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EDMUND WALLER.

THIS pleasing poet was born in 1605, at Cols

hill, in Hertfordshire, and he inherited from his father, who left him an infant, an estate worth three thousand five hundred pounds a year. He received his education at Eton, and King's College, Cambridge, and obtained a seat in parliament in his eighteenth year, at which early period he wrote a poem on the Prince's escape at St. Andero."*

* The following anecdote is related of Waller. He was a member of the famous poetical club to which Falkland, Wenman, Chillingworth, Godolphin, and other eminent wits of that age belonged. One evening, when this club were assembled, a great noise was heard in the street, which not a little alarmed them, and upon enquiring the cause they were told that a son of Ben Jonson's was arrested. This club was too generous to suffer a child of one who was a genuine son of Apollo, to be carried to gaol, perhaps for a trifle, they accordingly sent for him, but instead of Ben Jonson's son, Mr. George Morley, afterwards Bishop of Winchester, was introduced to them. Mr. Waller took a liking to this gentleman at first sight, paid the debt for him, which amounted to one hundred pounds, and took him down with him to Beaconsfield. Here he continued for eight or ten years, and Waller used to say, that by lending a hundred pounds he had paved the way for himself to borrow from his friend what was of infinitely more value, namely, a taste for the antient poets, and what he had retained of their manner.

Rich as he was by inheritance, says Dr. Johnson, he took care early to grow richer by marrying a great heiress in the city, who died in childbed, and left him a widower of about five and twenty, gay and wealthy, to please himself with another marriage.

He fixed his affections upon the Lady Dorothea Sidney, daughter of the Earl of Leicester, whom he celebrated in his various poems, under the appellation of Sacharissa, but she repelled his addresses with disdain, and married the Earl of Sunderland. In her old age, happening to meet her former admirer, she said to him, "Mr. Waller, when will you write again such fine verses upon me?"-" When you are as young and handsome as you was then, madam," replied Waller.

On losing Sacharissa, he married a lady of the name of Busse, who brought him five sons and eight daughters.

In the long parliament, Waller distinguished himself by his noisy speeches against the court and the clergy, but, to his honour, be it remembered, he spoke with energy against the abolition of episcopacy. In his speech he made the following sagacious remark:

"I see some are moved with a number of hands against the bishops; which, I confess, rather inclines me to their defence; for I rather look upon episcopacy as a counterscarp, or outwork; which, if it be taken by this assault of the

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people, and withal, this mystery once revealed, that we must deny them nothing when they ask it thus in troops, we may, in the next place, have as hard a task to defend our property, as we have lately had to recover it from the prerogative. If by multiplying hands and petitions, they prevail for an equality in things ecclesiastical, the next demand, perhaps, may be lex agraria, the like equality in things temporal.

"If these great innovations proceed, I shall expect a flat and level in learning too, as well as in church preferments; honos alit artes. And though it be true that grave and pious men do study for learning sake, and embrace virtue for itself; yet it is true, that youth, which is the season when learning is gotten, is not without ambition; nor will even take pains to excel in any thing, when there is not some hope of excelling others in reward and dignity."

Waller was appointed by the parliament one of the commissioners to treat with the king at Oxford, and when they were presented, the king said to him," though you are the last, you are not the lowest nor the least in my favour."

This tenderness of the king is supposed to have made such an impression upon the mind of Waller, as to make him a secret favourer of the royal cause. Let this be as it may, he was apprehended soon after, as being engaged in a conspiracy against the parliament, known by the

name of Waller's plot. His behaviour on this occasion has left a stain upon his memory.

"He was so confounded with fear," says Clarendon, "that he confessed whatever he had heard, said, thought, or seen; all that he knew of himself, and all that he had suspected of others, without concealing any person, of what degree soever, or any discourse which he had ever upon any occasion entertained with them; what such and such ladies of great honour, to whom, upon the credit of his wit and great reputation, he had been admitted,. had spoken to him in their chambers, upon the proceedings in the house, and how they had encouraged him to oppose them; what correspondence and intercourse they had with some Ministers of State at Oxford, and how they had conveyed all intelligence thither."*

In consequence of this discovery, some of his partizans suffered death, but Waller, the principal, escaped, by purchasing his pardon for the sum of ten thousand pounds, and going into voluntary banishment.

He then went to France, where he lived in great splendour, amusing himself with poetry in which he sometimes speaks of the rebels and their usurpation in the natural language of an honest

man.

At last he was obliged to sell his wife's jewels

History of the Rebellion,

for

for a support, and then he solicited Cromwell, who was his near relation, for permission to return home, and he obtained it by the interest of Colonel Scroop, to whom his sister was married.

The mother of Waller, though related to Cromwell and Hampden, was zealous for the royal cause, and when Oliver visited her, she used to reproach him in such bitter terms, that he would throw a napkin at her, and say he would not dispute with his aunt; but at last he thought proper to make her a prisoner in the house of her own daughter.

Waller was admitted to terms of great familiarity with Cromwell, when the latter was protector, and on one occasion he found him canting with a body of the puritanical ministers of the city. After they were gone he took Waller with him into his closet, saying to him, "Cousin Waller, I must talk to these men in their own way."

He repaid the Usurper, by a famous panegyric, . which has always been accounted the principal of his poetical performances. In another poem on the war with Spain, he carried his adulation to a higher pitch, and recommended Cromwell to assume the kingly crown and title, which he knew well were objects of the Protector's eager ambition, but that he was hindred from taking them principally out of fear of the army.

That a man of so versatile a disposition as

Waller,

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