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Then share thy pain, allow that sad relief;

Ah, more than share it, give me all thy grief.'
Heav'n first taught letters for some wretch's aid,'
Some banished lover, or some captive maid;

They live, they speak, they breathe what love inspires,
Warm from the soul, and faithful to its fires,
The virgin's wish without her fears impart,
Excuse the blush, and pour out all the heart,'
Speed the soft intercourse from soul to soul,
And waft a sigh from Indus to the Pole."

Thou know'st how guiltless first I met thy flame,'
When love approached me under friendship's name;"
My fancy formed thee of angelic kind,

Some emanation of th' all-beauteous Mind.'
Those smiling eyes, attemp'ring ev'ry ray,
Shone sweetly lambent with celestial day ;'

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1 Heloisa to Abelard : "Be not then unkind, nor deny me that little relief. All sorrows divided are made lighter."

2 Heloisa to Abelard: "Letters were first invented for comforting such solitary wretches as myself."

3 Heloisa to Abelard: "What cannot letters inspire? They have souls; they can speak; they have in them all that force which expresses the transports of the heart; they have all the fire of our passions; they can raise them as much as if the persons themselves were present; they have all the softness and delicacy of speech, and sometimes a boldness of expression even beyond it."

Otway's translation of Phædra to Hippolytus:

Thus secrets safe to farthest shores may

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most exquisite you."

Guiltless I gazed; heav'n listened while you sung;'
And truths divine came mended from that tongue.2
From lips like those, what precept failed to move?
Too soon they taught me 'twas no sin to love:
Back through the paths of pleasing sense I ran,'
Nor wished an angel whom I loved a man."
Dim and remote the joys of saints I see:
Nor envy them that heav'n I lose for thee.

How oft, when pressed to marriage, have I said,
Curse on all laws but those which love has made !"
Love, free as air, at sight of human ties,
Spreads his light wings, and in a moment flies."
Let wealth, let honour, wait the wedded dame,
August her deed, and sacred be her fame ;'

She says herself, "You had, I confess, two qualities in great perfection with which you could instantly captivate the heart of any woman,a graceful manner of reading and singing.". She mentions in another place also the excellence of his singing.-WAKEFIELD.

2 He was her preceptor in philosophy and divinity.-POPE. Dryden, Epistle, 14:

The fair themselves go mended from thy hand.-WAKEFIELD.

3 Dryden's Edipus, end of Act iii. : And backward trod the paths I sought to shun.

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Heloisa to Abelard: "The bonds of matrimony, however honourable, still bear with them a necessary engagement, and I was very unwilling to be necessitated to love always a man who perhaps would not always love me."

6 Love will not be confined by maisterie: When maisterie comes, the lord of Love

anon

Flutters his wings, and forthwith is he
gone. Chaucer.-POPE.

Hudibras, Part iii. Cant. i. 553:
Love that's too generous to abide
To be against its nature tied,
Disdains against its will to stay,
But struggles out and flies away.-
WAKEFIELD.

4 Thy holy precepts and the sanctity of thy character had made me conceive Dryden's Aurengezebe : of thee as of a being more venerable than man, and approaching the nature of superior existences. But thy personal allurements soon inspired those tender feelings which gradually conducted me from a veneration of the angel to a less pure and dignified sensation-love for the man.-WAKE

'Tis true of marriage bands I'm weary grown, Love scorns all ties but those that are his own.-STEEVENS.

FIELD.

Dryden, Ovid's Met. x. :

And own no laws but those which love ordains.-WAKEFIELD.

VOL. II.-POETRY.

The passage cited by Pope from Chaucer is in the Franklin's Tale. Spenser copied and altered the lines, which led Wakefield to imagine that Pope had committed the double error of falsely imputing them to Chaucer, and quoting them incorrectly.

7 Heloisa to Abelard: "It is not love but the desire of riches and

R

Before true passion all those views remove;
Fame, wealth, and honour! what are you to love ?
The jealous god, when we profane his fires,
Those restless passions in revenge inspires,
And bids them make mistaken mortals groan,
Who seek in love for aught but love alone.'
Should at my feet the world's great master fall,
Himself, his throne, his world, I'd scorn them all;
Not Cæsar's empress would I deign to prove ;2
No, make me mistress to the man I love;
If there be yet another name more free,'
More fond than mistress,' make me that to thee.
Oh! happy state! when souls each other draw,
When love is liberty, and nature, law :'
All then is full, possessing and possessed,
No craving void left aching in the breast:"

Ev'n thought meets thought, ere from the lips it part,
And each warm wish springs mutual from the heart.

honour which makes women run into the embraces of an indolent husband: ambition, not affection, forms such marriages. I believe indeed they may be followed with some honours and advantages, but I can never think that this is the way to enjoy the pleasures of an affectionate union."

1 Heloisa to Abelard : "This restless tormenting passion"-ambition -"punishes them for aiming at other advantages by love than love itself."

2 Heloisa to Abelard: "How often I have made protestations that it was infinitely preferable to me to live with Abelard as his mistress than with any other as empress of the world, and that I was more happy in obeying you than I should have been in lawfully captivating the lord of the uni

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This sure is bliss, if bliss on earth there be,
And once the lot of Abelard and me.'

Alas, how changed! what sudden horrors rise!
A naked lover bound and bleeding lies!"
Where, where was Eloise? her voice, her hand,
Her poniard, had opposed the dire command.'
Barbarian, stay! that bloody stroke' restrain
The crime was common, common be the pain."
I can no more; by shame, by rage suppressed,
Let tears, and burning blushes speak the rest."
Canst thou forget that sad, that solemn day,
When victims at yon altar's foot we lay?
Canst thou forget what tears that moment fell,
When, warm in youth, I bade the world farewell?'

8

Their hearts are full, and leave no vacancy for any other passion."

1 Heloisa to Abelard: "If I could believe you as truly persuaded of my merit as I am of yours, I might say there has been a time when we were such a pair."

2 Mrs. Rowe in her Elegy:

A dying lover pale and gasping lies.— WAKEFIELD.

3 Heloisa to Abelard : "Where was I? where was your Heloise then? What joy should I have had in defending my lover. I would have guarded you from violence, though at the expense of my life; my cries and shrieks alone would have stopped the hand."

4 For "stroke" Pope, in all editions till that of 1736, read "hand," the word in the translation. He had used "hand" in the rhyme of the previous couplet, and it was probably to avoid the repetition that he made the alteration.

$ Careless readers may misapprehend the sense. "Pain" here means punishment, pæna.-HOLT WHITE.

Like a verse of Drummond's:

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The grief was common, common were the cries.-WAKEFIELD.

Heloisa to Abelard: "You alone expiated the crime common to us beth. You only were punished though both of us were guilty."

6 Heloisa to Abelard: "Oh whither does the excess of passion hurry me ! Here love is shocked, and modesty joined with despair deprive me of speech."

7 A writer in the Gentleman's Magazine quotes Settle's Empress of Morocco:

Muly Hamet.-Speak.

Empress.-Let my tears and blushes speak the rest.

8 The altar of Paraclete, says Mr. Berrington, did not then exist. They were not professed at the same time or place; one was at Argenteuil, the other at St. Denys.— WARTON.

9 Abelard to Heloisa: "I accompanied you with terror to the foot of the altar, and while you stretched out your hand to touch the sacred cloth, I heard you pronounce distinctly those fatal words which for ever separated you from all men."

As with cold lips I kissed the sacred veil,'
The shrines all trembled, and the lamps grew pale :2
Heav'n scarce believed the conquest it surveyed,
And saints with wonder heard the vows I made.
Yet then, to those dread altars as I drew,

Not on the cross my eyes were fixed, but you;
Not grace, or zeal, love only was my call,
And if I lose thy love, I lose my all.

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Come with thy looks, thy words, relieve my woe;"

Those still at least are left thee to bestow."

120

Still on that breast enamoured let me lie,

Still drink delicious poison from thy eye,'

Pant on thy lip, and to thy heart be pressed;

Give all thou canst-and let me dream the rest.
Ah no! instruct me other joys to prize,
With other beauties charm my partial eyes,

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see me, hear my sighs, and be a witness of all my sorrows, without incurring any danger, since you can only relieve me with tears and words."

5 Roscoe remarks that the lines which follow cannot be justified by anything in the letters of Eloisa. Sentiments equally gross are however expressed both in the original Latin and in the adulterated translation which was Pope's authority.

6 Concannen's Match at Football, Canto iii. :

And drank in poison from her lovely eye.

Creech, at the beginning of his
Lucretius :

Where on thy bosom he supinely lies,
And greedily drinks love at both his eyes.
WAKEFIELD.

Smith's Phædra and Hippolytus, Act i.:

Drank gorging in the dear delicious poison.
-STEEVENS.

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