Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham

Poetical Works of Edmund
Waller and Sir John Denham

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Title: Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham
Author: Edmund Waller; John Denham
Release Date: May 10, 2004 [EBook #12322]
Language: English
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POETICAL WORKS
OF
EDMUND WALLER
AND
SIR JOHN DENHAM.

WITH MEMOIR AND DISSERTATION,
BY THE
REV. GEORGE GILFILLAN.
M.DCCC.LVII.

THE
LIFE OF EDMUND WALLER.
It is too true, after all, that the lives of poets are not, in general, very
interesting. Could we, indeed, trace the private workings of their souls,
and read the pages of their mental and moral development, no
biographies could be richer in instruction, and even entertainment, than
those of our greater bards. The inner life of every true poet must be
poetical. But in proportion to the romance of their souls' story, is often
the commonplace of their outward career. There have been poets,
however, whose lives are quite as readable and as instructive as their
poetry, and have even shed a reflex and powerful interest on their
writings. The interest of such lives has, in general, proceeded either
from the extraordinary misfortunes of the bard, or from his extremely
bad morals, or from his strange personal idiosyncrasy, or from his
being involved in the political or religious conflicts of his age. The life
of Milton, for instance, is rendered intensely interesting from his
connexion with the public affairs of his critical and solemn era. The life
of Johnson is made readable from his peculiar conformation of body,
his bear-like manners, his oddities, and his early struggles. You devour
the life of Gifford, not because he was a poet, but because he was a
shoemaker; and that of Byron, more on account of his vices, his
peerage, and his domestic unhappiness, than for the sake of his poetry.
And in Waller, too, you feel some supplemental interest, because he
united what are usually thought the incompatible characters of a poet
and a political plotter, and very nearly reached the altitudes of the
gallows as well as those of Parnassus.
March 1605 was the date, and Coleshill, in Hertfordshire, the place, of
the birth of our poet. He was of an ancient and honourable family
originally from Kent, some members of which were distinguished for
their wealth and others for the valour with which, at Agincourt and
elsewhere, they fought the battles of their country. Robert Waller, the
poet's father, inherited from Edmund, his father, the lands of

Beaconsfield, in Bucks, and other territory in Hertfordshire. These had
been in 1548-9 left by Francis Waller, in default of issue by his own
wife, to his brothers Thomas and Edmund, but Thomas dying, Edmund
inherited the whole. Robert, on receiving his estates, quitted the
profession of the law, to which he had attached himself, and spent the
rest of his life chiefly at Beaconsfield, employed in the manly business
and healthy amusements of a country gentleman. He died in August
1616, and left a widow and a son--the son, Edmund, being eleven years
of age. It was at Beaconsfield. We need hardly remind our readers, that
a far greater Edmund--Edmund Burke--spent many of his days. It was
there that he composed his latest and noblest works, the "Reflections on
the French Revolution," and the "Letters on a Regicide Peace;" and
there he surrendered to the Creator one of the subtlest, strongest,
brightest, and best of human souls. Shortly after Burke's death, the
house of Beaconsfield was burnt down, and no trace of it is now, we
believe, extant.
Mrs. Waller's brother, William, was the father of John Hampden. His
wife, Elizabeth Cromwell, the aunt of the great Oliver, was, however,
and continued to the end, a violent Royalist; and Cromwell, although
he treated both her and her son with kindness, and on the terms of their
relationship, was so provoked at hearing that she carried on a secret
correspondence with the Stewart party, that he confined her under a
very strict watch in the house of her daughter, Mrs. Price, whose
husband was on the side of the Parliament. It is exceedingly probable
that from the "mother's milk" of early prejudice was derived that spirit
of partisanship which distinguished alike the writings and the life of the
poet. It is possible, too, that contact with