These writers may have merit of a different kind; they may be read by wits for the sake of their wit; but they have failed in the great object of lyric poetry: they neither create sympathy for themselves; nor interest, nor respect for their mistresses: they were not in earnest;—and what woman of sense and feeling was ever touched by a compliment which no woman ever inspired? or pleased, by being addressed with the swaggering licence of a libertine? Who cares to inquire after the originals of their Belindas and Clorindas—their Chloes, Delias, and Phillises, with their pastoral names, and loves—that were any thing but pastoral? There is not one among the flaunting coquettes, or profligate women of fashion, sung by these gay coxcomb poets—
Those goddesses, so blithe, so smooth, so gay,
Yet empty of all good wherein consists
Woman's domestic honour and chief praise,
who has obtained an interest in our memory, or a permanent place in the history of our literature; not one, who would not be eclipsed by Bonnie Jean, or Highland Mary! It is true, that the age produced several remarkable women; a Lady Russell, that heroine of heroines! a Lady Fanshawe;[97] a Mrs. Hutchinson; who needed no poet to trumpet forth their praise: and others,—some celebrated for the possession of beauty and talents, and too many notorious for the abuse of both. But there were no poetical heroines, properly so called,—no Laura, no Geraldine, no Saccharissa. Among the temporary idols of the day, (by which name we shall distinguish those women whose beauty, rank, and patronage, procured them a sort of poetical celebrity, very different from the halo of splendour which love and genius cast round a chosen divinity,) there are one or two who deserve to be particularised.
The first of these was Maria Beatrice d'Este, the daughter of the Duke of Modena, second wife of James Duke of York, and afterwards his queen. She was married, at the age of fifteen, to a profligate prince, as ugly as his brother Charles, (without any of his captivating graces of figure and manner,) and old enough to be her grandfather. She made the best of wives to one of the most unamiable of men. All writers of all parties are agreed, that slander itself, was disarmed by the unoffending gentleness of her character; all are agreed too, on the subject of her uncommon loveliness: she was quite an Italian beauty, with a tall, dignified, graceful figure, regular features, and dark eyes, a complexion rather pale and fair, and hair and eyebrows black as the raven's wing: so that in personal graces, as in virtues, she fairly justified the rapturous eulogies of all the poets of her time. Thus Dryden:—
What awful charms on her fair forehead sit,
Dispensing what she never will admit;
Pleasing yet cold—like Cynthia's silver beam,
The people's wonder, and the poet's theme!
She captivated hearts almost as fast as James the Second lost them;
And Envy did but look on her and died![98]
Her fall from the throne she so adorned; her escape with her infant son, under the care of the Duc de Lauzun;[99] her conduct during her retirement at St. Germains, with a dull court, and a stupid bigoted husband; are all matters of history, and might have inspired, one would think, better verses than were ever written upon her. Lord Lansdown exclaims, with an enthusiasm which was at least disinterested—