If Rhodope be the only maid who has puzzled the poets, Butler is the only poet who has seriously libelled the maids, and their mothers. See what the rude fellow says of ladies in their company suits and faces:— “Yes, ’tis in vain to think to guess At women, by appearances; That paint and patch their imperfections Of intellectual complexions, And daub their tempers o’er with washes As artificial as their faces.” It is certainly strange that women, in earlier days, when they dealt in neither washes nor washing, should have been gravely commended for that less commendable fashion. Thus, Thomas of Ely lays down a very nasty maxim when he describes the toilet of Queen St. Ethelreda:—“Quæ enim lota erat corde, non necesse erat ut lavabatur corpore” (who was so thoroughly well-washed in heart that she never found it necessary to wash her person). Very well! I only wish this lady could have been married to the Irish Saint Angus Keledeus (_Kele De_, “God worshiper,” thence Culdees). They would have had a nice household of it; for the gentleman in question had the barn and the mill-work of his convent, and, as he _never_ cleaned himself, some of the grain which stuck in his hair and about his hairy body, used to grow as in a good soil, and then he pulled it out; gaining a portion of his bread in this nasty field. St. Angus, all over _ears_, would have been a novelly dressed bridegroom for Ethelreda, newly washed, in imagination! “Tut!” said St. Romnald, “filthy habits are the anchors by which holy hermits are kept fast in their cells; once let them dress well and smell nicely, and worldly people will invite them to their parties.” Depend upon it, when Ethelreda left off her habits of cleanliness, she wickedly thought of seducing some St. Angus to come and be her resident confessor! A better example was shown by that saintly sovereign, Jayme II. of Mayorca, who made ministers of his tailors, as George IV. made tailors of his ministers, who set those useful dignitaries to work in superb offices, wherein no profane person dared tread. On the garments made, no profane person dared lay a hand; the number of suits was seven, for the seven great festivals; and when these were completed, all the inhabitants were compelled to celebrate the event by a voluntary illumination. Certainly, Ethelreda did not sit for the original of Cowley’s ‘Clad all in White,’ wherein he says:— “Fairest thing that shines below, Why in this robe dost thou appear? Wouldst thou a white most perfect show, Thou must at all no garment wear: Thou wilt seem much whiter so Than winter when ’tis clad with snow.” But, altogether, Cowley cannot be said to dress his ladies well. He would banish all art, just as the nymphs in hoop-petticoats banished all nature. Herrick is the man, to my thinking, who has hit the happy medium, in his ‘Delight in Disorder’:—