His Anacreontics, and particularly his little drinking song, Come farò? Farò così! are very elegant, and almost equal to Chiabrera. It is difficult to sympathize with English drinking songs, and all the vulgar associations of flowing bowls, taverns, three times three, and the table in a roar. An Italian Brindisi transports us at once among flasks and vineyards, guitars and dances, a dinner al fresco, a group à la Stothard. It is all the difference between the ivy-crowned Bacchus, and the bloated Silenus. "Bumper, Squire Jones," or, Waiter, bring clean glasses," do not sound so well as Damigella Tutta bella Versa, versa, il bel vino ! &c. 66 139 CHAPTER IX. CONJUGAL POETRY CONTINUED. LORD LYTTELTON. LORD Lyttelton has told us in a very sweet line, How much the wife is dearer than the bride. But his Lucy Fortescue deserves more than a mere allusion, en passant. That Lord Lyttelton is still remembered and read as a poet, is solely for her sake: it is she who has made the shades of Hagley classic ground, and hallowed its precincts by the remembrance of the fair and gentle being, the tender woman, wife, and mother, who in the prime of youth and loveliness, melted like a creature of air and light from her husband's arms, "And left him on this earth disconsolate!" That the verses she inspired are still popular, is owing to the power of truth, which has here given lasting interest to what were otherwise mediocre. Lord Lyttelton was not much of a poet; but his love was real; its object was real, beautiful, and good: thus buoyed up, in spite of his own faults and the change of taste, he has survived the rest of the rhyming gentry of his time, who wrote epigrams on fans and shoe-buckles,-songs to the Duchess of this and the Countess of thatand elegies to Miras, Delias, and Chloes. Lucy Fortescue, daughter of Hugh Fortescue, Esq. of Devonshire, and grand-daughter of Lord Aylmer, was born in 1718. She was about twoand-twenty when Lord Lyttelton first became attached to her, and he was in his thirty-first year: in person and character she realized all he had imagined in his "Advice to Belinda."* *See his Poems. Without, all beauty-and all peace within. Blest is the maid, and worthy to be blest, Whose soul, entire by him she loves possest, And asks no power, but that of pleasing most: Her's is the bliss, in just return to prove The honest warmth of undissembled love; For her, inconstant man might cease to range, And gratitude forbid desire to change. To the more peculiar attributes of her sexbeauty and tenderness,-she united all the advantages of manner, Polite as she in courts had ever been ; and wit-the only wit that becomes a woman, That temperately bright With inoffensive light All pleasing shone, nor ever past The decent bounds that wisdom's sober hand And sweet benevolence's mild command, And bashful modesty before it cast. Her education was uncommon for the time; for then, a woman, who to youth and elegance and beauty united a familiar acquaintance with the 66 per literature of her own country, French, Italian, and the classics, was distinguished among her sex. She had many suitors, and her choice was equally to her own honour and that of her lover. Lord Lyttelton was not rich; his father, Sir Thomas Lyttelton, being still alive. He had haps never dreamed of the coronet which late in life descended on his brow: and far from possessing a captivating exterior, he was extremely plain in person, of a feeble, ill-compacted figure, and a meagre sallow countenance.”* But talents, elegance of mind, and devoted affection, had the influence they ought to have, and generally do possess, in the mind of a woman. We are told that our sex's "earliest, latest care, our heart's supreme ambition," is " to be fair." Even Madame de Stael would have given half her talents for half Madame Recamier's beauty! and why? because the passion of our sex is to please and to be loved; and men have taught us, that in nine cases out of ten we are valued merely for * Johnson's Life of Lord Lyttelton. |