CHAPTER LXXVIII.
AMATORY POETRY NOT ALWAYS OF THE WISEST KIND. AN ATTEMPT TO CONVEY SOME NOTION OF ITS QUANTITY. TRUE LOVE THOUGH NOT IN EVERY CASE THE BEST POET, THE BEST MORALIST ALWAYS.
El Amor es tan ingenioso, que en mi opinion, mas poetas ha hecho el solo, que la misma naturaleza.
PEREZ DE MONTALVAN.
I return to the loves of Leonard and Margaret.
That poet asked little from his mistress, who entreated her to bestow upon him, not a whole look, for this would have been too great a mercy for a miserable lover, but part of a look, whether it came from the white of her eye, or the black: and if even that were too much, then he besought her only to seem to look at him:
Un guardo—un guardo? no, troppo pietate
E per misero Amante un guardo intero;
Solo un de' vostri raggi, occhi girate,
O parte del bel bianco, o del bel nero.
E se troppo vi par, non mi mirate;
Ma fate sol sembiante di mirarmi,
Che nol potete far senza bearmi.
1
This is a new thought in amatory poetry; and the difficulty of striking out a new thought in such poetry, is of all difficulties the greatest. Think of a look from the white of an eye! Even part of a look however is more than a lady will bestow upon one whom she does not favour; and more than one whom she favours will consent to part with. An Innamorato Furioso in one of Dryden's tragedies says:
I'll not one corner of a glance resign!
1 CHIABRERA.
Poor Robert Greene, whose repentance has not been disregarded by just posterity, asked his mistress in his licentious days, to look upon him with one eye, (no doubt he meant a sheep's eye;) this also was a new thought; and he gave the reason for his request in this sonnet—
On women nature did bestow two eyes,
Like heaven's bright lamps, in matchless beauty shining,
Whose beams do soonest captivate the wise,
And wary heads, made rare by art's refining.
But why did nature, in her choice combining,
Plant two fair eyes within a beauteous face?
That they might favour two with equal grace.
Venus did soothe up Vulcan with one eye,
With the other granted Mars his wished glee.
If she did so whom Hymen did defy,
Think love no sin, but grant an eye to me!
In vain else nature gave two stars to thee.
If then two eyes may well two friends maintain,
Allow of two, and prove not nature vain.
Love, they say, invented the art of tracing likenesses, and thereby led the way to portrait painting. Some painters it has certainly made; whether it ever made a poet may be doubted: but there can be no doubt that under its inspiration more bad poetry has been produced than by any, or all other causes.
Hæc via jam cunctis nota est, hæc trita poetis
Materia, hanc omnis tractat ubique liber.2
As the most forward bud
Is eaten by the canker ere it blow,
Even so by Love the young and tender wit
Is turn'd to folly.3
Vanity, presumption, ambition, adulation, malice and folly, flatulent emptiness and ill digested fulness, misdirected talent and misapplied devotion, wantonness and want, good motives, bad motives, and mixed motives have given birth to verses in such numberless numbers, that the great lake of Oblivion in which they have sunk, must long ago have been filled up, if there had been any bottom to it. But had it been so filled up, and a foundation thus laid, the quantity of love poems which have gone to the same place, would have made a pile there that would have been the eighth wonder of the world. It would have dwarfed the Pyramids. Pelion upon Ossa would have seemed but a type of it; and the Tower of Babel would not, even when that Tower was at its highest elevation, have overtopt it, though the old rhyme says that
Seven mile sank, and seven mile fell,
And seven mile still stand and ever shall.
Ce n'est que feu de leurs froids chaleurs,
Ce n'est qu' horreur de leurs feintes douleurs,
Ce n'est encor de leurs souspirs et pleurs,
Que vents, pluye, et orages:
Et bref, ce n'est à ouir leurs chansons,
De leurs amours, que flammes et glaçons,
Fleches, liens, et mille autres façons
De semblables outrages.
De voz beautez, ce n'est que tout fin or,
Perles, crystal, marbre, et ivoyre encor,
Et tout l'honneur de l'Indique thresor,
Fleurs, lis, œillets, et roses:
De voz doulceurs ce n'est que succre et miel,
De voz rigueures n'est qu' aloës, et fiel,
De voz esprits c'est tous ce que le ciel
Tient de graces encloses.
* * * * *
Il n'y a roc, qui n'entende leurs voix,
Leurs piteux cris ont faict cent mille fois
Pleurer les monts, les plaines, et les bois,
Les antres et fonteines.
Bref, il n'y a ny solitaires lieux,
N'y lieux hantez, voyre mesmes les cieux,
Qui ça et là ne montrent à leurs yeux
L'image de leurs peines.
Cestuy-la porte en son cueur fluctueux
De l'Ocean les flots tumultueux,
Cestuy l'horreur des vents impetueux
Sortans de leur caverne:
L'un d'un Caucase, et Mongibel se plaingt,
L'autre en veillant plus de songes se peingt,
Qu'il n'en fut onq' en cest orme, qu'on feinct
En la fosse d'Averne.
Qui contrefaict ce Tantale mourant
Bruslé de soif au milieu d'un torrent,
Qui repaissant un aigle devorant,
S'accoustre en Promethee:
Et qui encor, par un plus chaste vœu,
En se bruslant, veult Hercule estre veu,
Mais qui se mue en eau, air, terre, et feu,
Comme un second Protee.
L'un meurt de froid, et l'autre meurt de chauld;
L'un vole bas, et l'autre vole hault,
L'un est chetif, l'autre a ce qui luy fault;
L'un sur l'esprit se fonde,
L'autre s'arreste à la beauté du corps;
On ne vid onq' si horribles discords
En ce cahos, qui troubloit les accords
Dont fut basty le monde.
4
But on the other hand if love, simple love, is the worst of poets, that same simple love, is beyond comparison the best of letter writers. In love poems conceits are distilled from the head; in love letters feelings flow from the heart; and feelings are never so feelingly uttered, affection never so affectionately expressed, truth never so truly spoken, as in such a correspondence. Oh if the disposition which exists at such times, were sustained through life, marriage would then be indeed the perfect union, the “excellent mystery” which our Father requires from those who enter into it, that it should be made; and which it might always be, under His blessing, were it not for the misconduct of one or the other party, or of both. If such a disposition were maintained,—“if the love of husbands and wives were grounded (as it then would be) in virtue and religion, it would make their lives a kind of heaven on earth; it would prevent all those contentions and brawlings which are the great plagues of families, and the lesser hell in passage to the greater.” Let no reader think the worse of that sentence because it is taken from that good homely old book, the better for being homely, entitled the Whole Duty of Man.
2 SCAURANUS.
3 SHAKESPEARE.
4 JOACHIM DU BELLAY.
I once met with a book in which a servant girl had written on a blank leaf, “not much love after marriage, but a good deal before!” In her station of life this is but too true; and in high stations also, and in all those intermediate grades where either the follies of the world, or its cares, exercise over us an unwholesome influence. But it is not so with well constituted minds in those favorable circumstances wherein the heart is neither corrupted by wealth, nor hardened by neediness. So far as the tendency of modern usages is to diminish the number of persons who are thus circumstanced, in that same proportion must the sum of happiness be diminished, and of those virtues which are the only safeguard of a nation. And that modern policy and modern manners have this tendency, must be apparent to every one who observes the course both of public and private life.
This girl had picked up a sad maxim from the experience of others; I hope it did not as a consequence, make her bestow too much love before marriage herself, and meet with too little after it. I have said much of worthless verses upon this subject; take now, readers, some that may truly be called worthy of it. They are by the Manchester Poet, Charles Swain.
1.
Love?—I will tell thee what it is to love!
It is to build with human thoughts a shrine,
Where Hope sits brooding like a beauteous dove;
Where Time seems young, and Life a thing divine.
All tastes, all pleasures, all desires combine
To consecrate this sanctuary of bliss.
Above, the stars in shroudless beauty shine;
Around, the streams their flowery margins kiss;
And if there's heaven on earth, that heaven is surely this!
2.
Yes, this is Love, the stedfast and the true,
The immortal glory which hath never set;
The best, the brightest boon the heart e'er knew:
Of all life's sweets the very sweetest yet!
Oh! who but can recall the eve they met
To breathe, in some green walk, their first young vow,
While summer flowers with moonlight dews were wet,
And winds sigh'd soft around the mountain's brow,
And all was rapture then which is but memory now!
The dream of life indeed can last with none of us,—
As if the thing beloved were all a Saint,
And every place she entered were a shrine:5
but it must be our own fault, when it has past away, if the realities disappoint us: they are not “weary, stale, flat and unprofitable,” unless we ourselves render them so. The preservation of the species is not the sole end for which love was implanted in the human heart; that end the Almighty might as easily have effected by other means: not so the developement of our moral nature, which is its higher purpose. The comic poet asserts that
Verum illud verbum est vulgo quod dici solet,
Omnes sibi esse melius malle, quam alteri:
6
but this is not true in love. The lover never says
Heus proximus sum egomet mihi; 6
He knows and understands the falsehood of the Greek adage,
φιλεῖ δ᾽ ἑαυτοῦ πλεῖον οὐδείς οὐδένα.
and not lovers alone, but husbands and wives, and parents feel that there are others who are dearer to them than themselves. Little do they know of human nature who speak of marriage as doubling our pleasures and dividing our griefs: it doubles, or more than doubles both.
5 GONDIBERT.
6 TERENCE.
