perpetually, for she knows silence in woman is the most persuading oratorie. She never arrived at so much familiarity with man as to know the diminutive of his name, and call him by it. . . . She is never sad, and yet not jiggish. . . . She is not ambitious to be prais'd and yet values death beneath infamy."
But Habington was not to find this Rose of the World altogether without its thorns. His family, although an eminent one, was scarcely a mate for the Herberts or the Percys, whose blood was mingled in "Castara's" veins; and his worldly fortunes were doubtless far inferior to those of other suitors. But there was something in the grave, cultured grace of this young student to which the lady could not be indifferent. Moreover, his unfaltering assurances that they were created for each other had a persuasive power quite their own. William Habington knew how to love: and he told his story in a series of poems so severely pure and so exquisitely tender that, in in addition to winning the heart of Lucy Herbert, they won him a place among the makers of English literature.
Very little did he dream of this latter result as he penned the praises of his well-beloved:
Let all the amorous Youth, whose faire desire
Felt never warmth but from a noble fire,
Bring hither their bright flames: which here shall shine
As tapers fixt about Castara's shrine.
While I, the Priest, my untam'd heart surprise,
And in this Temple make't her sacrifice. . . .
Thus characteristically does the little volume open; and from its first part we learn the story of that somewhat chequered courtship. There is a charming little poem, "To Castara, Praying"; another to the same "Softly Singing to Her
