Loves of the Angels, the stories of three angels, in verse, by T. Moore (1822). The stories are founded on the Eastern tale of Harût and Marût, and the rabbinical fictions of the loves of Uzziel and Shamchazai.
1. The first angel fell in love with Lea, whom he saw bathing. She returned love for love, but his love was carnal, her’s heavenly. He loved the woman, she loved the angel. One day, the angel told her the spell-word which opens the gates of heaven. She pronounced it, and rose through the air into paradise, while the angel became imbruted, being no longer an angel of light, but “of the earth, earthy.”
2. The second angel was Rubi, one of the seraphs. He fell in love with Liris, who asked him to come in all his celestial glory. He did so; and she, rushing into his arms, was burnt to death; but the kiss she gave him became a brand on his face for ever.
3. The third angel was Zaraph, who loved Nama. It was Nama’s desire to love without control, and to love holily: but as she had fixed her love on a creature, and not on the Creator, both she and Zaraph were doomed to live among the things that perish, till this mortal is swallowed up of immortality, when Nama and Zaraph will be admitted into the realms of everlasting love.
Lovegold, the miser, an old man of 60, who wants to marry Mariana, his son’s sweetheart. In order to divert him from this folly, Mariana pretends to be very extravagant, and orders a necklace and ear-rings for £3000, a petticoat and gown from a fabric £12 a yard, and besets the house with duns. Lovegold gives £2000 to be let off the bargain, and Mariana marries the son.—A. Fielding, The Miser a (réchauffé of L’Avare, by Molière).
Love´good (2 syl.), uncle to Valentine, the gallant who will not be persuaded to keep his estate.—Beaumont and Fletcher, Wit without Money (1639).
Lovel, once the page of Lord Beaufort, in love with Lady Frances; but he concealed his love because young Beaufort “cast his affections first upon the lady.”—Murphy, The Citizen (1757).
Lovel (Lord), the bridegroom who lost his bride on the wedding day from playing hide-and-seek. The lady hid in an old oak chest, the lid of which fell on her and closed with a spring-lock. Many years afterwards the chest was sold, and the skeleton of the maiden revealed the mystery of her disappearance.—T. H. Bayley, The Mistletoe Bough.
Samuel Rogers has introduced this story in his Italy (pt. i. 18, 1822). He says the bride was Ginevra, only child of Orsini, “an indulgent father;” and that the bridegroom was Francesco Doria, “her playmate from birth, and her first love.” The chest, he says, was an heirloom, “richly carved by Antony, of Trent, with Scripture stories from the life of Christ.” It came from Venice, and had “held the ducal robes of some old ancestors.” After the accident, Francesco, weary of life, flew to Venice, and “flung his life away in battle with the Turks;” Orsini went deranged, and spent the life-long day “wandering in quest of something he could not find.” It was fifty years afterwards that the skeleton was discovered in the chest.
Collet, in his Relics of Literature, gives a similar story.