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This change is judicious and moving. And the following invocation to hope, faith, and christian grace, to come and take full poffeffion of her foul, is folemn, and fuited to the condition of her mind; for it seems to be the poet's intention to fhew the force of religion over paffion at laft, and to reprefent her as a little calm and refigned to her destiny, and way of life. To fix her in which holy temthe circumftance that follows may be fuppofed to contribute. For the relates an incident to Abelard, which had made a very deep impreffion on her mind, and cannot fail of making an equal one, on the mind of those readers, who can relish true poetry, and ftrong imagery. The scene fhe paints is awful: she represents herself lying on a tomb, and thinking she heard fome * spirit calling to her in every low wind,

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+ Here as I watch'd the dying lamps around, From yonder fhrine I heard a hollow found,

* V. 308.

+ Virgil may however have given the hint.-Hinc exaudiri voces, & verba vocantis vifa viri-L. 4. 460.

Come

Come fifter come, (it faid, or feem'd to say)
Thy place is here, fad fifter, come away!
Once like thyfelf I trembled, wept and pray'd*,
Love's victim then, but now a fainted maid.

This fcene would make a fine fubject for the pencil; and is worthy a capital painter. He might place Eloifa in the long ile of a great Gothic church; a lamp should hang over her head, whose dim and dismal ray should afford only light enough to make darknefs vifible. She herself should be represented in the inftant, when the first hears this aerial voice, and in the attitude of starting round with aftonishment and fear. And this was the method a very great mafter took, to paint a found, if I may be allowed the expreffion. This fubject was the baptifm of Jefus Chrift; and in order to bring into the piece the remarkable incident of the voice from heaven, which cried aloud, "This is my beloved

* It is well contrived, that this invisible speaker, should be a person that had been under the very fame kind of misfortunes with Eloifa.

fon,"

fon," he represented all the affembly that attended on the banks of Jordon, gazing up into heaven, with the utmost ardor of amaze

ment.

Ar this call of a fister in misfortune, who had been vifited with a fad fimilitude of griefs with her own, Eloifa breaks out in a religious tranfport,

I come, I come! prepare your roseate bow'rs,
Coeleftial palms, and ever-blooming flow'rs;
Thither where finners may have reft I go!.

She then calls on Abelard, to pay her the last fad offices; and to be present with her in the article of death,

See my lips tremble, and my eyeballs roll

And then a circumstance of personal fondness intervenes,

Suck my laft breath, and catch the flying foul!

But she instantly corrects herself, and would have her Abelard attend her at these last

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folemn moments, only as a devout priest, and not as a fond lover. The image, in which The reprefents him coming to adminifter extreme unction, is striking and picturesque;

Ah no-in facred vestments mayst thou stand,
Thy hallow'd taper trembling in thy hand,
Prefent the cross before my lifted eye,

Teach me at once, and learn of me, to die!

She adds, that it will be fome confolation to behold him once more, tho' even in the agonies of death,

Ah then! thy once-lov'd Eloifa fee!

It will be then no crime to gaze on me!

Which laft line I could never read without great emotion; it is at once fo pathetic, and fo artfully points back to the whole train and nature of their misfortunes. The circumftances, fhe wishes may attend the death of Abelard, are poetically imagined, and are alfo agreeable to the notions of myftic devo

The words printed in Italics, ought to be looked on as particularly beautiful.

tion,

tion. The death of St. Jerome is finely painted by DOMENICHINO, with fuch attendant particulars;

In trance ecftatic may thy pangs be drown'd,
Bright clouds defcend, and angels watch thee round,
From opening fkies may ftreaming glories fhine,
And faints embrace thee with a love like mine.
May one kind grave unite each hapless name,
And graft my love immortal on thy fame!

This wish was fulfilled. The body of Abelard, who died twenty years before Eloifa, was fent to Eloifa, who interred it in the monastery of the Paraclete, and it was accompanied with a very extraordinary form of Absolution, from the famous Peter de Clugny; "Ego Petrus Cluniacenfis abbas, qui Petrum Abelardum in monachum Cluniacenfem recepi, & corpus ejus furtim delatum Heloiffe Abbatiffæ, & monialibus Paracleti conceffi, auctoritate omnipotentis Dei, & omnium fanctorum, abfolvo cum, pro officio, ab omnibus

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