But she instantly corrects herself, and would have her Abelard attend her at these last solemn moments, only as a devout priest, and not as a fond lover. The image, in which she represents him coming to administer extreme unction, is striking and picturesque :

Ah, no-in sacred vestments mayst thou stand,
The hallow'd taper * trembling in thy hand;
Present the cross before my lifted eye;

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

She adds, that it will be some consolation to behold him once more, though even in the agonies of death:

Ah then! thy once-lov'd Eloisa see!
It will be then no crime to gaze on me!

Which last line I could never read without great emotion; it is at once so pathetic, and so artfully points back to the whole train and nature of their misfortunes. The circumstances she wishes may attend the death of Abelard, are poetically

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

poetically imagined, and are also agreeable to the notions of mystic devotion. The death of St. Jerome is finely painted by DOMENICHINO, with such attendant particulars;

In trance ecstatic may thy pangs be drown'd ;*
Bright clouds descend, and angels watch thee round;
From opening skies may streaming glories shine,
And saints 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 Eloisa, was sent to Eloisa, 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 Cluniacensis abbas, qui Petrum Abelardum in monachum Cluniacensem recepi, & corpus ejus furtim delatum Heloissa Abbatissæ, & monialibus Paracleti concessi, auctoritate omnipotentis Dei, & omnium sanctorum, absolvo eum, pro officio, ab omnibus peccatis suis."-"Eloisa herself (says

* Ver. 339.

+ Epis. Abel. & Heloiss. p. 238.

(says* Vigneul Marville) solicited for this absolution, and Peter de Clugny willingly granted it on what it could be founded, I leave to our learned theologists to determine. In certain ages, opinions have prevailed, for which no solid reason can be given." When Eloisa died in 1163, she was interred by the side of her beloved husband. I must not forget to mention, for the sake of those who are fond of modern miracles, that when she was put into the grave, Abelard stretched out his arms to receive her, and closely embraced her.

Eloisa, at the conclusion of the EPISTLE to which we are now arrived, is judiciously represented as gradually settling into a tranquillity of mind, and seemingly reconciled to her fate. She can bear to speak of theif being buried together, without violent emotions. Two lovers are introduced as visiting their celebrated tombs, and the behaviour of these strangers is finely imagined ;

If ever chance two wand'ring lovers brings,
To Paraclete's white walls and silver springs,

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O'er

*Melanges, T. ii, p. 55,

O'er the pale marble shall they join their heads,
And drink the falling tears each other sheds;
Then sadly say, with mutual pity mov'd,
Oh! may we never love as these have lov'd!

The poet adds, still farther, what impressions a view of their sepulchre would make even on a spectator less interested than these two lovers; and how it could affect his mind, even in the midst of the most solemn acts of religion:

From the full quire when loud Hosannas rise,*
And swell the pomp of dreadful sacrifice,
Amid that scene, if some relenting eye

Glance on the stone where our cold relics lie,
Devotion's self shall steal a thought from heav'n,
One human tear shall drop-and be forgiven!

With this last line, at first it appears, that the poem should have ended; for the eight-additional verses, concerning some poet that haply might

* Ver. 353.

† And sure if fate some future bard shall join
In sad similitude of grief to mine,
Condemn'd whole years in absence to deplore,
And image charms he must behold no more;
Such if there be, who loves so long, so well,
Let him our sad, our tender story tell!
The well-sung woes will sooth my pensive ghost;
He best can paint 'em, who can feel 'em most.

arise

arise to sing their misfortune, are languid and flat, and diminish the pathos of the foregoing sentiments. They might stand, it should seem, for the conclusion of almost any story, were we not informed, that they were added by the Poet in allusion to his own case, and the state of his own mind. For I am well informed, that what determined him in the choice of the subject of this epistle, was the retreat of that lady into a nunnery, whose death he had lately so pathetically lamented in a foregoing Elegy, and for whom he had conceived a violent passion. She was first beloved by a nobleman,* an intimate friend of POPE, and, on his deserting her, retired into France; when, before she had made her last vows in the convent to which she had retreated, she put an end to her unfortunate life. The recollection of this circumstance will add a beauty and a pathos to many passages in the poem, and will confirm the doctrine delivered above, concerning the choice of subject.

This EPISTLE is, on the whole, one of the most highly finished, and certainly the most interesting,

The Duke of Buckingham-Sheffield.