The Romance of Biography Volume I Part 19

He travelled for eight years, seeking, in change of place and scene, some solace for his wounded peace. There was a kind of constancy even in Drummond's inconstancy; for meeting many years afterwards with an amiable girl, who bore the most striking resemblance to his lost mistress, he loved her for that very resemblance, and married her. Her name was Margaret Logan. I am not aware that there are any verses addressed to her.

Drummond has been called the Scottish Petrarch: he tells us himself, that "he was the first in this Isle who did celebrate a dead mistress,"--and his resemblance to Petrarch, in elegance and sentiment, has often been observed: he resembles him, it is true--but it is as a professed and palpable imitator resembles the object of his imitation.

On glancing back at the age of Elizabeth,--so adorned by masculine talent, in arts, in letters, and in arms,--we are at first surprised to find so few distinguished women. It seems remarkable that a golden epoch in our literature, to which she gave her name "the Elizabethan age,"--a court in which a female ruled,--a period fruitful in great poets, should have produced only one or two women who are interesting from their poetical celebrity. Of these, Alice Spenser, Countess of Derby, and Mary Sydney, Countess of Pembroke, (the sister of Sir Philip Sydney) are the most remarkable; the first has enjoyed the double distinction of being celebrated by Spenser in her youth, and by Milton in her age,--almost too much honour for one woman, though she had been a muse, and a grace, and a cardinal virtue, moulded in one. Lady Pembroke has been celebrated by Spenser and by Ben Jonson, and was, in every respect, a most accomplished woman. To these might be added other names, which might have shone aloft like stars, and "shed some influence on this lower world:" if the age had not produced two women, so elevated in station, and so every way ill.u.s.trious by accidental or personal qualities, that each, in her respective sphere, extinguished all the lesser orbs around her. It would have been difficult for any female to seize on the attention, or claim either an historical or poetical interest, in the age of Queen Elizabeth and Mary Stuart.

In her own court, Elizabeth was not satisfied to preside. She could as ill endure a compet.i.tor in celebrity or charms, as in power. She arrogated to herself all the incense around her; and, in point of adulation, she was like the daughter of the horse-leech, whose cry was, "give! give!" Her insatiate vanity would have been ludicrous, if it had not produced such atrocious consequences. This was the predominant weakness of her character, which neutralized her talents, and was pampered, till in its excess it became a madness and a vice. This precipitated the fate of her lovely rival, Mary Queen of Scots. This elevated the profligate Leicester to the pinnacle of favour, and kept him there, sullied as he was by every baseness and every crime;[112]

this hurried Ess.e.x to the block; banished Southampton; and sent Raleigh and Elizabeth Throckmorton to the Tower. Did one of her attendants, more beautiful than the rest, attract the notice or homage of any of the gay cavaliers around her,--was an attachment whispered, a marriage projected,--it was enough to throw the whole court into consternation.

"Her Majesty, the Queen, was in a pa.s.sion;" and, then, heaven help the offenders! It was the spirit of Harry the Eighth let loose again. Yet such is the reflected glory she derives from the Sydneys and the Raleighs, the Walsinghams and Cecils, the Shakspeares and Spensers of her time, that we can scarce look beyond it, to stigmatise the hard unfeminine egotism of her character.

There was something extremely poetical in her situation, as a maiden queen, raised from a prison to a throne, exposed to unceasing danger from without and treason from within, and supported through all by her own extraordinary talents, and by the devotion of the chivalrous, gallant courtiers and captains, who paid to her, as their queen and mistress, a homage and obedience they would scarce have paid to a sovereign of their own s.e.x. All this display of talent and heroism, and chivalrous gallantry, has a fine gorgeous effect to the imagination;--but for the woman herself,--as a woman, with her pedantry, and her absurd affectation; her masculine temper and coa.r.s.e insolence; her sharp, shrewish, cat-like face, and her pretension to beauty, it is impossible to conceive any thing more anti-poetical.

Yet had she praises in all plenteousness Pour'd upon her, like showers of Castalie.[113]

She was a favourite theme of the poets of the time, and by right divine of her sceptre and her s.e.x, an object of glorious flattery, not always feigned, even where it was false.

She is the Gloriana of Spenser's Fairy Queen,--she is the "Cynthia, the ladye of the sea,"--she is the "Fair Vestal throned in the West," of Shakspeare--

That very time I saw, (but thou couldst not,) Flying between the cold moon and the earth, Cupid all arm'd: a certain aim he took At a fair Vestal, throned by the West, And loosed his love-shaft smartly from his bow, As it should pierce a hundred thousand hearts; But I might see young Cupid's fiery shaft Quench'd in the chaste beams of the wat'ry moon; And the imperial vot'ress pa.s.sed on In maiden meditation, fancy free.

And the previous allusion to Mary of Scotland, as the "Sea Maid on the Dolphin's back,"

Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath, That the rude sea grew civil at her song,

is not less exquisite.

It would, in truth, have been easier for Mary to have calmed the rude sea than her ruder and wilder subjects. These two queens, so strangely misplaced, seem as if, by some sport of destiny, each had dropt into the sphere designed for the other. Mary should have reigned over the Sydneys, the Ess.e.xes, the Mountjoys;--and with her smiles, and sweet words; and generous gifts, have inspired and rewarded the poets around her. Elizabeth should have been transferred to Scotland, where she might have bandied frowns and hard names with John Knox, cut off the heads of rebellious barons, and boxed the ears of ill-bred courtiers.

This is no place to settle disputed points of history, nor, if it were, should I presume to throw an opinion in to one scale or the other; but take the two queens as women merely, and with a reference to apparent circ.u.mstances, I would rather have been Mary than Elizabeth; I would rather have been Mary, with all her faults, frailties, and misfortunes,--all her power of engaging hearts,--betrayed by her own soft nature, and the vile or fierce pa.s.sions of the men around her, to die on a scaffold, with the meekness of a saint and the courage of a heroine, with those at her side who would willingly have bled for her,--than I would have been that heartless flirt, Elizabeth, surrounded by the oriental servility, the lip and knee homage of her splendid court; to die at last on her palace-floor, like a crushed wasp--sick of her own very selfishness--torpid, sullen, and despairing,--without one friend near her, without one heart in the wide world attached to her by affection or grat.i.tude.

There is more true and earnest feeling in some little verses written by Ronsard on the unhappy Queen of Scots, than in all the elegant, fanciful, but extravagant flattery of Elizabeth's poets. After just mentioning the English Queen, whom he dispatches in a single line,--

Je vis leur belle reine, honnte et vertueuse;

he thus dwells on the charms of Mary:--

Je vis des Ecossais la Reine sage et belle, Qui de corps et d'esprits ressemble une immortelle; J'approchai de ses yeux, mais bien de deux soleils, Deux soleils de beaut, qui n'ont point leurs pareils.

Je les vis larmoyer d'une claire rose, Je vis d'un clair crystal sa paupire arrose, Se souvenant de France, et du sceptre laiss, Et de son premier feu, comme un songe pa.s.s!

And when Mary was a prisoner, he dedicated to her a whole book of poems, in which he celebrates her with a warmth, the more delightful that it was disinterested. He thanks her for selecting his poems, to amuse her solitary hours, and adds feelingly,--

Car, je ne veux en ce monde choisir Plus grand honneur que vous donner plaisir!

Mary did not leave her courteous poet unrewarded. She contrived, though a prisoner, to send him a casket containing two thousand crowns, and a vase, on which was represented Mount Parna.s.sus, and a flying Pegasus, with this inscription:--

A Ronsard, l'Apollon de la source des Muses.

No one understood better than Mary the value of a compliment from a beauty, and a queen; had she bestowed more precious favours with equal effect and discrimination, her memory had escaped some disparagement.

Ronsard, we are told, was sufficiently a poet, to value the inscription on his vase more than the gold in the casket.

Apropos to Ronsard: the history of his loves is so whimsical and so truly French, that it must claim a place here.

Yet now I am upon French ground, I may as well take the giant's advice, and "begin at the beginning."[114] It seems at first view unaccountable that France, which has produced so many remarkable women, should scarce exhibit one poetical heroine of great or popular interest, since its language and literature a.s.sumed their present form; not one who has been rendered ill.u.s.trious or dear to us by the praises of a poet lover. The celebrity of celebrated French women is, in truth, very anti-poetical.

The memory of the kiss which Marguerite d'Ecosse[115] gave to Alain Chartier, has long survived the verses he wrote in her praise. Clement Marot, the court poet of Francis the First, was the lover, or rather one of the lovers, of Diana of Poictiers (mistress to the Dauphin, afterwards Henry the Second). She was confessedly the most beautiful and the most abandoned woman of her time. Marot could hardly have expected to find her a paragon of constancy; yet he laments her fickleness, as if it had touched his heart.

A DIANE.

Puisque de vous je n'ai autre visage, Je m'en vais rendre hermite en un desert, Pour prier Dieu, si un autre vous sert, Qu'autant que moi en votre honneur soit sage.

Adieu, Amour! adieu, gentil corsage!

Adieu ce teint! adieu ces friands yeux!

Je n'ai pas eu de vous grand avantage,-- Un moins aimant aura peut-tre mieux.

In a _liaison_ of mere vanity and profligacy, the transition from love (if love it be) to hatred and malignity, is not uncommon--as Spenser says so beautifully,

Such love might never long endure, However gay and goodly be the style, That doth ill cause or evil end enure: For Virtue is the band that bindeth hearts most sure!

From being the lady's _lover_, Marot became her satirist; instead of _chansons_ in praise of her beauty, he circulated the most biting and insufferable epigrams on her person and character. We are told by one, who, I presume, speaks _avec connaissance de fait_, that a woman's revenge

Is like the tiger's spring, Deadly and quick, and crus.h.i.+ng.

Diana was a libelled beauty, all powerful and unprincipled. Marot, in some moment of gaiety and overflowing confidence, had confessed to her that he had eaten meat on a "jour maigre:" he had better in those days have committed all the seven deadly sins; and when the lady revealed his unlucky confession, and denounced him as a heretic, he was immediately imprisoned. Instead, however, of being depressed by his situation, or moved to make any concessions, he published from his prison a most ludicrous lampoon on his _ci-devant_ mistress, of which the burthen was, "Prenez le, il a mang le lard!" He afterwards made his escape, and took refuge in the court of Rene, d.u.c.h.ess of Ferrara; and though subsequently recalled to France, he continued to pursue Diana with the most bitter satire, became a second time a fugitive, partly on her account, and died in exile and poverty.[116]

Marot has been called the French Chaucer. He resembles the English poet in liveliness of fancy, picturesque imagery, simplicity of expression, and satirical humour; but he has these merits in a far less degree; and in variety of genius, pathos and power, is immeasurably his inferior.

Ronsard, to whom I at length return, was the successor of Marot. In his time the Italian sonnetteers, as Petrarch, Bembo, Sanazzaro, were the prevailing models, and cla.s.sical pedantry the prevailing taste. Ronsard, having filled his mind with Greek and learning, determined to be a poet, and looked about for a mistress to be the object of his songs: for a poet without a mistress was then an unheard-of anomaly. He fixed upon a beautiful woman of Blois, named Ca.s.sandre, whose Greek appellative, it is said, was her princ.i.p.al attraction in his fancy. To her he addressed about two hundred and twenty sonnets, in a style so lofty and pedantic, stuffed with such hard names and philosophical allusions, that the fair Ca.s.sandra must have been as wise as her namesake, the daughter of Priam, to have comprehended her own praises.

Ronsard's next love was more interesting. Her name was Marie: she was beautiful and kind: the poet really loved her; and consequently, we find him occasionally descending from his heights of affectation and scholars.h.i.+p, to the language of truth, nature and tenderness. Marie died young; and among Ronsard's most admired poems are two or three little pieces written after her death. As his works are not commonly met with, I give one as a specimen of his style:--

EPITAPHE DE MARIE.

Ci reposent les os de la belle Marie, Qui me fit pour un jour quitter mon Vendomois,[117]

Qui m'echauffa le sang au plus verd de mes mois; Qui ft toute mon tout, mon bien, et mon envie.

En sa tombe repose honneur et courtoisie, Et la jeune beaut qu'en l'ame je sentois, Et le flambeau d'Amour, ses traits et son carquois, Et ensemble mon coeur, mes penses et ma vie.

Tu es, belle Angevine,[117] un bel astre des cieux; Les anges, tous ravis, se paissent de tes yeux, La terre te regrette, O beaut sans seconde!

Maintenant tu es vive, et je suis mort d'ennui, Malheureux qui se fie en l'attente d'autrui; Trois amis m'ont tromp,--toi, l'amour, et le monde.

Ronsard had by this time acquired a reputation which eclipsed that of all his contemporaries. He was caressed and patronised by Charles the Ninth (of hateful memory), who, like Nero, exhibited the revolting combination of a taste for poetry and the fine arts, with the most sanguinary and depraved dispositions. Ronsard, having lost his Marie, was commanded by Catherine de' Medicis to select a mistress from among the ladies of her court, to be the future object of his tuneful homage.

He politely left her Majesty to choose for him, prepared to fall in love duly at the royal behest; and Catherine pointed out Helne de Surgeres, one of her maids of honour, as worthy to be the second Laura of a second Petrarch. The docile poet, with zealous obedience, warbled the praises of Helne for the rest of his life. He also consecrated to her a fountain near his chteau in the Vendomois, which has popularly preserved her name and fame. It is still known as the "Fontaine d'Helne."

Helne was more witty than beautiful, and, though vain of the celebrity she had acquired in the verses of Ronsard, she either disliked him in the character of a lover, or was one of those lofty ladies