But the best of it was, the god's wit so embrac'd The whole room with its kindness and exquisite taste,

Every guest seem'd to feel his arm round her own waist.

And well might seem palpable all which he said! For as Pallas leap'd arm'd out of Jupiter's head, So gods, when they please, utter things, and not words!

'Tis a fact !-solid visions !-clouds, armies, trees, herds :

You see them-nay, feel them. Thus, talks he of roses ?

They come, thick and globy, caressing your noses. Of music? 'tis heard: of a sword? you may grasp it : Of love, and the bosom you long for? you clasp it.

Conceive then the joy, when in toasting the women Whom wit hath made deathless, we saw them all swim in!

Each crossing the end of the room!-What a sight!— The guests thrust their chairs back at first, in a fright.

I declare I beheld them so plainly, it took

All the self-command in me (so sweet was her look)

Not to jump from the gallery, and kiss Mrs. Brooke.+

*See a curious speculation in Tucker's "Light of Nature Pursued," in which a guess is made at the mode of speech in a future state.

† Frances Brooke, authoress of "Rosina," "Emily Montague," &c. &c., "as remarkable," says Gorton's Biographical Dictionary," for the suavity and gentleness of her manners, as for her literary talents." She had the candour, in a dispute with Garrick, to confess publicly that she was in the wrong.

Lady Winchelsea cost me still more to go through it ;*

But at Lady Ann Barnard, I said "I must do it.”+

I cannot name all who thus issued from air, As the god made us see them ;-but Sappho was As brown as a berry, and little of size; [there, But lord! with such midnight and love in her eyes! Aspasia's however we thought still more loving : Heart sat in their pupils, and gentlest approving. We saw (only fancy it !) Pericles hand her; And both (I can testify) look'd up at Landor. Of Romans (whose women more startle than lull us) Came none but the dame that's bound up with Tibullus ;

* Anne, Countess of Winchelsea, in the time of Pope, whom she knew. Gay introduces her among Pope's welcomers home from Greece (his finish of the Iliad) as

"Winchelsea, still meditating song."

Her poems, amidst a good deal of inferior matter, contain evidences of a true feeling for nature, which has obtained the praise of Wordsworth. "It is remarkable," says he, in the Essay in his Miscellaneous Poems, "that excepting a passage or two in the Windsor Forest' of Pope, and some delightful pictures in the Poems of Lady Winchelsea, the poetry of the period intervening between the publication of the 'Paradise Lost,' and the Seasons,' does not contain a single new image of external nature." In Mr. Dyce's "Specimens of British Poetesses " are to be found two of her best specimens, the "Nocturnal Reverie," and the truly philosophical and fine-hearted effusion entitled the "Spleen;" but I am surprised that he has omitted her "Petition for an Absolute Retreat," a charming aspiration after one of those sequestered states of felicity which poets love to paint. It is equally beautiful for its thoughts, its pictures, and the music of the burthen which it repeats at the close of each paragraph.

† Lady Ann Barnard, of the house of Balcarres, authoress of "Auld Robin Grey,"-the most beautiful ballad that ever was written.

pute.

Sulpicia; respecting whom, after all, there is much dis

G

But France furnished many, and Italy fair
The laurel look'd sweet in their wild flowing hair.
Colonna came noble, in widow's black gown ;*

And Stampa, who worshipp'd a living renown ;+
Navarre's fair Boccaccio; the Rope-maker too;||
Deshoulieres, kind and pensive; De Launay the
true; §

Sévigné, good mother, a little too fussy; [Bussy!
But how, when she will, she beats Walpole and
Old selfish Du Deffand, more knowing than wise;
And Genlis didactic, and D'Houdetot's eyes; T
And De Stael, mighty mistress, par Napoleoni,
(For so he would make her), and dear Riccoboni ;**

* Vittoria Colonna, the chief Italian poetess, famous for her adoring constancy to the memory of her husband, the Marquis of Pescara, a distinguished soldier.

† Gaspara Stampa, another celebrated Italian poetess, whose writings are full of the passion she entertained, not with a like return, for Collaltino di Collalto, Conte di Trevigi, an eminent soldier. It has been generally supposed that she died of her love; but she did a much wiser thing,-transferred it to a more loving person.

Margaret of Valois, Queen of Navarre, sister of Francis the First, and grandmother of Henry the Fourth-authoress of the set of tales called "The Heptameron."

Louise Charly, generally called Louisa Labe, or La Belle Cordière, wife of a rope-maker at Lyons, celebrated for her numerous accomplishments; which included Greek and Latin, as well as wit and the guitar.

§ Madame de Stahl, an attendant on the Duchess du Maine in the time of the Regency, here called by her maiden name of de Launay (which she bore almost all her life) to distinguish her from Madame de Stael. Her autobiography is perhaps unique for candour and self-knowledge.

¶ Which charmed Rousseau with their expression, in spite of the small-pox, and their own not very great beauty in other respects. But every one's mind, such as it is, looks out through the eyes, those windows of the habitation of the soul; and Rousseau thought he discovered, in hers, the natural, affectionate woman, in the midst of a selfish and artificial generation. Madame d'Houdetot wrote, in the decline of life, some touching verses on love, beginning "Jeune j'aimai.”

**Wife of an Italian actor in Paris, and authoress of numerous

Then Newcastle's Duchess, fantastic but rare ;
And Behn and Centlivre, that plain-spoken pair;
And Wortley, who, had she been bred in a haram,
Had turn'd it, infallibly, all harum-scarum ;
And sweet Brooke aforesaid, all cover'd with May,
And Lady Ann, lovely for "Auld Robin Gray;
And dearest dear Winchelsea, whom I prefer,
After all, she so jumps with me, even to her:
(For although Lady Ann lov'd maternity, she
Lov'd love and the trees so, she might have lov'd me:)
But I see high-born Devonshire, who with such pith
Wrote of Tell and his platform ;† and poor Char-
lotte Smith,
[houses,
Whose muse might have bless'd so her nooks and old
Had lawyers not plagued her, and debts of her spouse's:
And Tighe, her own Psyche: and Elliott, sweet Jane,
Who made the lone dairies mourn Flodden again;

popular novels, remarkable for their good-hearted liberality of sentiment. She was a friend and correspondent of Garrick. She is said to have died in a state approaching to want.

* Margaret, Duchess of Newcastle in the time of Cromwell and Charles the Second. With an ill-regulated judgment, and fantastic notions of her dignity, personal and conventional, she possessed real genius and knowledge, and great consideration for others. She was one of those people who seem to have had a fool for one parent and a sage for the other.

Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, sister of the late Earl Spencer, and mother of the present Duke, who so well sustains the reputation of the ever liberal and graceful house of Cavendish. See, in Mr. Dyce's collection above noticed, the Duchess's "Ode on the Passage of Mourt Saint Gothard," which excited the enthusiasm of Coleridge

"O lady, nurs'd in pomp and pleasure,
Where gat you that heroic measure?"

Jane Elliot, authoress of the exquisite lament for the battle of Flodden, called the "Flowers of the Forest," which Sir Walter Scott had such difficulty in believing a modern production. It is like the sullenness of a still morning in the country, before rain.

And Radcliffe, fear-charm'd, ever breathlessly creep-
ing
Through castles and corridors, frightful to sleep in:
Then Barbauld, fine teacher, correcting impatience,
Or mounting the stars in divine meditations; *
Thrale, Brunton, Trefusis, her heart pit-a-patting,
And Hemans, behind her grand organ-loft chatting;
With others I can't well remember at present,
Except Hannah Moore, looking very unpleasant.

You'll fancy there could not have possibly been
A sight now, which females would sooner have seen
Than all this; and in truth, when you mark, in a street,
How they turn and inspect ev'ry bonnet they meet,
And how light, in comparison, seem to hold men,
'Tis a point I shall leave to some weightier pen.
Only pray be assur'd, that whatever the case,
It tells not a jot to our sex's disgrace;

And for this simple reason, that us they are sure of,
But each other's claims are not quite so secure of.
Thus much I can swear,-that what follow'd this
show
[glow,

Was a sight made their cheeks with new gratitude
And that half the dear souls fell in love on the spot,
And with posthumous men too! gallants living not!
Alas! did I say so? Oh impious misgiving!
Than Shakspeare and Petrarch pray who are more
living?
[touch?
Whose words more delight us? whose touches more
For these were the shapes that now pass'd us,-all
such

* See, in Aikin's "Miscellanies" her admirable essay upon "Inconsistency in our Expectations;" and in Mr. Dyce's collection, "A Summer Evening's Meditation." containing, among other beauties, the following sublime passage:

"This dead of midnight is the noon of thought;

And Wisdom mounts her zenith with the stars."