Of all stories, ancient or modern, there is not, perhaps, a more proper one to furnish out an elegiac epistle than that of Eloisa and Abelard. Their distresses were of a most singular and peculiar kind, and their names sufficiently known, but not grown trite or common by too frequent usage. Pope was a most excellent improver, if no great original inventor, and we see how finely he has worked up the hints of distress that are scattered up and down in Abelard and Eloisa's letters, and in a little French history of their lives and misfortunes. Abelard was reputed the most handsome, as well as the most learned man, of his time, according to the kind of learning then in vogue. An old chronicle, quoted by Andrew du Chesne, informs us, that scholars flocked to his lectures from all quarters of the Latin world; and his contemporary, St. Bernard, relates, that he numbered among his disciples many principal ecclesiastics and cardinals at the court of Rome. Abelard himself boasts, that when he retired into the country, he was followed by such immense crowds of scholars that they could get neither lodgings nor provisions sufficient for them. He met with the fate of many learned men, to be embroiled in controversy, and accused of heresy; for St. Bernard, whose influence and authority were very great, got his opinion of the Trinity condemned at a council held at Sens, 1140. But the talents of Abelard were not confined to theology, jurisprudence, philosophy, and the thorny paths of scholasticism. He gave proofs of a lively genius by many poetical performances, insomuch that he was reputed to be the author of the famous Romance of the Rose, which, however, was indisputably written by John of Meun, a little city on the banks of the Loire, about four miles from Orleans. It was he who continued and finished the Romance of the Rose, which William de Lorris had left imperfect forty years before. There is undoubted evidence that [the earliest portion] was written an hundred years after Abelard flourished, and if chronology did not absolutely contradict the notion of his being the author of this very celebrated piece, yet are there internal arguments sufficient to confute it. There are many severe and satirical strokes on the character of Eloisa which the pen of Abelard never would have given. In one passage she is introduced speaking with indecency and obscenity; in another all the vices and bad qualities of women are represented as assembled together in her alone:
Qui les mœurs féminins savoit
Car tres-tous en soi les avoit.
In a very old epistle dedicatory, addressed to Philip IV. of France by this same John of Meun, and prefixed to a French translation of Boetius, it appears that he also translated the epistles of Abelard to Heloisa, which were in high vogue at the court. It is to be regretted that we have no exact picture of the person and beauty of Eloisa. Abelard himself says that she was "facie non infima."[564] Her extraordinary learning many circumstances concur to confirm; particularly one, which is, that the nuns of the Paraclete are wont to have the office of Whitsunday read to them in Greek, to perpetuate the memory of her understanding that language. A lady learned as was Eloisa in that age, who indisputably understood the Latin, Greek, and Hebrew tongues, was a kind of prodigy.[565] Her literature, says Abelard, "in toto regno nominatissimam fecerat," and we may be sure more thoroughly attached him to her. Bussy Rabutin speaks in high terms of commendation of the purity of Eloisa's latinity,—a judgment worthy a French count. There is a force but not an elegance in her style, which is blemished, as might be expected, by many phrases unknown to the pure ages of the Roman language, and by many Hebraisms borrowed from the translation of the Bible.
However happy and judicious the subject of Pope's Epistle may be thought to be, as displaying the various conflicts and tumults between duty and pleasure, between penitence and passion, that agitated the mind of Eloisa, yet we must candidly own that the principal circumstance of distress is of so indelicate a nature, that it is with difficulty disguised by the exquisite art and address of the poet. The capital and unrivalled beauties of the poem arise from the striking images and descriptions of the convent, and from the sentiments drawn from the mystical books of devotion, particularly Madame Guion, and the Archbishop of Cambray.[566] The Epistle is on the whole, one of the most highly finished, and certainly the most interesting of the pieces of our author; and, together with the Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady, is the only instance of the pathetic Pope has given us. I think one may venture to remark that the reputation of Pope as a poet among posterity will be principally owing to his Windsor Forest, his Rape of the Lock, and his Eloisa to Abelard, whilst the facts and characters alluded to and exposed in his later writings, will be forgotten and unknown, and their poignancy and propriety little relished. For wit and satire are transitory and perishable, but nature and passion are eternal.—Warton.
Pope must be judged according to the rank in which he stands,—among those of the French school, not the Italian; among those whose delineations are taken more from manners than from nature. When I say that this is his predominant character, I must be insensible to everything exquisite in poetry if I did not except the Epistle to Eloisa; but this can only be considered according to its class, and if I say that it seems to me superior to any other of the kind to which it might fairly be compared, such as the Epistles of Ovid, Propertius, Tibullus (I will not mention Drayton, and Pope's numerous subsequent Imitations)—but when this transcendent poem is compared with those which will bear the comparison, I shall not be deemed as giving reluctant praise, when I declare my conviction of its being infinitely superior to everything of the kind, ancient or modern. In this poem, therefore, Pope appears on the high ground of the poet of nature, but this certainly is not his general character. In the particular instance of this poem how distinguished and superior does he stand. It is sufficient that nothing of the kind has ever been produced equal to it for pathos, painting, and melody. The mellifluence and solemn cadence of the verse, the dramatic transitions, the judicious contrasts, the language of genuine passion, uttered in the sweetest flow of music, and the pervading solemnity and grandeur of the picturesque scenery, give the Epistle a wonderful charm, and exemplify Pope's observation in his Essay on Criticism, "there is a happiness as well as care." The inherent indelicacy of the subject is one objection to it, and who but must lament its immoral effect, for of its beauty there can be but one sentiment. It may be said of it with truth in the language of its author:
It lives, it breathes, it speaks what love inspires,
Warm from the soul, and faithful to its fires;
and as long as the English language remains, it will
Call down tears through every age.
Pope I have no doubt wrote the Epistle to Sappho, and this of Eloisa, under the impression of strong personal feelings. It is supposed the subject was suggested by the unfortunate young lady going into a convent, whose untimely death occasioned the beautiful Elegy, "What beck'ning ghost;" but I cannot help thinking the real circumstance that occasioned these touching effusions was his early attachment to Lady Mary W. Montagu. The concluding lines allude to her, as I think is evident from his letter. Speaking of a volume he had sent her when abroad, he adds, "Among the rest you have all I am worth, that is, my works. There are few things in them but what you have already seen, except the Epistle of Eloisa to Abelard, in which you will find one passage that I cannot tell whether to wish you should understand or not." The lines could not be meant for the unfortunate lady, for she was dead and forgotten—could not relate to Martha Blount, for he was not "condemned whole years in absence to deplore," and therefore they could be addressed only to Lady Mary; and "he best shall paint them who shall feel them most," was a direct allusion to his own ardent but hopeless passion.—Bowles.
Mr. Bowles has represented the Epistle from Eloisa to Abelard as being of an immoral tendency. It must however be observed, that if this construction be put upon the poem, it is what the author never intended. On the contrary, his object is to show the fatal consequences of an ungovernable passion; and if he has done this in natural and even glowing language, it must be remembered that such are not his own sentiments, but those of the person he has undertaken to represent, and are in general given in nearly her own words. That many expressions and passages may be pointed out which are inconsistent with the established order and regulations of society, may be fully admitted. Such, for instance, as the lines