Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham | Page 9

related.
As a character, our opinion of Waller has been already indicated. He
was indecisive, vacillating, with more wit than judgment, and with
more judgment than earnestness. In that age of high hearts, stormy
passions, and determined purpose, he looks helpless and not at home,
like a butterfly in an eagle's eyrie. A gifted, accomplished, and

apparently an amiable man, he was a feeble, and almost a despicable
character. The parliament seem to have thought him hardly worth
hanging. Cromwell bore with him only as a kinsman, and respected
him only as a scholar. Charles II. liked to laugh at his jokes, and to
Saville his company was as good as an additional bottle of wine. His
only chance of fame as a man of action arose from his connexion with
the plot, which, however, in its issue covered him with infamy, as all
bad things bungled, inevitably do to those who attempt them.
Although he unquestionably in some points improved our correctness
of style and our versification, there is not much to be said either for or
against his poetry. It is as a whole a mass of smooth and easy, yet
systematic, trifling. Nine-tenths of it does not rise above mediocrity,
and the tenth that remains is more distinguished by grace than by
grandeur or depth. His lines on Cromwell we have already
characterised. It may seem odd, but in his verses on the head of a stag,
which Johnson singles out as bad, we see more of the soul of poetry
than in any of his other productions.
Let our readers, if they will not be convinced by our assertion, listen to
some of these lines:--
"So we some antique hero's strength, Learn by his lance's weight and
length-- As these vast beams express the beast Whose shady brows
alive they dress'd. Such game, while yet the world was new, The
mighty Nimrod did pursue; What huntsman of our feeble race Or dogs
dare such a monster chase? * * * * * Oh, fertile head, which every year
Could such a CROP of WONDER bear!"
In his amorous and complimentary ditties, he is often very successful.
So, too, is he in much of his "Divine Poetry," particularly the lines at
the end, beginning with--
"The soul's dark cottage, batter'd and decay'd," Lets in new light
through chinks which time hath made.
These contain a thought, so far as we remember, new and highly
poetical.
We may close by saying a few words on a question which Dr. Johnson
has started in his "Life of Waller" in reference to sacred poetry. That
great and good man, our readers remember, maintains that the ideas of
the Christian theology are too simple for eloquence, too sacred for
fiction, and too majestic for ornament, and "that faith, thanksgiving,

repentance, and supplication," are all unsusceptible of poetical
treatment. He grants that the doctrines of religion may be defended in a
didactic poem, and that a poet may not only describe God's works in
nature, but may trace them up to nature's God. But he asserts that
"contemplative piety, or the intercourse between God and the human
soul, cannot be poetical." It is curious to remember that, up to Johnson's
time, the best poetry in the world had been sacred. There had been the
poetry of the Bible, in which truth of the deepest import was expressed,
now in "eloquence," now in "fiction," and now in language most
gorgeously "ornamented," and in which "Faith" in Isaiah,
"Thanksgiving" in Moses, "Penitence" in David, and "Supplication" in
Jeremiah, had uttered themselves in sublime, or lively, or subdued, or
tender strains --the poetry of the "Divine Commedia," of the "Jerusalem
Delivered," of the "Faery Queen," of the "Paradise Lost" and "Paradise
Regained," of the "Night-Thoughts," of "Smart's David," all poetry, let
it be observed, not defending religion merely, or confining itself to the
praise of God's lower works, but entering into the depths of divine
contemplation, into the very adyta of the heavenly temple. And it is no
less interesting to recollect that in spite of Dr. Johnson's sage diction,
sacred poetry of a very high order has, since his day, abounded.
Cowper has extracted it from "the intercourse between God and the
human soul;" Montgomery has made now "the supplication," and now
the "thanksgiving," of the poor negro ring in every ear, and vibrate
through every heart; Coleridge has expressed, in his sounding and
splendid measures, at one time his "faith," and at another his
"repentance;" Pollok has with true, although unequal steps, followed
Milton and Dante, both into the heaven of heavens, and into the gloom
of Gehenna; and Wordsworth, Southey, Croly, Milman, Trench, Keble,
and a host more have, by their noble religious hymns, shamed the
wisdom of the Sadducee, and darkened the glory