Volume II Part 13 (1/2)
FOOTNOTES:
[70] Coleridge's Wallenstein.
[71] Bodmer, after the publication of the Messiah, invited the author to his house in Switzerland. He had imaged to himself a most sublime idea of the man who could write such a poem, and had fancied him like one of the sages and prophets of the Old Testament. His astonishment, when he saw a slight-made, elegant-looking young man leap gaily from his carriage, with sparkling eyes and a smiling countenance, has been pleasantly described.
[72] Klopstock's Letters, p. 145.
[73] Klopstock's Letters.
[74] ”I not being able to travel yet, my husband has been obliged to make a voyage to Copenhagen. He is yet absent; a cloud over my happiness! He will soon return; but what does that help? he is yet equally absent. We write to each other every post; but what are letters to presence? But I will speak no more of this little cloud, I will only tell my happiness. But I cannot tell you how I rejoice!--A son of my dear Klopstock's! O, when shall I have him?”--_Memoirs_, p. 99.
[75] Elizabeth Schmidt, married to the brother of f.a.n.n.y Schmidt.
[76] Meta was buried with her infant in her arms, at Ottenson, near Altona. She had expressed a wish to have two pa.s.sages from the Messiah, descriptive of the resurrection, inscribed on her coffin, but one only was engraved:--
”Seed sown by G.o.d to ripen for the harvest.”
_See Memoirs_, p. 197.
[77] Translated by Elizabeth Smith, of whom it has been truly said, that she resembled Meta, and to whom we are indebted for her first introduction to English readers.
[78] Memoirs.
[79] Klopstock says of himself, ”it is not my nature to be happy or miserable by halves: having once discarded melancholy, I am ready to welcome happiness.”--_Klopstock and his Friends_, p. 164.
[80]
Du zweifelst da.s.s ich dich wie Meta liebe?
Wie Meta lieb' Ich Done dich!
Dies, saget dir mein hertz liebe vol Mein ganzes hertz! &c.
CHAPTER XI.
CONJUGAL POETRY CONTINUED.
BONNIE JEAN.
It was as Burns's _wife_ as well as his early love, that Bonnie Jean lives immortalized in her poet's songs, and that her name is destined to float in music from pole to pole. When they first met, Burns was about six-and-twenty, and Jean Armour ”but a young thing,”
Wi' tempting lips and roguish e'en,
the pride, the beauty, and the favourite toast of the village of Mauchline, where her father lived. To an early period of their attachment, or to the fond recollection of it in after times, we owe some of Burns's most beautiful and impa.s.sioned songs,--as
Come, let me take thee to this breast, And pledge we ne'er shall sunder!
And I'll spurn as vilest dust, The world's wealth and grandeur, &c.
”O poort.i.th cold and restless love;” ”the kind love that's in her e'e;”
”Lewis, what reck I by thee;” and many others. I conjecture, from a pa.s.sage in one of Burns's letters, that Bonnie Jean also furnished the heroine and the subject of that admirable song, ”O whistle, and I'll come to thee, my lad,” so full of buoyant spirits and artless affection: it appears that she wished to have her name introduced into it, and that he afterwards altered the fourth line of the first verse to please her:--thus,
Thy Jeanie will venture wi' ye, my lad;