Two other women, who lived about the same time, possess a degree of celebrity which, though but a sound—a name—rather than a feeling or an interest, must not pass unnoticed; more particularly as they will farther illustrate the theory we have hitherto kept in view. I allude to "Granville's Mira," and "Prior's Chloe."
For the fame of the first, a single line of Pope has done more than all the verses of Lord Lansdown: it is in the Epistle to Jervas the painter—
With Zeuxis' Helen, thy Bridgewater vie,
And these be sung, till Granville's Mira die!
Now, "Granville's Mira" would have been dead long ago, had she not been preserved in some material more precious and lasting than the poetry of her noble admirer: she shines, however, "embalmed in the lucid amber" of Pope's lines; and we not only wonder how she got there, but are tempted to inquire who she was, or, if ever she was at all.
Granville's Mira was Lady Frances Brudenel, third daughter of the Earl of Cardigan. She was married very young to Livingstone, Earl of Newburgh; and Granville's first introduction to her must have taken place soon after her marriage, in 1690: he was then about twenty, already distinguished for that elegance of mind and manner, which has handed him down to us as "Granville the polite." He joined the crowd of Lady Newburgh's adorers; and as some praise, and some lucky lines had persuaded him that he was a poet, he chose to consecrate his verse to this fashionable beauty.
In all the mass of poetry, or rather rhyme, addressed to Lady Newburgh, there is not a passage,—not a single line which can throw an interest round her character; all we can make out is, that she was extremely beautiful; that she sang well; and that she was a most finished, heartless coquette. Thus her lover has pictured her:
Lost in a labyrinth of doubts and joys,
Whom now her smiles revived, her scorn destroys;
She will, and she will not, she grants, denies,
Consents, retracts; advances, and then flies.
Approving and rejecting in a breath,
Now proffering mercy, now presenting death!
She led Granville on from year to year, till the death of her first husband, Lord Newburgh. He then presented himself among the suitors for her hand, confiding, it seems, in former encouragement or promises; but Lady Newburgh had played the same despicable game with others: she had no objection to the poetical admiration of an accomplished young man of fashion, who had rendered her an object of universal attention, by his determined pursuit and tuneful homage, and who was then the admired of all women. She thought, like the coquette, in one of Congreve's comedies,
If there's delight in love, 'tis when I see
The heart that others bleed for—bleed for me!