"Il y a plus de pudeur et de dignité dans la douce indulgence qui semble ignorer les anecdotes scandaleuses ou du moins, les revoquer en doute, que dans le dédain qui en retrace le souvenir, et qui s'érige publiquement en juge inflexible."
CONCLUSION.
HEROINES OF MODERN POETRY.
Heureuse la Beauté que le poëte adore!
Heureux le nom qu'il a chanté!
DE LAMARTINE.
It will be allowed, I think, that women have reason to be satisfied with the rank they hold in modern poetry; and that the homage which has been addressed to them, either directly and individually, or paid indirectly and generally, in the beautiful characters and portraits drawn of them, ought to satisfy equally female sentiment and female vanity. From the half ethereal forms which float amid moonbeams and gems, and odours and flowers, along the dazzling pages of Lalla Rookh, down to Phœbe Dawson, in the Parish Register:[153] from that loveliest gem of polished life, the young Aurora of Lord Byron, down to Wordsworth's poor Margaret weeping in her deserted cottage;[154]—all the various aspects between these wide extremes of character and situation, under which we have been exhibited, have been, with few exceptions, just and favourable to our sex.
In the literature of the classical ages, we were debased into mere servants of pleasure, alternately the objects of loose incense or coarse invective. In the poetry of the Gothic ages, we all rank as queens. In the succeeding period, when the platonic philosophy was oddly mixed up with the institutions of chivalry, we were exalted into divinities;—"angels called, and angel-like adored." Then followed the age of French gallantry, tinged with classical elegance, and tainted with classical licence, when we were caressed, complimented, wooed and satirised by coxcomb poets,
Who ever mix'd their song with light licentious toys.