[TO BE CONTINUED in Volume II]
From The Book of Days.
YOUNG'S NARCISSA.
The Third Night of Young's Complaint is entitled Narcissa, from its being dedicated to the sad history of the early death of a beautiful lady, thus poetically designated by the author. Whatever doubts may exist with respect to the reality or personal identity of the other characters noticed in the "Night Thoughts," there can be none whatever as regards Narcissa. She was the daughter of Young's wife, by her first husband, Colonel Lee. When scarcely seventeen years of age she was married to Mr. Henry Temple, son of the then Lord Palmerston. [Footnote 158] Soon afterward, being attacked by consumption, she was taken by Young to the south of France in hopes of a change for the better; but she died there about a year after her marriage, and Dr. Johnson tells us, in his "Lives of the Poets," that "her funeral was attended with the difficulties painted in such animated colors in Night the Third." Young's words in relation to the burial of Narcissa, eliminating, for brevity's sake, some extraneous and redundant lines, are as follows:
[Footnote 158: By a second wife, grandfather of the present Premier.]
"While nature melted, superstition raved;
That mourned the dead; and this denied a grave.
For oh! the curst ungodliness of zeal!
While sinful flesh retarded, spirit nursed
In blind infallibility's embrace,
Denied the charity of dust to spread
O'er dust! a charity their dogs enjoy.
What could I do? what succor? what resource?
With pious sacrilege a grave I stole;
With impious piety that grave I wronged;
Short in my duty: coward in my grief!
More like her murderer than friend, I crept
With soft suspended step, and muffled deep
In midnight darkness, whispered my last sigh.
I whispered what should echo through their realms,
Nor writ her name whose tomb should pierce the skies."
All Young's biographers have told the same story from Johnson down to the last edition of the "Night Thoughts," edited by Mr. Gilfillan, who, speaking of Narcissa, says "her remains were brutally denied sepulture as the dust of a Protestant." Le Tourneure translated the "Night Thoughts" into French in 1770, and, strange to say, the work soon became exceedingly popular in France, more so probably than ever it has been in England. Naturally enough, then, curiosity became excited as to where the unfortunate Narcissa was buried, and it was soon discovered that she had been interred in the Botanic Garden of Montpellier. An old gate-keeper of the garden, named Mercier, confessed that many years previously he had assisted to bury an English lady in a hollow, waste spot of the garden. As he told the story, an English clergyman came to him and begged that he would bury a lady; but he refused, until the Englishman, with tears in his eyes, said that she was his only daughter; on hearing this, he (the gate-keeper), being a father himself, consented. Accordingly the Englishman brought the dead [{798}] body on his shoulders, his eyes raining tears, to the garden at midnight, and he there and then buried the corpse. About the time this confession was made, Professor Gouan, an eminent botanist, was writing a work on the plants in the garden, into which he introduced the above story, thus giving it a sort of scientific authority; and consequently the grave of Narcissa became one of the treasures of the garden, and one of the leading lions of Montpellier. A writer in the "Evangelical Magazine" of 1797 gives an account of a visit to the garden, and a conversation with one Bannal, who had succeeded Mercier in his office, and who had often heard the sad story of the burial of Narcissa from Mercier's lips. Subsequently, Talma, the tragedian, was so profoundly impressed with the story that he commenced a subscription to erect a magnificent tomb to the memory of Narcissa; but as the days of bigotry in matters of sepulture had nearly passed away, it was thought better to erect a simple monument, inscribed, as we learn from "Murray's Handbook," with the words:
"Placandis Narcissae manibus,"
the "Handbook" adding, "She was buried here at a time when the atrocious laws which accompanied the Revocation of Nantes, backed by the superstition of a fanatic populace, denied Christian burial to Protestants."
Strange to say, this striking story is almost wholly devoid of truth. Narcissa never was at Montpellier. That she died at Lyons we know from Mr. Herbert Crofts's account of Young, published by Dr. Johnson; that she was buried there we know by her burial registry and her tombstone, both of which are yet in existence. And by these we also learn that Young's "animated" account of her funeral in the "Night Thoughts" is simply untrue. She was not denied a grave: