Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham | Page 8

fist_, held up at home or across the waters, saved
millions of money, awed despots, encouraged freedom in every part of
the world, and had nearly established a pure form of Christianity over

Great Britain--who gave his country a model of excellence as a man,
and as a ruler, simple, severe, ruggedly picturesque, and stupendously
original, and solitary as one of the primitive rocks--whose eloquence
was uneven and piercing as the forked lightning, which is never so
terrible as when it falls to pieces --and highest praise of all, whose
deeds and character were so great in their sublime simplicity, that the
poet, who afterwards sung the hierarchies of heaven, and the anarchies
of hell, was fain to sit a humble secretary, recording the thoughts and
actions of Cromwell, and felt afterwards that he had been as nobly
employed when defending his grand defiance of evil and arbitrary
power, as when he did
"Assert Eternal Providence, And justify the ways of God to man."
We have seen pictured representations of Cromwell and Milton seated
together at the council-table, in which the painter wished more than to
insinuate that Milton was the superior being; but in our judgment the
advantage was on the other side, and the poet seemed to bear only that
relation and proportion to the Protector which the eloquent Raphael, the
"affable archangel," the bard of the war in heaven, does to the Gabriel
or the Michael, whose tremendous sword mingled in and all but
decided the fray. And we thought what a junction were that of the two
powers--of the sword and the pen, the actor and the recorder, the man
to do, and the poet to sing! Waller in his panegyric sees and shews in a
few lines Cromwell's relation to Britain, and that of both to the world:--
"Heaven that has placed this island to give law, To balance Europe, and
her states to awe, In this conjunction does on Britain smile, The
greatest leader and the greatest isle."
He saw that in Cromwell, and in Cromwell alone, had the power of
Britain come to a point: IT was made, if not to be the governor to be
the moderator of the earth, and HE was sent to govern it, to condense
its scattered energies, to awe down its warring factions, and to wield all
its forces to one good and great end. In him for the first time had the
wild island, the Bucephalus of the West, found a rider able, by backing,
bridling, and curbing him, to give due direction and momentum to his
fury, force, and speed.
He has scattered some other precious particles of thought in this poem,
such as:--
"Lords of the world's great waste, the ocean, we Whole forests send to

reign upon the sea."
"The Caledonians, arm'd with want and cold."
"The states, changed by you, Changed like the world's great scene,
when without noise, The rising sun night's vulgar lights destroys."
"Illustrious acts high raptures do infuse, And every conqueror creates a
Muse."
When Cromwell died, Waller again lifted up his pen, and indited a
short lamentation over his loss. After the Restoration, he was one of the
first to read a poetical recantation of his errors in verses addressed to
Charles II. In 1661 he was returned to parliament for Hastings, in
Sussex, and sat afterwards at various times for Chipping-Wycombe,
and Saltash. In parliament, he was rather famed for his lively sallies of
wit, than for his logic, sense, or earnestness. In private, his spirits, even
without the aid of wine,--which he never drank,--continued to a great
age unusually buoyant. As he advanced in life he became more
religious, and intermixed a vein of devotion with his verse. When
eighty-two, he bought a small estate in Coleshill, near his native place,
desirous, he said, "to die, like the stag, where he was roused." His wish,
however, was not granted. Seized with tumours in his legs, he went to
Windsor to consult Sir Charles Scarborough, then waiting on the king.
Sir Charles, at Waller's request to know the "meaning" of these
swellings, told him that they showed that his "blood would no longer
run." On this the poet quietly repeated a passage from Virgil, and
returned to Beaconsfield to die. Having received the sacrament, and
shared it with his children, and expressed his faith in Christianity, he
expired on the 21st of October 1687. He was buried in the churchyard
of Beaconsfield. He left five sons and eight daughters. His eldest son
being an imbecile, Edmund, his second, inherited the estates, and
having joined the party of the Prince of Orange, sat for Agmondesham
for some years, but became ultimately a Quaker. The fortunes of the
rest of his family are not particularly interesting, and need not be