Just what coxcombs call a bite.
(such is his elegant phrase.) He then offers her friendship instead of love: the lady replies with very pertinent arguments; and finally, the tale is concluded in this ambiguous passage, in which we must allow that great room is left for scandal, for doubt, and for curiosity.
But what success Vanessa met
Is to the world a secret yet;—
Whether the nymph, to please her swain,
Talks in a high romantic strain,
Or whether he at last descends
To act with less seraphic ends;
Or to compound the business, whether
They temper love and books together;
Must never to mankind be told,
Nor shall the conscious Muse unfold.
Such is the story of this celebrated poem. The passion, the circumstances, the feelings are real, and it contains lines of great power; and yet, assuredly, the perusal of it never conveyed one emotion to the reader's heart, except of indignation against the writer; not a spark of poetry, fancy, or pathos, breathes throughout. We have a dull mythological fable in which Venus and the Graces descend to clothe Vanessa in all the attractions of her sex:—
The Graces next would act their part,
And showed but little of their art;
Their work was half already done,
The child with native beauty shone;
The outward form no help required;—
Each, breathing on her thrice, inspired
That gentle, soft, engaging air,
Which in old times advanced the fair.
And Pallas is tricked by the wiles of Venus into doing her part.—The Queen of Learning
Mistakes Vanessa for a boy;
Then sows within her tender mind
Seeds long unknown to womankind,
For manly bosoms chiefly fit,—
The seeds of knowledge, judgment, wit.
Her soul was suddenly endued
With justice, truth, and fortitude,—
With honour, which no breath can stain,
Which malice must attack in vain;
With open heart and bounteous hand, &c.
The nymph thus accomplished is feared by the men and hated by the women; and Swift has shown his utter want of heart and good taste, by making his homage to the woman he loved, a vehicle for the bitterest satire on the rest of her sex. What right had he to accuse us of a universal preference for mere coxcombs,—he who, through the sole power of his wit and intellect, had inspired with the most passionate attachment two lovely women not half his own age? Be it remembered, that while Swift was playing the Abelard with such effect, he was in his forty-fifth year, and though
He moved and bowed, and talked with so much grace,
Nor showed the parson in his gait or face,[112]
he was one of the ugliest men in existence,—of a bilious, saturnine complexion, and a most forbidding countenance.