The power of sympathy: or, The triumph of nature. Founded in truth. — John Shaqi
The power of sympathy: or, The triumph of nature. Founded in truth.Brown, William Hill
General
The power of sympathy: or, The triumph of nature. Founded in truth.
Brown, William Hill
Man-woman relationships -- Fiction
“Lost in the magick of that sweet employ,
To build GAY SCENES and fashion FUTURE JOY.”
Footnote 1:
THIS young lady was of a reputable family in CONNECTICUT. In her youth
she was admired for beauty and good sense. She was a great reader of
novels and romances, and having imbibed her ideas of THE CHARACTERS OF
MEN, from those fallacious sources, became vain and coquettish, and
rejected several offers of marriage, in expectation of receiving one
more agreeable to her fanciful idea. Disappointed in her FAIRY hope,
and finding her train of admirers less solicitous for the honour of
her hand, in proportion as the roses of youth decayed, she was the
more easily persuaded to relinquish that STABILITY which is the honour
and happiness of the sex. The consequences of her amour becoming
visible, she acquainted her lover of her situation, and a HUSBAND was
proposed for her, who was to receive a considerable sum for preserving
the reputation of the lady; but having received security for payment,
he immediately withdrew. She then left her friends, and travelled in
the stage as far as WATERTOWN, where she hired a young man to conduct
her in a chaise to SALEM. Here she wandered alone and friendless, and
at length repaired to the BELL-TAVERN, in DANVERS, where she was
delivered of a lifeless child, and in about a fortnight after (in
JULY, 1788) died of a puerperal fever, age about 35 years.
Before her death she amused herself with reading, writing and
needlework, and though in a state of anxiety, preserved a
cheerfulness, not so much the effect of insensibility, as of patience
and fortitude. She was sensible of her approaching fate, as appears
from the following letter, which was written in characters.
“MUST I die alone? Shall I never see you more? I know that you will
come, but you will come too late: This is I fear, my last ability.
Tears fall so, I know not how to write. Why did you leave me in so
much distress? But I will not reproach you: All that was dear I left
for you; but do not regret it.—May God forgive in both what was amiss:
When I go from hence, I will leave you some way to find me; if I die,
will you come and drop a tear over my grave?”
In the following Poem, she, like the dying SWAN, sings her own Elegy,
and it is here added, as a sorrowful instance, how often the best, and
most pleasing talents, not accompanied by virtue and prudence, operate
the destruction of their possessor.
The description of her unfortunate passion, will remind the critical
reader of the famous ode of Sappho. In genius and in misfortune, these
poetical ladies were similar.
“_DISAPPOINTMENT._
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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