WALLER.

1605-1687.

Born at Coleshill, in Hertfordshire-Educated at Eton and Cambridge-Returned to Parliament-His first Poetry-Marries a rich Heiress-Sacharissa-His Second Marriage-Is a Member of the Long Parliament-Cromwell and Hampden-Publishes his Poems-His Plot in favour of Charles I.-His Life in danger-Escapes with a heavy Fine-Lives in FranceIs allowed to return-His Panegyric on Cromwell-His Poem on Charles II.-His Life at the Restoration-Death and Burial at Beaconsfield, in Buckinghamshire-Works and Character. EDMUND WALLER was born on the third of March, 1605,' at Coleshill, in Hertfordshire. His father was Robert Waller, Esq., of Agmondesham, in Buckinghamshire, whose family was originally a branch of the Kentish Wallers; and his mother was the daughter of John Hampden, of Hampden, in the same county, and sister to Hampden, the zealot of rebellion."

His father died while he was yet an infant, but left him a yearly income of three thousand five hundred pounds; which, rating together the value of money and the customs of life, we may reckon more than equivalent to ten thousand at the present time.

He was educated, by the care of his mother, at Eton, and removed afterwards to King's College in Cambridge. He was sent to parliament in his eighteenth, if not in his sixteenth year, and frequented the court of James I., where he heard a very remarkable conversation, which the writer of the Life prefixed to his Works,* who seems

1 Baptized the 9th. See Clutterbuck's 'Herts,' i. 349. The father made his will 21st December, 1615, leaving his wife executrix, and five hundred pounds a-piece to his younger sons Griffith and Stephen on their coming of age. A codicil bequeaths a like sum to a newly-born son, of the name of John. Robert Waller died in 1616, and his will was proved by Anne Waller, his widow.

2 Of Groombridge and Speldhurst, near Tunbridge Wells. Richard Waller of Groombridge took the Duke of Orleans prisoner at the battle of Agincourt, and had the Duke in custody at Groombridge for twenty-four years.

3 Waller was not the nephew of Hampden. He was first cousin to Hampden, and also first cousin to Cromwell.

4 To the eighth edition, Tonson, 1711, 8vo. The writer (Atterbury, it is said, Warton on Pope, ii. 866, ed. 1782) knew Dr. Birch, the poet's son-in-law.

to have been well informed of facts, though he may sometimes err in chronology, has delivered as indubitably certain :

"He found Dr. Andrews, Bishop of Winchester, and Dr. Neale, Bishop of Durham, standing behind his Majesty's chair; and there happened something extraordinary," continues this writer, "in the conversation those prelates had with the King, on which Mr. Waller did often reflect. His Majesty asked the bishops, 'My lords, cannot I take my subjects' money when I want it, without all this formality of parliament?' The Bishop of Durham readily answered, 'God forbid, Sir, but you should: you are the breath of our nostrils.' Whereupon the King turned and said to the Bishop of Winchester, 'Well, my lord, what say you?' Sir,' replied the bishop, 'I have no skill to judge of parliamentary cases.' The King answered, 'No put-offs, my lord; answer me presently.' Then, Sir,' said he, 'I think it is lawful for you to take my brother Neale's money, for he offers it.' Mr. Waller said the company was pleased with this answer, and the wit of it seemed to affect the King; for, a certain lord coming in soon after, his Majesty cried out, 'Oh, my lord, they say you lig with my lady.' 'No, Sir,' says his lordship, in confusion; 'but I like her company because she has so much wit.' 'Why then,' says the King, 'do you not lig with my Lord of Winchester there?"

5

Waller's political and poetical life began nearly together. In his eighteenth year he wrote the poem that appears in his works, on 'The Prince's Escape at St. Andero '—a piece which justifies the observation made by one of his editors, that he attained, by a felicity like instinct, a style which perhaps will never be obsolete; and that, "were we to judge only 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, he confessed himself indebted for the smoothness

6 Atterbury, 'Preface to Waller's Poems,' 1690. Atterbury meditated an edition of Waller, and has left an admirable imitation of him in his best manner. Another edition was contemplated by Kech, who bought the Chandos Portrait of Shakspeare from Mrs. Barry. Keck died in 1719, and in 1729 Fenton edited Waller in a 4to. volume, for old Jacob Tonson.

6 Many besides myself have heard our famous Waller own that he derived the harmony of his numbers from the Godfrey of Bulloigne, which was turned into English by Mr. Fairfax.— DRYDEN: Preface to Fables, 1700.

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 supposed by Mr. Fenton to be the 'Address to the Queen,' which he considers as congratulating her arrival, in Waller's twentieth year. 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 [Aug. 1628] 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.

Neither of these pieces that seem to carry their own dates 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, which could not be properly praised till it had appeared by its effects, show that time was taken for revision and improvement. It is not known that they were published till they appeared long afterwards with other poems.

8

Waller was not one of those idolaters of praise who cultivate their minds at the expense 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

9

7 Fenton is right. Johnson has confounded two poems, 'To the Queen, occasioned upon sight of Her Majesty's Picture,' and the one 'Of the Queen.' It is in the latter that the allusion to her frequent pregnancy occurs.

8 The earliest volume of verse published by Waller is his 'Poems,' 12mo., 1645. His first printed poem is Upon Ben Jonson,' part of the 'Jonsonus Virbius,' 4to., 1638.

• Anna, daughter of Edward Banks. "The next is the extraordinary paper I mentioned; it shows at once how far the royal authority in that age thought it had a right to extend, and how low it condescended to extend itself:

"Docquett, 28 November, 1628.-A letter to Louysa Cole, the relict of James Cole, in favour of Abraham Vanderdort, his Majestie's servant, recommending him to her in the way of mar riage. Procured by the Lord Viscount Conway.'

10

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," 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 Dorothy 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 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.

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 opportunity 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 16391 the Earl of Sunderland, who died [Sept. 1643] at Newbury in the King's cause; and, in her old age, meeting somewhere 13 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."1

13

14

"What was the success of this royal interposition I nowhere find."-WALPOLE: Anecdotes of Painting, ed. Dall. ii 104.

10 William Crofts, afterwards (1658) Baron Crofts of Saxham (d. 1677).

11 Of Rousham, where is still to be seen a very fine portrait of Waller. The grounds of Rousham were laid out by Pope.

12 When she was twenty-two, the parish-register of Isleworth recording her baptism on the 5th of October, 1617.

13 This was said "at the late Lady Wharton's at Woburn, near Beaconsfield."-"Life of Waller,' prefixed to Poems, 8vo., 1711, p. xvii.

14 Life of Waller,' prefixed to Poems, 8vo., 1711, p xvii.

The Earl of Sunderland died in 1643, and his widow (Sacharissa) in 1683, having married Robert Smythe, Esq., of the Strangford family. In a letter to Lord Halifax, written in 1680,

In this part of his life it was that he was known to Clarendon, 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 qualifications, 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 tradition preserved in families more may be discovered.1

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.

From his twenty-eighth to his thirty-fifth year, he wrote his pieces on the Reduction of Sallee; on the Reparation of St. Paul's; to the King on his Navy; the panegyric on the Queen Mother; 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 his wife was won by his poetry; nor is anything 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 ashamed to

she says, "Mrs. Middleton and I have lost old Waller; he is gone away frightened."-MISS BERRY'S Lady Rachael Russell, p. 357, 8vo. ed.

15 Nothing, however, has been discovered; for curiosity has been awakened since Johnson wrote more to our Elizabethan poets; and few have cared to inquire who were the heroines of Waller and the rivals of Sacharissa. It is now, I fear, too late to make any discovery.