Master Crashaw is not the only man by many who in the past has been seduced into putting into words and verse the aspirations, on this subject, which filled his soul. It would probably be found, if anyone had the requisite patience to go through with it, that there has been scarcely a poet who has not thus given expression to his conception of an ideal woman and to his desire for her companionship. Much more numerous, to be sure, are the rapturous tributes which have been paid to actual persons of the other sex: the poetry of praise, as written by men of women, has not yet been exhausted, and probably never will be. But the ideal description has generally come first, and very notable it has usually been. Sir Thomas Wyatt declared that 'A face that should content me wondrous well Should not be fair, but lovely to behold; Of lively look, all grief for to repel; With right good grace,' et caetera. He further asserted that 'her tress also should be of crisped gold,' and intimated graciously that 'With wit, and these, perchance I might be tied, And knit again with knot that should not slide.' His contemporary, Lord Surrey, included among 'the means to attain happy life,' 'the faithful wife, without debate'--that is, I suppose, a lady without forty-parson-power of talk--a not impossible, nay, fairly common, She. In a lyric by Beaumont and Fletcher, we find the supposed speaker giving utterance to a series of such wishes. 'May I,' he says, 'find a woman fair, And her mind as clear as air!' 'May I find a woman rich, And of not too high a pitch!... May I find a woman wise, And her falsehood not disguise!... May I find a woman kind, And not wavering like the wind!...' And, in truth, he talks throughout as if he did not expect to discover any such rarity. Everyone knows the little poem in which Ben Jonson details his preferences in women's dress, declaring that 'a sweet disorder' does more bewitch him 'than when art Is too precise in every part.' But elsewhere he paints for us, not a perfect feminine attire, but the faultless maid herself, as he would have her: 'I would have her fair and witty, Favouring more of Court than City, A little proud, but full of pity, Light and humorous in her toying, Oft building hopes and soon destroying... Neither too easy nor too hard, All extremes I would have barr'd.' That, it would seem, was rare Ben's ideal. Carew, it is notorious, professed to despise 'lovely cheeks or lips or eyes,' if they were not combined with 'A smooth and steadfast mind, Gentle thoughts, and calm desires.' A rosy cheek, a coral lip, and even star-like eyes, as he sagely said, would waste away. And in this somewhat priggish, and perhaps not wholly sincere, vein, he finds a rival in the anonymous bard who declared that he did not demand 'A crystal brow, the moon's despair, Nor the snow's daughter, a white hand, Nor mermaid's yellow pride of hair,' and so on, but instead,