Neither Lord Ellenborough, nor the Bavarian Prime Minister, nor the Arab Sheik, nor any other of her special friends, would deny that a little more velvet on the paws of the sprightly Jane Elizabeth would have been an advantage. There are always women of this kind, who exercise an imperious and inexplicable sway over the male imagination, or, to be more exact, over the imagination of certain males. It is no use to reason with the bondager. The music plays . . . We are fortunate, no doubt, who never hear this music, a bewildering strain from the heart of the Venusberg.
Poets are terrible romanticists in the matter of the affections.
Too many behave, even on the threshold of the Ideal, in the reprehensible manner of Samuel Pepys when that famous chronicler and incurable old pagan found himself in church one fine day. So the sermon ended. See that they be good, see that they come in season. If all the Fair Women of Picture-World were to be brought together, it would be made quite clear that the one thing that in a thousand instances escapes the painter is expression. Expression is the morningglory of beauty.