"Once like thyself, I trembled, wept, and prayed, "Love's victim then, though now a sainted maid :' "But all is calm in this eternal sleep ;'

"Here grief forgets to groan, and love to weep,
"Ev'n superstition loses every fear:

"For God, not man, absolves our frailties here."
I come, I come!' prepare your roseate bow'rs,
Celestial palms, and ever-blooming flow'rs;
Thither, where sinners may have rest, I go,
Where flames refined in breasts seraphic glow:
Thou, Abelard! the last sad office pay,'
And smooth my passage to the realms of day: '
See my lips tremble, and my eye-balls roll,
Suck my last breath, and catch my flying soul!"
Ah no-in sacred vestments may'st thou stand,
The hallowed taper trembling in thy hand,
Present the cross before my lifted eye,
Teach me at once, and learn of me to die."
Ah then, thy once-loved Eloisa see!
It will be then no crime to gaze on me.

It is well contrived that this invisible speaker should be a person that had been under the very same kind of misfortunes with Eloisa.WARTON.

2 Dryden's version of the latter part of the third book of Lucretius:

But all is there serene in that eternal sleep.
-WAKEFIELD.

3 In the first edition :

I come ye ghosts.—WAKEFIELD.

4 Ogilby, Virg. Æn. xi. :

And to the dead our last sad duties pay.

Dryden, Æn. xi. 322 :

Perform the last sad office to the slain.WAKEFIELD.

5 Dryden's Aurengezebe at the commencement of Act iv. :

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I thought before you drew your latest breath,

To sooth your passage, and to soften death.

6 Oldham's translation of Bion on the death of Adonis :

Kiss, while I watch thy swimming eye-balls roll,

Watch thy last gasp, and catch thy springing soul.

Dryden's Virg. Æn. iv. 984:

While I in death

Lay close my lips to hers, and catch the flying breath.

And in his Cleomenes, the end of Act iv.:

sucking in each other's latest breath. -WAKEFIELD.

7 Rowe's ode to Delia :

When e'er it comes, may'st thou be by, Support my sinking frame, and teach me how to die.-WAKEFIELD.

See from my cheek the transient roses fly!'
See the last sparkle languish in my eye!
'Till ev'ry motion, pulse, and breath be o'er;
And ev❜n my Abelard be loved no more.
Oh death all-eloquent! you only prove

What dust we doat on, when 'tis man we love.'
Then too, when fate shall thy fair fame destroy,
(That cause of all my guilt, and all my joy)'
In trance ecstatic may thy pangs be drowned,
Bright clouds descend, and angels watch thee round,
From op'ning 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!
Then, ages hence, when all my woes are o'er,
When this rebellious heart shall beat no more;
If ever chance two wand'ring lovers brings
To Paraclete's white walls and silver springs,
O'er the pale marble shall they join their heads,
And drink the falling tears each other sheds ;'
Then sadly say, with mutual pity moved,
"Oh may we never love as these have loved!"

Dryden Æn., xi. 1194 :

And from her cheeks the rosy colour flies.

2 Abelard to Heloisa: "You shall see me to strengthen your piety by the horror of this carcase, and my death, then more eloquent than I can be, will tell you what you love when you love a man.”

3 Spenser, Faerie Queen, i. 4, 45: Cause of my new grief, cause of new joy.WAKEFIELD.

Abelard and Eloisa were interred in the same grave, or in monuments adjoining, in the monastery of the Paraclete. He died in the year 1142, she in 1163 [4].-POPE.

Abelard and Heloisa are said to have been both sixty-three when

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they died. They were buried in the same crypt, but it was not till 1630, or near five hundred years after the death of Heloisa, that their remains were consigned to the same grave. Then their bones are reported to have been put into a double coffin, divided by a partition of lead. They subsequently underwent various disinterments and removals, till in 1817 the alleged relics were transferred to the cemetery of PèreLachaise, at Paris, and have not since been disturbed.

5 Dryden, in his translation of Canace to Macareus:

I restrained my cries And drunk the tears that trickled from my eyes.-WAKEFIELD.

From the full choir' 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 forgiv❜n.
And sure if fate some future bard shall join
In sad similitude of griefs to mine,

Condemned 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 them who shall feel them most.'

1 Milton, Il Penseroso :

There let the pealing organ blow
To the full-voiced choir below.

2 "Dreadful sacrifice" is the ritual term. So in the History of Loretto, 1608, ch. 20, p. 278, The priest, as the use is, assisted the cardinal in the time of the dreadful sacrifice."STEEVENS.

3 Warton says that the eight concluding lines of the Epistle "are rather flat and languid." It is indeed an absurd supposition that a woman who had been speaking the fervid language of christianity should imagine that her state in the world beyond the grave would be that of a "pensive ghost," and that her consolation would consist in having her woes well-sung" on earth. And it is in the tremendous conflict between piety and passion, while divine and

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human love are contending fiercely for the mastery, that she finds relief in this unsubstantial idea that some future lover would make her the subject of a poem.

4 The last line is imitated from Addison's Campaign.

Marlb'rough's exploits appear divinely bright

Raised of themselves their genuine charms they boast,

And those who paint them truest, praise them most.

This Pope had in his thoughts; but not knowing how to use what was not his own, he spoiled the thought when he had borrowed it. Martial exploits may be painted; perhaps woes may be painted; but they are surely not painted by being well sung it is not easy to paint in song, or to sing in colours.- JOHNSON.

AN

ESSAY ON MAN,

IN FOUR EPISTLES

ΤΟ

HENRY ST. JOHN, LORD BOLINGBROKE.

WRITTEN IN THE YEAR 1732.