Sivut kuvina
PDF
ePub

highest of its kind, and which no other Poet could perhaps altogether have done fo well, is furely very high praise. The excellence is Pope's own, the inferiority is in the subject; no one underfood better that excellent rule of Horace:

Sumite materiam veftris, qui fcribitis æquam

Viribus.

ELEGY

TO THE MEMORY OF

AN UNFORTUNATE LADY*.

HAT beck'ning ghoft, along the moon-light fhade Invites my steps, and points to yonder glade? 'Tis fhe!—but why that bleeding bofom gor'd, Why dimly gleams the vifionary fword!

NOTES.

Oh

See the Duke of Buckingham's Verfes to a Lady defigning to retire into a Monaftery, compared with Mr. Pope's Letters to feveral Ladies, p. 206. quarto Edition. She feems to be the fame person whose unfortunate death is the fubject of this poem.

VER. 1. What beck'ning ghoft,]

"What gentle ghoft befprent with April dew,
Hails me fo folemnly to yonder yew?`

And beck'ning wooes me?".

POPE.

BEN JOHNSON.

The cruelties of her relations, the defolation of the family, the being deprived of the rites of fepulture, the circumstance of dying in a country remote from her relations, are all touched with great tenderness and pathos, particularly the four lines from the 51ft:

By foreign hands thy dying eyes were clos'd; Which lines may remind one of that exquisite stroke in the Philoctetes of Sophocles, who, among other afflicting circumstances, had not near him any σúvlgopov öμμa. ver. 17. The true cause of the excellence of this Elegy is, that the occafion of it was real; fo true is the maxim, that nature is more powerful than fancy;

and

Oh ever beauteous, ever friendly! tell,

Is it, in heav'n, a crime to love too well?
To bear too tender, or too firm a heart,
To act a Lover's or a Roman's part?
Is there no bright reversion in the sky,
For those who greatly think, or bravely die?

Why bade ye elfe, ye Pow'rs! her foul aspire
Above the vulgar flight of low defire?
Ambition first sprung from your blest abodes;
The glorious fault of Angels and of Gods :
Thence to their images on earth it flows,
And in the breafts of Kings and Heroes glows.
Most fouls, 'tis true, but peep out once an age,
Dull fullen pris'ners in the body's cage:
Dim lights of life, that burn a length of
Ufeless, unseen, as lamps in fepulchres;

years

5

10

15

20

Like

NOTES.

and that we can always feel more than we can imagine; and that the most artful fiction muft give way to truth, for this Lady was beloved by Pope. After many and wide enquiries, I have been informed that her name was Wainfbury; and that (which is a fingular circumftance) she was as ill-fhaped and deformed as our author. Her death was not by a fword, but, what would less bear to be told poetically, he hanged herself. Johnfon has too feverely cenfured this Elegy, when he fays, "that it has drawn. much attention by the illaudable fingularity, of treating fuicide with refpect;" and, "that poetry has not oftea been worse employed, than in dignifying the amorous fury of a raving girl." She feems to have been driven to this defperate act by the violence and cruelty of her uncle and guardian, who forced her to a convent abroad; and to which circumftance Pope alludes in one of his letters. WARTON.

VER. 6. to love too well?] Steevens quotes Crafhaw, “To love too well." It is furely an expreffion fufficiently common.

Like Eastern Kings a lazy ftate they keep,

And, close confin'd to their own palace, fleep.
From these perhaps (ere nature bade her die)
Fate fnatch'd her early to the pitying sky.
As into air the purer fpirits flow,

And fep'rate from their kindred dregs below;
So flew the foul to its congenial place,

Nor left one virtue to redeem her Race.

But thou, false guardian of a charge too good,
Thou, mean deferter of thy brother's blood!
See on these ruby lips the trembling breath,

These cheeks now fading at the blast of death;

Cold is that breast which warm'd the world before,
And those love-darting eyes muft roll no more.
Thus, if eternal justice rules the ball,

Thus fhall your wives, and thus your children fall:
On all the line a fudden vengeance waits,
And frequent herfes fhall befiege your gates;
There paffengers shall stand, and pointing fay,
(While the long fun'rals blacken all the way)
Lo! these were they, whofe fouls the Furies fteel'd,
And curs'd with hearts unknowing how to yield.
Thus unlamented pass the proud away,

The gaze of fools, and pageant of a day!

25

30

35

40

So perifh all, whofe breast ne'er learn'd to glow 45 For others good, or melt at others woe.

NOTES.

VER. 41. Lo! these were they,] Iliad. ix. 749.
"The gods that unrelenting mind have steel'd,
And curs'd thee with a mind that cannot yield."

That

« EdellinenJatka »