In our last number, we extracted from this book two charmingly pathetic letters, which brought the reader acquainted with a pair of real lovers.* It shall now furnish us with a tragedy of a different sort, though pretending to be equally founded on love, and (as the paragraph advertisements say) of "startling interest." Steele says he had it from a gentleman who was "an eye-witness of several parts of it." The relief which the feelings experienced amidst the terrors of the former story arose from the sweetness of its affections. In the present, the love is of as bitter a sort as the catastrophe, but consoles us by driving matters to a pitch of the ludicrous in the very excess of its will. The heroine is a great spoiled child, who insists upon tearing her lover's breast open, and • taking him with her into the other world, just as a smaller one might its drum. "About ten years ago," says Steele, "there lived at Vienna a German count, who had long entertained a secret amour with a young lady of a considerable family. After a correspondence of gallantries, which had lasted two or three years, the father of the young count, whose family was reduced to a low condition, found out a very advantageous match for him; and made his son sensible, that he ought in common prudence to close with it. The count, upon the first opportunity, acquainted his mistress very fairly with what had passed, and laid the whole mat placed themselves in the Middle-Boxes were a Neutral Party, whose Faces had not yet declared themselves. These last, however, as I afterwards found, diminished daily, and took their Party with one Side or the other; inasmuch as that I observed, in several of them, the Patches which were before dispersed equally, are now all gone over to the Whig or Tory Side of the Face. -ADDISON, The Spectator, No. 81. - ED. * See the article on "Garth, Physicians, and Love-Letters," in "Men, Women, and Books."— ED. ter before her with such freedom and openness of heart, that she seemingly consented to it. She only desired of him that they might have one meeting more, before they parted for ever. The place appointed for this their meeting was a grove, which stands at a little distance from the town. They conversed together in this place some time, when on a sudden the lady pulled out a pocket-pistol, and shot her lover into the heart, so that he immediately fell dead at her feet. She then returned to her father's house, telling every one she met what she had done. Her friends, upon hearing her story, would have found out means for her to make her escape; but she told them she had killed her dear count, because she could not live without him; and that, for the same reason, she was resolved to follow him by whatever way justice should determine. She was. soon seized, but she avowed her guilt; rejected all excuses that were made in her favor, and only begged that her execution might be speedy. She was sentenced to have her head cut off, and was apprehensive of nothing but that the interest of her friends would obtain a pardon for her. When the confessor approached her, she asked him where he thought was the soul of her dead count. He replied that his case was very dangerous, considering the circumstances in which he died. Upon this so desperate was her frenzy, that she bid him leave her, for that she was resolved to go to the same place where the count was. The priest was forced to give her better hopes for the deceased, from considerations that he was upon the point of breaking off so criminal a commerce, and leading a new life, before he could bring her mind into a temper fit for one who was so near her end. Upon the day of her execution she dressed herself in all her ornaments, and walked toward the scaffold more like a bride than a con demned criminal. My friend tells me that he saw her placed in the chair, according to the custom of that place, where, after having stretched out her neck with an air of joy, she called upon the name of the count, which was the appointed signal for the executioner, who, with a single blow of his sword, severed her head from her body." What a woman! and what a love, to stick to the poor devil of a count to all eternity! very lucky for him was it, that she could not settle matters in the next world with the same tragical nonchalance as in this! though, in the excess of her vanity, she seems to have taken for granted that she could; and that the angels were all to tremble before her, as the poor foolish people had been accustomed to do in her father's house. For, observe, she reckons confidently upon going to heaven, instead " of the other way." The very mention of the latter puts her in a frenzy, to which the priest himself is obliged to accommodate his last offices, before he can bring her mind to a temper fit to die in. It is impossible her "dear count" can go to the devil, precisely because she has made up her mind to go elsewhere; such an erroneous proceeding is not to be thought of: she has taken him from his new mistress (upon the contrast of whose mild manners he had just been hugging himself)—has given him his directions with a pocket-pistol which way to go, as much as to say, "There, get you along first,”—and then sets out for heaven after him by the execution-stage, shaking her loving fist towards the stars, and resolved to have him all to herself, till time and termagancy shall be no more! This is, perhaps, the most extraordinary sample on record of the modesty and tenderness of self-will-of the having the "reciprocity" (as the Irishman said) “all on one side." I love you, says the lady, therefore you must love me; or it is no matter whether you do or not, compared with my treating you as if you did, and tormenting you if you don't. You are very amiable, therefore be so to me above anybody else, whether I am amiable or not. You have a will and wishes of your own, perhaps, as well as other people; but yours and all other people's must of course give way to mine; for that is but reasonable: all are fools and scoundrels who "offer to believe otherwise," and I could knock them all on the head, if I cared for them enough to do so; but that is a favor which I reserve for yourself. So there (shoots him through the body) and now, with this new wound in your heart, come you along with me, and be delighted with me and my company, world without end! To go to the other extreme of lovely generosity, how different is the wish expressed by Shakespeare, in the contemplation of his own death of Shakespeare himself, observe not of the dramatist speaking in the person of another, but of the great poet and human being speaking in his own person-of the creator of the characters of Imogen and Desdemona - and of the man who could create those characters, because he felt as he spoke in uttering these sentiments. How else, indeed, could he so have spoken them? Observe the simple words the pure and daring trust in the belief of his reader — the great and good mind, that in spite of its having run the whole round of experience, or rather because it had done so, could retain feelings so enthusiastic and generous above all worldly price. "No longer mourn for me when I am dead, Give warning to the world that I am fled From this vile world with vilest worms to dwell: Nay, if you read this LINE, remember not The hand that writ it; FOR I LOVE YOU So, THAT I IN YOUR SWEET THOUGHTS WOULD BE FORGOT, Oh, if, (I say), you look upon this verse, What beautiful writing! What common, every-day words made divine by love! But it may be said that the poet may have written all this, without exactly feeling what he said; that other poets have done as much who were notoriously no very admirable lovers; that it is imagination an art-fiction. Do not believe it. Put no faith in the envy, or the want of faith, that thus attempts to level performance with pretension. You might as well proclaim truth to be a lie. No poets have so written who have not thoroughly felt what they professed to feel. If they had, if incompleteness could thus be completeness, we should have had a thousand Shakespeares instead of one- a thousand Chaucers, a thousand Homers, a thousand Burnses for we do not mean to say that in every instance the very greatest genius must accompany the truest feeling. It is sufficient that there is entire truth in the feeling to be expressed, and genius enough to express that truth. "Here's a health to ane I lo'e dear! Here's a health to ane I lo'e dear! Thou art sweet as the smile when fond lovers meet, And soft as their parting tear— Fessy ! "Although thou maun never be mine, 'Tis sweeter for thee despairing, Than aught in the world beside." And so he goes on through the whole of that exquisite |