Lucasta [13]
was the conduct, under similar circumstances, of the lady whom Charles Gerbier commemorates in his ELOGIUM HEROINUM, 1651, p. 127. "Democion, the Athenian virgin," he tells us, "hearing that Leosthenes, to whom she was contracted, was slain in the wars, she killed herself; but before her death she thus reasoned with herself: 'Although my body is untoucht, yet should I fall into the imbraces of another, I should but deceive the second, since I am still married to the former in my heart.'"
<2.11> Wood's story about LUCASTA having been a Lucy Sacheverell, "a lady of great beauty and fortune," may reasonably be doubted. Lucasta, whoever she was, seems to have belonged to Kent; the SACHEVERELLS were not a Kentish family. Besides, the corruption of Lucy Sacheverell into Lucasta is not very obvious, and rather violent; and the probability is that the author of the ATHENAE was misled by his informant on this occasion. The plate etched by Lely and engraved by Faithorne, which is found in the second part of LUCASTA, 1659, can scarcely be regarded as a portrait; it was, in all likelihood, a mere fancy sketch, and we are not perhaps far from the truth in our surmise that the artist was nearly, if not quite, as much in the dark as to who Lucasta was, as we are ourselves at the present day.
<2.12> This is a mistake on the part of Wood, which (with many others) ought to be corrected in a new edition of the ATHENAE. Lawes did not set to music AMARANTHA, A PASTORAL, nor any portion of it; but he harmonized two stanzas of a little poem to be found at p. 29 of the present volume, and called "To Amarantha; that she would dishevel her Hair."
<2.13> Hasted states that soon after the death of Charles I. the manor of Lovelace-Bethersden passed by purchase to Richard Hulse, Esq.
<2.14> On the title-page of this portion of LUCASTA, as well as on that which had appeared in 1649, the author is expressly styled RICHARD LOVELACE, ESQ.: yet in Berry's KENT GENEALOGIES, p. 474, he is, curiously enough, called SIR Richard Lovelace, KNT. It is scarcely necessary to observe that the error is on Berry's side.
<2.15> The most pleasing likeness of Lovelace, the only one, indeed, which conveys any just idea to us of the "handsomest man of his time," is the picture at Dulwich, which has been twice copied, in both instances with very indifferent success. One of these copies was made for Harding's BIOGRAPHICAL MIRROR. Bromley (DICTIONARY OF ENGRAVED BRITISH PORTRAITS, 1793, p. 101) correctly names F[rancis] Lovelace, the writer's brother, as the designer of the portrait before the POSTHUME POEMS.
<2.16> Winstanley, perhaps, intended some allusion to these two lost dramas from the pen of Lovelace, when he thus characterizes him in his LIVES OF THE POETS, 1687, p. 170:--"I can compare no man," he says, "so like this Colonel LOVELACE as SIR PHILIP SIDNEY, of which latter it is said by one in an epitaph made of him:--
'Nor is it fit that more I should acquaint, Lest men adore in one A Scholar, SOULDIER, Lover, and a Saint.'"
As to the comparison, Winstanley must be understood to signify a resemblance between Lovelace and Sydney as men, rather than as writers. Winstanley's extract is from WITS' RECREATIONS, but the text, as he gives it, varies from that printed by the editor of the reprint of that work in 1817.
<2.17> Gunpowder Alley still exists, but it is not the Gunpowder Alley which Lovelace knew, having been rebuilt more than once since 1658, It is now a tolerably wide and airy court, without any conspicuous appearance of squalor. There is no tradition, I am sorry to say, respecting Lovelace; all such recollections have long been swept away. When one of the old inhabitants told me (and there are one or two persons who have lived here all their life) that a great poet once resided thereabout, I naturally became eager to catch the name; but it turned out to be Dr. Johnson, not Lovelace, the latter of whom might have been contemporary with Homer for aught they knew to the contrary in Gunpowder Alley. It appears from
<2.11> Wood's story about LUCASTA having been a Lucy Sacheverell, "a lady of great beauty and fortune," may reasonably be doubted. Lucasta, whoever she was, seems to have belonged to Kent; the SACHEVERELLS were not a Kentish family. Besides, the corruption of Lucy Sacheverell into Lucasta is not very obvious, and rather violent; and the probability is that the author of the ATHENAE was misled by his informant on this occasion. The plate etched by Lely and engraved by Faithorne, which is found in the second part of LUCASTA, 1659, can scarcely be regarded as a portrait; it was, in all likelihood, a mere fancy sketch, and we are not perhaps far from the truth in our surmise that the artist was nearly, if not quite, as much in the dark as to who Lucasta was, as we are ourselves at the present day.
<2.12> This is a mistake on the part of Wood, which (with many others) ought to be corrected in a new edition of the ATHENAE. Lawes did not set to music AMARANTHA, A PASTORAL, nor any portion of it; but he harmonized two stanzas of a little poem to be found at p. 29 of the present volume, and called "To Amarantha; that she would dishevel her Hair."
<2.13> Hasted states that soon after the death of Charles I. the manor of Lovelace-Bethersden passed by purchase to Richard Hulse, Esq.
<2.14> On the title-page of this portion of LUCASTA, as well as on that which had appeared in 1649, the author is expressly styled RICHARD LOVELACE, ESQ.: yet in Berry's KENT GENEALOGIES, p. 474, he is, curiously enough, called SIR Richard Lovelace, KNT. It is scarcely necessary to observe that the error is on Berry's side.
<2.15> The most pleasing likeness of Lovelace, the only one, indeed, which conveys any just idea to us of the "handsomest man of his time," is the picture at Dulwich, which has been twice copied, in both instances with very indifferent success. One of these copies was made for Harding's BIOGRAPHICAL MIRROR. Bromley (DICTIONARY OF ENGRAVED BRITISH PORTRAITS, 1793, p. 101) correctly names F[rancis] Lovelace, the writer's brother, as the designer of the portrait before the POSTHUME POEMS.
<2.16> Winstanley, perhaps, intended some allusion to these two lost dramas from the pen of Lovelace, when he thus characterizes him in his LIVES OF THE POETS, 1687, p. 170:--"I can compare no man," he says, "so like this Colonel LOVELACE as SIR PHILIP SIDNEY, of which latter it is said by one in an epitaph made of him:--
'Nor is it fit that more I should acquaint, Lest men adore in one A Scholar, SOULDIER, Lover, and a Saint.'"
As to the comparison, Winstanley must be understood to signify a resemblance between Lovelace and Sydney as men, rather than as writers. Winstanley's extract is from WITS' RECREATIONS, but the text, as he gives it, varies from that printed by the editor of the reprint of that work in 1817.
<2.17> Gunpowder Alley still exists, but it is not the Gunpowder Alley which Lovelace knew, having been rebuilt more than once since 1658, It is now a tolerably wide and airy court, without any conspicuous appearance of squalor. There is no tradition, I am sorry to say, respecting Lovelace; all such recollections have long been swept away. When one of the old inhabitants told me (and there are one or two persons who have lived here all their life) that a great poet once resided thereabout, I naturally became eager to catch the name; but it turned out to be Dr. Johnson, not Lovelace, the latter of whom might have been contemporary with Homer for aught they knew to the contrary in Gunpowder Alley. It appears from