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

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 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