Sir Walter Scott ought to have lived in the age of chivalry, (if we could endure the thoughts of his living in any other age but our own!) so touched with the true antique spirit of generous devotion to our sex are all his poetical portraits of women. I do not find that he has, like most other writers of the present day, mixed up his personal feelings and history with his poetry; or that any fair and distinguished object will be so thrice fortunate as to share his laurelled immortality. We must therefore treat him like Shakspeare, whom alone he resembles—and claim him for us all.
Then there is Rogers, whose compliments to us are so polished, so pointed, and so elegantly turned, and have such a drawing-room air, that they seem as if intended to be presented to Duchesses, by beaux in white kid gloves. And there is Coleridge who approaches women with a sort of feeling half earthly, half heavenly, like that with which an Italian devotee bends before his Madonna—
And comes unto his courtship as his prayer.
And there is Southey, in whose imagination we are all heroines and queens; and Wordsworth, lost in the depths of his own tenderness!
The time is not yet arrived, when the loves of the living poets, or of those lately dead, can be discussed individually, or exhibited at full length. The subject is much too hazardous for a contemporary, and more particularly for a female to dwell upon. Such details belong properly to the next age, and there is no fear that these gossiping times will leave any thing a mystery for posterity. The next generation will be infinitely wiser on these interesting subjects than their grandmothers. Yet a few years, and what is scandal and personality now, will then be matter for biography and history. Then many a love, destined to rival that of Petrarch in purity and celebrity, and that of Tasso in interest, shall be divulged; the thread of many a poetical romance now coiled up in mystic verse, shall then be evolved. Then we shall know the true history of Lord Byron's "Fare thee well." We shall then know more than the mere name of his Mary,[160] who first kindled his boyish fancy, and left an ineffaceable impression on his young heart, and whose history is said to be shadowed forth in "The Dream." We may then know who was the heroine of "Remember him whom passion's power:" whose moonlight charms at once so radiant and so shadowy, inspired "She walks in beauty;" we shall be told, perhaps, who was the Thyrza, so loving and beloved in life, and whose early death, which appears to have taken place during his travels, is so deeply, so feelingly lamented: and who was his Ginevra,[161] and what spot of earth was made happy by her beautiful presence—if any thing so divinely beautiful ever was!
Then we shall not ask in vain who was Campbell's Caroline?[162] Whether she did, indeed, walk this earth in mortal beauty, or was not rather invoked by the poet's spell, from the soft evening star which shone upon her bower?
Then we shall know upon whose white bosom perished that rose,[163] which, dying, bequeathed with its odorous breath a tale of truest love to after-times, and glory to her, whose breast was its envied tomb—to her, whose heart has thrilled to the homage of her poet,—yet who would "blush to find it fame!"
Then we shall know who was the "Lucy,"