The very excuse she makes for her inserted words reveals one side of her delightful nature--her love of poetry, her love of beauty, her seeing eye, her delicate distinction, her mingled humility and self-knowledge.
Look at Baccheion's beauty opposite, The temple with the pillars at the porch! See you not something beside masonry?
What if my words wind in and out the stone As yonder ivy, the God's parasite?
Though they leap all the way the pillar leads, Festoon about the marble, foot to frieze, And serpentiningly enrich the roof, Toy with some few bees and a bird or two,-- What then?
The column holds the cornice up.
As the ivy is to the pillar that supports the cornice, so are her words to the _Alkestis_ on which she comments.
That is her charming way.

She also is, like Pompilia, young.

But no contrast can be greater than that between Pompilia at seventeen years of age and Balaustion at fifteen.

In Greece, as in Italy, women mature quickly.

Balaustion is born with that genius which has the experience of age in youth and the fire of youth in age.