Читать книгу Lucasta - Richard Lovelace - Страница 9

Come, Adonis, come again;

What distaste could drive thee hence,

Where so much delight did reign,

Sateing ev'n the soul of sense?

And though thou unkind hast prov'd,

Never youth was more belov'd.

Then, lov'd Adonis, come away,

For Venus brooks not thy delay.

Wert thou sated with the spoil

Of so many virgin hearts,

And therefore didst change thy soil,

To seek fresh in other parts?

Dangers wait on foreign game;

We have deer more sound and tame.

Then, lov'd Adonis, come away,

For Venus brooks not thy delay.

Phillis, fed with thy delights,

In thy absence pines away;

And love, too, hath lost his rites,

Not one lass keeps holiday.

They have changed their mirth for cares,

And do onely sigh thy airs.

Then, lov'd Adonis, come away,

For Venus brooks not thy delay.

Elpine, in whose sager looks

Thou wert wont to take delight,

Hath forsook his drink and books,

'Cause he can't enjoy thy sight:

He hath laid his learning by,

'Cause his wit wants company.

Then, lov'd Adonis, come away,

For friendship brooks not thy delay.

All the swains that once did use

To converse with Love and thee,

In the language of thy Muse,

Have forgot Love's deity:

They deny to write a line,

And do only talk of thine.

Then, lov'd Adonis, come away,

For friendship brooks not thy delay.

By thy sweet Althea's voice,

We conjure thee to return;

Or we'll rob thee of that choice,

In whose flames each heart would burn:

That inspir'd by her and sack,

Such company we will not lack:

That poets in the age to come,

Shall write of our Elisium.

<2.9> Peter, or rather PETRE House, in Aldersgate Street, belonged at one time to the antient family by whose name it was known. The third Lord Petre, dying in 1638, left it, with other possessions in and about the city of London, to his son William. (Collins's PEERAGE, by Brydges, vii. 10, 11.) When Lovelace was committed to Peter House, and probably long before (MERCURIUS RUSTICUS, ed. 1685, pp. 76-79), this mansion was used as a house of detention for political prisoners; but in Ward's DIARY (ed. Severn, p. 167), there is the following entry (like almost all Ward's entries, unluckily without date):—"My Lord Peters is an Essex man; hee hath a house in Aldersgate Street, wherein lives the Marquis of Dorchester:" implying that at that period (perhaps about 1660), the premises still belonged to the Petre family, though temporarily let to Lord Dorchester. Another celebrated house in the same street was London House, which continued for some time to be the town residence of the Bishops of London. When it had ceased to be an episcopal abode, it was adapted to the purposes of an ordinary dwelling, and, among the occupants, at a somewhat later period, was Tom Rawlinson, the great book-collector. See Stow, ed. 1720, ii. lib. iii. p. 121.

<2.10> How different was the conduct, under similar circumstances, of the lady whom Charles Gerbier commemorates in his ELOGIUM HEROINUM, 1651, p. 127. "Democion, the Athenian virgin," he tells us, "hearing that Leosthenes, to whom she was contracted, was slain in the wars, she killed herself; but before her death she thus reasoned with herself: 'Although my body is untoucht, yet should I fall into the imbraces of another, I should but deceive the second, since I am still married to the former in my heart.'"

<2.11> Wood's story about LUCASTA having been a Lucy Sacheverell, "a lady of great beauty and fortune," may reasonably be doubted. Lucasta, whoever she was, seems to have belonged to Kent; the SACHEVERELLS were not a Kentish family. Besides, the corruption of Lucy Sacheverell into Lucasta is not very obvious, and rather violent; and the probability is that the author of the ATHENAE was misled by his informant on this occasion. The plate etched by Lely and engraved by Faithorne, which is found in the second part of LUCASTA, 1659, can scarcely be regarded as a portrait; it was, in all likelihood, a mere fancy sketch, and we are not perhaps far from the truth in our surmise that the artist was nearly, if not quite, as much in the dark as to who Lucasta was, as we are ourselves at the present day.

<2.12> This is a mistake on the part of Wood, which (with many others) ought to be corrected in a new edition of the ATHENAE. Lawes did not set to music AMARANTHA, A PASTORAL, nor any portion of it; but he harmonized two stanzas of a little poem to be found at p. 29 of the present volume, and called "To Amarantha; that she would dishevel her Hair."

<2.13> Hasted states that soon after the death of Charles I. the manor of Lovelace-Bethersden passed by purchase to Richard Hulse, Esq.

<2.14> On the title-page of this portion of LUCASTA, as well as on that which had appeared in 1649, the author is expressly styled RICHARD LOVELACE, ESQ.: yet in Berry's KENT GENEALOGIES, p. 474, he is, curiously enough, called SIR Richard Lovelace, KNT. It is scarcely necessary to observe that the error is on Berry's side.

<2.15> The most pleasing likeness of Lovelace, the only one, indeed, which conveys any just idea to us of the "handsomest man of his time," is the picture at Dulwich, which has been twice copied, in both instances with very indifferent success. One of these copies was made for Harding's BIOGRAPHICAL MIRROR. Bromley (DICTIONARY OF ENGRAVED BRITISH PORTRAITS, 1793, p. 101) correctly names F[rancis] Lovelace, the writer's brother, as the designer of the portrait before the POSTHUME POEMS.

<2.16> Winstanley, perhaps, intended some allusion to these two lost dramas from the pen of Lovelace, when he thus characterizes him in his LIVES OF THE POETS, 1687, p. 170:—"I can compare no man," he says, "so like this Colonel LOVELACE as SIR PHILIP SIDNEY, of which latter it is said by one in an epitaph made of him:—

'Nor is it fit that more I should acquaint,

Lest men adore in one

A Scholar, SOULDIER, Lover, and a Saint.'"

As to the comparison, Winstanley must be understood to signify a resemblance between Lovelace and Sydney as men, rather than as writers. Winstanley's extract is from WITS' RECREATIONS, but the text, as he gives it, varies from that printed by the editor of the reprint of that work in 1817.

<2.17> Gunpowder Alley still exists, but it is not the Gunpowder Alley which Lovelace knew, having been rebuilt more than once since 1658, It is now a tolerably wide and airy court, without any conspicuous appearance of squalor. There is no tradition, I am sorry to say, respecting Lovelace; all such recollections have long been swept away. When one of the old inhabitants told me (and there are one or two persons who have lived here all their life) that a great poet once resided thereabout, I naturally became eager to catch the name; but it turned out to be Dr. Johnson, not Lovelace, the latter of whom might have been contemporary with Homer for aught they knew to the contrary in Gunpowder Alley. It appears from Decker and Webster's play of WESTWARD HOE, 1607 (Webster's Works, ed. Hazlitt, i. 67), that there was another Gunpowder Alley, near Crutched Friars.

<2.18> Hone (EVERY-DAY BOOK, ii. 561, edit. 1827), states, under date of April 28, that "during this month in 1658 the accomplished Colonel Richard Lovelace died IN THE GATEHOUSE AT WESTMINSTER, whither he had been committed," &c. No authority, however, is given for in assertion so wholly at variance with the received view on the subject, and I am afraid that Hone has here fallen into a mistake.

<2.19> Aubrey, in what are called his LIVES OF EMINENT MEN, but which are, in fact, merely rough biographical memoranda, states under the head of Lovelace:—"Obiit in a cellar in Long acre, a little before the restauration of his Matie. Mr. Edm. Wyld,<<AN.1>> &c. had made collections for him, and given him money…..Geo. Petty, haberdasher, in Fleet street, carried xx<shillings> to him every Monday morning from Sr….Many and Charles Cotton, Esq. for….moneths, BUT WAS NEVER REPAYD." Aubrey was certainly a contemporary of Lovelace, and Wood seems to have been indebted to him for a good deal of information; but all who are acquainted with Aubrey are probably aware that he took, in many instances, very little trouble to examine for himself, but accepted statements on hearsay. Wood does not, in the case of Lovelace, adopt Aubrey's account, and it is to be observed that, IF the poet died as poor as he is represented by both writers to have died, he would have been buried by the parish, and, dying in Long Acre, the parochial authorities would not have carried him to Fleet Street for sepulture.

<<AN.1>> P. xxiv. MR. EDM[UND] WYLD. This gentleman, the friend of Aubrey, Author of the MISCELLANIES, &c., and (?) the son of Sir Edmund Wyld, seems to have furnished the former with a variety of information on matters of current interest. See Thoms' ANECDOTES AND TRADITIONS, 1839, p. 99. He is, no doubt, the E. W. Esq., whom Aubrey cites as his authority on one or two occasions, in his REMAINS OF GENTILISM AND JUDAISM. He was evidently a person of the most benevolent character, and Aubrey (LIVES OF EMINENT MEN, ii. 483) pays him a handsome tribute, where he describes him as "a great fautor of ingenious and good men, for meer merit's sake."

<2.20> See p. 149, NOTE 3.<i.e. note 63.4> His acquaintance with Hellenic literature possibly extended very little beyond the pages of the ANTHOLOGIA.

<2.21> His favourites appear to have been Ausonius and Catullus.

<2.22> On the 5th May, 1642, a counter-petition was presented by some Kentish gentlemen to the House of Commons, disclaiming and condemning the former one.—JOURNALS OF THE H. OF C. ii. 558.

<2.23> "The humble petition of Richard Lovelace, Esquire, a prisoner in the Gate-house, by a former order of this House."—JOURNALS, ii. 629.

<2.24> This property, which was of considerable extent and value, was purchased of the Cheney family, toward the latter part of the reign of Henry VI, by Richard Lovelace, of Queenhithe.