Volume I Part 20 (1/2)

Who hate to have their dignity profaned With any relish of an earthly thought.[118]

She desired the Cardinal du Perron would request Ronsard (in her name) to prefix an epistle to the odes and sonnets addressed to her, a.s.suring the world that this poetical love had been purely Platonic. ”Madam,”

said the Cardinal, ”you had better give him leave to prefix your picture.”[119]

I presume my fair and gentle readers (I shall have none, I am sure, who are not one or the other, or both,) are as tired as myself of all this affectation, and glad to turn from it to the interest of pa.s.sion and reality.

”There is not,” says Cowley, ”so great a lie to be found in any poet, as the vulgar conceit of men, that lying is essential to good poetry.” On the contrary, where there is not truth, there is nothing--

Rien n' est beau que le vrai,--le vrai seul est aimable!

While the Italian school of amatory verse was flouris.h.i.+ng in France, Spain, and England, almost to the extinction of originality in this style, the brightest light of Italian poesy had arisen, and was s.h.i.+ning with a troubled splendour over that land of song. How swiftly at the thought does imagination shoot, ”like a glancing star,” over the wide expanse of sea and land, and through a long interval of sad and varied years! I am again standing within the porch of the church of San Onofrio, looking down upon the little slab in its dark corner, which covers the bones of Ta.s.sO.

FOOTNOTES:

[109] Died 1631

[110] Died in 1619.

[111] Died 1649.

[112] Leicester's influence over Elizabeth appeared so unaccountable, that it was ascribed to magic, and to her evil stars.

[113] Spenser's Daphnaida.

[114]

Blier, mon ami! Commencez par le commencement!

COUNT HAMILTON.

[115] ”La gentille Marguerite,” the unhappy wife of Louis the Eleventh.

Beautiful, accomplished, and in the very spring of life, she died a victim to the detestable character of her husband. When one of her attendants spoke of hope and life, the Queen, turning from her with an expression of deep disgust, exclaimed with a last effort, ”Fi de la vie!

ne m'en parlez plus!”--and expired.

[116] At Althorp, the seat of Lord Spenser, there is a most curious picture of Diana of Poictiers, once in the Crawford collection: it is a small half-length; the features are fair and regular; the hair is elaborately dressed with a profusion of jewels; but there is no drapery whatever, except a curtain behind: round the head is the legend from the forty-second Psalm,--”Comme le cerf braie aprs le dcours des eaues, ainsi brait mon me aprs toi, O Dieu!” which is certainly a most extraordinary and profane application. In the days of Diana of Poictiers, Marot had composed a version of the Psalms, then very popular. It was the fas.h.i.+on to sing them to dance and song tunes; and the courtiers and beauties had each their favourite psalm, which served as a kind of _devise_. This may explain the very singular inscription on this very singular picture.

[117] Ronsard was a native of the Vendomois, and Marie, of Anjou.

[118] Ben Jonson.

[119] V. Bayle Dictionnaire Historique.--Pierre de Ronsard was born in 1524, and died in 1585.

CHAPTER XVIII.

LEONORA D'ESTE.

Leonora d'Este, a princess of the proudest house in Europe, might have wedded an emperor, and have been forgotten. The idea, true or false, that she it was who broke the heart and frenzied the brain of Ta.s.so, has glorified her to future ages; has given her a fame, something like that of the Greek of old, who bequeathed his name to immortality, by firing the grandest temple of the universe.

The question of Ta.s.so's attachment to the Princess Leonora, is, I believe, set at rest by the acute researches and judicious reasoning of M. Ginguen, and those who have followed in his steps. A body of circ.u.mstantial evidence has been collected, which would not only satisfy a court of love--but a court of law, with a Lord Chancellor, to boot, ”_perpending_” at the head of it. That which was once regarded as a romance, which we wished to believe, if we _could_, is now an established fact, which we cannot disbelieve if we would.