audience. There are few letters of the period which have not the stamp of a literary composition destined to a public sufficiently large to render it necessary to put them in possession of the circumstances. If any persons are surprised that Heloisa could design the revelations in her first and especially in her second letter, for any eye but that of Abelard, let them read the incidents she could see recounted without offence in the Historia Calamitatum, and they will be convinced of the existence of a state of manners in which elevated and even delicate sentiments in a distinguished and naturally modest woman might be allied to the strangest forms of language."1 The case is put inaccurately. The " sentiments are not "delicate;" they are coarser than the language. The reasoning of Madame Guizot is equally defective. An immodest act is declared to be modest because Heloisa had committed a previous act of immodesty. Her toleration of Abelard's grossness is the evidence of her purity in imitating his freedoms. The appeal should have been to independent works of the time, and these are opposed to the theory of Madame Guizot. Language was often plainer than at present, but only creatures of the disgusting type of the Wife of Bath proclaimed the hidden details of their own sexual licentiousness. The reputable classes had risen high above the point at which elemental decency and self-respect become extinct. Heloisa must, indeed, have been a woman of an "unbashful forehead," to use the expression of Shakespeare, if she deliberately placed herself before the public as she appears in the letters. It is far more likely that they are the fabrication of an unconcerned romancer, who speaks in the name of others with a latitude which people, not entirely degraded, would never adopt towards themselves. The suspicion is strengthened when the second party to the correspondence, the chief philosopher of his generation, exhibits the same exceptional depravity of taste. The improbability is great that both should have courted a disgraceful notoriety. The corre spondence was coined in one mint; the impress it bears is male, and not female; and we may apply to Heloisa the words of Rosalind,—

I say she never did invent these letters,
This is a man's invention, and his hand.2

No portion of them, if they are genuine, can do honour to her memory. The coarse particulars she divulged to the public would prove that she was debased, and any sentiments which might have been creditable in an artless effusion addressed to Abelard lose their value when they are a studied rhetorical manifesto, got up to produce an impression on the world.

1 Essai Historique, p. lxiii.
2 As You Like It, Act iv. sc. 3.

VOL. II.-POETRY.

According to the Historia Calamitatum Abelard was the eldest son of a soldier in Brittany. His father, who had a tincture of learning, imbued him with a passion for study. He renounced the weapons of war for those of logic, resigned his paternal inheritance to his brothers, and traversed the kingdom that he might engage in scholastic tournaments at the towns on his road. He arrived at Paris about the year 1100, when he was twenty-one. There he frequented the lectures of William of Champeaux, the most famous dialectician of the day. Soon the pupil questioned the doctrines of his master, and was often victorious in their public disputations. He established a rival school, and the credit of all other teachers was lost in his renown. William of Champeaux, devoured with envy, struggled for years to drive his antagonist from the field. The invincible Abelard never failed to defeat him, and finally reigned without a competitor.

When his supremacy was recognised in the domain of metaphysical logic, he turned his attention to theology, and proceeding to Laon he sat under Anselm, who was esteemed the foremost divine in the church. The author of the letter affirms that his instruction consisted of fine words without matter, smoke without flame, leaves without fruit. Abelard soon relaxed in his attendance, and expressed his surprise to his fellow-students that any aid should be used beyond the text and the gloss in interpreting the Bible. With a derisive laugh they enquired if he would be bold enough, on these terms, to become the expositor. He accepted the challenge, and they thought to baffle him by allotting him the book of Ezekiel. He replied by inviting them to hear his commentary the following morning. They recommended him to take time, and he answered that his habit was to prevail by force of mind, and not by labour. His audience was small the next day, for it was considered ridiculous that a young man, who had hardly looked into the Bible, should extemporise an explanation of its obscurest prophecies. The few who went were fascinated, and their praises caused his lecture-room to be thronged. The old story was re-enacted. The pupil who had vanquished the most celebrated metaphysician of his generation, now at the first onset eclipsed the greatest theologian in Europe. Anselm, like William of Champeaux, was filled with jealousy, and forbade him to continue his disquisitions at Laon.

He returned to Paris, and taught dialectics and divinity with equal distinction. He had money and glory, he says, in profusion; he imagined that he was the only philosopher on earth; and in the words of the letter which bears his name, he was consumed by the fever of pride and luxury. In this state of worldly prosperity he reached his thirty-sixth year, when he formed his connection with Heloisa, who was barely eighteen. His qualifications for amorous intrigue are related by him with just the same boastful assurance

with which he describes his dictatorship in the schools. He declares that his youth, his fame, and his handsome person gave him such a superiority over all other men, that no woman could resist him. Whoever she might be she would have thought herself honoured by his love; and the context shows that the love he meant was illicit. The learning of Heloisa obtained her the preference, and he deliberately formed a plan to seduce her. She resided with her uncle Fulbert, a canon of the cathedral at Paris, who doated on money and his niece. Abelard appealed to the double passion. Professing to desire a release from household cares, he offered to board and lodge with the canon on any terms he chose to ask, and to devote his leisure hours to the instruction of Heloisa. Fulbert was delighted. He confided, to use the language of the letter, the tender lamb to the ravenous wolf, and enjoined the tutor to administer corporal punishment when his pupil neglected her studies. The comment of Abelard, or his representative, is extraordinary. He marvels at the simplicity of the canon in entrusting him with an authority which would enable him, if Heloisa resisted his fondness, to subdue her by blows. He thinks Fulbert childishly credulous for not divining that the grand luminary of philosophy and divinity was a wretch of fiendish depravity—a demon who would adopt the brutal expedient of beating an innocent girl into submission to his wicked designs. In his third letter he acknowledges that he had put the method in practice when the temporary scruples of his victim prevailed.

During the frenzy of his passion Abelard was indifferent to literary glory. His lectures were a burthen to him, and he only cared to compose amatory songs, which he informs his friend are still popular in numerous countries. Heloisa says in her reply that, as the greater part of these poems celebrated their love, her name became famous, and the jealousy of the women was roused. This is one of the many improbabilities of the story. At the exact period that Abelard, by his own acknowledgment, was anxious to conceal his passion from Fulbert, he published it in popular ballads to the world. The inconsistency is too glaring. A second statement is more consonant with human nature. The nerveless lectures, and preoccupied air of Abelard betrayed his infatuation to his disciples. They divined the truth; the intrigue was noised abroad, and the rumour at last got round to Fulbert. Abelard asserts that he and his concubine were overwhelmed with anguish and shame on their detection; Heloisa that her amour was the envy of princesses and queens. The apocryphal writer, after the manner of his tribe, overlooked these discrepancies.

When the first shock of disgrace was past, the lovers disregarded appearances, and carried on their intercourse without disguise. The poor canon was nearly mad between grief and rage, and Abelard

to appease him led Heloisa to the altar, on the understanding that their union should be kept a secret; but the relations of the bride broke their promise, and proclaimed that she was married. She protested it was false, and Fulbert, exasperated by her denial, treated her harshly. Her husband removed her to the abbey of Argenteuil, near Paris, that she might be safe from persecution. Her friends conjectured that his object was to get rid of her, and in revenge for his former treachery and present heartlessness, Fulbert bribed some miscreants to mutilate him when he was asleep. Overwhelmed with mortification, he resolved to hide his head in a convent, and selected St. Denis. His jealousy would not suffer him to leave Heloisa free, and before he bound himself by an irrevocable vow he obliged her to take the veil.

The monks in Abelard's new retreat led the dissolute life in which he himself had indulged up to the moment of his disaster. He provoked their hostility by his remonstrances, and to get rid of him they joined in the entreaties of his disciples that he would leave his cell, and resume his lectures. The concourse of hearers was so great that the district where he set up his chair could not afford them food and lodging. The popularity of his teaching is attested by independent evidence, although his extant treatises are bald in style, prolix and cloudy in exposition, abstruse and barren in substance. But manuscripts were scarce; the multitude were chiefly dependent upon oral instruction; literature was almost unknown, and the subtleties of a meagre metaphysical system applied to theology, had a charm for active intellects when theology, logic, and metaphysics had undivided possession of the schools. Controversy lent its powerful aid, animating the dry bones with the fiery life of human passion. The superiority of Abelard in the verbal strife was due to the comparative feebleness of his adversaries, and not to the absolute greatness of his acute, but narrow and unprolific mind. "How is it," said a nobleman to Lely, "that you are so celebrated, when you know, as well as I do, that you are no painter ?" True," replied Lely, "but I am the best you have."

The revival of Abelard's popularity was attended by the old results. Rival schools were deserted, envy, malice, and hatred were inflamed. Applying his metaphysical logic to the doctrines of the Bible he produced a treatise on the Trinity, which he asserts solved every difficulty; and the more transcendent was the mystery, the greater, he says, was the admiration at the acuteness of his solution. But it was by altering the dogma that he brought it down to the level of human reason, and a council at Soissons accused him of heresy. If the letter is to be credited, his antagonists paid him the compliment of refusing to hear his defence, on the plea that his arguments would confound the united world. The assembly voted him guilty, and the troubles which grew out of his condemnation ended in his withdrawing

to an uninhabited district on the banks of the river Ardusson, where he constructed an oratory of reeds and mud. Admiring crowds pursued him into his desolate retreat. Sleeping in rude huts, and subsisting on bread and herbs, they abjured the physical luxuries of existence for the mental feast of listening to the arid speculations in vogue. His auditors replaced his cratory by a larger building of wood and stone, which might serve for a lecture-room, and he named it the Paraclete, or the Comforter, because Providence had sent him consolation to the spot whither he had fled in despair. He, or his personator on his behalf, cannot suppress the usual vaunts. His body, he says, was concealed by his seclusion, but he filled the universe by his word and his renown. His enemies were enraged, and groaned inwardly, "Behold the world is gone after him, and our persecution has increased his glory." He admits that the sentiment did not fall from their lips, and it is merely the form in which his vanity embodied their feelings. The celebrated St. Bernard entered the lists against him, and Abelard began to be deserted by his adherents. He completely lost heart, and when the monks of a remote abbey on the coast of Brittany appointed him their head, he was glad to embrace a banishment which removed him from the midst of his increasing foes. New enmities awaited him. As at St. Denis, he soon became odious to his brethren by reproving their laxity. Their vindictive rage knew no bounds. They poisoned his food, but he forbore to taste it. They poisoned the chalice at the altar, but he did not drink of it. They suborned a servant to poison his victuals when he was on a visit. to his brother, and again he happened not to eat of the dish, while a monk who partook of it died on the spot. Wherever he went they posted hired assassins on the road, and for some untold reason he always escaped. He procured the expulsion of the most desperate of his bloodthirsty children, and when the remainder were about to stab him he eluded their daggers. The sword, when he wrote, was still hanging over his head, and he passed his days in almost breathless fear. The early novelist who composed the apocryphal correspondence had the art to leave him in this critical situation. But the Abelard of the autobiography is a repulsive hero of romance, since even the penitent is boastful, coarse, and callous.

The abbey of Argenteuil, where Heloisa was prioress, was a dependency of the abbey of St. Denis. The parent monastery reclaimed the building and turned out Heloisa and the nuns. Abelard invited them to meet him at the Paraclete, and he established them in the oratory and its appurtenances, which had remained unoccupied since he settled in Brittany. He took frequent journeys from his abbey to instruct and console them, till finding that his visits gave rise to scandal, he went no more. Heloisa had not seen him or heard from