68

on

the paper-tree, which, for many years, had been miffing."

Genius now and then produces a lucky trifle. We ftill read the Dove of Anacreon, and Sparrow of Catullus; and a writer naturally pleases himself with a performance, which owes nothing to the fubject. But compofitions merely pretty have the fate of other pretty things, and are quitted in time for fomething useful; they are flowers fragrant and fair, but of fhort duration; or they are bloffoms to be valued only as they foretell fruits.

Among Waller's little poems are fome, which their excellency ought to fecure from oblivion; as, To Amoret, comparing the different modes of regard with which he looks on her and Sacharissa ; and the verfes On Love, that begin, Anger in hafty words or blows.

In others he is not equally fuccefsful; fometimes his thoughts are deficient, and fometimes his expreffion.

The

The numbers are not always musical; as,

Fair Venus, in thy soft arms

The god of rage confine;

For thy whifpers are the charms

Which only can divert his fierce defign.

What though he frown, and to tumult do incline; Thou the flame

Kindled in his breaft canft tame

With that fnow which unmelted lies on thine.

amorous

He feldom indeed fetches an fentiment from the depths of fcience; his thoughts are for the most part easily underftood, and his images fuch as the fuperficies of nature readily fupplies; he has a juft claim to popularity, because he writes to common degrees of knowledge; and is free at leaft from philofophical pedantry, unless perhaps the end of a fong to the Sun may be excepted, in which he is too much a Copernican. To which may be added the fimile of the Palm in the verfes on her paffing through a crowd; and a line in a more ferious poem on the Reforation, about vipers and treacle, which can only be understood by thofe who happen to know the compofition of the Theriaca.

His thoughts are fometimes hyperbolical and his images unnatural :

The plants admire,

No less than thofe of old did Orpheus' lyre;
If she fit down, with tops all tow'rds her bow'd;
They round about her into arbours crowd:

Or if the walks, in even ranks they ftand,
Like fome wall-marshal'd and obfequious band

In another place;

While in the park I fing, the listening deer
Attend my paffion, and forget to fear:
When to the beeches I report my flame,
They bow their heads, as if they felt the fame.
To gods appealing, when I reach their bowers,
With loud complaints they answer me in fhowers.
To thee a wild and cruel foul is given,
More deaf than trees, and prouder than the heaven!

On the head of a ftag.

O fertile head! which every year
Could fuch a crop of wonder bear!
The teeming earth did never bring
So foon, fo hard, fo huge a thing:
Which might it never have been caft,
Each year's growth added to the laft,

Thefe

These lofty branches had fupply'd

The Earth's bold fon's prodigious pride;
Heaven with these engines had been scal'd
When mountains heap'd on mountains fail'd.

Sometimes having fucceeded in the first part, he makes a feeble conclufion. In the fong of Sachariffa's and Amoret's Friendfhip," the two last stanzas ought to have been omitted.

66

His images of gallantry are not always in the highest degree delicate.

Then fhall my love this doubt difplace,
And gain fuch truft that I may come
And banquet fometimes on thy face,

But make my conftant meals at home.

Some applications may be thought too res mote and unconfequential: as in the verfes on the Lady Dancing:

The fun in figures fuch as thefe

Joys with the moon to play :

To the fweet ftrains they advance,

Which do refult from their own fpheres ;

As this nymph's dance

Moves with the numbers which he hears.

Some.

Sometimes a thought, which might per haps fill a diftich, is expanded and attenuated till it grows weak and almost evanefcent,

Chloris! fince first our calm of peace
Was frighted hence, this good we find, so
Your favours with your
fears increase,

And growing mischiefs make you kind. So the fair tree, which ftill prefervest 10 Her fruit, and ftate, while no wind blows, d In ftorms from that uprightness fwerves; nois And the glad earth about her ftrows ommon With treasure from her yielding boughs.

His images are not always diftinct; as, in the following paffage, he confounds Love as a perfon with love as a paffion:

bowolla

Some other nymphs, with colours faint, J And pencil flow, may Cupid paint, And a weak heart in time deftroy; She has a ftamp, and prints the Boy be enou Can, with a fingle look, inflame Awood The coldeft breaft, the rudeft tame... nis qui

“His falljes of cafual flattery are fometimes elegant and happy, as that in return for the Silver Pen; and fometimes empty and tri