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CHAPTER III.

The Loves of the Troubadours 14

CHAPTER IV.

The Loves of the Troubadours (continued) 34

CHAPTER V.

Guido Cavalcanti and Mandetta.—Cino da Pistoja and Selvaggia 55

CHAPTER VI.

Laura 64

CHAPTER VII.

Laura and Petrarch (continued) 85

CHAPTER VIII.

Dante and Beatrice Portinari 105

CHAPTER IX.

Dante and Beatrice (continued) 125

CHAPTER X.

Chaucer and Philippa Picard.—King James and Lady Jane Beaufort 133

CHAPTER XI.

Lorenzo de' Medici and Lucretia Donati 161

CHAPTER XII.

The Fair Geraldine 185

CHAPTER XIII.

Ariosto, Ginevra, and Alessandra Strozzi 198

CHAPTER XIV.

Spenser's Rosalind. Spenser's Elizabeth 219

CHAPTER XV.

On the Love of Shakspeare 237

CHAPTER XVI.

Sydney's Stella (Lady Rich) 249

CHAPTER XVII.

Court and Age of Elizabeth.

Drayton, Daniel, Drummond, Mary Queen Of Scots, Clement Marot and Diana de Poictier,
Ronsard's Cassandre, Ronsard's Marie, Ronsard's Helène 263

CHAPTER XVIII.

Leonora d'Este 288

CHAPTER XIX.

Milton and Leonora Baroni 330

THE LOVES OF THE POETS.

CHAPTER I.

A POET'S LOVE.

Of all the heaven-bestowed privileges of the poet, the highest, the dearest, the most enviable, is the power of immortalising the object of his love; of dividing with her his amaranthine wreath of glory, and repaying the inspiration caught from her eyes with a crown of everlasting fame. It is not enough that in his imagination he has deified her—that he has consecrated his faculties to her honour—that he has burned his heart in incense upon the altar of her perfections: the divinity thus decked out in richest and loveliest hues, he places on high, and calls upon all ages and all nations to bow down before her, and all ages and all nations obey! worshipping the beauty thus enshrined in imperishable verse, when others, perhaps as fair, and not less worthy, have gone down, unsung, "to dust and an endless darkness." How many women who would otherwise have stolen through the shades of domestic life, their charms, virtues, and affections buried with them, have become objects of eternal interest and admiration, because their memory is linked with the brightest monuments of human genius? While many a high-born dame, who once moved, goddess-like, upon the earth, and bestowed kingdoms with her hand, lives a mere name in some musty chronicle. Though her love was sought by princes, though with her dower she might have enriched an emperor,—what availed it?

And how have women repaid this gift of immortality? O believe it, when the garland was such as woman is proud to wear, she amply and deeply rewarded him who placed it on her brow. If in return for being made illustrious, she made her lover happy,—if for glory she gave a heart, was it not a rich equivalent? and if not—if the lover was unsuccessful, still the poet had his reward. Whence came the generous feelings, the high imaginations, the glorious fancies, the heavenward inspirations, which raised him above the herd of vulgar men—but from the ennobling influence of her he loved? Through her, the world opened upon him with a diviner beauty, and all nature became in his sight but a transcript of the charms of his mistress. He saw her eyes in the stars of heaven, her lips in the half-blown rose. The perfume of the opening flowers was but her breath, that "wafted sweetness round about the world:" the lily was "a sweet thief" that had stolen its purity from her breast. The violet was dipped in the azure of her veins; the aurorean dews,