sister to John Hampden, the Hero of
Patriotism, martyred in. the green meadow
near Chalgrove, and consequently cousin
of his Highness the Lord Protector, Oliver
Cromwell, the uncrowned king of the
Commonwealth. Through the paternal line, on
the contrary, our love-sick aspirant to the
blending by marriage of his own "divine
ichor" with the "blue blood " of the Percies
and the Sydney, traced back his ancestry by
direct ascent up to the Golden Age of
Chivalry—in simple truth, to that valiant Sheriff
of Kent, Richard Waller of Spendhurst, who,
in fourteen hundred and fifteen, with his own
hand, took the Duke of Orleans prisoner
upon the memorable twenty-fifth of October,
when King Henry gave the battle-signal,
"Banners Advance," upon the famous field
of Agincourt. Wherefore, probably, the
knightly sheriff's descendant deemed it in no
way incongruous that he also, in due course,
should in the lists of love dream of capturing
an earl's daughter, even though that earl's
daughter wore a mail of proof as impenetrable
to the shafts of his passion, even, be it
said, as the pride of Sacharissa. A suspicion
of that repellant pride, Waller seems, in
spite of his own matchless self-reliance, to
have entertained actually at the very outset;
so that we absolutely find him muttering to
himself "sour grapes" with a qualm like
that of an agonising presentiment, in the
earliest utterance of his newly-awakened
admiration. It is where he hints (in the
Verses upon the Picture of his Beloved) at
the fate of the emotions inspired by her
graces. " As doubtful," he sighs,

"As when, beyond our greedy reach, we see
Inviting fruit on too sublime a tree."

Never does he sing to her as he sang to
Chloris afterwards:

"So the fair tree which still preserves
Her fruit and state when no wind blows,
In storms from that uprightness swerves,
And the glad earth about her strews
With treasure from her yielding boughs."

Unconsciously, indeed, he confirms Sacharissa
in her scorn by a premature revelation
of his hopelessness. Cupid, with him, shoots
his darts like a Parthian in flight. Besides,
the manner in which his ardour found
expression, bore about it the appearance at
last of affectation. Writing, as he did, at
long intervals—this naturally enough becoming
a habit with one altogether without the
necessity of toiling at the pen for his subsistence
—Waller invariably wrote and re-wrote
with the most exquisite care, and the most
painful deliberation. Has he not acknowledged
naively, in his comment upon the Earl
of Roscommon's version of Horace?

"Poets lose half the praise they should have got
Could it be known what they discreetly blot."

Unlike Paganini, who was never once
heard by his familiar friends to string an
instrument, Waller was always applying
fresh rosin to his bow, and screwing the
strings a little tighter. According to the
assurance given by the Duke of Buckingham
to the Annotation of our author's Quarto
Edition, he was known to have consumed
the greater part of an entire summer in
composing and correcting just ten lines to be
inscribed in a rare copy of Tasso, belonging to
her Royal Highness the Duchess of York.
Yet the cherrystone was not worth much,
after all, even when rubbed into a gloss and
carved thus elaborately. It may be, doubtless,
in explanation of the fastidious caution
lavished upon these verses, for the fly-leaf of
the Jerusalem Delivered, that he designed
them, possibly as a tribute of reverent gratitude
to the memory of Torquato, to whose
melodious epic, done into English by Mr.
Fairfax, he avowed, in the hearing of Mr.
Dryden, that he owed whatever smoothness
might be discernible in his own flowing and
harmonious versification. In testimony,
however, of the poetic faith that was in him, this
significant couplet may be not inaptly cited
from one of his Prologues:

"Our lines reformed, and not composed in haste,
Polished like marble, would like marble last."

Hardened and polished lines like these
same marble numbers of Waller, howbeit,
were scarcely the fittest medium for a
passion imperatively demanding at all times
more penetrable stuff for its manifestation.
Sacharissa, we may presume, wanted a
heart, and she was offered a gem selected
with the taste, and cut with the adroitness,
of the most exquisitely tasteful and cunningly
adroit of lapidaries.

Sacharissa, the haughty and the
debonnaire, was the first-born of eight fair
daughters—offsprings of the marriage of
Robert Sidney, Earl of Leicester, with the
Lady Dorothea Percy, sister of the celebrated
Countess of Carlisle. Sacharissa, chief flower
of all this blooming stock,

"Queen rose in this rosebud garden of girls;"

was known and admired, during her radiant
maidenhood, as the Lady Dorothea Sydney.
Subsequently, however, her name was
rendered otherwise familiar; first of all, during
nearly half a century, by her husband's title,
to her contemporaries; afterwards, by the
sweetest appellation lover ever bestowed on
his beloved, to all after generations. During
her life-time, Countess of Sutherland!
Perpetually, to all generations, Sacharissa!
Delectable, old, bright-eyed Elia, would infallibly
have called her (coining a superlative for
the nonce) Fortunatest of Ladies! this—at
any rate in one important particular—happy-
go-lucky Dorothea, Countess of Sutherland.
And why? Simply, be it confessed, because
there is not anywhere discoverable the faintest
vestige of a clue to the date of her birth,
leaving that mystery as a problem to be