bitterness to his regrets. He devoted the rest of his life. to politics and literature. About ten years after his second marriage, Lord Lyttelton made a tour into Wales with a gay party. On some occasion, while they stood contemplating a scene of uncommon picturesque beauty, he turned to a friend, and asked him, with enthusiasm, whether it was possible to behold a more pleasing sight? Yes, answered the otherthe countenance of the woman one loves! Lord Lyttelton shrunk, as if probed to the quick; and after a moment's silence, replied pensively-"Once, I thought so!"* Lord Lyttelton brings to mind his friend and patron, Frederick, Prince of Wales (grandfather of the present King) From the impression which history has given of his character, no one, I believe, would suspect him of being a poet, though he was known as the patron of poets. He sometimes amused himself with writing French and English songs, &c., in imitation of the Regent Duc d'Orleans. But, assuredly, it was not in imitation of the Regent he chose his own wife for the principal subject of his ditties. In the same manner and in the same worthy spirit of imitation of the same worthy person, he tried hard to be a libertine, and laid siege to the virtue of sundry maids of honour; preferring all the time, in his inmost soul, his own wife to the handsomest among her attendants. His flirtations with Lady Archibald Hamilton and Miss Vane had not half the grace or sincerity of some of his effusions to the Princess, whom he tenderly loved, and used to call, with a sort of pastoral gallantry, "ma Sylvie." One of his songs has been preserved by that delicious retailer of court-gossip, Horace Walpole; and I copy it from the Appendix to his Memoirs, without agreeing in his flippant censure. SONG. 'Tis not the languid brightness of thine eyes, * Lord Lyttelton's Works, 4to. 'Tis not that hair which plays with every wind, Now straying o'er thy forehead, now behind "Tis not the living colours over each, By nature's finest pencil wrought, To shame the fresh-blown rose and blooming peach, And mock the happiest painter's thought; But 'tis that gentle mind, that ardent love So kindly answering my desire,— That grace with which you look, and speak, and move! To Dr. Parnell's* love for his wife (Anne Minchin,) we owe two of the most charming songs in our language; "My life hath been so wondrous free," and that most beautiful lyric, "When your beauty appears," which, as it is less known, I give entire. 66 When your beauty appears In its graces and airs, All bright as an angel new dropt from the skies, So strangely you dazzle my eyes. But when without art, Your kind thoughts you impart, When your love runs in blushes through every vein; When it darts from your eyes, when it pants at your heart, Then I know that you're woman again. "There's a passion and pride, In our sex," she replied; "And thus, might I gratify both, I would do,— Still an angel appear to each lover beside, But still be a woman for you!" pen This amiable and beloved wife died after a union of five or six years, and left her husband broken-hearted. Her sweetness and loveliness, and the general sympathy caused by her death, drew a touch of deep feeling from the of Swift, who mentions the event in his journal to Stella: 'every one," he says, "grieved for her husband, they were so happy together." Poor Parnell did not, in his bereavement, try Lord Lyttelton's specifics: he did not write an elegy, nor a monody, nor did he marry again; and, unfortunately for himself, he could not subdue his mind to religious resignation. His grief and his nervous irrita * Born in Dublin, 1679; died 1717. bility proved too much for his reason; he felt, what all have felt under the influence of piercing anguish,—a dread, a horror of being left alone: he flew to society; when that was not at hand, he sought relief from excess which his constitution would not bear, and died, unhappy man! in the prime of life; "a martyr," as Goldsmith tells us, "to conjugal fidelity." CHAPTER XXX. CONJUGAL POETRY, CONTINUED. KLOPSTOCK AND META. THEN is there not the German Klopstock and his Meta,his lovely, devoted, angelic Meta? As the subject of some of her husband's most delightful and popular poems, both before and after her marriage,-when living, she formed his happiness on earth; and when, as he tenderly imagined, she watched over his happiness from heaven-how pass her lightly over in a work like this? Yet how do her justice, but by borrowing her own sweet words? or referring the reader at once to the memoirs and fragments of her letters, which never saw the light till sixty years after her death? -for in her there was no vain-glory, no effort, no display. A feeling so hallowed lingers round the memory of this angelic creature, that it is rather a subject to blend with our most sacred and most serious thoughts,to muse over in hours when the heart communes with itself and is still, than to dress out in words, and mingle with the ideas of earthly fame and happiness. Other loves might be poetical, but the love of Klopstock and his Meta was in itself poetry. They were mutually possessed with the idea, that they had been predestined to each other from the beginning of time, and that their meeting on earth was merely a kind of incidental prelude to an eternal and indivisible union in heaven: and shall we blame their fond faith? It is a gentle and affectionate thought, That in immeasurable heights above us, Even at our birth, the wreath of love was woven * Coleridge's Wallenstein. All the sweetest images that ever were grouped together by fancy, dreaming over the golden age; beauty, innocence, and happiness; the fervour of youthful love, the rapture of corresponding affection; undoubting faith and undissembled truth;-these were so bound together, so exalted by the highest and holiest associations, so confirmed in the serenity of conscious virtue, so sanctified by religious enthusiasm; and in the midst of all human blessedness, so wrapt up in futurity,-that the grave was not the close but the completion and the consummation of their happiness. The garland which poesy has suspended on the grave of Meta, was wreathed by no fabled muse; it is not of laurel," meed of conqueror and sage ;" nor of roses blooming and withering among their thorns; nor of myrtle shrinking and dying away before the blast: but of flowers gathered in Paradise, pure and bright, and breathing of their native Eden; which never caught one blighting stain of earth, and though dewed with tears,-" tears such as angels shed!" The name of Klopstock forms an epoch in the history. of poetry. Goëthe, Schiller, and Wisland, have since adorned German literature; but Klopstock was the first to impress on the poetry of his country the stamp of nationality. He was a man of great and original genius,gifted with an extraordinary degree of sensibility and imagination; but these being united to the most enthusiastic religious feeling, elevated and never misled him. His life was devoted to the three noblest sentiments that can fill and animate the human soul,-religion, patriotism and love. To these, from early youth, he devoted his faculties and consecrated his talents. He had, even in his boyhood, resolved to write a poem," which should do honour to God, his country, and himself;" and he produced the Messiah. It would be difficult to describe the enthusiasm this work excited when the first three cantos appeared in 1746. "If poetry had its saints," says Madame de Staël, "then Klopstock would be at the head of the calendar;" and she adds, with a burst of her own eloquence, "Ah, qu'il est beau le talent, quand on ne l'a jamais profané! quand il n'a servi qu'a revèler aux hommes, sous la forme |