A precious boon, that would go far to reconcile one to old age-this love, if true! But is there any such true love? I hope so. But do you believe it? FRIEND. CATHERINE. ELIZA (eagerly.) I am sure he does. FRIEND. CATHERINE. No! we will be affronted, drop a courtesy, and ask pardon for our presumption in expecting that Mr would waste his sense on two insignificant girls. FRIEND. Well, well I will be serious. Hem! Now then commences the discourse; Mr Moore's song being the text. Love, as distinguished from Friendship, on the one hand, and from the passion that too often usurps its name, on the other LUCIUS. (Eliza's brother, who had just joined the trio, in a whisper to the Friend.) But is not Love the union of both? FRIEND (aside to LUCIUS). He never loved who thinks so. ELIZA. Brother, we don't want you. There! Mrs H. cannot arrange the flower-vase without you. Thank you, Mrs Hartman. LUCIUS. I'll have my revenge! I know what I will say ! ELIZA. Off! off! Now, dear sir,-Love, you were saying FRIEND. Hush! Preaching, you mean, Eliza. Pshaw! FRIEND. and tenderness of nature; a constitutional communicativeness and utterancy of heart and soul; a delight in the detail of sympathy, in the outward and visible signs of the sacrament within-to count, as it were, the pulses of the life of love. But above all, it supposes a soul which, even in the pride and summer-tide of life -even in the lustihood of health and strength, had felt oftenest and prized highest that which age cannot take From a man turned of fifty, Catherine, I imagine, away, and which, in all our lovings, is the Love;—— expects a less confident answer. --I mean that willing sense of the insufficingness of the self for itself, which predisposes a generous nature to see, in the total being of another, the supplement and completion of its own-that quiet perpetual seeking which the presence of the beloved object modulates, not suspends, where the heart momently finds, and, finding, again seeks on- lastly, when life's changeful orb has pass'd the full, a confirmed faith in the nobleness of humanity, thus brought home and pressed, as it were, to the very bosom of hourly experience: it Say another word, and we will call it downright af- supposes, I say, a heart-felt reverence for worth, not the fectation. ELIZA. less deep because divested of its solemnity by habit, by CATHERINE. Well, Sir; you have said quite enough to make me despair of finding a John Anderson, my jo, John, to totter down the hill of life with. FRIEND. familiarity, by mutual infirmities, and even by a feeling less other infinitesimals of pleasureable thought and of modesty which will arise in delicate minds, when genial feeling. they are conscious of possessing the same or the correspondent excellence in their own characters. In short, there must be a mind, which, while it feels the beautiful and the excellent in the beloved as its own, and by right of love appropriates it, can call Goodness its Playfellow; and dares make sport of time and infirmity, while, in the person of a thousand-foldly endeared partner, we feel for aged VIRTUE the caressing fondness that belongs to the INNOCENCE of childhood, and repeat the same attentions and tender courtesies as had been dictated by the same affection to the same object when attired in feminine loveliness or in manly beauty. ELIZA. What a soothing-what an elevating idea! CATHERINE. If it be not only an idea. FRIEND. At all events, these qualities which I have enumerated, are rarely found united in a single individual. How much more rare must it be, that two such individuals should meet together in this wide world under circumstances that admit of their union as Husband and Wife. A person may be highly estimable on the whole, nay, amiable as neighbour, friend, housemate-in short, in all the concentric circles of attachment, save only the last and inmost; and yet from how many causes be estranged from the highest perfection in this? Pride, coldness or fastidiousness of nature, worldly cares, an anxious or ambitious disposition, a passion for display, a sullen temper-one or the other-too often proves ■ the dead fly in the compost of spices,» and any one is enough to unfit it for the precious balm of unction. For some mighty good sort of people, too, there is not seldom a sort of solemn saturnine, or, if you will, ursine vanity, that keeps itself alive by sucking the of its paws own self-importance. And as this high sense, or rather sensation of their own value is, for the most part, grounded on negative qualities, so they have no better means of preserving the same but by negatives-that is, by not doing or saying any thing, that might be put down for fond, silly, or nonsensical,-or (to use their own phrase) by never forgetting themselves, which some of their acquaintance are uncharitable enough to think the most worthless object they could be employed in remembering. ELIZA (in answer to a whisper from CATHERINE). To a hair! He must have sate for it himself. Save me from such folks! But they are out of the question. FRIEND. True! but the same effect is produced in thousands by the too general insensibility to a very important truth; this, namely, that the MISERY of human life is made up of large masses, each separated from the other by certain intervals. One year, the death of a child; years after, a failure in trade; after another longer or shorter interval, a daughter may have married unhappily ;-in all but the singularly unfortunate, the integral parts that the sum total of the unhappiness of compose a man's life, are easily counted, and distinctly remembered. The HAPPINESS of life, on the contrary, is made up of minute fractions-the little, soon-forgotten charities of a kiss, a smile, a kind look, a heartfelt compliment in the disguise of playful raillery, and the count Not so! Good men are not, I trust, so much scarcer than good women, but that what another would find in you, you may hope to find in another. But well, however, may that boon be rare, the possession of which would be more than an adequate reward for the rarest virtue. ELIZA. Surely, he who has described it so beautifully, must have possessed it? FRIEND. If he were worthy to have possessed it, and had believingly anticipated and not found it, how bitter the disappointment! (Then, after a pause of a few minutes). Yes, yes! that boon, life's richest treat, The fancy made him glad! That boon, which but to have possess'd Doubts toss'd him to and fro; Those sparkling colours, once his boast, Poor Fancy on her sick-bed lay; Where was it then, the sociable sprite That crown'd the Poet's cup and deck'd his dish! It dimm'd his eye, it darken'd on his brow, O bliss of blissful hours! The boon of Heaven's decreeing, While yet in Eden's bowers Dwelt the First Husband and his sinless Mate! Late autumn's Amaranth, that more fragrant blows THE GARDEN OF BOCCACCIO. But casts in happier moulds the slumberer's dream, A tremulous warmth crept gradual o'er my chest, Of manhood, musing what and whence is man! Wild strain of Scalds, that in the sea-worn caves And, like a gift from heaven, in lifeful glee, Thanks, gentle artist! now I can descry Sit on the ground-sward, and the banquet share. Or pause and listen to the tinkling bells From the high tower, and think that there she dwells. chest. The brightness of the world, O thou once free, W See! Boccace sits, unfolding on his knees But from his mantle's fold, and near the heart, 1 Boccaccio claimed for himself the glory of having first introduced the works of Homer to his countrymen. I know few more striking or more interesting proofs of the overwhelming influence which the study of the Greek and Roman classics exercised on the judgments, feelings, and imaginations of the literati of Europe at the commencement of the restoration of literature, than the passage in the Filocopo of Boccaccio: where the sage instructor, Racheo, as soon as the young prince and the beautiful girl Biancafiore had learned their letters, sets them to study the Holy Book, Ovid's ART OF LOVE. Incominciò Racheo a mettere il suo ofticio in essecuzione con intera sollecitudine. E THE END. |