There is
nothing in any one of these so numerous love-songs to
indicate who or what the lady was. Was she dark or fair,
passionate or gentle like himself, witty or simple? Was it
always one woman? or are there a dozen here immortalised in
cold indistinction? The old English translator mentions gray
eyes in his version of one of the amorous rondels; so far as
I remember, he was driven by some emergency of the verse; but
in the absence of all sharp lines of character and anything
specific, we feel for the moment a sort of surprise, as
though the epithet were singularly happy and unusual, or as
though we had made our escape from cloudland into something
tangible and sure. The measure of Charles's indifference to
all that now preoccupies and excites a poet, is best given by
a positive example. If, besides the coming of spring, any
one external circumstance may be said to have struck his
imagination, it was the despatch of FOURRIERS, while on a
journey, to prepare the night's lodging. This seems to be
his favourite image; it reappears like the upas-tree in the
early work of Coleridge: we may judge with what childish eyes
he looked upon the world, if one of the sights which most
impressed him was that of a man going to order dinner.
Although they are not inspired by any deeper motive than the
common run of contemporaneous drawing-room verses, those of
Charles of Orleans are executed with inimitable lightness and
delicacy of touch.
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