the height the vainest and most imperious nature could be contented with; that it preserved and won his life from those who were most resolved to take it, and on an occasion in which he ought to have been ambitious to have lost it; and then preserved him again from the reproach and contempt that was due to him for so preserving it, and for. vindicating it at such a price, that it had power to reconcile him to those whom he had most offended and provoked; and continued to his old age with that rare felicity, that his company was acceptable when his spirit was odious; and he was at least pitied, where he was most de→ tested."

Such is the account of Clarendon; on which it may not: be improper, says Dr. Johnson, to make some remarks. "He was very little known till he had obtained a rich wife in the city." He obtained a rich wife about the age of: three-and-twenty; an age, before which few men are con spicuous much to their advantage. He was known, however, in parliament and at court; and, if he spent part of his time in privacy, it is not unreasonable to suppose that he endeavoured the improvement of his mind as well as of his fortune. That Clarendon might misjudge the motive of his retirement is the more probable, because he has evi dently mistaken the commencement of his poetry, which he supposes him not to have attempted before thirty. As his first pieces were perhaps not printed, the succession of his compositions was not known; and Clarendon, who cannot be imagined to have been very studious of poetry, did not rectify his first opinion by consulting Waller's book, Clarendon observes also, that he was introduced to the wits of the age by Dr. Morley; but the writer of his Life relates that he was already among them, when, hearing a noise in the street, and inquiring the cause, they found a son of Ben Jonson under an arrest, This was Morley, whom Waller set free at the expence of 100l. took him into the country as director of his studies, and then proe eured him admission into the company of the friends of literature. But of this fact, says Johnson, Clarendon had a nearer knowledge than the biographer, and is therefore more to be credited.

Of the laxity of his political principles, and the weakness of his resolution, he experienced the natural effect, by losing the esteem of every party. From Cromwell he

had only his recall; and from Charles the Second, who delighted in his company, he obtained only the pardon of his relation Hampden, and the safety of Hampden's son. As far as conjecture can be made from the whole of his writing, and his conduct, he was habitually and deliberately a friend to monarchy. His deviation towards demo cracy proceeded from his connection with Hampden, for whose sake he prosecuted Crawley with great bitterness; and the invective which he pronounced on that occasion was so popular, that twenty thousand copies are said by his biographer to have been sold in one day. It is confessed that his faults still left him many friends, at least many companions. His convivial power of pleasing is universally acknowledged; but those who conversed with him intimately, found him not only passionate, especially in his old age, but resentful; so that the interposition of friends was sometimes necessary. His wit and his poetry naturally connected him with the polite writers of his time; he was joined with lord Buckhurst in the translation of Corneille's Pompey; and is said to have added his help to that of Cowley in the original draught of the Rehearsal.

The care of his fortune, which Clarendon imputes to him in a degree little less than criminal, was either not constant or not successful; for, having inherited a patrimony of three thousand five hundred pounds a year in the time of James the First, and augmented it at least by one wealthy marriage, he left, about the time of the revolution, an income of not more than twelve or thirteen hundred ; which, when the different value of money is reckoned, will be found perhaps not more than a fourth part of what he once possessed. Of this diminution, part was the consequence of the gifts which he was forced to scatter, and the fine which he was condemned to pay at the detection of his plot; and if his estate, as is related in his Life, was sequestered, he had probably contracted debts when he lived in exile; for we are told, that at Paris he lived in splendor, and was the only Englishman, except the lord St. Alban's, that kept a table. His unlucky plot compelled him to sell a thousand a year; of the waste of the rest there is no account, except that he is confessed by his biographer to have been a bad economist. He seems to have deviated from the common practice; to have been a hoarder in his first years, and a squanderer in his last.

Of his course of studies, or choice of books, nothing is known more than that he professed himself unable to read Chapman's translation of Homer without raptures His opinion concerning the duty of a poet is contained in his declaration, that "he would blot from this works any line, that did not contain some motive to virtue." For his merit as a poet, we may refer with confidence to Johnson, whose life of Waller we have generally followed in the preceding sketch, and on which he appears to have be stowed more than usual pains, and is in his facts more than usually accurate. English versification, it is universally allowed, is greatly indebted to Waller, and he is every where elegant and gay. To his contemporaries he must have appeared more rich in invention, than modern critics are disposed to allow, because, as Johnson observes, they have found his novelties in later books, and do not know or inquire who produced them first. Dr. Warton thinks it remarkable that Waller never mentions Milton, whose Comus, and smaller poems, preceded his own; and he ac counts for this by Milton's poetry being unsuitable to the French taste on which Waller was formed *.

From Aubrey, quoted in the preceding notes, we may

*Some light is thrown on this subject by bishop Atterbury, who was the editor of the edition of Waller's Poems printed in 1690, and speaks thus in the preface:

"Waller commends no poet of his times that was in any degree a rival to him, neither Denham, nor Cowley, nor Dryden, nor Fairfax himself, to whose versification he owes so much, and upon whose turn of verse he founded his own. Sir John Suckling he writes against, and seems pleased in exposing the many false thoughts there are in his copy of verses "Against 7 Fraition;" and, besides, he well knew the advantage he had of sir John; pare ticularly in that sort of verse and manner of writing. He has copies in praise

of the translator of Gratius, Mr. Wase or(I think), sir William Davenant. Mr. Sandys, and Mr. Evelyn: he knew their reputation would not hurt his own. Ben Jonson and Fletcher he commends: in good earnest; their dramatic works -19gave e him no pain; that sort of writing he never pretended to. Denham's high compliment to Waller in his "Cooper's Hill" deserved some return.

"Mr. Waller has praised Chaucer, and borrowed a fine allusion to prince Arthur's Shield, and the name of Glóriana, from Spenser; but he was not much conversant in or beholding to either. Milton's Poem came not forth till Mr. Waller was above sixty years old, and, as I suppose, he had no taste for his manner of writing.

“There are but few things in Waller that shew his acquaintance with the Latin; fewer still that would make one think him acquainted with the Greek poets. Somewhat of the Mythology he knew; but that might be no deeper than Ovid's Metamorphoses. Some allusions to several parts of the Æneid, the story of it I mean, for as tor language be has copied little of he

it.

Had he been a perfect master of Virgil, his Latin phrase would have crept every where into, Waller's English; as we see it does in Dryden's writings (who yet was far from being a perfect master of him). As for his cloud-compelling, and two or three more compound words, I believe he went not to the original for them, but to some translation, perhaps Chapman's,"

select a few more particulars of Waller. Speaking of his plot, he says, He had much ado then to save his life; and in order to it, sold his estate, in Bedfordshire, about 1300% per ann. to Dr. Wright, M. D. for 10,000/. (much under value) which was procured in twenty-fours time, or else he had been hanged. With this money he bribed the House, which was the first time a House of Commons was ever bribed. "His intellectuals are very good yet (1690), but he growes feeble. He is somewhat above a middle stature, thin body, not at all robust fine thin skin, his face somewhat of an olivaster: his hayre frized, of a brownish colour; full eie, popping out and workinge, ovall faeed, his forehead high and full of wrinkles. His bead but small, braine very hott, and apt to be cholerique! Quanto doctius, eo iracundior. Cic. He is somewhat magisteriall, and hath received a great mastership of the EngJish language. He is of admirable elocution, and graceful; and exceeding ready."-" Notwithstanding his great witt and maisteresse in rhetorique, &c. he will oftentimes be guilty of mispelling in English. He writes a lamentable hand, as bad as the scratching of a hen."'

WALLER (SIR WILLIAM), an eminent parliamentary general, was born in 1597. He was descended, as well as the preceding poet, from the ancient family of the Wal lers of Spendhurst, in the county of Kent; and received at Magdalen-hall and Hart-hall, Oxford, his first education, which he afterwards completed at Paris. He began his military career in the service of the confederate princes against the emperor, in which he acquired the reputation of a good soldier, and upon his return home, was distinguished with the honour of knighthood. He was three times married; first to Jane, daughter and heiress of sir Richard Reynell, of Ford in Devonshire, by whom he had one daughter, Margaret, married to sir William Courtenay of Powderham castle, ancestor of the present lord viscount "Courtenay'; secondly, to the lady Anne Finch, daughter of the first earl of Winchelsea, by whom he had one son, William, who was afterwards an active magistrate for the county of Middlesex, and a strenuous opposer of all the measures of king Charles the Second's government; and

Fenton's Life.-Johnson's Poets.-Biog. Brit.-Letters by Eminent Persons.-Burnet's own Times.-Clarendon's Life and History.Noble's Memoirs of Cromwell, vol. II, p. 66,

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one daughter, Anne, married to sir Philip Harcourt, from whom is descended the present earl of that name. Of the family of sir William's third wife, we are not informed.

Sir William Waller was elected a member of the long parliament for Andover; and having suffered under the. severity of the star-chamber, on the occasion of a private quarrel with one of his wife's relations, as well as imbibed in the course of his foreign service early and warm prejudices in favour of the presbyterian discipline, he became a determined opponent of the court. While employed at the head of the parliamentary forces, under the earl of Essex, he was deputed to the command of the expedition against Portsmouth, when colonel Goring, returning to his duty, declared a resolution of holding that garrison for his majesty. In this enterprise, sir William conducted himself with such vigour and ability, that be reduced the garrison in a shorter time and upon better terms than could have been expected; and afterwards obtained the direction of several other expeditions, in which he likewise proved re.. markably successful. After many signal advantages, however, he sustained some defeats by the king's forces, particularly at Roundway Down near the Devizes, and at Cropready-bridge in Oxfordshire. On each of those occasions, the blame was thrown by him on the jealousy of other officers; and neither the spirit nor the judgment of his own operations were ever questioned. The independents, who were becoming the strongest party, both in the army and the parliament, had wished him to become their general, on terms which, either from conscience or military honour, he could not comply with. By the famous self-denying ordinance he was removed from his command, but still maintained so great an influence and reputation in the army, as rendered him not a little formidable to the rising party; and he was thenceforth considered as a leader of the presbyterians against the designs of the independents. He was one of the eleven members impeached of high treason by the army. This forced him to withdraw for some time; but be afterwards resumed his, seat in parliament, until, in 1648, with fifty others, he was expelled by the army, and all of them committed to different prisons, on suspicion of attachment to the royal cause. He was afterwards committed to custody on suspicion of being engaged in sir George Booth's insurrection, in Aug. 1658, but in November was released upon bail.