reflection fromWaller, the celebrated wit." He said, "the house of commons had resolved that the Duke should not reign after the King's death, but the King, in opposition to them, had resolved that he should reign even in his life.”

In the year 1665 he asked from the King the Provostship of Eton College which was granted; but Clarendon refused to put the seal, alledging that it could be held only by a clergyman. To this opposition is imputed the violence and acrimony with which Waller joined Buckingham's faction in the prosecution of Clarendon. A year after the chancellor's banishment another vacancy gave him encouragement for another petition which the King referred to the council, who, after hearing the question argued by lawyers for three days, determined that the office could be held only by a clergyman, according to the act of conformity, since the provost had always received institution, as for a patronage, from the Bishops of Lincoln. The King then said he could not break the law which he had made.

At the accession of King James (in 1685) he was chosen for parliament, being then fourscore, at Saltash in Cornwall, and wrote "A presage of the downfal of the Turkish empire." It is remarked by his commentator Fenton, that, in reading Tasso, he had early imbibed a veneration for the heroes of the holy war, and a zealous enmity to the Turks which never left him.

James treated him with kindness and familiarity. One day, taking him into the closet, the King asked

him how he liked one of the pictures. "My eyes," said Waller, 66 are dim, and I do not know it.' The King said it was the Princess of Orange. “She is," said Waller, "like the greatest woman in the world." The King asked who that was, and being answered Queen Elizabeth, "I wonder," said the King, "you should think so; but I must confess she had a wise council. "And, Sir," said Waller, "did you ever know a fool chose a wise one!"

When the King knew that he was about to marry his daughter to Dr. Birch, a clergyman, he ordered a French gentleman to tell him " that the King wondered he could think of marrying his daughter to a falling church!" "The King," says Waller, "does me great honour in taking notice of my domestic affairs, but I have lived long enough to observe that this falling church has got a trick of rising again."

Whether he was privy to any of the transactions which ended in the Revolution is not known. His heir joined the Prince of Orange.

He now seemed to have turned his mind upon preparation for a future state, and therefore consecrated his poetry to devotion. The lines which he composed when He, for age, could neither read nor write, are not inferior to the effusions of his youth.

Towards the decline of life he bought a small house, with a little land, at Colshill, and said, "he should be glad to die like the stag, where he was roused." This, however, did not happen. When he was at Beaconsfield, he found his legs

grow tumid. He went to Windsor, where Sir Charles Scarborough then attended the King, and requested him, as both a friend and a physician, to tell him what that swelling meant!

Sir,

answered Scarborough, " your blood will run no longer." Waller repeated some lines of Virgil and went home to die. His decease happened on the 21st of October 1687, and he was interred at Beaconsfield.

"The characters," says Johnson, "by which Waller intended to distinguish his writings, are. sprightliness and dignity; in his smaller pieces he endeavours to be gay, in the larger to be great. Of his airy and light productions the chief course is gallantry, that attentive reverence of female excellence which has descended to us from the Gothic age. As his poems are commonly occasional and his addresses personal, he was not so liberally supplied with grand as with soft images; for beauty is more easily found than magnanimity.

"The delicacy which he cultivated restrains him to a certain nicety and caution, even when he writes upon the slightest matter. He has therefore, in his whole volume, nothing burlesque, and seldom any thing ludicrous or familiar. He seems always to do his best, though his subjects are often unworthy of his care. His subjects were generally trifling, and his numbers not always musical. thoughts are sometimes hyperbolical, and his images unnatural.

His

"His sallies of casual flattery are sometimes elegant and happy, as that " I return for the Silver

Pen;" and sometimes empty and trifling, as that Upon the Card torn by the Queen.

There

are a few lines "written in the Duchess's Tasso," which he is said by Fenton to have kept a summer under correction. Johnson gives it as his opinion, in opposition to that of Fenton, that Waller appears not to have lost at eighty-two any part of his poetical powers. After lamenting that verse, when applied to the purposes of worship, has not been hitherto attended with success, he again more particularly recurs to the poet who is the present subject of consideration.

"As much of Waller's reputation was owen to the softness and smoothness of his numbers, it is proper to consider those minute particulars to which a versifier must attend.

"He certainly very much excelled in smoothness most of the writers who were living when his poetry commenced. The poets of Elizabeth had attained an art of modulation which was afterwards neglected or forgotten. Fairfax was acknowledged by him as his model; and he might have studied, with advantage, the poem of Davies, which, though merely philosophical, yet seldom leaves the ear ungratified.

"But he was rather smooth than strong; of the full resounding line, which Pope attributes to Dryden, he has given but very few examples. The critical decision has given the praise of

'Sir John Davies. The title of the poem here alluded to is "Nosce teipsum.

strength to Denham, and of sweetness to Waller. "His excellence of versification has some abatements. He uses the expletive do very frequently; and, though he lived to see it almost universally ejected, was not more careful to avoid it in his last compositions than in his first. Praise had given him confidence; and finding the world satisfied, he satisfied himself.

"His rhymes are, sometimes, weak words. So is found to make the rhyme twice in ten lines, and occurs often as a rhyme through his book.

"His double rhymes in heroic verse have been censured by Mrs. Philips, who was his rival in the translation of Corneille's Pompey; and more faults might be found were not the inquiry below attention.

"He sometimes uses the obsolete termination of verbs, as waxeth, affecteth; and sometimes retains the final syllable of the preterite, as amazed, supposed, of which I know not whether it is not to the detriment of our language that we have totally rejected them.

"Of triplets he is sparing, but he did not wholly forbear them: of an Alexandrine he has given no example.

"The general character of his poetry is elegance and gaiety. He is never pathetic, and very rarely sublime. He seems neither to have had a mind much elevated by nature, nor amplified by learning. His thoughts are such as a liberal conversation and large acquaintance with life would easily supply. They had however,