heaven, which cried aloud, "This is my beloved son," he represented all the assembly that attended on the banks of Jordan, gazing up into heaven with the utmost ardor of amazement. At this call of a sister in misfortune, who had been visited with a sad similitude of griefs with her own, Eloisa breaks out in a religious transport. I come, I come! prepare your roseate bow'rs, She then calls on Abelard to pay her the last sad offices, and to be present with her in the article of death: See my lips tremble, and my eyeballs roll— And then a circumstance of personal fondness intervenes : Suck my last breath, and catch my flying soul! But But she instantly corrects herself, and would have her Abelard attend her at these last solemn moments, only as a devout priest, and not as a fond lover. The image, in which she represents him coming to administer extreme unction, is striking and picturesque : Ah, no- in sacred vestments mayst thou stand, Teach me at once, and learn of me, to die! She adds, that it will be some consolation to behold him once more, though even in the agonies of death: Ah then! thy once-lov'd Eloisa see! Which last line I could never read without great emotion; it is at once so pathetic, and so artfully points back to the whole train and nature of their misfortunes. The circumstances she wishes may attend the death of Abelard, are poetically Y 3 * The words printed in Italics ought to be looked on as particularly beautiful. poetically imagined, and are also agreeable to the notions of mystic devotion. The death of St. Jerome is finely painted by DOMENICHINO, with such attendant particulars; In trance ecstatic may thy pangs be drown'd ;* This wish was fulfilled. The body of Abelard, who died twenty years before Eloisa, was sent to Eloisa, who interred it in the monastery of the Paraclete, and it was accompanied with a very extraordinary form of Absolution, from the famous Peter de Clugny; "Ego Petrus Cluniacensis abbas, qui Petrum Abelardum in monachum Cluniacensem recepi, & corpus ejus furtim delatum Heloissa Abbatissæ, & monialibus Paracleti concessi, auctoritate omnipotentis Dei, & omnium sanctorum, absolvo eum, pro officio, ab omnibus peccatis suis."-" Eloisa herself (says * Ver. 339. Epis. Abel. & Heloiss. p. 238. (says* Vigneul Marville) solicited for this absolution, and Peter de Clugny willingly granted it on what it could be founded, I leave to our learned theologists to determine. In certain ages, opinions have prevailed, for which no solid reason can be given." When Eloisa died in 1163, she was interred by the side of her beloved husband. I must not forget to mention, for the sake of those who are fond of modern miracles, that when she was put into the grave, Abelard stretched out his arms to receive her, and closely embraced her. Eloisa, at the conclusion of the EPISTLE to which we are now arrived, is judiciously represented as gradually settling into a tranquillity of mind, and seemingly reconciled to her fate. She can bear to speak of their being buried together, without violent emotions. Two lovers are introduced as visiting their celebrated tombs, and the behaviour of these strangers is finely imagined: If ever chance two wand'ring lovers brings, O'er the pale marble shall they join their heads, The poet adds, still farther, what impressions a view of their sepulchre would make even on a spectator less interested than these two lovers ; and how it could affect his mind, even in the midst of the most solemn acts of religion: From the full quire when loud Hosannas rise,* Glance on the stone where our cold relics lie, With this last line, at first it appears, that the poem should have ended; for the eight additional verses, concerning some poet that haply might * Ver. 353. † And sure if fate some future bard shall join arise |