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Tasso's ode to the Countess of Scandiano's maid, but contains some most elegant lines.

You the soft season know, when best her mind
May be to pity, or to love inclined:

In some well-chosen hour supply his fear,
Whose hopeless love durst never tempt the ear
Of that stern goddess; you, her priest, declare
What offerings may propitiate the fair:
Rich orient pearl, bright stones that ne'er decay,
Or polished lines, that longer last than they.

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But since her eyes, her teeth, her lip excels
All that is found in mines or fishes' shells,
Her nobler part as far exceeding these,

None but immortal gifts her mind should please.

These lines impress us with the image of a very imperious and disdainful beauty; yet such was not the character of Sacharissa's person or mind.* Nor is it necessary to imagine her such, to account for her rejection of Waller, and her indifference to his flattery. There was a meanness about the man: he wanted not birth alone, but all the high and generous qualities which must have been required to recommend him to a woman, who, with the blood and the pride of the Sydneys, inherited their large heart and noble spirit. We are not surprised when she turned from the poet to give her hand to Henry Spencer, Earl of Sunderland, one of the most interesting and heroic characters of that time. He was then only nineteen, and she was about the same age. This marriage was celebrated with great splendour at Penshurst, July 30, 1639. Waller, who had professed that his hope

Should ne'er rise higher

Than for a pardon that he dared admire,

pressed forward with his congratulations in verse and prose, and wrote the following letter, full of pleasant imprecations, to Lady Lucy Sydney, the younger sister of Sacharissa. It will be allowed that it argues more wit and good nature than love or sorrow; and that he was

* Sacharissa, the poetical namc Waller himself gave her, signifies sweetness.

resolved that the willow should sit as gracefully and lightly on his brow, as the myrtle or the bays.

“To my Lady Lucy Sydney, on the marriage of my Lady Dorothea, her Sister.

"MADAM,—In this common joy, at Penshurst, I know none to whom complaints may come less unseasonable than to your Ladyship,--the loss of a bed-fellow being almost equal to that of a mistress; and therefore you ought, at least, to pardon, if you consent not to the imprecations of the deserted, which just Heaven, no doubt, will hear.

"May my Lady Dorothea, if we may yet call her so, suffer as much, and have the like passion, for this young Lord, whom she has preferred to the rest of mankind, as others have had for her; and may this love, before the year come about, make her taste of the first curse imposed on woman-kind-the pains of becoming a mother. May her first-born be none of her own sex, nor so like her, but that he may resemble her Lord as much as herself.

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May she, that always affected silence and retiredness, have the house filled with the noise and number of her children, and hereafter of her grand-children, and then may she arrive at that great curse, so much declined by fair ladies,-old age. May she live to be very old, and yet seem young-be told so by her glass-and have no aches to inform her of the truth: and when she shall appear to be mortal, may her Lord not mourn for her, but go handin-hand with her to that place, where, we are told, there is neither marrying nor giving in marriage, that being there divorced, we may all have an equal interest in her again. My revenge being immortal, I wish that all this may also befall their posterity to the world's end and afterwards.

"To you, Madam, I wish all good things, and that this loss may, in good time, be happily supplied with a more constant bed-fellow of the other sex.

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Madam, I humbly kiss your hands, and beg pardon for this trouble from your Ladyship's most humble servant, "E. WALLER."

Lady Sunderland had been married about three years;

she and her youthful husband lived in the tenderest union, and she was already the happy mother of two fair infants, a son and a daughter,-when the civil wars broke out, and Lord Sunderland followed the King to the field. In the Sydney papers are some beautiful letters to his wife, written from the camp before Oxford. The last of these, which is in a strain of playful and affectionate gaiety, thus concludes,-"Pray bless Poppet for me!* and tell her I would have wrote to her, but that, upon mature deliberation, I found it uncivil to return an answer to a lady in another character than her own, which I am not yet learned enough to do.-I beseech you to present his service to my Lady,† who is most passionately and perfectly yours, &c.

"SUNDERLAND.'

Three days afterwards this tender and gallant heart had ceased to beat: he was killed in the battle of Newbury, at the age of three-and-twenty. His unhappy wife, on hearing the news of his death, was prematurely taken ill, and delivered of an infant, which died almost immediately after its birth. She recovered, however, from a dangerous and protracted illness, through the affectionate and unceasing attentions of her mother, Lady Leicester, who never quitted her for several months. Her father wrote her a letter of condolence, which would serve as a model for all letters on similar occasions. "I know," he says, "that it is to no purpose to advise you not to grieve; that is not my intention: for such a loss as yours, cannot be received indifferently by a nature so tender and sensible as yours," &c. After touching lightly and delicately on the obvious sources of consolation, he reminds her, that her duty to the dead requires her to be careful of herself, and not hazard her very existence by the indulgence of grief. "You offend him you loved, if you hurt that per

son whom he loved; remember how apprehensive he was of your danger, how grieved for any thing that troubled

His infant daughter, then about two years old, afterwards Marchioness of Halifax.

+ The Countess's mother, Lady Leicester, who was then with her at Althorpe.

you! I know you lived happily together, so as nobody but yourself could measure the contentment of it. I rejoiced at it, and did thank God for making me one of the means to procure it for you," &c.*

Those who have known deep sorrow, and felt what it is to shrink with shattered nerves and a wounded spirit from the busy hand of consolation, fretting where it cannot heal, will appreciate such a letter as this.

Lady Sunderland, on her recovery, retired from the world, and centering all her affections in her children, seemed to live only for them. She resided, after her widowhood, at Althorpe, where she occupied herself with. improving the house and gardens. The fine hall and staircase of that noble seat, which are deservedly admired for their architectural beauty, were planned and erected by her. After the lapse of about thirteen years, her father, Lord Leicester, prevailed on her to choose one from among the numerous suitors who sought her hand: he dreaded, lest on his death, she should be left unprotected, with her infant children, in those evil times; and she married, in obedience to his wish, Sir Robert Smythe, of Sutton, who was her second cousin, and had long been attached to her. She lived to see her eldest son, the second Earl of Sunderland, a man of transcendant talents, but versatile principles, at the head of the government, and had the happiness to close her eyes before he had abused his admirable abilities, to the vilest purposes of party and court intrigue. The Earl was appointed principal Secretary of State in 1682; his mother died in 1683.

There is a fine portrait of Sacharissa at Blenheim, of which there are many engravings. It must have been painted by Vandyke, shortly after her marriage, and before the death of her husband. If the withered branch, to which she is pointing, be supposed to allude to her widowhood, it must have been added afterwards, as Vandyke died in 1641, and Lord Sunderland in 1643. In the gallery at Althorpe, there are three pictures of this celebrated woman. One represents her in a hat, and at the age of fifteen or sixteen, gay, girlish, and blooming: the second

* Sydney's Memorials, vol. ii. p. 271.

far more interesting, was painted about the time of her first marriage: it is exceedingly sweet and lady-like. The features are delicate, with redundant light brown hair, and eyes and eye-brows of a darker hue; the bust and hands very exquisite: on the whole, however, the high breeding of the face and air is more conspicuous than the beauty of the person. These two portraits are by Vandyke; nor ought I to forget to mention that the painter himself was supposed to have indulged a respectful but ardent passion for Lady Sunderland, and to have painted her portrait literally con amour.*

A third picture represents her about the time of her second marriage: the expression wholly changed,—cold, faded, sad, but still sweet-looking and delicate. One might fancy her contemplating with a sick heart, the portrait of Lord Sunderland, the lover and husband of her early youth, and that of her unfortunate but celebrated brother, Algernon Sydney; both which hang on the opposite side of the gallery.

The present Duke of Marlborough, and the present Earl Spencer, are the lineal descendants of Waller's Sacharissa.

One little incident, somewhat prosaic indeed, proves how little heart there was in Waller's poetical attachment to this beautiful and admirable woman. When Lady Sunderland, after a retirement of thirty years, re-appeared in the court she had once adorned, she met Waller at Lady Wharton's, and addressing him with a smiling courtesy, she reminded him of their youthful days:"When," said she," will you write such fine verses on me again?”—“ Madam," replied Waller, "when your Ladyship is young and handsome again." This was contemptible and coarse,-the sentiment was not that of a well-bred or a feeling man, far less that of a lover or a poet,-no!

Love is not love,

That alters where it alteration finds.

One would think that the sight of a woman, whom he had last seen in the full bloom of youth and glow of happiness, who had endured, since they parted, such extre* See State Poems, vol. iii. P. 396.

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