Books: Lives of the Poets: Waller, Milton, Cowley
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Samuel Johnson >> Lives of the Poets: Waller, Milton, Cowley
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As the disease increased upon him, he composed himself for his
departure; and calling upon Dr. Birch to give him the holy
sacrament, he desired his children to take it with him, and made an
earnest declaration of his faith in Christianity. It now appeared
what part of his conversation with the great could be remembered
with delight. He related, that being present when the Duke of
Buckingham talked profanely before King Charles, he said to him, "My
lord, I am a great deal older than your grace and have, I believe,
heard more arguments for atheism than ever your grace did; but I
have lived long enough to see there is nothing in them; and so, I
hope, your grace will."
He died October 21, 1687, and was buried at Beaconsfield, with a
monument erected by his son's executors, for which Rymer wrote the
inscription, and which I hope is now rescued from dilapidation.
He left several children by his second wife, of whom his daughter
was married to Dr. Birch. Benjamin, the eldest son, was
disinherited, and sent to New Jersey as wanting common
understanding. Edmund, the second son, inherited the estate, and
represented Agmondesham in parliament, but at last turned quaker.
William, the third son, was a merchant in London. Stephen, the
fourth, was an eminent doctor of laws, and one of the commissioners
for the union. There is said to have been a fifth, of whom no
account has descended.
The character of Waller, both moral and intellectual, has been drawn
by Clarendon, to whom he was familiarly known, with nicety, which
certainly none to whom he was not known can presume to emulate. It
is therefore inserted here, with such remarks as others have
supplied; after which, nothing remains but a critical examination of
his poetry.
"Edmund Waller," says Clarendon, "was born to a very fair estate, by
the parsimony, or frugality, of a wise father and mother; and he
thought it so commendable an advantage, that he resolved to improve
it with his utmost care, upon which in his nature he was too much
intent; and in order to that, he was so much reserved and retired,
that he was scarcely ever heard of, till by his address and
dexterity he had gotten a very rich wife in the city, against all
the recommendation and countenance and authority of the court, which
was thoroughly engaged on the behalf of Mr. Crofts, and which used
to be successful, in that age, against any opposition. He had the
good fortune to have an alliance and friendship with Dr. Morley, who
had assisted and instructed him in the reading many good books, to
which his natural parts and promptitude inclined him, especially the
poets; and at the age when other men used to give over writing
verses (for he was near thirty years when he first engaged himself
in that exercise, at least that he was known to do so), he surprised
the town with two or three pieces of that kind; as if a tenth Muse
had been newly born to cherish drooping poetry. The doctor at that
time brought him into that company which was most celebrated for
good conversation, where he was received and esteemed with great
applause and respect. He was a very pleasant discourser in earnest
and in jest, and therefore very grateful to all kind of company,
where he was not the less esteemed for being very rich.
He had been even nursed in parliaments, where he sat when he was
very young; and so, when they were resumed again (after a long
intermission) he appeared in those assemblies with great advantage;
having a graceful way of speaking, and by thinking much on several
arguments (which his temper and complexion, that had much of
melancholic, inclined him to), he seemed often to speak upon the
sudden, when the occasion had only administered the opportunity of
saying what he had thoroughly considered, which gave a great lustre
to all he said; which yet was rather of delight than weight. There
needs no more be said to extol the excellence and power of his wit,
and pleasantness of his conversation, than that it was of magnitude
enough to cover a world of very great faults; that is, so to cover
them, that they were not taken notice of to his reproach, viz., a
narrowness in his nature to the lowest degree; an abjectness and
want of courage to support him in any virtuous undertaking; an
insinuation and servile flattery to the height, the vainest and most
imperious nature could be contented with; that it preserved and won
his life from those who most resolved to take it, and in an occasion
in which he ought to have been ambitious to have lost it; and then
preserved him again from the reproach and the 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 age with that rare
felicity, that his company was acceptable where his spirit was
odious; and he was at least pitied where he was most detested."
Such is the account of Clarendon; on which it may not be improper 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 conspicuous much to their advantage. He
was now, 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 his fortune.
That Clarendon might misjudge the motive of his retirement is the
more probable, because he has evidently 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, 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 expense of one hundred pounds,
took him into the country as director of his studies, and then
procured him admission into the company of the friends of
literature. Of this fact Clarendon had a nearer knowledge than the
biographer, and is therefore more to be credited.
The account of Waller's parliamentary eloquence is seconded by
Burnet, who, though he calls him "the delight of the House," adds,
that "he was only concerned to say that which should make him be
applauded, he never laid the business of the House to heart, being a
vain and empty, though a witty man."
Of his insinuation and flattery it is not unreasonable to believe
that the truth is told. Ascham, in his elegant description of those
whom in modern language we term wits, says, that they are "open
flatterers, and private mockers." Waller showed a little of both,
when, upon sight of the Duchess of Newcastle's verses on the Death
of a Stag, he declared that he would give all his own compositions
to have written them, and being charged with the exorbitance of his
adulation, answered, that "nothing was too much to be given, that a
lady might be saved from the disgrace of such a vile performance."
This, however, was no very mischievous or very unusual deviation
from truth; had his hypocrisy been confined to such transactions, he
might have been forgiven, though not praised: for who forbears to
flatter an author or a lady?
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 democracy proceeded from his
connexion 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 draft 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
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
splendour, and was the only Englishman, except the Lord St. Albans,
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 rapture. His opinion concerning the duty of a poet
is contained in his declaration, that "he would blot from his works
any line that did not contain some motive to virtue."
The characters by which Waller intended to distinguish his writing
are sprightliness and dignity; in his smallest pieces, he endeavours
to be gay; in the larger to be great. Of his airy and light
productions, the chief source is gallantry, that attentive reverence
of female excellence which has descended to us from the Gothic ages.
As his poems are commonly occasional, and his addresses personal, he
was not so liberally supplied with grand as with soft images; for
beauty is more easily found than magnanimity.
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
anything ludicrous or familiar. He seems always to do his best;
though his subjects are often unworthy of his care.
It is not easy to think without some contempt on an author, who is
growing illustrious in his own opinion by verses, at one time, "To a
Lady, who can do anything but sleep, when she pleases;" at another,
"To a Lady who can sleep when she pleases;" now, "To a Lady, on her
passing through a crowd of people;" then, "On a braid of divers
colours woven by four Ladies;" "On a tree cut in paper;" or, "To a
Lady, from whom he received the copy of verses on the paper-tree,
which, for many years, had been missing."
Genius now and then produces a lucky trifle. We still read the Dove
of Anacreon, and Sparrow of Catullus: and a writer naturally
pleases himself with a performance, which owes nothing to the
subject. But compositions merely pretty have the fate of other
pretty things, and are quitted in time for something useful; they
are flowers fragrant and fair, but of short duration; or they are
blossoms to be valued only as they foretell fruits.
Among Waller's little poems are some, which their excellency ought
to secure from oblivion; as, To Amoret, comparing the different
modes of regard with which he looks on her and Sacharissa; and the
verses on Love, that begin, "Anger in hasty words or blows."
In others he is not equally successful; sometimes his thoughts are
deficient, and sometimes his expression.
The numbers are not always musical; as,
Fair Venus, in thy soft arms
The god of rage confine:
For thy whispers are the charms
Which only can divert his fierce design.
What though he frown, and to tumult do incline;
Thou the flame
Kindled in his breast canst tame
With that snow which unmelted lies on thine.
He seldom indeed fetches an amorous sentiment from the depths of
science; his thoughts are for the most part easily understood, and
his images such as the superfices of nature readily supplies; he has
a just claim to popularity, because he writes to common degrees of
knowledge; and is free at least from philosophical pedantry, unless
perhaps the end of a song to the Sun may be excepted, in which he is
too much a Copernican. To which may be added the simile of the
"palm" in the verses "on her passing through a crowd;" and a line in
a more serious poem on the Restoration, about vipers and treacle,
which can only be understood by those who happen to know the
composition of the Theriaca.
His thoughts are sometimes hyperbolical and his images unnatural
The plants admire,
No less than those of old did Orpheus' lyre;
If she sit down, with tops all tow'rds her bow'd,
They round about her into arbours crowd;
Or if she walks, in even ranks they stand,
Like some well-marshall'd and obsequious band.
In another place:
While in the park I sing, the listening deer
Attend my passion, and forget to fear:
When to the beeches I report my flame,
They bow their heads, as if they felt the same.
To gods appealing, when I reach their bowers
With loud complaints they answer me in showers.
To thee a wild and cruel soul is given,
More deaf than trees, and prouder than the Heaven!
On the head of a stag:
O fertile head! which every year
Could such a crop of wonder bear!
The teeming earth did never bring,
So soon, so hard, so large a thing:
Which might it never have been cast,
Each year's growth added to the last,
These lofty branches had supplied
The earth's bold sons' prodigious pride:
Heaven with these engines had been scaled,
When mountains heap'd on mountains fail'd.
Sometimes having succeeded in the first part, he makes a feeble
conclusion. In the song of "Sacharissa's and Amoret's Friendship,"
the two last stanzas ought to have been omitted.
His images of gallantry are not always in the highest degree
delicate.
Then shall my love this doubt displace
And gain such trust that I may come
And banquet sometimes on thy face,
But make my constant meals at home.
Some applications may be thought too remote and unconsequential; as
in the verses on the Lady Dancing:
The sun in figures such as these
Joys with the moon to play:
To the sweet strains they advance,
Which do result from their own spheres;
As this nymph's dance
Moves with the numbers which she hears.
Sometimes a thought, which might perhaps fill a distich, is expanded
and attenuated till it grows weak and almost evanescent.
Chloris! since first our calm of peace
Was frighted hence, this good we find,
Your favours with your fears increase,
And growing mischiefs make you kind.
So the fair tree, which still preserves
Her fruit, and state, while no wind blows,
In storms from that uprightness swerves;
And the glad earth about her strows
With treasure from her yielding boughs.
His images are not always distinct; as in the following passage, he
confounds LOVE as a person with LOVE as a passion:
Some other nymphs, with colours faint,
And pencil slow, may Cupid paint,
And a weak heart in time destroy;
She has a stamp, and prints the boy;
Can, with a single look, inflame
The coldest breast, the rudest tame.
His sallies of casual flattery are sometimes elegant and happy, as
that in return for the Silver Pen; and sometimes empty and trifling,
as that upon the Card torn by the Queen. There are a few lines
written in the Duchess's Tasso, which he is said by Fenton to have
kept a summer under correction. It happened to Waller, as to
others, that his success was not always in proportion to his labour.
Of these pretty compositions, neither the beauties nor the faults
deserve much attention. 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. Such books, therefore, may be considered as
showing the world under a false appearance, and, so far as they
obtain credit from the young and unexperienced, as misleading
expectation, and misguiding practice.
Of his nobler and more weighty performances, the greater part is
panegyrical: for of praise he was very lavish, as is observed by
his imitator, Lord Lansdowne:
No satyr stalks within the hallow'd ground,
But queens and heroines, kings and gods abound;
Glory and arms and love are all the sound.
In the first poem, on the danger of the prince on the coast of
Spain, there is a puerile and ridiculous mention of Arion at the
beginning; and the last paragraph, on the cable, is in part
ridiculously mean, and in part ridiculously tumid. The poem,
however, is such as may be justly praised, without much allowance
for the state of our poetry and language at that time.
The two next poems are upon the king's behaviour at the death of
Buckingham, and upon his Navy.
He has, in the first, used the pagan deities with great propriety:
'Twas want of such a precedent as this
Made the old heathens frame their gods amiss.
In the poem on the Navy, those lines are very noble which suppose
the king's power secure against a second deluge; so noble, that it
were almost criminal to remark the mistake of "centre" for
"surface," or to say that the empire of the sea would be worth
little if it were not that the waters terminate in land.
The poem upon Sallee has forcible sentiments; but the conclusion is
feeble. That on the Repairs of St. Paul's has something vulgar and
obvious; such as the mention of Amphion; and something violent and
harsh: as,
So all our minds with his conspire to grace
The Gentiles' great apostle and deface
Those state obscuring sheds, that like a chain
Seem'd to confine, and fetter him again:
Which the glad saint shakes off at his command,
As once the viper from his sacred hand.
So joys the aged oak, when we divide
The creeping ivy from his injured side.
Of the two last couplets, the first is extravagant, and the second
mean.
His praise of the Queen is too much exaggerated; and the thought,
that he "saves lovers, by cutting off hope, as gangrenes are cured
by lopping the limb," presents nothing to the mind but disgust and
horror.
Of the Battle of the Summer Islands, it seems not easy to say
whether it is intended to raise terror or merriment. The beginning
is too splendid for jest, and the conclusion too light for
seriousness. The versification is studied, the scenes are
diligently displayed, and the images artfully amplified; but as it
ends neither in joy nor sorrow, it will scarcely be read a second
time.
The panegyric upon Cromwell has obtained from the public a very
liberal dividend of praise, which, however, cannot be said to have
been unjustly lavished; for such a series of verses had rarely
appeared before in the English language. Of the lines some are
grand, some are graceful, and all are musical. There is now and
then a feeble verse; or a trifling thought; but its great fault is
the choice of its hero.
The poem of the War with Spain begins with lines more vigorous and
striking than Waller is accustomed to produce. The succeeding parts
are variegated with better passages and worse. There is something
too farfetched in the comparison of the Spaniards drawing the
English on by saluting St. Lucar with cannon, "to lambs awakening
the lion by bleating." The fate of the Marquis and his Lady, who
were burnt in their ship, would have moved more, had the poet not
made him die like the Phoenix, because he had spices about him, nor
expressed their affection and their end by a conceit at once false
and vulgar:
Alive, in equal flames of love they burn'd,
And now together are to ashes turn'd.
The verses to Charles, on his return, were doubtless intended to
counterbalance the panegyric on Cromwell. If it has been thought
inferior to that with which it is naturally compared, the cause of
its deficience has been already remarked.
The remaining pieces it is not necessary to examine singly. They
must be supposed to have faults and beauties of the same kind with
the rest. The Sacred Poems, however, deserve particular regard;
they were the work of Waller's declining life, of those hours in
which he looked upon the fame and the folly of the time past with
the sentiments which his great predecessor Petrarch bequeathed to
posterity, upon his review of that love and poetry which have given
him immortality.
That natural jealousy which makes every man unwilling to allow much
excellence in another, always produces a disposition to believe that
the mind grows old with the body; and that he, whom we are now
forced to confess superior, is hastening daily to a level with
ourselves. By delighting to think this of the living, we learn to
think it of the dead; and Fenton, with all his kindness for Waller,
has the luck to mark the exact time when his genius passed the
zenith, which he places at his fifty-fifth year. This is to allot
the mind but a small portion. Intellectual decay is doubtless not
uncommon; but it seems not to be universal. Newton was in his
eighty-fifth year improving his chronology, a few days before his
death; and Waller appears not, in my opinion, to have lost at
eighty-two any part of his poetical power.
His Sacred Poems do not please like some of his other works; but
before the fatal fifty-five, had he written on the same subjects,
his success would hardly have been better.
It has been the frequent lamentation of good men that verse has been
too little applied to the purposes of worship, and many attempts
have been made to animate devotion by pious poetry. That they have
very seldom attained their end is sufficiently known, and it may not
be improper to inquire why they have miscarried.
Let no pious ear be offended if I advance, in opposition to many
authorities, that poetical devotion cannot often please. The
doctrines of religion may indeed be defended in a didactic poem; and
he, who has the happy power of arguing in verse, will not lose it
because his subject is sacred. A poet may describe the beauty and
the grandeur of nature, the flowers of the spring, and the harvests
of autumn, the vicissitudes of the tide, and the revolutions of the
sky, and praise the Maker for his works, in lines which no reader
shall lay aside. The subject of the disputation is not piety, but
the motives to piety; that of the description is not God, but the
works of God.
Contemplative piety, or the intercourse between God and the human
soul, cannot be poetical. Man, admitted to implore the mercy of his
Creator, and plead the merits of his Redeemer, is already in a
higher state than poetry can confer.
The essence of poetry is invention; such invention as by producing
something unexpected, surprises and delights. The topics of
devotion are few, and being few are universally known; but, few as
they are, they can be made no more; they can receive no grace from
novelty of sentiment, and very little from novelty of expression.
Poetry pleases by exhibiting an idea more grateful to the mind than
things themselves afford. This effect proceeds from the display of
those parts of nature which attract, and the concealment of those
which repel, the imagination: but religion must be shown as it is;
suppression and addition equally corrupt it; and such as it is, it
is known already.
From poetry the reader justly expects, and from good poetry always
obtains, the enlargement of his comprehension and elevation of his
fancy: but this is rarely to be hoped by Christians from metrical
devotion. 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.
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