"Love acts the tennis-player's part,
And throws to thee my panting heart;
Heliodora! ere it fall,
Let desire catch swift the ball:
Let her in the ball-court move,
Follow in the game with love.
If thou throw me back again,
I shall of foul play complain."
And an address to the Cicada by the same writer, (IBID. i. 415)
opens with these lines:--
"Oh, shrill-voiced insect that, with dew-drops sweet
Inebriate, dost in desert woodlands sing."
In the poem called "The Grasshopper" (p. 94), the author speaks
of the insect as
"Drunk ev'ry night with a delicious tear,
Dropped thee from heaven."----
The similarity, in each case, I believe to have been entirely
accidental: nor am I disposed to think that Lovelace was under any
considerable or direct obligations to the classics. I have taken
occasion to remark that Lovelace seems to have helped to furnish
a model to Cleveland, who carried to an extraordinary length that
fondness for words and figures derived from the alchymist's
vocabulary; but as regards the author of LUCASTA himself, it may
be asserted that there are few writers whose productions exhibit
less of book-lore than his, and even in those places, where he has
employed phrases or images similar to some found in Peele,
Middleton, Herrick, and others, there is great room to question,
whether the circumstance can be treated as amounting to more than
a curious coincidence.
The Master of Dulwich College has obligingly informed me,
that the picture of ALTHEA, as well as that of Lovelace himself,
bequeathed by Cartwright the actor to Dulwich College in 1687,
bears no clue to date of composition, or to the artist's name,
and that it does not assist in the identification of the lady.
This is the more vexatious, inasmuch as it seems probable that
ALTHEA, whoever she was, became the poet's wife, after LUCASTA'S
marriage to another. The CHLOES, &c. mentioned in the following
pages were merely more or less intimate acquaintances of Lovelace,
like the ELECTRA, PERILLA, CORINNA, &c. of Herrick. But at the
same time an obscurity has hitherto hung over some of the persons
mentioned under fictitious names in the poems of Lovelace,
which a little research and trouble would have easily removed.
For instance, no one who reads "Amarantha, a Pastoral,"
doubts that LUCASTA and AMARANTHA are one and the same person.
ALEXIS is Lovelace himself. ELLINDA is a female friend of
the poet, who occasionally stayed at her house, and on one
occasion (p. 79) had a serious illness there. ELLINDA marries
AMYNTOR, under which disguise, I suspect, lurks the well known
Maecenas of his time, Endymion Porter. If Porter be AMYNTOR, of
course ELLINDA must be the Lady Olivia Porter, his wife. ARIGO
(see the poem of AMYNTOR'S GROVE) signifies Porter's friend,
Henry Jermyn. It may be as well to add that the LETTICE mentioned
at p. 121, was the Lady Lettice Goring, wife of Lovelace's friend,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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