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’:—
“A sweet disorder in the dress,
Kindles in clothes a playfulness.