as a knight-errant; so handsome in person, that he could not appear without inspiring admiration; a polished courtier; an elegant scholar; and to crown all, a lover and a poet. He wrote a volume of poems, dedicated to the praises of Lucy Sacheverel, with whom he had exchanged vows of everlasting love. Her poetical appellation, according to the affected taste of the day, was Lucasta. When the civil wars broke out, Lovelace devoted his life and fortunes to the service of the King; and on joining the army, he wrote that beautiful song to his mistress, which has been so often quoted,

Tell me not, sweet, I am unkind,
That from the nunnery

Of thy chaste breast and quiet mind
To war and arms I fly.

True, a new mistress now I chase,
The first foe in the field;
And with a stronger faith embrace
A sword, a horse, a shield.

Yet this inconstancy is such
As you too shall adore;

I could not love thee, dear! so much,
Lov'd I not honour more.

The rest of his life was a series of the most cruel misfortunes. He was imprisoned on account of his enthusiastic and chivalrous loyalty; but no dungeon could subdue his buoyant spirit. His song "to Althea from Prison," is full of grace and animation, and breathes the very soul of love and honour.

When Love, with unconfined wings,

Hovers within my gates,

And my divine Althea brings

To whisper at the grates;

When I lie tangled in her hair,
And fettered to her eye,

The birds that wanton in the air,
Know no such liberty.

Stone walls do not a prison make,

Nor iron bars a cage;

Minds innocent and quiet take
That for a hermitage.

If I have freedom in my love,
And in my soul am free,-
Angels alone that soar above
Enjoy such liberty.

Lovelace afterwards commanded a regiment at the siege of Dunkirk, where he was severely, and, as it was supposed, mortally wounded. False tidings of his death were brought to England; and when he returned, he found his Lucy ("O most wicked haste!") married to another; it was a blow he never recovered. He had spent nearly his whole patrimony in the King's service, and now became utterly reckless. After wandering about London in obscurity and penury, dissipating his scanty resources in riot with his brother cavaliers, and in drinking the health of the exiled King and confusion to Cromwell, this idol of women and envy of men,-the beautiful, brave, high-born, and accomplished Lovelace, died miserably in a little lodging in Shoe Lane. He was only in his thirty-ninth year.

The mother of Lucy Sacheverel was Lucy, daughter of Sir Henry Hastings, ancestor to the present Marquis of Hastings. How could she so belie her noble blood? I would excuse her were it possible, for she must have been a fine creature to have inspired and appreciated such a sentiment as that contained in the first song: but facts cry aloud against her. Her plighted hand was not transferred to another, when time had sanctified and mellowed regret; but with a cruel and unfeminine precipitancy. Since then her lover has bequeathed her name to immortality, he is sufficiently avenged. Let her stand forth condemned and scorned for ever, as faithless, heartless,-light as air, false as water, and rash as fire.-I abjure her.

17*

CHAPTER XXI:

WALLER'S SACHARISSA.

THE Courtly Waller, like the lady in the Maids' Tragedy, loved with his ambition,-not with his eyes; still-less with his heart. A critic, in designating the poets of that time, says truly that "Waller still lives in Sacharissa:" he lives in her name more than she does in his poetry; he gave that name a charm and a celebrity which has survived the admiration his verses inspired, and which has assisted to preserve them and himself from oblivion. If Sacharissa had not been a real and an interesting object, Waller's poetical praises had died with her, and she with them. He wants earnestness; his lines were not inspired by love, and they give "no echo to the seat where love is throned." Instead of passion and poetry, we have gallantry and flattery; gallantry, which was beneath the dignity of its object; and flattery, which was yet more superfluous,―it was painting the lilly and throwing perfume on the violet.

Waller's Sacharissa was the Lady Dorothea Sydney, the eldest daughter of the Earl of Leicester, and born in 1620. At the time he thought fit to make her the object of his homage she was about eighteen, beautiful, accomplished, and admired. Waller was handsome, rich, a wit, and five-and-twenty. He had ever an excellent opinion of himself, and a prudent care of his wordly interests. He was a great poet, in days when Spenser was forgotten, Milton neglected, and Pope unborn. He began by addressing to her the lines on her picture.

Such was Philoclea and such Dorus' flame,*

* Alluding to the two heroines of Sir Philip Sydney's Arcadia; Sacharissa was the grandniece of that preux chevalier, and hence the frequent allusions to his name and fame.

Then we have the poems written at Penshurst,-in this strain,

Ye lofty beeches! tell this matchless dame,

That if together ye fed all one flame,

It could not equalize the hundredth part

Of what her eyes have kindled in my heart, &c.

The lady was content to be the theme of a fashionable poet: but when he presumed farther, she crushed all hopes with the most undisguised aversion and disdain: thereupon he rails, thus,

To thee a wild and cruel soul is given,

More deaf than trees, and prouder than the heaven;
Love's foe profest! why dost thou falsely feign
Thyself a Sydney? From which noble strain
He sprung that could so far exalt the name
Of love, and warm a nation with his flame.*

His mortified vanity turned for consolation to Amoret, (Lady Sophia Murray,) the intimate companion of Sacharissa. He describes the friendship between these two beautiful girls very gracefully.

And they are very beautifully contrasted in the lines to

Amoret

If less splendour wait on thine,
Yet they so benignly shine,
I would turn my dazzled sight
To behold their milder light.

*

Amoret! as sweet and good
As the most delicious food,
Which but tasted does impart
Life and gladness to the heart.
Sacharissa's beauty's wine,
Which to madness doth incline,
Such a liquor as no brain

That is mortal, can sustain,

But Lady Sophia, though of a softer disposition, and not carrying in her mild eyes the scornful and destructive light which sparkled in those of Sacharissa, was not to be "be-rhymed" into love any more than her fair friend. She applauded, but she repelled; she smiled, but she was cold. Waller consoled himself by marrying a city widow, worth thirty thousand pounds.

The truth is, that with all his wit and his elegance of fancy, of which there are some inimitable examples,-as the application of the story of Daphne, and of the fable of the wounded eagle; the lines on Sacharissa's girdle; the graceful little song, "Go, lovely Rose," to which I need only allude, and many others,-Waller has failed in convincing us of his sincerity. As Rosalind says, "Cupid might have clapped him on the shoulder, but we could warrant him heart whole." All along our sympathy is rather with the proud beauty, than with the irritable selfcomplacent poet. Sacharissa might have been proud, but she was not arrogant; her manners were gentle and retiring; and her disposition rather led her to shun than to seek publicity and admiration.

Such cheerful modesty, such humble state,
Moves certain love, but with as doubtful fate;
As when beyond our greedy reach, we see
Inviting fruit on too sublime a tree.*

The address to Sacharissa's femme-de-chambre, beginning, "Fair fellow-servant," is not to be compared with.

* Lines on her picture.