Sacharissa, too, stands near, with a shade of listlessness in her sweet eyes, as though she wearied a little of Master Waller’s courtly strains. A withered rose droops from her white fingers, preaching its mute sermon, and preaching it all in vain; for rose and lady live forever, linked to each other’s fame. And by her side, casting her fragile loveliness in the shade, is one of different mould, a sumptuous, smiling woman, on whom Sacharissa’s blue eyes fall with a soft disdain. We know this indolent beauty by the brave vibration of her tempestuous silken robe, by the ruby carcanet that clasps her throat, the rainbow ribbon around her slender waist, the jewels wedged knuckle-deep on every tapering finger, and even--oh, vanity of vanities!--on one small rosy thumb. We know her by the scented beads upon her arm, and by the sweet and subtle odors of storax and spikenard and galbanum that breathe softly forth from her brocaded bodice, and from her hair’s dark meshes caught in a golden net. It is she to whom the glow-worms lent their eyes, and the elves their wings, and the stars their shooting fires, as she wandered through the dewy woods to meet her lover’s steps. It is Herrick’s Julia whom we see so clearly through the mist of centuries, that cannot veil nor dim the brightness of her presence. To ask how many of these fair dames have gone through the formality of living, and how many exist only by the might of a poet’s breath, is but a thankless question. All share alike in that true being which may not be blown out like the flame of a taper; in that true entity which Cæsar and Hamlet hold in common, and which reveals them side by side. Mr. Gosse, for example, assures us that Julia really walked the earth, and even gives us some details of her mundane pilgrimage; other critics smile, and shake their heads, and doubt. It matters not; she lives, and she will continue to live when we who dispute the matter lie voiceless in our graves. The essence of her personality lingers on every page where Herrick sings of her. His verse is heavy with her spicy perfumes, glittering with her many-colored jewels, lustrous with the shimmer of her silken petticoats. Her very shadow, he sighs, distills sweet odors on the air, and draws him after her, faint with their amorous languor. How lavish she is with her charms, this woman who neither thinks nor suffers; who prays, indeed, sometimes, with great serenity, and dips her snowy finger in the font of blessed water, but whose spiritual humors pale before the calm vigor of her earthly nature! How kindly, how tranquil, how unmoved, she is; listening with the same slow smile to her lover’s fantastic word-play, to the fervid conceits with which he beguiles the summer idleness, and to the frank and sudden passion with which he conjures her, “dearest of thousands,” to close his eyes when death shall summon him, to shed some true tears above the sod, to clasp forever the book in which he writes her name!