The verses to the memory
of a lost love veiled as "Thyrza," of moderate artistic merit, were not,
as Moore alleges, mere plays of imagination, but records of a sincere
grief.[1] Another intimacy exerted so much influence on this phase of the
poet's career, that to pass it over would be like omitting Vanessa's name
from the record of Swift. Lady Caroline Lamb, granddaughter of the first
Earl Spencer, was one of those few women of our climate who, by their
romantic impetuosity, recall the "children of the sun." She read Burns in
her ninth year, and in her thirteenth idealized William Lamb (afterwards
Lord Melbourne) as a statue of Liberty. In her nineteenth (1805) she
married him, and lived for some years, during which she was a reigning
belle and toast, a domestic life only marred by occasional eccentricities.
Rogers, whom in a letter to Lady Morgan she numbers among her lovers, said
she ought to know the new poet, who was three years her junior, and the
introduction took place in March, 1812. After the meeting, she wrote in
her journal, "Mad--bad--and dangerous to know;" but, when the fashionable
Apollo called at Melbourne House, she "flew to beautify herself.
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