Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham | Page 7

the "exorbitance of his
adulation," of his "having lost the esteem of all parties," and says, "It is
not possible to read without some contempt and indignation, poems
ascribing the highest degree of power and piety to Charles the First, and
then transferring the same power and piety to Oliver Cromwell." In
keeping with this, Bishop Burnet asserts, that "in the House he was
only concerned to say what should make him applauded, and never laid
the business of the House to heart."
Waller, returning, found his mother still alive at Beaconsfield, where
Cromwell sometimes visited her; and when she talked in favour of the
royal cause, would throw napkins at her, and say that he would not
dispute with his aunt, although afterwards, as we have seen, her spirit
of political intrigue compelled him to make her a prisoner in her own
house. The poet took up his residence near her at Hall-barn, a house of
his own erection, and on the walls of which he hung up a picture of
Saccharissa, whence he hoped, it may be, draw consolation for the past,
and inspiration for the future. Here Cromwell, who probably despised
Waller in his heart, as often men of action despise men of mere literary
ability, especially when that ability is not transcendent, but whose cue
it was to conciliate all men according to their respective positions and
capabilities, paid great attention to his kinsman. Waller found
Cromwell well acquainted with the ancient historians, and they
conversed a good deal on such topics. It is said, that when Waller
jeered him on his using the peculiar phraseology of the Puritans in his
conversation with them, the Protector answered, "Cousin Waller, I must
talk to these men in their own way;" an anecdote which is sometimes
quoted as if it proved that Cromwell had no religion; whereas it only
proved that he had at heart no cant. It was not as if he had privately
avowed infidelity to his kinsman. Cromwell found cant prevalent on
his stage, just as any great actor of that century found rant on his, and,
like the actor, he used it occasionally as a means of gaining his own
lofty ends, and as a foil to his own genuine earnestness and power.
The Protector, however, seems to have profoundly impressed even
Waller's light and fickle mind; and the panegyric which he produced on

him in 1654, is not only the ablest, but seems the sincerest of his
productions. He had hitherto been writing about women, courtiers, and
kings; but now he had to gird up his loins and write on a man. The
piece is accordingly as masculine in style, as it is just in appreciation;
and, with the exception of Milton's glorious sketch in the "Defensio pro
populo Anglicano," and Carlyle's lecture in his "Heroes and
Hero-worship," it is, perhaps, the best encomium ever pronounced on
the Lord Protector of England--almost worthy of Cromwell's unrivalled
merits and achievements, and more than worthy of Waller's powers. It
is said, that when twitted with having written a better panegyric on
Cromwell than a congratulation to Charles II., he wittily replied, "You
should remember that poets succeed better in fiction than in truth."
Perhaps in this he spoke ironically; certainly the fact was the reverse of
his words. It is because he has spoken truth in the first, and fiction in
the second, of productions, that the first is incomparably the better
poem. Sketches of character taken from the life are better than those
where imagination operates on hearsays and on recorded actions. And
certainly few men had a better opportunity than Waller of seeing in
private and in undress, and with an eye in which native sagacity was
sharpened by prejudices, partly for, partly against, the Man of that
century--a man in whom we recognise a union of Roman, Hebrew, and
English qualities--the faith of the Jew, the firmness of the Roman, and
the homespun simplicity of the Englishman of his own age--in purpose
and in powers "an armed angel on a battle-day;" in manners a plain
blunt corporal; and in language always a stammerer, and sometimes a
buffoon; the middle-class man of his time, with the merits and the
defects of his order, but touched with an inspiration as from heaven,
lifting him far above all the aristocracy, and all the royalty, and all the
literature of his period; who found his one great faculty--inflamed and
consecrated commonsense--to be more than equal to the subleties, and
brilliancies, and wit, and eloquence, and taste, and genius, of his
thousand opponents--whose crown was a branch of English oak, his
sceptre a strong sapling of the same, his throne a mound of turf--who
economised matters by being at once king and king's jester, and whose
mere _clenched