In Coventry Patmore’s delicately beautiful poem, The Angel in the House, twice occurs the line,—
Her pleasure in her power to charm.
“An exquisite line,” says The Critic: “who could have believed that the ugly and often unjust word vanity could ever be melted down into so true and pretty and flattering a periphrasis?” Thackeray uses the same idea:—
A fair young creature, bright and blooming yesterday, distributing smiles, levying homage, inspiring desire, conscious of her power to charm, and gay with the natural enjoyments of her conquests—who, in his walk through the world, has not looked on many such a one? The Newcomes.
E’en the slight hare-bell raised its head,
Elastic from its airy tread. Scott, Lady of the Lake.
For other print her airy steps ne’er left;
Her treading would not bend a blade of grass.
Ben Jonson, The Sad Shepherd.
Not so when swift Camilla scours the plain,