though he has almost hidden his divinity behind a cloud of incense, she is not therefore less _real_.

The life Lord Byron led was not calculated to give him a good opinion of women, or to place before him the best virtues of our s.e.x. Of all modern poets, he has been the most generally popular among female readers; and he owes this enthusiasm not certainly to our obligations to _him_; for, as far as women are concerned, we may designate his works by a line borrowed from himself,--

With much to excite, there's little to exalt.

But who, like him, could administer to that "_besoin de sentir_" which I am afraid is an ingredient in the feminine character all over the world?

Lord Byron is really the Grand Turk of amatory poetry,--ardent in his love,--mean and merciless in his resentment: he could trace pa.s.sion in characters of fire, but his caustic satire burns and blisters where it falls. Lovely as are some of his female portraits, and inimitably beautiful as are some of his lyrical effusions, it must be confessed there is something very Oriental in all his feelings and ideas about women; he seems to require nothing of us but beauty and submission.

Please him--and he will crown you with the richest flowers of poetry, and heap the treasures of the universe at your feet, as trophies of his love; but once offend, and you are lost,--

There yawns the sack--and yonder rolls the sea!

Campbell, ever elegant and tender, has hymned us all into divinities; and through his sweet and varied page

Where love pursues an ever devious race, True to the winding lineaments of grace,

we figure under every beautiful aspect that truth and feeling could inspire, or poetry depict.

Sir Walter Scott ought to have lived in the age of chivalry, (if we could endure the thoughts of his living in any other age but our own!) so touched with the true antique spirit of generous devotion to our s.e.x are all his poetical portraits of women. I do not find that he has, like most other writers of the present day, mixed up his personal feelings and history with his poetry; or that any fair and distinguished object will be so thrice fortunate as to share his laurelled immortality. We must therefore treat him like Shakspeare, whom alone he resembles--and claim him for us all.

Then there is Rogers, whose compliments to us are so polished, so pointed, and so elegantly turned, and have such a drawing-room air, that they seem as if intended to be presented to d.u.c.h.esses, by beaux in white kid gloves. And there is Coleridge who approaches women with a sort of feeling half earthly, half heavenly, like that with which an Italian devotee bends before his Madonna--

And comes unto his courtship as his prayer.

And there is Southey, in whose imagination we are all heroines and queens; and Wordsworth, lost in the depths of his own tenderness!

The time is not yet arrived, when the loves of the living poets, or of those lately dead, can be discussed individually, or exhibited at full length. The subject is much too hazardous for a contemporary, and more particularly for a female to dwell upon. Such details belong properly to the next age, and there is no fear that these gossiping times will leave any thing a mystery for posterity. The next generation will be infinitely wiser on these interesting subjects than their grandmothers.

Yet a few years, and what is scandal and personality _now_, will _then_ be matter for biography and history. Then many a love, destined to rival that of Petrarch in purity and celebrity, and that of Ta.s.so in interest, shall be divulged; the thread of many a poetical romance now coiled up in mystic verse, shall then be evolved. Then we shall know the true history of Lord Byron's "Fare thee well." We shall then know more than the mere name of his Mary,[160] who first kindled his boyish fancy, and left an ineffaceable impression on his young heart, and whose history is said to be shadowed forth in "The Dream." We may then know who was the heroine of "Remember him whom pa.s.sion's power:" whose moonlight charms at once so radiant and so shadowy, inspired "She walks in beauty;" we shall be told, perhaps, who was the Thyrza, so loving and beloved in life, and whose early death, which appears to have taken place during his travels, is so deeply, so feelingly lamented: and who was his Ginevra,[161] and what spot of earth was made happy by her beautiful presence--if any thing so divinely beautiful ever was!

Then we shall not ask in vain who was Campbell's Caroline?[162] Whether she did, indeed, walk this earth in mortal beauty, or was not rather invoked by the poet's spell, from the soft evening star which shone upon her bower?

Then we shall know upon whose white bosom perished that rose,[163]

which, dying, bequeathed with its odorous breath a tale of truest love to after-times, and glory to her, whose breast was its envied tomb--to _her_, whose heart has thrilled to the homage of her poet,--yet who would "_blush to find it fame_!"

Then we shall know who was the "Lucy,"

Who dwelt among the untrodden ways, Beside the springs of Dove![164]

and who was the heroine of that most exquisite picture of feminine loveliness in all its aspects, "She was a Phantom of delight."[165]--No phantom, it is said, but a fair reality:

A being, breathing thoughtful breath, A traveller betwixt life and death,

yet fated not to die, while verse can live!

Then we shall know whose tear has been preserved by Rogers with a power beyond "the Chymist's magic art;" who was the lovely bride who is destined to blush and tremble in his Epithalamium, for a thousand years to come; and to what fair obdurate is addressed his "Farewell."

We may then learn who was that sweet Mary who adorned the cottage-home of Wilson; and who was the "Wild Louisa," of whom he has drawn such a captivating picture; first as the sprightly girl floating down the dance,

With footsteps light as falling snow,

and afterwards as the matron and the mother, hanging over the cradle of her infant, and blessing him in his sleep.

Then we may _tell_ who was the "Bonnie Jean," sung by Allan Cunningham, whose destructive charms are so pleasantly, so naturally touched upon.

Sair she slights the lads-- Three are like to die; Four in sorrow listed,-- And five flew to sea!

This rural beauty, who caused such terrible devastation, and who, it is said, first made a poet of her lover, became afterwards his wife; and in her matronly character, she inspired that beautiful little effusion of conjugal tenderness, "The Poet's Bridal Song." When first published, it was almost universally copied, and committed to memory; and Allan Cunningham may not only boast that he has woven a wreath "to grace his Jean,"

While rivers flow and woods are green,