Anacreon preferred auburn hair.
| "Deepening inwardly, a dun; Sparkling golden next the sun," |
conveys nearly the same idea with that expressed in Jonson's "Gold upon a ground of black."
I have two or three more verses upon hair, which I recollect to have seen in an old English poem. They are descriptive of "Hero the nun of Venus—the lady beloved of Leander." These are the lines—three in number,
| "Come listen to the tale of Hero young, Whom pale Apollo courted for her hair, And offered as a dower his burning throne." |
We often meet with double tastes. Tasso loved two Leonoras. Leonora D'Este had a fair skin. The other was a brunette.
| "Bruna sei tu ma bella Qual virgini viola." |
It is difficult to decide between the rival colors of the eye. This difficulty is set forth in a little poem called the "Dilemma," which I find in an old number of the New England Magazine.
| "I had a vision in my dreams, I saw a row of twenty beams; From every beam a rope was hung, In every rope a lover swung. I asked the hue of every eye That bade each luckless lover die; Ten livid lips said heavenly blue And ten accused the darker hue." |
Before ending this "scrap" I will quote some sentences written by a friend of my own long ago—a very eccentric man, and indeed a melancholy one. He had been crossed in love, and could rarely speak or write without recurring to the origin of his unhappiness. He had a great many faults, but he is dead now, and has been so for many years; I am not anxious to say any more about them. The paragraph which I copy from his manuscript, is a portion of a flighty book, the aim or meaning of which I could never discover. It owes its fanciful extravagance, I rather think, to the influence of opium upon the author's nerves. After pointing out the numerous particulars in which "nature imitates our women," he proceeds to observe after the following fashion,