poets of that time, says truly that "Waller still lives in Sacharissa:" he lives in her name more than she does in his poetry; he gave that name a charm and a celebrity which has survived the admiration his verses inspired, and which has assisted to preserve them and himself from oblivion.

Waller's Sacharissa was the Lady Dorothea Sydney, the eldest daughter of the Earl of Leicester, and born in 1620. At the time he thought fit to make her the object of his homage, she was about eighteen, beautiful, accomplished, and admired. Waller was handsome, rich, a wit, and five-and-twenty. He had ever an excellent opinion of himself, and a prudent care of his worldly interests. He was a great poet, in days when Spenser was forgotten, Milton neglected, and Pope unborn. The lady was content to be the theme of a fashionable poet: but when he presumed farther, she crushed all hopes with the most undisguised aversion and disdain.-JAMESON, ANNA BROWNELL, 1829, The Loves of the Poets, vol. II, pp. 15, 16, 17.

The wife and the mother may be said, however, to have survived, in the popular memory, the gallant husband, and the clever but unstable son. Sacharissa is a name more universally known than the name and title of either Lady Spencer or Countess of Sunderland. Waller formed the name "pleasantly," as he was wont to say, from saccharum, sugar. Whether Waller were ever more than her poetical suitor may be doubted; though Dorothy is said to have once rejected his suit.MANCHESTER, DUKE OF, 1864, Court and Society from Elizabeth to Anne, vol. I, p. 354.

With all his brilliant poetic gifts and social accomplishments, Waller's seems to have been a mean and poor nature-selfish and pleasure-loving in prosperity, and abject and servile in adversity.-TULLOCH, JOHN, 1872, Rational Theology and Christian Philosophy in England in the Seventeenth Century, vol. 1, p. 110.

As Beatrice and Laura represent the ideal lady of Dante and of Petrarch's age, so Waller's Sacharissa is the type of all that was fair and excellent in the womanhood of the seventeenth century. But Sacharissa, unlike ces belles dames du tems jadis, is more for us than a mere dream of beauty and goodness. She

has a very attractive and interesting personality of her own. The pictures of her which Vandyke painted, as she appeared to Waller in the bloom of her youthful loveliness, adorn the walls of more than one ancient and stately house. At Penshurst, at Althrop, at Petworth, we see her under many forms and in many different costumes, and always, as Horace Walpole said, "charmingly handsome." --CARTWRIGHT, JULIA (MRS. HENRY ADY,) 1893, Sacharissa; Some Account of Dorothy Sidney, Countess of Sunderland, Preface, p. v.

GENERAL

The best of poets.-DENHAM, SIR JOHN, 1642, Cooper's Hill.

The Workes of Edmond Waller Esquire, Lately a Member of the Hon ourable House of Commons, in this Present Parliament. | London. | Printed for Thomas Walkley. | 1645.-TITLE PAGE OF FIRST EDITION.

Waller not wants the glory of his verse; And meets a noble praise, in every Linc. -DANIEL, GEORGE, 1647, A Vindication of Poesy.

I cannot but bewail the transitoriness of their fame, as well as other men's, when I hear Mr. Waller is turned to burlesque among them, while he is alive, which never happened to old poets till many years after their death; and though I never knew him enough to adore him as many have done, and easily believe he may be, as your Lordship says, enough out of fashion, yet I am apt to think some of the old cut-work bands were of as fine thread, and as well wrought, as any of our new points; and, at least, that all the wit he and his company spent, in heightening love and friendship, was better employed, than what is laid out so prodigally by the modern wits, in the mockery of all sorts of religion and government.-TEMPLE, SIR WILLIAM, 1667, Letter to Lord Lisle, August.

Waller, by Nature for the Bays design'd, With Force and Fire, and Fancy unconfin'd In Panegyric, does excel Mankind. -ROCHESTER, EARL OF, 1678, An Allusion to the tenth Satire of the first book of Horace.

Chaucer threw in Latin, French, Provençal, and other languages, like new stum to raise a fermentation; in Queen Elizabeth's time, it grew fine, but came

Waller came last, but was the first whose art
Just weight and measure did to verse impart ;
That of a well-placed word could teach the
force,

And show'd for poetry a nobler course;
His happy genius did our tongue refine,
And easy words with pleasing numbers join:
His verses to good method did apply,

And changed hard discord to soft harmony. All own'd his laws; which long approved and tried,

To present authors now may be a guide Tread boldly in his steps, secure from fear, And be, like him, in your expressions clear.

Parent of harmony in English verse, Whose tuneful Muse in sweetest accents flows,

In couplets first taught straggling sense to close.

-CHURCHILL, CHARLES, 1761, The Apol

ogy.

Waller was the first refiner of English poetry, at least of English rhyme; but his performances still abound with many faults, and what is more material, they contain but feeble and superficial beauties. Gaitey, wit, and ingenuity, are their ruling character: they aspire not to the sublime; still less to the pathetic. They treat of love, without making us feel any tenderness; and abound in panegyric,

Poetry, rev. Dryden.

Long did the untun'd world in ignorance stray,

Producing nothing that was great and gay, Till taught by thee the true poetic way; Rough were the tracks before, dull and obscure,

Nor pleasure nor instruction could procure; Their thoughtless labours could no passion

move

Sure, in that age, the poets knew not love. That charming god, like apparitions, then, Was only talked on, but ne'er seen by men. Darkness was o'er the Muses' land displayed, And even the chosen tribe unguided strayed, Till, by thee rescued from the Egyptian night,

They now look up and view the god of light, That taught them how to love, and how to write.

gyric, however, on Cromwell, contains more force than we should expect from the other compositions of this poet.--HUME, DAVID, 1762, The History of England, The Commonwealth.

Our poetry was not quite harmonized in Waller's time; so that this, ["On the Death of the Lord Protector."] which would be now looked upon as a slovenly sort of versification, was, with respect to the times in which it was written, almost a prodigy of harmony. A modern reader will chiefly be struck with the strength of thinking and the turn of the compliments bestowed upon the Usurper. Every body has heard the answer our poet made Charles II. who asked him how his poem upon Cromwell came to be finer than his panegyric upon himself. Your maj

Waller.

While tender airs and lovely dames inspire Soft melting thoughts, and propagate desire; So long shall Waller's strains our passion

move,

And Sacharissa's beauty kindle love.

always succeed best in fiction.-GOLDSMITH, OLIVER, 1767, The Beauties of English Poetry.

Edmund Waller, sometimes styled "the English Tibullus," excelled all his predecessors, in harmonious versification.

Waller in Granville lives: when Mira sings With Waller's hand he strikes the sounding strings,

With sprightly turns his noble genius shines, And manly sense adorns his easy lines.

-GAY, JOHN, 1714, On a Miscellany of

Poems.

Britain to soft refinement less a foe,
Wit grew polite, and numbers learn'd to flow,
Waller was smooth.

-POPE, ALEXANDER, 1733, The First
Epistle of the second book of Horace.

His

and politeness of the Roman poet; and his panegyric on Cromwell has been ever esteemed a masterpiece in its kind. vein is never redundant, like that of Cowley; we frequently wish he had said more, but never that he had said less.―GRANGER, JAMES, 1769-1824, Biographical History of England, vol. III, p. 125.

His works gave a new era to English poetry. STOCKDALE, PERCIVAL, 1772 Life of Waller.

The delicacy, which he cultivated,

restrains him to a certain nicety and caution, even when he writes upon the slightest matter. He has, therefore, in his whole volume, nothing burlesque, and seldom any thing ludicrous or familiar. He seems always to do his best; though his subjects are often unworthy of his care.

. The amorous verses have this to recommend them, that they are less hyperbolical than those of some other poets. Waller is not always at the last gasp; he does not die of a frown, nor live upon a smile. There is, however, too much. love, and too many trifles. Little things are made too important; and the Empire of Beauty is represented as exerting its influence further than can be allowed by the multiplicity of human passions, and the variety of human wants.

He certainly very much excelled in smoothness most of the writers who were living when his poetry commenced. . . The general character of his poetry is elegance and gaiety. He is never pathetick, and very rarely sublime. He seems

.

neither to have a mind much elevated by nature, nor amplified by learning. His thoughts are such as a liberal conversation and large acquaintance with life would. easily supply. Of the praise of Waller, though much may be taken away, much will remain; for it cannot be denied that he added something to our elegance of diction, and something to our propriety of thought.-JOHNSON, SAMUEL, 1779, Waller, Lives of the English Poets.

Waller, whom you proscribe, Sir, owed his reputation to the graces of his manner, though he frequently stumbled, and even fell flat; but a few of his smaller pieces are as graceful as possible: one might say that he excelled in painting ladies in enamel, but could not succeed in portraits in oil, large as life.-WALPOLE, HORACE, 1785, Letters (To J. Pinkerton), ed. Cunningham, vol. VIII, p. 564.

To say of Carew that he is superior to Waller, is saying nothing; for if every line of Waller were lost, I know not that poetry would have much to lament. The works of both however should be preserved, and I hope ever will be, as necessary to mark the progress of our language toward refinement. DRAKE, NATHAN, 1798-1820, Literary Hours, No. xxviii.

If Waller differed from the Cowleian sect of writers, he differed for the worse.

He

had as little poetry as they, and much less. wit: nor is the langour of his verses less offensive than the ruggedness of theirs.MACAULAY, THOMAS BABINGTON, 1828, Dryden, Edinburgh Review, Critical and Miscellaneous Essays.

His reputation was great, and somewhat more durable than that of similar poets has generally been: he did not witness its decay in his own protracted life, nor was it much diminished at the beginning of the next century. Nor was this wholly undeserved. Waller has a more uniform elegance, a more sure facility and happiness of expression, and, above all, a greater exemption from glaring faults, such as pedantry, extravagance, conceit, quaintness, obscurity, ungrammatical and unmeaning constructions, than any of the Caroline era with whom he would naturally be compared. We have only to open Carew or Lovelace to perceive the difference; not that Waller is wholly without some of these faults, but that they are much less frequent. If he rarely sinks, he never rises very high; and we find much good sense and selection, much skill in the mechanism of language and metre, without ardor and without imagination. In his amorous poetry he has little passion or sensibility; but he is never free and petulant, never tedious, and never absurd. His praise consists much. in negations; but, in a comparative estimate, perhaps negations ought to count for a good deal.-HALLAM, HENRY, 183739, Introduction to the Literature of Europe, pt. iv, ch. v, par. 22.

The crying truth is louder than Mr. Hallam, and cries, in spite of Fame, with whom whom poor Waller was an "'enfant trouvé," an heir by chance, rather than merit, that he is feeble poetically quite as surely as morally and politically, and that, so far from being an equal and sustained poet, he has not strength for unity even in his images, nor for continuity in his thoughts, nor for adequacy in his expression, nor for harmony in his versification. BROWNING, ELIZABETH BARRETT, 1842-63, The Book of the Poets.

Edmund Waller hardly deserves a place among the best names in English literature, either as a poet or as a man; and in giving him a small space here, I yield my own judgement to that of Dryden and Pope. . . . As a poet, Waller is certainly

"smooth, as Pope styles him, and comparatively destitute of that affectation which characterizes most of his contemporaries. CLEVELAND, CHARLES D., 1848, A Compendium of English Literature, p. 314.

Waller's poems were universally read and admired in the age in which they were published: nor was their general popularity much diminished during the early portion of the last century. The greater part of them now seldom find a reader; and the large majority of educated Englishmen are familiar with only a few lines of Waller; yet these few lines are such standard favourites, that their author's poetical reputation is safely preserved by them.-CREASY, SIR EDWARD, 1850-76, Memoirs of Eminent Etonians, p. 132.

Pope said of Waller, that he would have. been a better poet had he entertained less admiration of people in power. But surely it was the excess of that propensity which inspired him. He was naturally timid and servile; and poetry is the flower of a man's real nature, whatever it be, provided there be intellect and music enough to bring it to bear. Waller's very best pieces are those in praise of soverign authority and of a disdainful mistress. He would not have sung Saccharissa so well had she favored him.-HUNT, LEIGH, 1851, Table-Talk, p. 136.

Waller of the silvery tongue, --LYTTON, EDWARD LORD, 1860, St. Stephen's, pt. i.

There are not, perhaps, two hundred really good lines in all Waller's poetry. Extravagant conceits, feeble verses, and defective rhymes are constantly recurring, although the poems, being mostly short, are not tedious. Of elevated imagination, profound thought, or passion, he was utterly destitute; and it is only in detached passages, single stanzas, or small pieces, finished with great care and elegance, as the lines on a lady's girdle, those on the dwarfs, and a few of the lyrics, that we can discern that play of fancy, verbal sweetness, and harmony which gave so great a name to Waller for more than a hundred years.-CARRUTHERS, ROBERT, 1860, Waller, Encyclopædia Britannica, 8th ed., vol. XXI, p. 691.

The passages of merit in Waller's writings that elevate him from "the mob of gentlemen who wrote with ease," prove that he had the intellect to be a far

greater poet than he was, but he had not the heart. He was a brilliant wit, an elegant verse-writer, but he was as destitute of deep feeling as he was of high principle. It was only when trembling on the borders of the grave that he manifested anything like a noble and generous emotion. He was unfaithful to

the trust reposed in him, and, with full and brilliant capacity, fell immeasurably below the high office of the bard.-RICE, G. E., 1860, Edmund Waller, North American Review, vol. 91, pp. 383, 384.

One thing must be admitted in regard to Waller's poetry: it is free from all mere verbiage and empty sound; if he rarely or never strikes a very powerful note, there is at least always something for the fancy or the understanding, as well as for the ear, in what he writes. He abounds also in ingenious thoughts, which he dresses to the best advantage, and exhibits with great transparency of style. Eminent, however, as he is in his class, he must be reckoned among that subordinate class of poets who think and express themselves chiefly in similitudes, not among those who conceive and write passionately and metaphorically. He had a deccrative and illuminating, but not a transforming imagination.-CRAIK, GEORGE L., 1861, A Compendious History of English Literature and of the English Language, vol. II, p. 102

No man better understood the art of flattery and how to administer it with grace. SCOONES, W. BAPTISTE, 1880, Four Centuries of English Letters, p. 95.

He seizes anything frivolous, new, or convenient, on the wing; and his poetry is only a written conversation, -I mean the conversation which goes on at a ball, when people speak for the sake of speaking, lifting a lock of one's wig, or twisting about a glove. Gallantry, as he confesses, holds the chief place here, and one may be pretty certain that the love is not over-sincere. In fact, Waller sighs on purpose (Sacharissa had a fine dowry), or at least for the sake of good manners; that which is most evident in his tender poems is, that he aims at a flowing style and good rhymes. He is affected, he exaggerates, he strains after wit, he is always an author. . . . Nevertheless Waller is usually amiable; a sort of brilliant light floats like a halo round his verses;