SECT. V. Of The ELEGY to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady, The PROLOGUE to Cato, and The EPILOGUE to Jane Shore. HE ELEGY to the Memory of an Unfor which tunate Lady, which is next to be spoken of, as it came from the heart, is very tender and pathetic; more fo, I think, than any other copy of verses of our author. We are unacquainted with the whole of her history, and with that series of misfortunes, which feems to have drawn on the melancholy catastrophe, alluded to in the beginning of this ELEGY. She is faid to be the fame perfon, to whom the Duke of Buckingham has addressed some lines, viz. "To a Lady defigning to retire into a Monastery." This defign is also hinted at in POPE's Letters, where he fays in a letter addreffed, I prefume, to this very perfon, "If If you are refolved, in revenge, to rob the world of fo much example, as you may Vol. vii. p. 193. Octavo Edition. afford afford it, I believe your defign will be vain : for even, in a monaftery, your devotions cannot carry you fo far towards the next world, as to make this lofe fight of you: but you will be like a ftar, that, while it is fixed in heaven, shines over all the earth. Wherefoever providence shall difpofe of the most valuable thing I know, I fhall ever follow you with my fincerest wishes; and my best thoughts will be perpetually waiting upon you, when you never hear of me or them. Your own guardian angels cannot be more constant, nor more filent." THIS ELEGY opens with a ftriking abruptnefs, and a strong image; the poet fancies he beholds fuddenly the phantom of his murdered friend; What beck'ning ghost along the moonlight shade, This queftion alarms the reader; and puts one in mind of that lively and affecting image in the prophecy of Ifaiah, fo vigorously conceived, that it places the object full in "Who is this that cometh from one's eyes. "Edom? With dyed garments from Bosra*?” Akenfide has begun one of his odes in the like manner; O fly! 'tis dire SUSPICION'S mein; The forc'refs hither bends! Behold her torch in gall imbru'd; Behold, her garments drop with blood Of lovers and of friends! The execrations on the cruelties of this lady's relations, which had driven her to this deplorable extremity, are very fpirited and forcible; especially where the poet fays emphatically, Thus, if eternal justice rules the ball, Thus fhall your wives, and thus your children fall. He describes afterwards the defolation of this family, by the following lively circumstance and profopopœia: There paffengers fhall ftand, and pointing fay, The incident of her dying in a country remote from her relations and acquaintance, is touched with great tenderness, and introduced with propriety, to aggravate and heighten her lamentable fate; No friend's complaint, no kind domestic tear *, The force of the repetition of the fignificant epithet foreign, need not be pointed out to any reader of fenfibility. The right of sepulture of which he was deprived, from the * Something like that pathetic ftroke in the Philoctetes of Sophocles, who, among other heavy circumftances of distress, is faid not to have near him, any σvigopov oμμà. Ver. 171.— Not to be tranflated! manner manner of her death, is glanced at with great delicacy; nay, and a very poetical ufe is made of it. What though no facred earth allow thee room, IF this ELEGY be fo excellent, it may be afcribed to this caufe; that the occafion of it was real; for it is certainly an indisputable maxim, "That nature is more powerful than fancy; that we can always feel more than we can imagine; and that the most artful fiction must give way to truth." When Polus the celebrated actor, once affected his audience with more than ordinary emotions, it was "luctû et lamentis veris," by bursting out into real cries and tears; for in perfonating Electra weeping over the supposed urn of her brother Oreftes, he held in his hand the real afhes of his own fon lately dead *. Events that have * Aul. Gell. Noct. Attic. Lib. vii. Cap. v. |