KIDD'S LONDON JOURNAL. 



70 



poet ; — " What sort of a man art thou, that 

 can'st be ignorant of love ? " I rather would 

 inquire, " What sort of a man art thou, that 

 can'st be capable of love ? " since, though of 

 all the passions it is the most productive of 

 delight, it is the most unfrequent of them 

 all. How many of us feel the passions of 

 hatred and revenge, envy and desire, every 

 day ! but how few of us are capable of feeling 

 an ardent affection, or conceiving an elevated 

 passion ! That was not love which Maho- 

 met felt for Irene, Titus for Berenice, or 

 Horace for Lydia ; and though Anacreon is 

 never weary of boasting his love, the gay, 

 the frantic Anacreon never felt a wound. 

 Indeed, the Greeks were almost as much a 

 stranger to legitimate love, as the barbarians 

 they affected to despise. The passion of 

 Sappho was nothing but an ungovernable 

 fever of desire, though the fragment she has 

 left has been so long, so often, and so widely 

 celebrated, that the world imagines she was 

 the essence of love ! As a poem, it has been 

 unjustly celebrated (if we may venture to 

 differ from so admirable a critic as Longi- 

 nus) because it has been celebrated far be- 

 yond its merits ; and even, as a faithful 

 picture of desire, it has nothing to compare 

 with a poem of Jayadeva — " The palms of 

 her hands support her aching temples, pale 

 as the crescent, rising at eve. ' Heri, Heri! ' 

 thus she meditates on thy name, as if she luere 

 gratified, and she lucre dying through thy ab- 

 sence. She rends her locks — she pants — she 

 laments inarticidately — she trembles — she pines 

 — she moves from place to place — she closes 

 her eyes — she rises again — she faints ! In 

 such a fever of love, she may live, oh ! celestial 

 physician, if thou administer the remedy • but 

 shoiddst thou be unkind, her malady toill be 

 desperate." 1 " 1 



This picture is drawn with force, and with 

 all the wild irregularity of the passion it- 

 self; but what has uncontrollable desire to 

 do with the passion of love ? That mild and 

 elegant affection, which sinks the deepest 

 where it shews itself the least ; that curiosa 

 felicitas of the heart, which can animate only 

 the wise, the elegant, and the virtuous ; that 

 sacred passion, which bestows more rapture 

 than perfumes, than sculpture, than paint- 

 ing, than landscape, than riches, than honors, 

 and all the charms of poesy united in one 

 general combination. 



Let us read the ode of Sappho and the 

 fragment of Jayadeva, again and again, and 

 say if we are half so agreeably attracted to 

 their merits, as to those of the following 

 beautiful and faithful indication of virtuous 

 and elevated attachment ? The feeling 

 which this exquisite morgeau expresses, must 

 be felt by every woman who aspires to the 

 passion of love, or the name of love is pros- 

 tituted and its character libelled : — 



Go, youth belov'd, in distant glades, 

 New friends, new hopes, new joys to find; 

 Yet sometimes deign, 'mid fairer maids, 

 To think on her thou leav'st behind. 

 Thy love, thy fate, dear youth to share 

 Must never he my happy lot; 

 But thou may'st grant this humble prayer — 

 Forget me not — forget me not ! 



Yet should the thought of my distress 

 Too painful to thy feelings be, 

 Heed not the wish I now express, 

 Nor ever deign to think on me. 

 Yet oh! if grief thy steps attend, 

 If want, if sickness be thy lot, 

 And thou require a soothing friend, 

 Forget me not — forget me not ! 



Love is composed of all that is delicate in 

 pleasure ; it is an union of desire, tender- 

 ness, and friendship ; confidence the most 

 unbounded; and esteem the most animated 

 and solid — filling the entire capacity of the 

 soul, it elevates the character by purifying 

 every passion, while it polishes the manners 

 with a manly softness. Where love like 

 this exists, far better is it to be joined in 

 death, than, by the caprice of parents, or 

 the malice of a wayward fortune, to drag on 

 years of anxious separation, fie who is 

 capable of acting greatly and nobly, when 

 under no influence of affection, animated by 

 the applause of a woman whom he loves, 

 would act splendidly and sublimely. And 

 is this the passion which every animal that 

 usurps the name of man, flatters himself he 

 is capable of feeling? As well may he 

 imagine himself capable of writing the Ham- 

 let of Shakspeare, of forming the Hercules 

 Farnese, or of composing the u Kedempf ion " 

 of the immortal Handel ! 



Love has several analogies with natural 

 beauties. " What is more like love," says 

 a German philosopher, quoted by Zimmer- 

 man, " than the feeling with which the soul 

 is inspired, when viewing a line country, 

 or the sight of a magnificent valley, illumined 

 by the setting sun?" So obvious is the 

 connection to which we have alluded, that 

 it is no unfrequent practice with the French 

 peasant girls, when they separate at the 

 close of the day, to say, " good night ! — I 

 wish you may dream that you are walking 

 with your lover in a garden of flowers." 



Have we lost a beloved mistress, or an 

 affectionate friend ? Do we hear a tune of 

 which she was enthusiastically fond, or read 

 a poem he passionately admired, are not our 

 thoughts swayed by a secret impulse as by 

 the faculty of association we recal to mind 

 the many instances we have received of their 

 affection and regard ? If a melancholy plea- 

 sure is awakened by what we hear and what 

 we see in familiar life, how much more is 

 that exquisite faculty of combination en- 

 larged, when, after a long absence, we tread 



