Would I esteem this mercenary band, As those far more malignant powers that stand, Those doubtful paths, through all the shades of fear EDMUND WALLER. EDMUND WALLER (1605-1687) was a courtly and amatory poet, inferior to Herrick or Suckling in natural feeling and poetic fancy, but superior to them in correctness and in general powers of versification. The poems of Waller have all the smooth Edmund Waller. ness and polish of modern verse, and hence a high, perhaps too high, rank has been claimed for him as one of the first refiners and improvers of poetical diction. One cause of Waller's refinement was doubtless his early and familiar intercourse with the court and nobility, and the light conversational nature of most of his productions. He wrote for the world of fashion and of taste-consigning The noon of manhood to a myrtle shade. And he wrote in the same strain till he was upwards of fourscore! His life has more romance than his poetry. Waller was born at Coleshill, in Hertfordshire, and in his infancy was left heir to an estate of £3000 per annum. His mother was a sister of the celebrated John Hampden, but was a royalist in feeling, and used to lecture Cromwell for his share in the death of Charles I. Her son, the poet, was either a roundhead or a royalist, as the time served. He entered parliament and wrote his first poem when he was eighteen. At twenty-five, he married a rich heiress of London, who died the same year, and the poet immediately became a suitor of Lady Dorothea Sidney, eldest daughter of the Earl of Leicester. To this proud and peerless fair one Waller dedicated the better portion of his poetry, and the groves of Penshurst echoed to the praises of his Sacharissa. Lady Dorothea, however, was inexorable, and bestowed her hand on the Earl of Sunderland. It is said that, meeting her long afterwards, when she was far advanced in years, the lady asked him when he would again write such verses upon her. When you are as young, madam, and as handsome, as you were then,' replied the ungallant poet. The incident affords a key to Waller's character. He was easy, witty, and accomplished, but cold and selfish; destitute alike of high principle and deep feeling. As a member of parliament, Waller distinguished himself on the popular side, and was chosen to conduct the prosecution against Judge Crawley for his opinion in favour of levying ship-money. His speech, on delivering the impeachment, was printed, and 20,000 copies of it sold in one day. Shortly afterwards, however, Waller joined in a plot to surprise the city militia, and let in the king's forces, for which he was tried and sentenced to one year's imprisonment, and to pay a fine of £10,000. His conduct on this occasion was mean and abject. At the expiration of his imprisonment, the poet went abroad, and resided, amidst much splendour and hospitality, in France. He returned during the protectorate, and when Cromwell died, Waller celebrated the event in one of his most vigorous and impressive poems. The image of the commonwealth, though reared by no common hands, soon fell to pieces under Richard Cromwell, and Waller was ready with a congratulatory address to Charles II. The royal offering was considered inferior to the panegyric on Cromwell, and the king himself (who admitted the poet to terms of courtly intimacy) is said to have told him of the disparity. 'Poets, sire,' replied the witty, self-possessed Waller, 'succeed better in fiction than in truth.' In the first parliament summoned by Charles, Waller sat for the town of Hastings, and he served for different places in all the parliaments of that reign. Bishop Burnet says he was the delight of the house of commons. At the accession of James II. in 1685, the venerable poet, then eighty years of age, was elected representative for a borough in Cornwall. The mad career of James in seeking to subvert the national church and constitution was foreseen by this wary and sagacious observer: 'he will be left,' said he, like a whale upon the strand.' Feeling his long-protracted life drawing to a close, Waller purchased a small property at Coleshill, saying, 'he would be glad to die like the stag, where he was roused.' The wish was not fulfilled; he died at Beaconsfield on the 21st of October 1687, and in the churchyard of that place (where also rest the ashes of Edmund Burke) a monument has been erected to his memory. The first collection of Waller's poems was made by himself, and published in the year 1664. It went through numerous editions in his lifetime; and in 1690 a second collection was made of such pieces as he had produced in his latter years. In a poetical dedication to Lady Harley, prefixed to this edition, and written by Elijah Fenton, Waller is styled the Maker and model of melodious verse. This eulogium seems to embody the opinion of Waller's contemporaries, and it was afterwards confirmed by Dryden and Pope, who had not sufficiently studied the excellent models of versification furnished by the old poets, and their rich poetical diction. The smoothness of his versification, his good sense, and uniform elegance, rendered him popular with critics as with the multitude; while his prominence as a public man, for so many years, would increase curiosity as to his works. Waller is now seldom read. The playfulness of his fancy, and the absence of any striking defects, are but poor substitutes for genuine feeling and the language of nature. His poems are chiefly short and incidental, but he wrote a poem on Divine Love, in six cantos. Cowley had written his 'Davideis,' and recommended sacred subjects as adapted for poetry; but neither he nor Waller succeeded in this new and higher walk of Waller's Tomb. the muse. Such an employment of their talents was graceful and becoming in advanced life, but their fame must ever rest on their light, airy, and occasional poems, dictated by that gallantry, adulation, and play of fancy, which characterised the cavalier poets. On Love. Anger, in hasty words or blows, Should some brave Turk, that walks among So the tall stag, upon the brink He straight resumes his wonted care; On a Girdle. That which her slender waist confin'd On the Marriage of the Dwarfs. To him, for whom Heav'n seem'd to frame Thrice happy is that humble pair, As if the world held none but them. Like moving mountains topp'd with snow; Does to his Galatea seem. Ah! Chloris, that kind Nature thus A Panegyric to the Lord Protector. Let partial spirits still aloud complain, Your drooping country, torn with civil hate, * Still as you rise, the state exalted too, The rising sun night's vulgar lights destroys. Had you, some ages past, this race of glory If Rome's great senate could not wield that sword, You, that had taught them to subdue their foes, Above our neighbours our conceptions are; But faultless writing is the effect of care. Our lines reform'd, and not compos'd in haste, Polish'd like marble, would like marble last. But as the present, so the last age writ: In both we find like negligence and wit. Were we but less indulgent to our faults, And patience had to cultivate our thoughts, Our Muse would flourish, and a nobler rage Would honour this than did the Grecian stage. [The British Navy.] When Britain, looking with a just disdain And now some months, encamping on the main, Others may use the ocean as their road, Only the English make it their abode, Whose ready sails with every wind can fly, And make a covenant with the inconstant sky: Our oaks secure, as if they there took root, We tread on billows with a steady foot. At Penshurst. While in this park I sing, the list'ning deer Of such stern beauty, plac'd those healing springs2 I might, like Orpheus, with my num'rous moan Of just Apollo, president of verse; Thus he advis'd me: On yon aged tree Hang up thy lute, and hie thee to the sea, Flies for relief unto the raging main, But from those gifts which Heav'n has heap'd on her. The Bud. Lately on yonder swelling bush, To the young flow'r my breath has done. If our loose breath so much can do, In heav'n itself thou sure wert dress'd With that angel-like disguise; Thus deluded, am I blest, And see my joy with closed eyes. But, ah! this image is too kind To be other than a dream; Cruel Sacharissa's mind Ne'er put on that sweet extreme. Fair dream! if thou intend'st me grace, Change that heavenly face of thine; Paint despis'd love in thy face, And make it t' appear like mine. Pale, wan, and meagre, let it look, Of Lethe, or from graves escape. Then to that matchless nymph appear, With humble words express my wo. Perhaps from greatness, state, and pride, And, death resembling, equals all. Small is the worth Of beauty from the light retir'd; Suffer herself to be desir'd, And not blush so to be admir'd. Then die! that she The common fate of all things rare How small a part of time they share Old Age and Death. The seas are quiet when the winds give o'er; As they draw near to their eternal home. 1608. His father was of an ancient Catholic family, but having embraced the Protestant faith, he was disinherited, and had recourse, as a means of support, to the profession of a scrivener-one who draws legal contracts, and places money at interest. The firmness and the sufferings of the father for conscience' sake, tinctured the early feelings and sentiments of the son, who was a stern unbending champion of religious freedom. The paternal example may also have had some effect on the poet's taste and accomplishments. The elder Milton was distinguished as a musical composer, and the son was well skilled in the same soothing and delightful art. The variety and harmony of his versification may no doubt be partly traced to the same source. Coleridge styles Milton a musical, not a picturesque, poet. The saying, however, is more pointed than correct. In the most musical passages of Milton (as the lyrics in "Comus'), the pictures presented to the mind are as distinct and vivid as the paintings of Titian or Raphael. Milton was educated with great care. At fifteen, he was sent (even then an accomplished scholar) to St Paul's school, London, and two years afterwards to Christ's college, Cambridge. He was a severe student, of a nice and haughty temper, and jealous of constraint or control. He complained that the fields around Cambridge had no soft shades to attract the muse, as Robert Hall, a century and a half afterwards, attributed his first attack of insanity to the flatness of the scenery, and the want of woods in that part of England! Milton was designed for the church, but he preferred a 'blameless silence' to what he considered servitude and forswearing.' At this time, in his twenty-first year, he had written his grand Hymn on the Nativity, any one verse of which was sufficient to show that a new and great light was about to rise on English poetry. In 1632 he retired from the university, having taken his degree of M.A., and went to the house of his father, who had relinquished business, and purchased a small property at Horton, in Buckinghamshire. Here he lived five years, studying classical literature, and here he wrote his Arcades, Comus, and Lycidas. The Arcades' formed part of a masque, presented to the Countess Dowager of Derby, at Harefield, near Horton, by some noble persons of her family. Comus,' also a masque, was presented at Ludlow castle in 1634, before the Earl of Bridgewater, then president of Wales. This drama was founded on an actual occurrence. The Earl of Bridgewater then resided at Ludlow castle; his sons, Lord Brackley and Mr Egerton, and Lady Alice Egerton, his daughter, passing through Haywood forest in Herefordshire, on their way to Ludlow, were benighted, and the lady was for a short time lost. This accident being related to their father upon their arrival at his castle, Milton, at the request of his friend Henry Lawes, the musician (who taught music in the family), wrote the masque. Lawes set it to music, and it was acted on Michaelmas night, 1634, the two brothers, the young lady,' and Lawes himself, bearing each a part in the representation. Comus' is better entitled to the appellation of a moral masque than any by Jonson, Ford, or Massinger. It is a pure dream of Elysium. The reader is transported, as in Shakspeare's Tempest,' to scenes of fairy enchantment, but no grossness mingles with the poet's creations, and his muse is ever ready to moralise the song' with strains of solemn imagery and lofty sentiment. Comus' was first published in 1637, not by its author, but by Henry Lawes, who, in a dedication to Lord Bridgewater, says, although not openly acknowledged by the author, yet it is a legitimate offspring, so lovely, and so much desired, that the often copying of it hath tired my pen to give my several friends satisfaction.' Lycidas' was also published in the same year. This exquisite poem is a monody on a college companion of Milton's, Edward King, who perished by shipwreck on his passage from Chester to Ireland. Milton's descriptive poems, L'Allegro and Il Penseroso, are generally referred to the same happy period of his life; but from the cast of the imagery, we suspect they were sketched in at college, when he walked the studious cloisters pale,' amidst 'storied windows,' and 'pealing anthems.' And, indeed, there is a tradition that the scenery depicted in L'Allegro' is that around a country college retirement of the poet, at Forest Hill, about three miles from Oxford. In 1638 the poet left the paternal roof, and travelled for fifteen months in France and Italy, returning homewards by the Leman lake' to Geneva and Paris. His society was courted by the choicest Italian wits,' and he visited Galileo, then a prisoner of the Inquisition. The statuesque grace and beauty of some of Milton's poetical creations (the figures of Adam and Eve, the angel Raphael, and parts of Paradise Regained) were probably suggested by his study of the works of art in Florence and Rome. The poet had been with difficulty restrained from testifying against popery within the verge of the Vatican; and on his return to his native country, he engaged in controversy against the prelates and the royalists, and vindicated, with characteristic ardour, the utmost freedom of thought and expression. His prose works are noticed in another part of this volume. In 1643 Milton went to the country, and married Mary, the daughter of Richard Powell, a high cavalier of Oxfordshire, to whom the poet was probably known, as Mr Powell had, many years before, borrowed £500 from his father. He brought his wife to London, but in the short period of a month, the studious habits and philosophical seclusion of the republican poet proved so distasteful to the cavalier's fair daughter, that she left his house on a visit to her parents, and refused to return. Milton resolved to repudiate her, and published some treatises on divorce, in which he argues that the law of Moses, which allowed of divorcement for uncleanness, was not adultery only, but uncleanness of the mind as well as the body. This dangerous doctrine he maintained through life; but the year after her desertion (when the poet was practically enforcing his opinions by soliciting the hand of another lady), his erring and repentant wife fell on her knees before him, 'submissive in distress,' and Milton, like his own Adam, was fondly overcome with female charm.' He also behaved with great generosity to her parents when the further progress of the civil war involved them in ruin. In 1649 Milton was, unsolicited, appointed foreign or Latin secretary to the council of state. His salary was about £300 per annum, which was afterwards reduced one half, |