otting a line, though it would
have been well for his reputation, if he had blotted many.

In the poem of the LOOSE SARABAND (p. 34) there is some resemblance
to a piece translated from Meleager in Elton's SPECIMENS OF CLASSIC
POETS, i. 411, and entitled by Elton "Playing at Hearts."

"Love acts the tennis-player's part,
And throws to thee my panting heart;
Heliodora! ere it fall,
Let desire catch swift the ball:
Let her in the ball-court move,
Follow in the game with love.
If thou throw me back again,
I shall of foul play complain."

And an address to the Cicada by the same writer, (IBID. i. 415)
opens with these lines:--

"Oh, shrill-voiced insect that, with dew-drops sweet
Inebriate, dost in desert woodlands sing."

In the poem called "The Grasshopper" (p. 94), the author speaks
of the insect as

"Drunk ev'ry night with a delicious tear,
Dropped thee from heaven."----

The similarity, in each case, I believe to have been entirely
accidental: nor am I disposed to think that Lovelace was under any
considerable or direct obligations to the classics. I have taken
occasion to remark that Lovelace seems to have helped to furnish
a model to Cleveland, who carried to an extraordinary length that
fondness for words and figures derived from the alchymist's
vocabulary; but as regards the author of LUCASTA himself, it may
be asserted that there are few writers whose productions exhibit
less of book-lore than his, and even in those places, where he has
employed phrases or images similar to some found in Peele,
Middleton, Herrick, and others, there is great room to question,
whether the circumstance can be treated as amounting to more than
a curious coincidence.

The Master of Dulwich College has obligingly informed me,
that the picture of ALTHEA, as well as that of Lovelace himself,
bequeathed by Cartwright the actor to Dulwich College in 1687,
bears no clue to date of composition, or to the artist's name,
and that it does not assist in the identification of the lady.
This is the more vexatious, inasmuch as it seems probable that
ALTHEA, whoever she was, became the poet's wife, after LUCASTA'S
marriage to another. The CHLOES, &c. mentioned in the following
pages were merely more or less intimate acquaintances of Lovelace,
like the ELECTRA, PERILLA, CORINNA, &c. of Herrick. But at the
same time an obscurity has hitherto hung over some of the persons
mentio