E. Cobham Brewer 1810–1897. Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. 1898.
Saccharis’sa.
A name bestowed by Waller on Lady Dorothea Sidney, eldest daughter of the Earl of Leicester, for whose hand he was an unsuccessful suitor, for she married the Earl of Sunderland.
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“The Earl of Leicester, father of Algernon Sidney, the patriot, and of Waller’s Saccharissa built for himself a stately house at the north corner of a square plot of ‘Lammas land’ belonging to the parish of St. Martin’s, which plot henceforth became known to Londoners as ‘Leicester Fields.’”—Cassell’s Magazine: London Legends, ii.
Saccharissa turns to Joan (Fenton: The Platonic Spell). The gloss of novelty being gone, that which was once thought unparalleled proves only ordinary. Fenton says before marriage many a woman seems a Saccharissa, faultless in make and wit, but scarcely is “half Hymen’s taper wasted” when the “spell is dissolved,” and “Saccharissa turns to Joan.”
