Lives of the Poets | Page 2

proprietors are almost all the booksellers in London, of
consequence."
In 1780 the booksellers published, in separate form, four volumes of
Johnson's "Prefaces, Biographical and Critical, to the most Eminent of
the English Poets." The completion followed in 1781. "Sometime in
March," Johnson writes in that year, "I finished the Lives of the Poets."
The series of books to which they actually served as prefaces extended
to sixty volumes. When his work was done, Johnson then being in his
seventy-second year, the booksellers added 100 pounds to the price first
asked. Johnson's own life was then near its close. He died on the 13th
of December, 1784, aged seventyfive.

Of the Lives in this collection, Johnson himself liked best his Life of
Cowley, for the thoroughness with which he had examined in it the
style of what he called the metaphysical Poets. In his Life of Milton,
the sense of Milton's genius is not less evident than the difference in
point of view which made it difficult for Johnson to know Milton
thoroughly. They know each other now. For Johnson sought as steadily
as Milton to do all as "in his great Taskmaster's eye."
H. M.
WALLER.
Edmund Waller was born on the third of March, 1605, at Coleshill, in
Hertfordshire. His father was Robert Waller, Esquire, 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 the First, where he heard a very remarkable conversation,
which the writer of the Life prefixed to his Works, who seems 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 subject's
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?'"
Waller's political and poetical life began nearly together. In his
eighteenth year he wrote the poem that appears first 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 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