Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham | Page 3

a liberal feast of hot-house grapes, thankful, but feeling that a few
more would have turned satisfaction into nausea. Yet you feel, too, that
perhaps his selection of small themes, and the consequent curbing of
his powers, have sprung from his fastidiousness in the matter of
versification. The sermons, the satires, the speeches, the odes, and the
didactic poems of the fastidious are generally _short_, and do not,
therefore, fully mirror the amplitude, or express the energy of their
genius. To his poem on the escape of Prince Charles, succeeded that on
the Prince, and two or three others of a similar kind; all finding their
inspiration, not as yet in that love of others which animated his amatory
effusions, but in that love to himself and his own interest which marks
the incipient courtier, who is beginning, in Shakspeare's thought, to
hang his knee upon "hinges," that it may bend more readily to power.
Yet his case shews that there is a certain incompatibility between the
profession of a courtier and that of a poet. He often began his
panegyrics with much fervour, but the fit passed, or his fastidious taste

produced disgust at what he had written, and it was either not finished,
or was delayed till the interest of the occasion had passed away.
After the death of James I., Charles called a new parliament in 1625,
and in it Waller took his place for Chipping-Wycombe, a borough in
Buckinghamshire. This parliament met in London, but was adjourned
to Oxford on account of the Plague. In Oxford, it proved refractory to
the king's wishes, and refusing to grant him a tithe of the supplies
which he demanded, was summarily dismissed. Waller was not
re-elected in 1626, when the next parliament was summoned, but
secured his return for Agmondesham in March 1627. He appears to
have been in these years a silent senator, taking little interest or share in
the debates, but retiring from them to offer the quit-rent of his
versicles--a laureate without salary, and yet not probably much more
sincere than laureates generally are; for although his loyalty was
undoubted, his expressions of it in rhyme are often hyperbolical to a
degree.
In his twenty-sixth year, he married an heiress, the daughter of Mr.
Banks, a wealthy London citizen. In this there was nothing singular but
the fact, that he, as yet obscure, distanced a rival of great influence,
whose suit was supported by royalty--namely, Mr. Crofts, afterwards
Baron Crofts--gave rather a romantic and adventurous air to the match.
He retired soon after to Beaconsfield, where he spent some happy years
in the enjoyment of domestic society, pursuing, too, his studies under
the direction of Morley, afterwards Bishop of Winchester, a
distinguished scholar of the time, who resided with him. During this
period he is said to have read many poets, but to have written little
poetry. Although the king, jealous of his subjects, had, in 1632, by a
most absurd and arbitrary decree, commanded all the lords and gentry
in the kingdom to reside on their own estates, Waller did not at the time
consider this an exceeding hardship. Indeed, his feelings were on no
subject, and under no pressure of circumstances, either very profound
or very lasting.
His wife died after having borne him a son and a daughter--a son, who
did not long survive his mother; and a daughter, who became
afterwards Mrs. Dormer of Oxfordshire. From under this calamity
Waller, yet only thirty years of age, rebounded with characteristic
elasticity. He came back, nothing both, to the society he had left, and

was soon known to be in quest of a fair lady, whom he has made
immortal by the sobriquet of Saccharissa. She was the eldest daughter
of the Earl of Leicester, and her name was the Lady Dorothy Sidney.
This lady was counted beautiful. Her father was absent in foreign parts.
She lived almost alone in Penshurst. It added to her charms, at least in a
poetical eye, that she was descended from Sir Philip Sidney; a man
whose name, as the flower of chivalry and the soul of honour, is still
"like ointment poured forth" in the estimation of the world--whose
death rises almost to the dignity and grandeur of a martyrdom--and
who has left in his "Arcadia" a quaintly decorated, conceived, and
unequally chiselled, but true, rich, and magnificent monument of his
genius. In spite, however, of all Waller's tender ditties, of the incense
he offered up--not only to Dorothy, but to her sister Lady Lucy, and
even to her maid Mrs. Braughton--his goddess was inexorable, and not
only rejected, but spurned him from her feet. The poet bore this
disappointment, as all poets, Dante hardly excepted, have borne the
same: he transferred his affections to another, who, indeed, ere