enemies, and adored by his soldiers, his power was at this time so great, that many attempts were made to shake his fidelity to the Emperor. Even the kingdom of Naples was offered to him if he would detach himself from the party of Charles the Fifth. Pescara was not without ambition, though without "the ill that should attend it." He wavered-he consulted his wife;-he expressed his wish to place her on a throne she was so fitted to adorn. That admirable and high-minded woman wrote to confirm him in the path of honour, and besought him not to sell his faith and truth, and his loyalty to the cause in which he had embarked, for a kingdom. "For me," she said, “believe that I do not desire to be the wife of a King; I am more proud to be the wife of that great captain, who in war, by his valour, and in peace, by his magnanimity, has vanquished the greatest monarchs."* On receiving this letter, Pescara hastened to shake off the subtle tempters round him; but he had previously become so far entangled, that he did not escape without some impeachment of his before stainless honour. The bitter consciousness of this, and the effects of some desperate wounds he had received at the battle of Pavia, which broke out afresh, put a period to his life at Milan, in his thirty-fith year.t The Marchesana was at Naples when the news of his danger arrived. She immediately set out to join him; but was met at Viterbo by a courier bearing the tidings of his death. On hearing this intelligence, she fainted away; and being brought a little to herself, sank into a stupor of grief, which alarmed her attendants for her reason or her life. Seasonable tears at length came to her relief; but her sorrow, for a long, long time, admitted no alleviation. She retired, after her first overwhelming anguish had subsided, to her favourite residence in the isle of "Non desidero d'esser moglie d'un re; bensi di quel gran capitano, il quale non solamente in guerra con valor, ma ancora in pace con la magnanimità ha saputo vincere i re più grande." (Vita di Vittoria Co. lonna, da Giambattista Rota.) See in Robertson's Charles V. an account of the generous conduct of Pescara to the Chevalier Bayard. Ischia, where she spent, almost uninterruptedly, the first seven years of her widowhood. Being only in her thirty-fifth year, in the prime of her life and beauty, and splendidly dowered, it was supposed that she would marry again, and many of the Princes of Italy sought her hand; her brothers urged it; but she replied to their entreaties and remonstrances, with a mixture of dignity and tenderness, that "Though her noble husband might be by others reputed dead, he still lived to her, and to her heart."* And in one of her poems, she alludes to these attempts to shake her constancy. "I will preserve," she says, "the title of a faithful wife to my beloved,-a title dear to me beyond every other: and on this island rock,† once so dear to him, will I wait patiently, till time brings the end of all my griefs, as once of all my joys." D'arder sempre piangendo non mi doglio! Caro a me sopra ogn' altro etorno onore. This Sonnet was written in the seventh year of her widowhood. She says elsewhere, that her heart having once been so nobly bestowed, disdains a meaner chain; and that her love had not ceased with the death of its object. Di cosi nobil fiamma amore mi cinse, Ch' essendo spenta, in me viva l' ardore. There is another, addressed to the poet, Molza, in which she alludes to the fate of his parents, who, by a singular providence, both expired in the same day and hour: such a fate appeared to her worthy of envy; and she laments very tenderly that Heaven had doomed her to survive him with whom her heart lay buried. There are others addressed to Cardinal Bembo, in which she thus excuses herself for making Pescara the subject of her verse. Che il suo sole, quantunque dagli altri fosse rìputato morte, appresso di lei sempre re vivea. (Vita.) + Sonnet 74. + Ischia. Scrivo sol per sfogar l' interna doglia; Mi scusa appo ciascun; che 'l grave pianto E tal, che tempo, ne raggion l' affrena. There is also a Canzone by Vittoria, full of poetry and feeling, in which she alludes to the loss of that beauty which once she was proud to possess, because it was dear in her husband's sight. "Look down upon me," she exclaims, "from thy seat of glory! look down upon me with those eyes that ever turned with tenderness on mine! Behold, how misery has changed me; how all that once was beauty is fled !-and yet I am-I am the same!"— (Io son―io son ben dessa!)—But no translation-none at least that I could execute-would do justice to the deep pathos, the feminine feeling, and the eloquent simplicity of this beautiful and celebrated poem. The reader will find it in Mathias's collection.* After the lapse of several years, her mind, elevated by the very nature of her grief, took a strong devotional turn: and from this time, we find her poetry entirely consecrated to sacred subjects. The first of these Rime spirituali is exquisitely beautiful. She allows that the anguish she had felt on the death of her noble husband, was not alleviated, but rather nourished and kept alive in all its first poignancy, by constantly dwelling on the theme of his virtues and her own regrets; that the thirst of fame, and the possession of glory, could not cure the pining sickness of her heart; and that she now turned to Heaven as a last and best resource against sorrow.† * Componimenti Lirici, vol. i. 144. + L'honneur d'avoir été, entre toutes les poëtes, la première à composer un recueil de poësies sacrées, appartient, toute entière, à Vittoria Colonna. (See Ginguené.) Her masterpieces, in this style, are said to be the sonnet on the death of our Saviour, and the hymn "Gli Angeli eletti al gran bene infinite;" "Padre Eterno del cielo!" which is sublime: it may be found in Mathias's Collection, vol. iii. "In Not the least of Vittoria's titles to fame, was the intense adoration with which she inspired Michel Angelo. Condivi says he was enamoured of her divine talents. particolare egli amò grandemente la Marchesana di Pescara, del cui divino spirito ara inamorato:" and he makes use of a strong expression to describe the admiration and friendship she felt for him in return. She was fifteen years younger than Michel Angelo, who not only employed his pencil and his chisel for her pleasure, or at her suggestion, but has left among his poems several which are addressed to her, and which breathe that deep and fervent, yet pure and reverential love she was as worthy to inspire as he was to feel. I cannot refuse myself the pleasure of adding here one of the Sonnets, addressed to Michel Angelo to the Marchesana of Pescara, as translated by Wordsworth, in a peal of grand harmony, almost as literally faithful to the expression as to the spirit of the original. SONNE T. Yes! hope may with my strong desire keep pace, For if of our affections none find grace In sight of Heaven, then, wherefore hath God made Love cannot have, than that in loving thee Who such divinity to thee imparts As hallows and makes pure all gentle hearts. With beauty, which is varying every hour: He stood by her in her last moments; and when her lofty and gentle spirit had forsaken its fair tenement, he raised her hand and kissed it with a sacred respect. He afterwards expressed to an intimate friend his regret, that being oppressed by the awful feelings of that moment, he had not, for the first and last time, pressed his lips to hers. Vittoria had another passionate admirer in Galeazzo di Tarsia, Count of Belmonte in Calabria, and an excellent poet of that time.* His attachment was a poetical, but apparently not quite so Platonic, as that of Michel Angelo. His beautiful Canzone beginning, A quel pietra sommiglia La mia bella Colonna, contains lines rather more impassioned than the modest and grave Vittoria could have approved: for exampleCon lei foss' io da che si parte il sole, E non ci vedesse altri che le stelle, Solo una notte-e mai non fosse l' Alba! Marini and Bernardo Tasso were also numbered among her poets and admirers. Vittoria Colonna died at Rome, in 1547. She was suspected of favouring in secret the reformed doctrines; but I do not know on what authority Roscoe mentions this. Her noble birth, her admirable beauty, her illustrious marriage, her splendid genius, (which made her the worship of genius-and the theme of poets,) have rendered her one of the most remarkable of women;-as her sorrows, her conjugal virtues, her innocence of heart, and elegance of mind, have rendered her one of the most interesting. "Where could she fix on mortal ground Antiquity may boast its heroines; but it required virtues of a higher order to be a Vittoria Colonna, or a Lady Russell, than to be a Portia or an Arria. How much * Died 1535. |