EDMUND, an eminent English poet of the seventeenth century, was descended from an ancient and opulent family, settled at a very early period in the county of Kent. Sir Richard Waller of Groomebridge fought at the battle of Agincourt, and took prisoner the Duke of Orleans. The French Prince having been brought to England, was confined at Groomebridge for twenty-four years, and his custodian was permitted by King Henry V. to add to his crest a shield of the Orleans' arms, still borne by the Waller family. A great-grandson of this gallant Kentish knight removed to Buckinghamshire, and from him sprung the Wallers of Amersham and Beaconsfield, Robert Waller, father of the poet, inherited estates in Bucks and Herts, and was married to Anne, daughter of John Hampden of Hampden. By this connection the poet was cousin to the patriot Hampden, and was also distantly related to Oliver Cromwell. Edmund Waller was born at Coleshill, Herts, on the 3d of March 1605-6. His father died in 1616, and the poet was left heir to estates said to have been of the yearly value of £3500—a sum which Dr Johnson considered to be equivalent in his day (about 1780) to £10,000. There is reason to believe, however, that the amount of the poet's fortune has been exaggerated, and there had at least to be deducted from it the widow's jointure, and sums of £500, each left to three younger sons.

In his eighteenth year, if not earlier, Waller had passed through Eton and King's College, Cambridge, and obtained a seat in the House of Commons! Almost from his childhood, as he stated, he had up to 1643 (when he was expelled the House) represented the borough of Agmonesham or Amersham, in Buckinghamshire. His first poem is also said to have been written when he was eighteen. It is entitled, On the Danger his Majesty (being Prince) escaped in the Road at St Andro. The Prince (afterwards Charles I.), on returning with the Duke of Buckingham from their fruitless and romantic expedition to Spain, was nearly lost in a sudden storm that overtook them, while proceeding in a boat from St Andro to the admiral's ship. They gained the vessel, however, and arrived safely at Portsmouth in October 1623. Waller's lines could not have been written immediately after the event, for they allude to the predicted marriage of the Prince with Henrietta Maria of France, which was not talked of till the following year. Their author was even then only about eighteen, and if we have the poem in its original form, Waller must at that early age have attained to a remarkable proficiency in the poetic art, judgment, and metrical harmony for which he was afterwards distinguished. His next piece, To the Queen occasioned upon Sight of her Majesty's Picture, is supposed to have been written soon after the Queen's arrival in England; and three years later (in August 1628), we have a copy of verses on the assassination of the Duke of Buckingham, or rather on the manner in which King Charles received intelligence of the event. His Majesty was at prayers; the news was whispered in his ear, but he continued unmoved until his devotions were over, when he retired to his chamber, and burst into tears. "God-like unmoved, and yet like woman kind"—such was the courtly and profane language of the poet. The earliest printed verses of Waller, are those upon Ben Jonson in the Jonson's Virgins, 1638, and they are by no means remarkable for correctness of expression, or melody of versification. The probability is, that he had written occasional poems in his youth at the dates now affixed to them; but that before they were first collected and published in his fortieth year, all had undergone a careful revision. Their general smoothness and regularity bespeak matured taste; and we know that Waller was a slow and fastidious writer. The Duke of Buckinghamshire told Fenton, that Waller spent the greater part of a summer in composing and correcting ten lines to be written in a copy of Tasso belonging to the Duchess of York. He laboured at his poetical conceptions, as artists of old did in cutting and polishing a cameo, and even at the last there were few without some flaw in the execution.

In his twenty-sixth year (July 16, 1631), Waller was married in St Margaret's Church, Westminster, to a London heiress, Anna, daughter of Edward Banks, Esq. The court, it is said, had tried to obtain the hand of this lady for a gentleman afterwards raised to the peerage as Baron Crofts; but even such high solicitations were unavailing—the poet was irresistible. The lady survived her marriage only a few years, leaving a son, who died young, and a daughter, who was afterwards married to Mr Dormer of Rousham, Oxfordshire,—a place celebrated by Pope and Horace Walpole, and where a fine portrait of Waller is still preserved. Thus left a gay and wealthy widower, not of five-and-twenty, as Johnson states, but of somewhere about thirty, Waller made suit to the Lady Dorothy Sidney, eldest daughter of the Earl of Leicester. He commemorated her under the name of Sacharissa in various fanciful effusions, making the classic shades of Penshurst vocal with her praise; he endeavoured to enlist on his side the auxiliary powers of the lady's father and sister; and he even propitiated her maid, "Mrs Broughton, servant to Sacharissa," in a copy of verses; but the haughty high-born fair one was inexorable. "She was not to be subdued," as Johnson said, "by the powers of verse;" she was twelve years younger than her laureate, and in her twenty-second year (in 1639), she became the wife of Lord Spencer, afterwards Earl of Sunderland. It is related that, in extreme old age, Sacharissa once asked her poet, when he would again write verses upon her, and that Waller ungallantly replied,—"When you are as young, madam, and as handsome as you were then." To forget for a time or to soften his disappointment, Waller is said

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1 They seem to have occasionally met. In a letter to Lord Halifax, written in 1689, Sacharissa says, "Mrs Middleton and I have lost old Waller; he is gone away frightened." (Miss Berry's Lady Rachel Russell.) The lady was then the wife of Robert Smythe, Esq., of Bounds in Kent. The Earl of Sunderland was slain at the battle of Newbury in 1643, and nine years afterwards, in 1652, Lady Dorothy married Mr Smythe. Johnson gravely and ponderously criticises the mes de plume of Sacharissa: "The name is derived from the Latin appellation of sugar, and implies, if it means anything, a spiritless mildness and dull good-nature, such as excites rather tenderness and esteem, and such as, though always treated with kindness, is never honoured or admired." The old poets, however, had an affection for the sugar-cane. A reference to Mrs Cowden Clarke's excellent Concordance to Shakespeare will show how often the greatest of them drew illustrations from this source, and every reader knows of "Shakespeare's sugared sonnets among his private friends." Lady Dorothy, who could, as Waller tells us, sleep when she pleased, and who always affected silence and reticence, was well-named Sacharissa. Waller to have accompanied the Earl of Warwick in a voyage to the Bermudas. In his verses written at Penshurst, he makes Apollo deliver this counsel:

"On you aged tree Hang up thy lute, and hie thee to the sea."

And in his *Battle of the Summer Islands*, he describes the fruits and scenery of the fair archipelago, so celebrated in poetry. But his descriptions are vague and general; and from a passage in the first canto of the poem, it would appear that he rather dreamt of the charms of the "late-discovered isles," and longed to repose under the plantain's shade, than that he had actually beheld them. He makes no allusion to the ancient character of the islands—"the still vexed Bermoothes"—so famous for storms, shipwreck and enchantment, and as the scene of Shakespeare's *Tempest*.

In 1640, Waller appeared in a new character. The king had at last, impelled by necessity, summoned a meeting of Parliament. Pym, Hampden, Cromwell, Hollis, Maynard, and other stanch friends of the popular cause, were again returned, and the poet joined them in demanding that there should be an inquiry into the grievances of the nation before the House proceeded to a vote of supply. Charles resisted, and in a few weeks dismissed the uncomplying Parliament. His exigencies, however, compelled him before the close of the year to repeat the attempt, and on the 3rd of November, the ever-memorable Long Parliament assembled. Among its various schemes of reform and retaliation was the proposed impeachment of Justice Crawley for his conspicuous support of the impost of ship-money. A conference of both Houses was held on the subject, and Waller was selected by the Commons to present and enforce the articles of impeachment. His speech on the occasion is able and animated. He had the sure ground of constitutional law and precedent on which to rest his argument; and as his cousin Hampden had been the grand mover of the opposition to the ship-money, and had suffered for his courage and patriotism, the zeal of the orator was quickened by the warmth of private feeling and attachment. The movement, however, proved a failure. Sir Francis Crawley escaped all pains and penalties, although Waller's speech was so popular that, when printed, 20,000 copies of it are said to have been sold in one day. In length it would do little more than fill a column of the *Times*, yet the constitutional argument is forcibly stated, and illustrations are drawn both from Scripture and from Roman history. One of these is peculiarly happy. "In the Old Law," he said, "they were forbid to seethe a kid in his mother's milk, of which the received interpretation is, that we should not use that to the destruction of any creature which was intended for its preservation. Now, my lords, God and nature have given us the sea as our best guard against our enemies, and our ships as our greatest glory above other nations; and how barbarously would these men have let in the sea upon us at once to wash away our liberties and to overwhelm, if not our land, all the property we have therein, making the supply of our navy a pretence for the ruin of our nation!" But though on this question strong on the popular side, Waller was no decided partisan. He defended Episcopacy, then assaulted by Puritans and Presbyterians, and he warned the House against letting the people know that nothing was to be denied them when "they asked it in troops." During that great struggle he spoke with sharpness and freedom, as Clarendon states, against many of the proceedings of the House, and even ventured to send money to the king—a thousand broad pieces—when Charles had set up his standard. This fact must have been unknown to the popular leaders; for in 1643, when they entered into fruitless negotiations with the king at Oxford, Waller was appointed one of the Parliamentary Commissioners. He was the last, according to the etiquette of rank and precedence, to kiss hands at the ceremony of presentation; and Charles said to him—"Though you are the last, you are not the worst nor the least in my favour." This royal courtesy extinguished any remains of resentment or opposition in the breast of the Parliamentary Commissioner, if indeed Waller had not previously thrown himself entirely into the hands of the royalists. He soon left no room for doubt. The Oxford conferences took place in March. On the 31st of May, as the Commons were listening to one of their interminable fast-day sermons in St Margaret's church, a messenger was seen to enter and communicate some intelligence to Pym. Pym whispered the news to those near him, they conveyed it to others, and then the parties thus informed rose and left the church together. In a few hours all London knew that a horrid plot had been discovered, the object of which was to seize the leading members of the House of Commons—the conscript fathers—and to deliver up the city to the king's army and the cavaliers. Waller, it was reported, was at the head of the conspiracy! And undoubtedly the poet had entangled himself in the meshes of a secret association, which, though of little real danger, proved disastrous both to his reputation and his fortune. He had been in communication with the king's secretary, Lord Falkland, and had engaged to act with the royalists in endeavouring to put an end to the war by refusing to contribute to the support of the parliamentary forces. His brother-in-law Tomkins, clerk of the queen's council, Lord Conway, and several others, entered into the design; they met in secret, and discussed the matter, but apparently with no intention, on the part at least of Waller, of resorting to arms. The confederacy, as Waller said, was a civil, not a martial one. Unfortunately, however, at the same time a keen royalist, Sir Nicholas Crispe (who had raised a regiment for the king), obtained from Charles a commission of array, or power to call out the military. Tomkins was connected with this design also, and from the two schemes, though really unconnected, one great plot was easily formed or imagined. A servant of Tomkins had overheard the conversation at the secret meetings of Waller and his friends, and gave information to Pym, who instantly had the parties apprehended. "Waller," says Clarendon, "was so confounded with fear, that he confessed whatever he had heard, thought, or seen—all that he knew of himself, and all that he suspected of others." He accused parties who denied the charge, and against whom he could bring no proof; and he appealed ad misericordiam to the House of Commons, saying he was worthy not only of being put out of the House, but out of the world too! His petition was that he should be saved the exposure of a trial by the Council of War. All the parties, however, were tried and convicted; Tomkins and another conspirator, Chalonier, were hanged within sight of their own houses; others were imprisoned and their estates confiscated; and Waller, after a year's confinement in the Tower, was suffered to go into exile on paying a fine of L10,000. His character had received a stain which never could be effaced. Great crimes, united to daring and courage, may be pardoned, but the meanness of an informer and abject supplicant for life with dishonour is never wholly forgiven.

Waller appears to have been about eight years in exile. Evelyn met him in Venice in the spring of 1646, and they travelled together in Italy for a short time. Next year we find him in Rouen, and there he probably entered into his second marriage, of which his biographers tell us no more than that the lady's name was Bresse or Breaux (a French name), and that she brought her husband the large family of five sons and eight daughters. At Rouen, on the sug-

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1 One of the daughters was married to Dr P. Birch of Westminster, and another, Margaret, born at Rouen, was his favourite daughter. Waller, gestion of some unknown lady of rank, Waller collected and revised his scattered poetical pieces, and the first edition of his poems appeared in 1648. From Rouen he removed to Paris, and there he is reported to have lived in a style of splendour and hospitality which at length compelled him to sell his wife's jewels. His poverty, however, could have been but temporary; for he still had his patrimonial inheritance, and on his return to England in 1653, we find him building a house at Hall Barn, close to Beaconsfield, where his mother resided. The poet is said to have obtained permission to return, in consequence of the intercession of Colonel Scroop, to whom his sister was married, but Lord General Cromwell may also be supposed to have been favourably disposed towards his banished and suffering kinsman. To the government of the Commonwealth Waller gave a willing and implicit submission, and after Cromwell had assumed the supreme power he dedicated to him some of the most energetic and finished of his poems. His Panegyric to my Lord Protector (1655), is usually held to be the best of his poetical productions. No finer compliment was ever paid to a successful ruler, self-elevated and self-sustained, than is conveyed in this picturesque stanza:

"Still as you rise, the State, exalted too, Finds no distemper while 'tis changed by you— Changed like the world's great scene, when, without noise, The rising sun Night's vulgar lights destroys."

His next piece, On a War with Spain, is specially eulogistic of the Protector's foreign policy, and the poet hints, what he no doubt knew would be welcome, that as the Protector's head had no more room for bays, the Spanish gold should be melted down to give him a crown. Oliver, however, died without this "round and top of sovereignty," and Waller bewailed the national loss in a short poem of about thirty lines, remarkable chiefly for its appearance of earnestness and sorrow, but containing several bald and prosaic couplets,—e.g.

"Under the tropic is our language spoke, And part of Flanders hath received our yoke."

As might be expected from the political flexibility of Waller, he was as ready to congratulate Charles II. on his restoration as he had been to laud or to lament the Protector. To the King on his Majesty's happy Return, is a strain of joyous unmixed adulation. Tropes and metaphors, all flattering, are poured forth in profusion. The sea "trembled to think she had ever obeyed his majesty's foes," the "giant isle had got her eye again," the Muses' inspired train had raised their drooping heads, and the king (ludicrously said to be "to himself severe, to others kind,") is assured that—

"Faith, law, and piety, that banish'd train, Justice and truth, with him return again!"

It required some courage or audacity to say all this of Charles the Second; but it was not said well, and when the king hinted at the inferiority of the poem to the panegyric on Cromwell, Waller replied with admirable readiness, "Poets, sir, succeed best in fiction." Charles twice conferred upon Waller the vacant office (for which he had applied) of provost of Eton College; but it was decided that it could only be held by a clergyman. The first rejection proceeded from Clarendon, and Waller, in revenge, joined keenly in the persecution of the chancellor. Clarendon, on the other hand, when drawing the character of the poet, contrasted the excellence and power of his wit with his great fault—"a narrowness in his nature to the lowest degree; an abjectness and want of courage to support him in any virtuous undertaking; an insinuation and servile flattery," &c. His insinuation, indeed, was remarkable. He was a favourite with all classes, and though a water-drinker, his society was eagerly courted by the gay and dissipated cavaliers. His witty replies and lively conversation were celebrated both at home and abroad. In Parliament it was thought to be no house if Waller were not present. He was returned to the first Parliament of Charles II. in May 1661, and he continued to sit for different places till he was past eighty. At that age he wrote a Presage of the Downfall of the Turkish Empire, and presented it to the king (James II.) on his birth-day. The shrewd old man predicted the fate of the bigoted monarch: "he will be left alone," he said, "like a whale upon the strand." James wondered that Waller could marry one of his daughters to a "falling church," alluding to the marriage of Dr Birch. "The kings," rejoined the other, "does me great honour in taking notice of my domestic affairs; but I have lived long enough to observe that this falling church has got a trick of rising again." And it did rise most potentially to thrust down the king himself! The latest poetical efforts of Waller were devoted to religious subjects. When he had become too infirm either to read or to hold the pen, he dictated a few lines superior both in thought and diction to most of the pieces composed in the prime and vigour of his life. He had bought a small house with some land at Colehill, and said he "should be glad to die like the stag where he was roused." But this natural wish was not realized. He died at Beaconsfield on the 21st of October 1687, in his eighty-second year, and a handsome monument in the churchyard of that place marks his grave.

Waller seems to have published two collections of his poems, one in 1648, and another in 1664. In 1690, after his death, a supplemental volume appeared with a preface, understood to have been written by Atterbury, who is also said to have contributed a sketch of the poet's life to a subsequent edition issued in 1711. In 1729 Fenton edited the poetical works of Waller, adding some new pieces, and subjoining to the volume copious "Observations," critical and explanatory. It was then the fashion to consider Denham and Waller, particularly the latter, as the great refiners and improvers of English poetry, an opinion which seems incredible when we remember Shakspeare, Spenser, and the minor poems of Milton. Dryden, Prior, and Pope have borne testimony to the sweetness of Waller's style. Atterbury does not hesitate to call him "the parent of English verse, and the first that showed us that our tongue had beauty and numbers." Such language is the more remarkable from Atterbury, as he was one of the few literary men of his day who fully appreciated Milton. But the preface to Waller was an early production, and cannot be held to express the mature convictions of that able though turbulent and pretentious churchman. The heroic couplet was then the favourite measure. Drummond had excelled in it, but he was little read; and Denham and Waller unquestionably wrote it with greater ease and more uniform correctness than Donne, Hall, or Ben Jonson. They

and amanuensis. Among his various troubles, it was perhaps not the least in the poet's estimation, that his eldest son was an idiot and one of his daughters a dwarf. Edmund, the second son, inherited the estate, and, like his father, represented Amersham in Parliament, but at last turned Quaker. The fourth son, Stephen, became eminent as a lawyer, and was one of the commissioners for the Union. He was his father's executor, and the poet in his will leaves his dwelling-house in St James's Street (which he had occupied for twenty-seven years) to his son. Byron, it will be recollected, lodged for some time in St James's Street; Steele, Rogers, and Moore are connected with offshoots from it; and to persons fond of literary associations it may be pleasant to recall those names in that region of clubs,— were better artists, and had the grace of well-bred courtiers familiar with men as well as books. But there are not, perhaps, two hundred really good lines in all Waller's poetry. Extravagant conceits, feeble verses, and defective rhymes, are constantly recurring, although the poems, being mostly short, are not tedious. Of elevated imagination, profound thought, or passion, he was utterly destitute; and it is only in detached passages, single stanzas, or small pieces finished with great care and elegance, as the lines on a lady's girdle, those on the dwarfs, and a few of the lyrics, that we can discern that play of fancy, verbal sweetness and harmony, which gave so great name to Waller for more than a hundred years.