[50] Chalmers's Biography.
[51] In 1617.
CHAPTER VII.
CONJUGAL POETRY CONTINUED.
HABINGTON'S CASTARA.
One of the most elegant monuments ever raised by genius to conjugal affection, was Habington's Castara.
William Habington, who ranks among the most graceful of our old minor poets, was a gentleman of an ancient Roman Catholic family in Worcestershire, and born in 1605.[52] On his return from his travels, he saw and loved Lucy Herbert, the daughter of Lord Powis, and grand-daughter of the Earl of Northumberland. She was far his superior in birth, being descended, on both sides, from the noblest blood in England; and her haughty relations at first opposed their union. It was, however, merely that degree of opposition, without which the "course of true love would have run too smooth." It was just sufficient to pique the ardour of the lover, and prove the worth and constancy of her he loved. The history of their attachment has none of the painful interest which hangs round that of Donne and his wife: it is a picture of pure and peaceful happiness, and of mutual tenderness, on which the imagination dwells with a soft complacency and unalloyed pleasure; with nothing of romance but what was borrowed from the elegant mind and playful fancy, which heightened and embellished the delightful reality.
If Habington had not been born a poet, a tombstone in an obscure country church would have been the only memorial of himself and his Castara. "She it was who animated his imagination with tenderness and elegance, and filled it with images of beauty, purified by her feminine delicacy from all grosser alloy." In return, he may be allowed to exult in the immortality he has given her.