his pathetic couplets on "Old Age and Death;" and his pretty conceit about the Girdle: "A narrow compass, and yet there Dwelt all that's good, and all that's fair; It is a characteristic of his good and passionless verse that it was always the same, in old age as in early manhood; drawing ingenious moralities from a fading rose, or celebrating " His Majesty's Escape at St. Andrew's; " never rising to any heights of eloquence or power, and never sinking below a certain level of graceful execution. Edmund Waller was born at Coleshill, in Warwickshire, on the third of March, 1605-the year in which Sir William Davenant was born. His father died in his infancy, and left him an income of £3,500 a year, equal to about £10,000 or £11,000 at the present value of money. His mother was John Hampden's sister—a relationship of which any Englishman might be proud. He was educated at Eton and Cambridge, and at the age of seventeen the precocious young man entered Parliament as member for Agmondesham. He was scarcely twenty-five when he married a city heiress, who, dying within a twelvemonth, left him richer than before; and the wealthy young gallant, already of some repute as a poet, began his suit to Lady Dorothy Sidney. He pelted her with loveverses for some years, but she proved obdurate, and, in 1639, bestowed her hand on the Earl of Sunderland. is said that, meeting her in later life, when Time had dealt hardly with her, he replied to her inquiry when he would again write such verses upon her, "When you are as young, madam, and as handsome as then you were." But no gentleman would have made such a reply, and, It Returned with all his faults, Waller was a gentleman. to Parliament in 1640, he took at first the popular side, owing, probably, to the influence of his uncle Hampden, and was foremost in the opposition to the ship-money tax; but he veered round to the Royalists as events hurried on the Civil War. For his share in a plot to surprise the London train bands and let in the royal troops, in 1648, he narrowly escaped the scaffold; but his abject entreaties saved his life, and he was let off with a fine of £10,000 and a year's imprisonment. On his release, he crossed over to France, and lived at Rouen with a good deal of splendour. After some years he returned to England, and made his peace with Cromwell, by whose majestic character he seems to have been strongly impressed. His "Panegyric on Oliver Cromwell" contains some of his best writing. With easy morality he prepared a congratulatory address to Charles II., which was so inferior in poetical merit that the débonnair monarch rallied him on the disparity. "Poets, sir," answered Waller, with felicitous impertinence, "succeed better in fiction than in truth." He sat in several Parliaments after the Restoration, and Bishop Burnet tells us that he was the delight of the House of Commons. For his loyal subservience he was rewarded with the Provostship of Eton. At the accession of James II., he was elected representative for a Cornish borough; and his keen political sagacity soon predicted the issue to which the new King's arbitrary measures would bring "He had much ado to save his life," says Aubrey, "and in order to do it sold his estate in Bedfordshire, about £1,300 per annum, to Dr. Wright, for £10,000 (much under value), which was procured in twenty-four hours' time, or else he had been hanged. With this money he bribed the House, which was the first time a House of Commons was ever bribed." The money really went to pay the fine. him. "He will be left," he said, "like a whale upon the strand." About this time he purchased a small property at Coleshill, his native place, saying, "He was fain to die like the stag, where he was raised." But he was not fated to realise his wish. An attack of dropsy carried him off at Beaconsfield, on the 21st of October, 1682; and he was buried in the churchyard, where the ashes of Edmund Burke also rest. One of his later literary acts was the mutilation of Beaumont and Fletcher's "Maid's Tragedy." The performance of this fine play was prohibited after the Restoration, its moral-that "On lustful Kings Unlooked-for sudden deaths from heaven are sent being necessarily disagreeable to the royal protector of Mrs. Barbara Palmer, Mistress Eleanor Gwynn, Louise de la Querouailles, and others. Waller rehabilitated it in Charles's favour by contriving a new act, in which the wronged Melantius rejoices in the gracious condescension of the licentious King of Rhodes who offers him "satisfaction" in a duel : "The royal sword thus drawn, has cured a wound A satisfaction for a sister lost. The blood of Kings exposed, washes a stain Cleaner than thousands of the vulgar slain." The new ending required a new moral, and here it is:"Long may he reign that is so far above All vice, all passion but excess of love." "Excess of love "-a nice euphemism, truly, for vulgar lust! The conscience of Mr. Edmund Waller must have thrilled with satisfaction as he wrote these charming lines. Let us get rid of this nauseous remembrance by repeating the one perfect-or almost perfect-lyric which will keep Waller's name alive in future ages: "Go, lovely Rose, Tell her that wastes her time and me, That now she knows When I resemble her to thee How sweet and fair she seems to be. Tell her that's young, And shuns to have her graces spied, In deserts where no men abide, Small is the worth Of beauty from the light retired; Suffer herself to be desired, And not blush so to be admired. Then die, that she The common fate of all things rare May read in thee, How small a part of time they share Who are so wondrous sweet and fair." In none other of his poems has Waller touched such a chord of truth and virtue. In none other are his cadences so new and fresh, and yet so sweet-sweet with almost a Shakespearian sweetness. The song is one of those which set themselves naturally, as it were, to music. You set an air to the words perforce as you repeat them. One can forgive Waller a good deal for this lustrous and exquisitely wrought gem. In all Sir William Davenant's ponderous folio collection of masques, tragedies, operas, heroic poems, and what not, I can find nothing to equal Waller's claim to immortality. The dust of oblivion rests upon them. The life-blood of genius was wanting, and so they decayed rapidly, and the world put them out of sight, as dead things that were not worthy even of decent interment. Yet his epic poem of "Gondibert" (published in 1651) had its admirers in its day-a very short one-and Waller and Cowley would predict for it an enduring renown. And that its author had a large command of sonorous rhetorical verse and no small amount of technical skill, we are constrained to admit. He was a man of ingenuity, scholarship, and patience; but he was no poet. The dry bones were there; but he could not put into them the breath of life. "Gondibert" is an epic of chivalry, in which the story carries an inner significance, being designed to recommend and illustrate the study of Nature, and to deduce therefrom certain philosophical conclusions. It is written in two-syllabled lines, and in quatrains; a metrical form* afterwards adopted by Dryden in his "Annus Mirabilis." Davenant, in his preface, explains his use of it on the ground "that it would be more pleasant to the reader, in a work of length, to give this respite or pause between every stanza (having endeavoured that each should contain a period) than to run him out of breath with continued couplets. Nor doth alternate rhyme by any lowliness of cadence make the sound less heroick, but rather adapt it to a plain and stately composing of musick; and the the brevity of the stanza renders it less subtle to the composer and more easy to the singer, which in stilo recitativo, where the story is long, is chiefly requisite." And he goes on to express the astounding hope that the cantos of his poem-of this dreary, monotonous, semi-philosophical essay in rhyme, which has neither dramatic incident nor lyrical break-would be sung at * Davenant borrowed it from Sir John Davies's "Nosce teipsum." |