never be obsolete; and that 'were we to judge only [barely] by the wording, we could not know what was wrote at twenty, and what at fourscore'.' His versification was in his first essay such as it appears in his last performance. By the perusal of Fairfax's translation of Tasso, to which, as Dryden relates 3, he confessed himself indebted for the smoothness of his numbers, and by his own nicety of observation, he had already formed such a system of metrical harmony as he never afterwards much needed or much endeavoured to improve. Denham corrected his numbers by experience, and gained ground gradually upon the ruggedness of his age; but what was acquired by Denham was inherited by Waller. The next poem, of which the subject seems to fix the time, is 6 supposed by Mr. Fenton to be the Address to the Queen, which he considers as congratulating her arrival, in Waller's twentieth year 5. He is apparently mistaken; for the mention of the nation's obligations to her frequent pregnancy proves that it was written when she had brought many children. We have therefore no date of any other poetical production before that which the murder of the Duke of Buckingham occasioned': the steadiness with which the King received the news in the chapel deserved indeed to be rescued from oblivion. seem to carry their own dates 7 Godfrey of Bulloigne, which was 66 When he was a brisque young sparke, and first studyed poetry, Methought," said he, "I never saw a good copie of English verses; they want smoothnes; then I began to essay." AUBREY, Brief Lives, ii. 275. Post, WALLER, 142. The queen arrived on June 12, 1625. The mistake is Johnson's, who has confused two poems-one To the Queen, the other of the Queen. The first was written to congratulate her arrival; in the second the nation's obligations' are thus expressed:'Joy of our age and safety of the next, For which so oft thy fertile womb is vext.' Eng. Poets, xvi. 30, 34. 'On Aug. 23, 1628. Eng. Poets, xvi. 23; post, WALLER, 124. 8 9 10 could have been the sudden effusion of fancy. In the verses on the Prince's escape, the prediction of his marriage with the princess of France must have been written after the event'; in the other, the promises of the King's kindness to the descendants of Buckingham 2, which could not be properly praised till it had appeared by its effects, shew that time was taken for revision and improvement. It is not known that they were published till they appeared long afterwards with other poems 3. Waller was not one of those idolaters of praise who cultivate their minds at the expence of their fortunes. Rich as he was by inheritance, he took care early to grow richer by marrying Mrs. Banks, a great heiress in the city, whom the interest of the court was employed to obtain for Mr. Crofts. Having brought him a son, who died young, and a daughter, who was afterwards married to Mr. Dormer of Oxfordshire 6, she died in childbed, and left him a widower of about five and twenty, gay and wealthy, to please himself with another marriage. Being too young to resist beauty, and probably too vain to think himself resistible, he fixed his heart, perhaps half fondly and half ambitiously, upon the Lady Dorothea Sidney, eldest daughter of the Earl of Leicester, whom he courted by all the poetry in which Sacharissa is celebrated: the name is derived from the Latin appellation of sugar, and implies, if it means any thing, a spiritless mildness and dull good-nature, such as excites rather tenderness than esteem, and such as, though always treated with kindness, is never honoured or admired'. Yet he describes Sacharissa as a sublime predominating beauty, of lofty charms and imperious influence, on whom he looks with amazement rather than fondness, whose chains he wishes, though in vain, to break, and whose presence is 'wine that inflames to madness'.' His acquaintance with this high-born dame gave wit no oppor- 11 tunity of boasting its influence; she was not to be subdued by the powers of verse, but rejected his addresses, it is said, with disdain, and drove him away to solace his disappointment with Amoret or Phillis. She married in 1639 the Earl of Sunderland, who died at Newberry in the king's cause 2; and, in her old age, meeting somewhere with Waller, asked him when he would again write such verses upon her; 'When you are as young, Madam,' said he, 'and as handsome, as you were then 3.' In this part of his life it was that he was known to Clarendon, 12 among the rest of the men who were eminent in that age for genius and literature; but known so little to his advantage, that they who read his character will not much condemn Sacharissa that she did not descend from her rank to his embraces, nor think every excellence comprised in wit. The Lady was, indeed, inexorable; but his uncommon qualifi- 13 cations, though they had no power upon her, recommended him to the scholars and statesmen, and undoubtedly many beauties of that time, however they might receive his love, were proud of his praises. Who they were, whom he dignifies with poetical names, cannot now be known. Amoret, according to Mr. Fenton, was the Lady Sophia Murray. Perhaps by traditions preserved in families more may be discovered. ''Sacharissa's beauty's wine, Which to madness doth incline; For a reference to these lines see 2 'Here fell the Earl of Sunderland; a lord of great fortune, tender years (being not above three and twenty years of age), and an early judgment; who, having no command in the army, attended upon the King's person under the obligation of honour; and putting himself that day in the King's troop a volunteer, before they came to charge, was taken away by a common bullet.' Clarendon's Hist. iv. 239. His only son was the shameless minister of Charles II and James II, through whom the Dukes of Marlborough and Earls Spencer are descended from Waller's Sacharissa. 3 'She asked him in raillery," When, Mr. Waller, will you write such fine verses upon me again?" "Oh, Madame," said he, "when your Ladyship is as young again." Life, p. 117. For a copy of verses to her 'among the State Papers in the Record Office' see N. & 2.4 S. ii. 1. 4 Post, WALLER, 90. 5 Fenton's Waller: Observations, p. 73. She, with Lady Daubigny post, WALLER, 57), was charged with complicity in Waller's plot. "I do not mean,' she said boldly to the Committee of Safety, "to give an 14 15 16 From the verses written at Penshurst it has been collected that he diverted his disappointment by a voyage, and his biographers, from his poem on the Whales, think it not improbable that he visited the Bermudas; but it seems much more likely that he should amuse himself with forming an imaginary scene than that so important an incident, as a visit to America, should have been left floating in conjectural probability 1. From his twenty-eighth to his thirty-fifth year he wrote his pieces on the Reduction of Sallee; on the Reparation of St. Paul's3; to the King on his Navy; the panegyrick on the Queen Mother 5; the two poems to the Earl of Northumberland; and perhaps others, of which the time cannot be discovered. When he had lost all hopes of Sacharissa he looked round him for an easier conquest, and gained a Lady of the family of Bresse, or Breaux'. The time of his marriage is not exactly known. It has not been discovered that this wife was won by his poetry; nor is any thing told of her, but that she brought him many children. He doubtless praised some whom he would have been afraid to marry, and perhaps married one whom he would have been Lashamed to praise. Many qualities contribute to domestick happiness upon which poetry has no colours to bestow, and many airs and sallies may delight imagination which he who account to such fellows as you are." A few voices were raised in the House for sending the two ladies before a court-martial; but in the end respect for their sex prevailed.' GARDINER, Great Civil War, 1897, i. 158. Likely enough, she was one of the ladies of great honour' whom, according to Clarendon, Waller betrayed. Post, WALLER, 47. The poem is entitled The Battel of the Summer Islands-a name given to the Bermudas by Sir George Summers, who was wrecked there about 1609. Fenton points out that Waller in his last poem to Sacharissa says:'Ah! cruel nymph! from whom her humble swain Flies for relief unto the raging main.' [Eng. Poets, xvi. 61.] Fenton adds:-'If he was a proprietor of the Summer Islands, as it is reported he was, he might perhaps at that time accompany his friend the Earl of Warwick, who had a large share in that plantation.' Fenton's Waller, pp. 43, 52, and Observations, p. 85. Aubrey recorded in 1680:-' He wrote verses of the Bermudas 50 yeares since, upon the information of one that had been there; walking in his fine woods, the poetique spirit came upon him.' Brief Lives, ii. 276. See post, WALLER, 127, and Eng. Poets, xvi. 70. 2 Ib. p. 26; post, WALLER, 125. 3 lb. p. 27; post, WALLER, 125. * lb. p. 24; post, WALLER, 124. 5 Ib. p. 37. Ib. pp. 44, 46. In his epitaph she is described as 'ex Bressyorum familia.' Life, p. 81. Aubrey spells the name Brace. She was, he says, 'beautifull and very prudent.' Brief Lives, ii. 274. The passage that follows is quoted in Boswell's Johnson, ii. 57. flatters them never can approve. There are charms made only for distant admiration. No spectacle is nobler than a blaze. Of this wife his biographers have recorded that she gave him 17 five sons and eight daughters. During the long interval of parliament he is represented as 18 living among those with whom it was most honourable to converse, and enjoying an exuberant fortune with that independence and liberty of speech and conduct which wealth ought always to produce. He was however considered as the kinsman of Hampden, and was therefore supposed by the courtiers not to favour them. When the parliament was called in 1649 it appeared that 19 Waller's political character had not been mistaken. The King's demand of a supply produced one of those noisy speeches which disaffection and discontent regularly dictate; a speech filled with hyperbolical complaints of imaginary grievances. They,' says he, 'who think themselves already undone can never apprehend themselves in danger, and they who [that] have nothing left can never give freely1. Political truth is equally in danger from the) praises of courtiers and the exclamations of patriots. He then proceeds to rail at the clergy, being sure at that time 20 of a favourable audience. His topick is such as will always serve its purpose; an accusation of acting and preaching only for preferment and he exhorts the Commons 'carefully to provide for their protection against Pulpit Law"?' It always gratifies curiosity to trace a sentiment. Waller has in 21 this speech quoted Hooker in one passage3, and in another has copied him, without quoting *. 'Religion,' says Waller, 'ought to be the first thing in our purpose and desires; but that which is first in dignity is not always to precede in order of time, for well-being supposes a being; and the first impediment which men naturally endeavour to remove, is the want of those things without which they cannot subsist. God first assigned unto Adam maintenance of life, and gave him a title to the rest of the creatures before he appointed a law to observe.' 'God first assigned Adam,' says Hooker, 'maintenance of life, 22 and then appointed him a law to observe.-True it is that the |