Shakspeare showed his usual judgment in putting the well-known exclamation, "What's in a name," into the mouth of a young lady in love, who may very well be supposed not to know what she was talking about: and if a castle is to have such a name, it must be content to abide by its associations. The tea-table was the last resource of these little attentions; but the "bubbling urn's" dismissal has carried with it that once-common flattery of "Pray, Miss, look in the cup, and then it won't want sugar." Alas! our grandmothers were better off than we are. When an art reaches its perfection, it must decline; and certainly the French carried "the delicate science" of blarney to its perfection.
To quote two instances: Madame Helvetius reproached Fontenelle, that he passed her without even looking at her, by saying, "Comment, Monsieur, peux tu me passer sans me regarder?" "Si je vous avals regardé, je n'aurois pu passer," was the gallant reply.
Madame de Stael asked Talleyrand, (while they were engaged in a game then much in vogue, which supposed that out of two in a sinking boat you were to save one,) which he would save, Madame de R—, or her. There was not a little jealousy between the ladies; still Talleyrand named Madame de R—; but instantly smoothed matters by saying to Madame de Stael, "Ah, Madame, l'assistance est ce qu'on n'osoit vous offrir." Such was the ingenious extrication of the diplomatist.
A rich strain of flattery pervaded our elder poets. A lover bids his lady unveil in the following imagery:
"As some fair tulip, by a storm opprest,
Shrinks up, and folds its silken arms to rest,
Hears from within the wind sing round its head;
So, shrouded up, your beauty disappears.
Unveil, my love, and lay aside your fears."
Again, a young sea captain entreats his fair incognita to tell her name, that he
"may call upon it in a storm,
And save some ship from perishing;"
Or, Carew's "painted words" to his mistress, beginning—
"Ask me no more where June bestows,
When June is past the fading;
For in your beauties' orient deep
Those flowers as in their causes sleep."
Or, take the immortal wreath the dramatist offered his mistress:
"I sent thee late a rosy wreath;
Not so much honouring thee,
As giving it a hope that there
It could not withered be.
