Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham by Edmund Waller; John Denham

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Waller's conduct in this whole matter was a mixture of cowardice and
meanness. Recollecting his poetical temperament, and the well-known
stories of Demosthenes at Cheronea, and Horace at Philippi, we are not
disposed to be harsh on his cowardice, but we have no excuse for his
meanness. It discovers a want of heart, and an infinite littleness of
soul. We can hardly conceive him to have possessed a drop of the blood
of Hampden or Cromwell in his veins, and cease to wonder why two
high-spirited ladies of rank should have spurned the homage of a poetic
poltroon, whom instinctively they seem to have known to be such, even
before he proved it to the world.

"Infamous, and _not_ contented," Waller repairs to the Continent, first
to Rouen, then to Switzerland and Italy, in company with his friend
Evelyn, and, in fine, settles for a season in Paris. Here he keeps open
table for the banished royalists, as well as for the French wits, till
his means are impaired by his liberality. A middling poet, a pitiful
politician, a fickle dangler in affairs of love, Waller was an admirable
_host_, and not only gave good dinners and suppers, but flavoured them
delicately with compliment and repartee. In Paris he recovered his tone
of spirits, and, had his money lasted, might have remained there till
his dying day. But fines and bribes had exhausted his patrimony, and he
was compelled first to sell a property in Bedfordshire, worth more than
L1,000 a-year, then to part with his wife's jewels, and in fine to sell
the last of these, which he called "the rump jewel." His family, too,
had increased, and added to his incumbrances. His favourite was a
daughter, Margaret, born in Rouen, who acted as his amanuensis. At last,
through the intercession of his brother-in-law, Scroope, he was
permitted to return to England. This was on the 13th of January 1652.
During all his residence on the Continent, he had continued to amuse
himself with poetry, "in which," says Johnson, "he sometimes speaks of
the rebels and their usurpation, in the natural language of an honest
man." If this mean that Waller, when he uttered such sentiments, was,
for the nonce, sincere, it is quite true; but if the Doctor means that
Waller was, speaking generally, an honest man, it is not true; and Dr.
Johnson repeatedly signifies, in other parts of his life, that he does
not believe it to be true. He speaks, for instance, of the "exorbitance
of his adulation," of his "having lost the esteem of all parties," and
says, "It is not possible to read without some contempt and indignation,
poems ascribing 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 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 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 of the song of the sceptic. Why argue about
principles while we can appeal to facts? Why shew either the
probabilities against, or the probabilities for, good sacred poetry,
while we see it before us, gushing from a thousand springs, and
gladdening every corner of the church and of the world?

Dr. Johnson says, "Whatever is great, desirable, or tremendous, is
comprised in the name of the Supreme Being. Omnipotence cannot be
exalted. Infinity cannot be amplified. Perfection cannot be improved."
All this is as true as it is pointedly expressed; but though true, it is
nothing to the purpose--nay, bears as much against prayer as against
poetry. What meant the Psalmist when he said, "My soul doth magnify the
Lord?" Did he aspire to exalt Omnipotence or to amplify perfection? No;
but only first to shew his own feeling of their magnitude; and, again,
to raise himself a step toward an approximately adequate conception of
the Most High. So in religious poetry. We cannot add to, or exalt God,
but we can raise ourselves up nearer to Him, and attain, if not a full
understanding, a deeper feeling of the elements of His surpassing
excellence and glory. Indeed, as the highest poetry (in Milton, for
instance) blossoms into prayer, so the truest prayer, often by
insensible gradation, becomes poetry.

Dr. Johnson says, that "of sentiments purely religious, the most simple
expression is the most sublime." True, and hence, the best religious
poetry is at once sublime and simple. He adds, "Poetry loses its lustre
and its power, because it is applied to the decoration of something more
excellent than itself." On this principle, poets should never sing of
God's works in nature--of the ocean, or the sun, or the stars--no, nor
of the heroic achievements of man's courage, or of the self-sacrifices
of his love--for are not all these more excellent than poetry? Dr
Johnson's theory would hush the "New Song" itself, and perpetuate that
silence which was once in heaven "for half-an-hour."

Long before the Doctor vented this paradox, Cowley, in his preface to
his poems, had written the following eloquent and memorable sentences on
this subject:--"When I consider how many bright and magnificent subjects
Scripture affords, and proffers, as it were, to poesy, in the wise
managing and illustrating whereof the glory of God Almighty might be
joined with the singular utility and noblest delight of mankind, it is
not without grief and indignation that I behold that divine science
employing all her inexhaustible riches of wit and eloquence, either in
the wicked and beggarly flattering of great persons, or the unmanly
idolising of foolish women, or the wretched affectation of scurril
laughter, or the confused dreams of senseless fables and metamorphoses.
Amongst all holy and consecrated things which the devil ever stole and
alienated from the service of the Deity--as altars, temples, sacrifices,
prayers, and the like--there is none that he so universally and so long
usurped as poetry. It is time to recover it out of the tyrant's hands,
and to restore it to the kingdom of God, who is the Father of it. It is
time to baptize it in Jordan, for it will never become clean by bathing
in the waters of Damascus.

"What can we imagine more proper for the ornaments of wit and learning
in the story of Deucalion than in that of Noah? Why will not the actions
of Samson afford as plentiful matter as the Labours of Hercules?
(Perhaps from this Milton took the hint of writing his "Samson
Agonistes.") Why is not Jephtha's daughter as good a woman as Iphigenia?
and the friendship of David and Jonathan more worthy celebration than
that of Theseus and Pirithous? Does not the passage of Moses and the
Israelites into the Holy Land yield incomparably more poetic variety
than the voyages of Ulysses and Aeneas? Are the obsolete, threadbare
tales of Thebes and Troy half so well stored with great, heroical, and
supernatural actions (since verse will needs find or make such), as the
wars of Joshua, of the Judges, of David, and divers others? Can all the
transformations of the gods give such copious hints to flourish and
expatiate on as the true miracles of Christ, or of His prophets and
apostles? What do I instance in these few particulars? All the books in
the Bible are either already most admirable and exalted pieces of
poetry, or are the best materials in the world for it.

"Yet," he adds with great judiciousness, "though they be so proper in
themselves to be made use of for this purpose, none but a good artist
will know how to do it, neither must we think to cut and polish diamonds
with so little pains and skill as we do marble. He who can write a
profane poem well, may write a divine one better; but he who can do that
but ill, will do this much worse, and so far from elevating poesy will
but abase divinity. The same fertility of invention--the same wisdom of
disposition--the same judgment in observance of decencies--the same
lustre and vigour of elocution--the same modesty and majesty of number--
briefly, the same kind of habit--is required in both, only this latter
allows better stuff, and therefore would look more deformedly drest in
it."

The errors of a great author are often more valuable than his sound
sentiments; because they tend, by the reaction they provoke, and the
replies they elicit, to dart new light upon the opposite truths. And so
it has been with this dogma of the illustrious Lexicographer. It has led
to some admirable rejoinders from such pens as those of Montgomery, and
of Christopher North, which have not only rebutted Johnson's objections,
but have directed public attention more strongly to the general theme,
and served to shed new light upon the nature and province of religious
poetry.

CONTENTS.

WALLER'S POEMS.

MISCELLANEOUS:--

Of the Danger His Majesty (being Prince) Escaped in the Road at St
Andero.

Of His Majesty's receiving the News of the Duke of Buckingham's Death

On the Taking of Salle

Upon His Majesty's Repairing of St. Paul's

The Countess of Carlisle in Mourning

In Answer to One who writ a Libel against the Countess of Carlisle

Of her Chamber

Thyrsis, Galatea

On my Lady Dorothy Sidney's Picture

At Penshurst

Of the Lady who can Sleep when she Pleases

Of the Misreport of her being Painted

Of her Passing through a Crowd of People

The Story of Phoebus and Daphne, applied

On the Friendship betwixt Saccharissa and Amoret

At Penshurst

The Battle of the Summer Islands

Of the Queen

The Apology of Sleep, for not Approaching the Lady who can do anything
but Sleep when she Pleases

Puerperium

A La Malade

Upon the Death of my Lady Rich

Of Love

For Drinking of Healths

Of my Lady Isabella, Playing on the Lute

Of Mrs. Arden

Of the Marriage of the Dwarfs

Love's Farewell

From a Child

On a Girdle

The Fall

Of Sylvia

The Bud

On the Discovery of a Lady's Painting

Of Loving at First Sight

The Self-Banished

A Panegyric to my Lord Protector, of the Present Greatness, and Joint
Interest, of His Highness, and this Nation

On the Head of a Stag

The Miser's Speech, in a Masque

Chloris and Hylas, made to a Saraband

In Answer of Sir John Suckling's Verses

An Apology for having Loved Before

The Night-Piece; or, a Picture Drawn in the Dark

On the Picture of a Fair Youth, Taken after he was Dead

On a Brede of Divers Colours, Woven by Four Ladies

Of a War with Spain, and Fight at Sea

Upon the Death of the Lord Protector

On St. James's Park, as lately Improved by His Majesty

Of Her Royal Highness, Mother to the Prince of Orange; and of her
Portrait, Written by the Late Duchess of York, while she Lived with her

Upon Her Majesty's New Buildings at Somerset House

Of a Tree Cut in Paper

Verses to Dr. George Rogers, on his Taking the Degree of Doctor of Physic
at Padua, in the Year 1664

Instructions to a Painter, for the Drawing of the Posture and Progress
of His Majesty's Forces at Sea, under the Command of His Highness-Royal;
together with the Battle and Victory obtained over the Dutch, June 3,
1665

Of English Verse

These Verses were Writ in the Tasso of Her Royal Highness

The Triple Combat

Upon our Late Loss of the Duke of Cambridge

Of the Lady Mary, Princess of Orange

Upon Ben Johnson

On Mr. John Fletcher's Plays

Upon the Earl of Roscommon's Translation of Horace, 'De Arte Poetica;'
and of the Use of Poetry

On the Duke of Monmouth's Expedition into Scotland in the Summer
Solstice

Of an Elegy made by Mrs. Wharton on the Earl of Rochester

Of Her Majesty, on New-Year's Day, 1683

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