manlike, he first demands that Heloise turn nun, in order that no other may know the attractions he has enjoyed. Heloise willingly consents; she being then twenty-two and he forty years of age. Ten years after, in her convent, a letter of Abelard's falls into her hands; she learns he has not found content, she knows she has not. She writes to Abelard betraying all the pent-up passion of those years of restraint; he replies in a letter alternating between religion and regret not accepting the inevitable, not daring to break free. Other four letters pass, each less passionate than the previous, aud then the silence falls once more.

Abelard died in 1142 at the age of sixty-three, and twenty years later Heloise died and was buried beside him. Subsequently their remains were removed to Père Lachaise, where their tomb can now be seen.

And Abelard, the great leader and logician, his treatises are forgotten, his fame as a philosopher is dead-only his love letters live.

an

And Heloise, the beautiful and the learned, who stands second to Sapho, is known merely as example of the passionate devotion of woman.

So they remain to us, the typical lovers; he with man's mania to master, she with woman's one desire to submit.

No love letters that have ever been written but have contained phrases common to one another and to be found here; but no love letters that have ever been published have equalled these in the old passionate tale of the struggle to forget to sink the love of the human in the love of the divine.

ii

H. M.

LETTERS

OF

ABELARD AND HELOISE

LETTERI

Abelard to Philintus

his friend

THE last time we were together, Philintus, you Abelard gave me a melancholy account of your misfor- consoles tunes; I was sensibly touched with the relation, and like a true friend bore a share in your griefs. What did I not say to stop your tears? I laid before you all the reasons philosophy could furnish, which I thought might anyways soften the strokes of fortune. But all these endeavours have proved useless; grief, I perceive, has wholly seized your spirits, and your prudence, far from assisting, seems to have forsaken you. But my

skilful friendship has found out an expedient to relieve you. Attend to me a moment, hear but the story of my misfortunes, and yours, Philintus, will be nothing as compared with those of the loving and unhappy Abelard. Observe, I beseech you, at what expense I endeavour to serve you; and think this no small mark of my affection; for I am going to present you with the relation of such particulars as it is impossible for me to re

He re- collect without piercing my heart with the most lates his sensible affliction.

early life

You know the place where I was born, but not, perhaps, that I was born with those complexional faults which strangers charge upon our nation-an extreme lightness of temper, and great inconstancy. I frankly own it, and shall be as free to acquaint you with those good qualities which were observed in me. I had a natural vivacity and aptness for all the polite arts. My father was a gentleman and a man of good parts; he loved the wars, but differed in his sentiments from many who follow that profession. He thought it no praise to be illiterate, but in the camp he knew how to converse at the same time with the Muses and Bellona. He was the same in the management of his family, and took equal care to form his children to the study of polite learning as to their military exercises. As I was his eldest, and consequently his favourite son, he took more than ordinary care of my education. I had a natural genius for study, and made extraordinary progress in it. Smitten with the love of books, and the praises which on all sides were bestowed upon me, I aspired to no other reputation than that of learning. To my brothers I W leave the glory of battles and the pomp of triumphs; nay, more, I yielded them up my birthright and patrimony. I knew necessity was the great spur to study, and was afraid I should not merit the title of learned if I distinguished myself from others by nothing but a more plentiful fortune. Of all the sciences logic was the most to my taste. Such were the arms I chose to