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CHAPTER II.

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 lily 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 worldly 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 Arca

dia;

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 matchles dame,

That if together ye fed all one flame,

It could not equalise 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.

VOL. II.

* Alluding to Sir Philip Sydney.

C

And they are very beautifully contrasted in the lines to Amoret

If sweet Amoret complains,

I have sense of all her pains;

But for Sacharissa, I

Do not only grieve, but die!

'Tis amazement more than love,
Which her radiant eyes do move;
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 "berhymed" into love any more than her fair friend. plauded, but she repelled; she smiled, but she was cold. Waller consoled himself by marrying a city widow, worth thirty thousand pounds.

She ap

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 wound