180 ELEGY TO THE MEMORY OF AN UNFORTUNATE LADY. WHAT beckoning ghost along the moonlight shade Invites my steps, and points to yonder glade ? Is it, in heaven, a crime to love too well? Is there no bright reversion in the sky For those who greatly think, or bravely die? 5 10 Why bade ye else, ye powers! her soul aspire But thou, false guardian of a charge too good, Thus, if eternal justice rules the ball, 35 Thus shall your wives, and thus your children fall: 40 "Lo! these were they, whose souls the Furies steel'd, So perish all, whose breast ne'er learn'd to glow 45 What can atone (oh ever-injured shade!) Pleased thy pale ghost, or graced thy mournful bier. 1 [Pope's Iliad, ix. 749, and xxii. 447.] 2 ["I heard the hooded father mumbling charms."-Dryden's Sebast.] A heap of dust alone remains of thee, 'Tis all thou art, and all the proud shall be! Poets themselves must fall, like those they sung, 75 80 ["See the Duke of Buckingham's Verses to a Lady designing to retire into a monastery, compared with Mr. Pope's 'letters to several ladies.' She seems to be the same person whose unfortunate death is the subject of this poem." -Pope. The Verses by Sheffield, Duke of Buckingham, are rather calculated to break the spell contained in Pope's exquisitely pathetic and musical Elegy. The following is about one half of Sheffield's poem, and the only part having a reference to the lady's history: "What breast but yours can hold the double fire Of fierce devotion and of fond desire? Love would shine forth were not your zeal so bright, "While to us nothing but ourselves is dear, Are far beneath us; fortune's self may take But think, O think, before you prove unkind, And Sheffield then goes on to apply the case of Armida and Rinaldo, with other choice conceits, which have a ludicrous air as coming from a man above sixty and married to his third wife. There was no real feeling in this poem; Pope's is full of it, and of a sad earnestness, which attests the truth of the main incidents in the Elegy. The name of the lady has not transpired. Pope appears to have been reluctant to mention it; for his friend, Mr. Caryll, of West Grinstead, in the published Correspondence, twice asks the question, and no answer is given. The earliest allusion to the case seems to occur in one of the suppressed letters to Cromwell, in July, 1711, when the distressed lady was represented by her relations "of large acres and little souls," as in an unsound state of mind. From subsequent letters we learn, that she was a Mrs. W., niece to a Lady A., and that on the 25th of May, 1712, she went on a visit to her aunt, Lady A., after a series of hardships or misfortunes, of the nature of which we are not informed. Craggs the younger interested himself in the lady. He wrote to her aunt, as pressingly as possible," not to let anything obstruct the journey, "and," he adds, "I will write again to my lady, to urge as much as possible the effecting the only thing that in my opinion can make her niece easy." Pope answers, that he is afraid Craggs's charitable intention of writing again to Lady A. may be frustrated by the short stay the lady was to make there. "She went thither on the 25th," he says, "with that mixture of expectation and anxiety with which people usually go into unknown or half-discovered countries, utterly ignorant of the disposition of the inhabitants and the treatment they are to meet with." He also blames some of his own friends. "I cannot excuse some near allies of mine for their conduct of late towards this lady, which has given me a great deal of anger as well as sorrow: all I shall say to you of them at present is, that they have not been my relations these two months. The consent of opinions in our minds is certainly a nearer tie than can be contracted by all the blood in our bodies." From the poem we learn, that the lady had "beauty, titles, wealth, and fame," and that she was ambitious in her love; but, thwarted by her relatives and deserted by her uncle, who was her guardian, she committed suicide. Johnson's stern morality allows no quarter to the unhappy lady, or to Pope's apology for suicide. Warton, less severe and more active in his sympathies, made “many and wide inquiries" after the lady, the result of which was, that he was informed her name was Wainsbury; that she was as ill-shaped and deformed as our author;" and that her death was not by a sword, but, what would less bear to be told poetically, she hanged herself. Mr. Bowles revives the romance of the story, by stating, on the authority of Voltaire, communicated to Condorcet, and by Condorcet to a gentleman of high birth and character, from whom Mr. Bowles received it, "that her attachment was not to Pope, or to any Englishman of inferior degree, but to a young French prince, of the blood royal, Charles Emmanuel, Duke of Berry, whom, in early youth, she had met at the Court of France," and who, in 1712, was in his twentysixth year. This certainly explains the poet's allusion to the lady's ambi tion, "Above the vulgar flight of low desire." It may also account for the lady's despair and distraction of mind, with its fatal termination. Such an alliance was unattainable, and in the tumult of passion, amidst the reproaches or alienation of her guardian and relatives, reason was overthrown. When Craggs stated that he would urge Lady A. to effect the only thing that, in his opinion, could make her niece easy, he most probably referred to retirement to a convent. Pope, in one of his "letters to several ladies," without name or date, alludes to this intention : : 'Though you modestly say the world has left you, yet, I verily believe it is coming to you again as fast as it can: for, to give the world its due, it is always very fond of merit when it is past its power to oppose it. Therefore, if you can, take it into favour again upon its repentance, and continue in it. But if you are resolved in revenge to rob the world of so much example as you may afford it, I believe your design will be vain: for even in a monastery your devotions cannot carry you so far toward the next world as to make this lose the sight of you; but you'll be like a star, that, while it is fixed to heaven, shines over all the earth. Wheresoever Providence shall dispose of the most valuable thing I know, I shall ever follow you with my sincerest wishes, and my best thoughts will be perpetually waiting upon you, when you never hear of me nor them. Your own guardian angels cannot be more constant, nor more silent." There is no reference to the case in the Maple-Durham MSS. Ayre states that the lady had formed an attachment to a young gentleman of inferior rank, and refused a match proposed to her by her guardian, who forced her abroad. All this is contrary to express declarations in the poem and letters. Ruff head servilely copies Ayre-a proof that Pope had not informed Warburton of the secret. The poet, we conceive, threw ideal circumstances into the case to heighten its interest and poetical effect, and, when he came to publish his letters, put wrong initials, as in other instances, to conceal the real names.] |