The Press. — London, England, 1854-11-11 00:00:00

1072 Nittraturt. Annotated Edition of the English Poets. By Robert Bell. Works of Edmund Waller. London : J. W. Parker and Son. IN an edition of our poets, the selection of authors of secondary rank must depend on the taste of the editor. Some selection there must be, as the verse of certain periods, though valuable as marking the progress of literature or manners, may possess little claim to poetic merit. There may be a questicn as to the ad• missibility of John Oldham to a place in this collection, but there can he none as to the title of Edmund Waller. Were his works less excellent than they are he would still fill a conspicuous place among our poets from the part he had in fixing our language by his ex quisite taste in the choice of words, and the harmony of his numbers. Mr. Bell says that there are very few of his lines that do not read smoothly, and but one in which a syllabic defect can be detected. The reference here is probably to the lines on the death of the Duchess of Northumberland, p. 93. : It is enough her stone May honoured be with superscription, &c. Mr. Bell quotes this couplet as an example of " the female rhyme which rarely occurs in " Waller, and one of the very few blemishes he " carried down from the old writers." We sup pose " feeble " is the word intended ; but there are other syllabic defects in Waller. In his noblest composition, the panegyric to Crom well, " spirit " is twice used as a word of one syllable : Oft have we wondered how you hid in peace A mind proportioned to such things as these; How such a ruling spirit you could restrain, And practise first o'er yourself to reign. You that taught them to subdue their foes, Could order teach, and their high spirits compose. It is difficult to understand in what way Waller, with his fine ear, could have pro nounced " spirit " in these cases to have ac commodated it to his verse. He would never have intentionally interrupted the smoothness of his numbers for the sake of variety, and we must suppose, therefore, that the irregularity escaped him. The leading merits of Waller, his smooth numbers and careful language, were equally conspicuous in the first lines he ever wrote and in the last which he dictated to his daughter Margaret, when no longer able to hold a pen himself. Between one piece and the other there was an interval of nearly sixty-five years, yet the mechanical merit of his verse was the same throughout, a strong presumption that his poetic faculty was natural, and that it was, indeed, rather an in stinct than an accomplishment. On this view, however, it appears strange that he should have wrought with such extreme labour and slowness as it is certain marked his execution. The fact that in this small volume, the lines altogether not numbering more perhaps than five or six thousand, are collected the work of sixty-five years, is a proof of the toil with which he wrote. Ad mitting the execution of his verse to be nearly equal throughout, we must yet distinguish between its merit at different times. We cannot agree that the sacred pieces written in his extreme age are distinguished by the same poetic ability as the compositions he wrote in the maturity of his powers. They may show the same kind of art, care, and executive skill, but they exhibit, with one very remarkable exception, little of the inventive fire of Waller's happiest style. Like most other poets, there was a period when his genius seemed to reach its zenith and shine with brightest lustre; and this was, as might be Id fro: the slow development of his '-is fortieth and which must be immeasurably with his later superiority is ;nt in point of Lass, for example, 'nesse Mary to virtues of the THE PRESS. Orange, with youth, experience has; In action young, in council old; Orange is, what Augustus was, Brave, wary, provident, and bold. And again, alluding to Charles the Second's protection of the navy : A wall I like that which Athens had, By the Oracle's advice, of wood; Had theirs been such as Charles has made, That mighty state till now had stood. There is no trace here of the vigorous genius which wrote of Cromwell : Still as you rise, the State, exalted too, Finds no distemper while 'tie changed by you; Change like the world's great scene ! when, without noise, The rising sun night's vulgar lights destroys. The fine taste of Burke discerned the grandeur of these lines; and he quotes them with admiration in a note to his celebrated " Reflections." Waller wittily excused to Charles the inferiority of his lyrics on the Restoration by saying that poets excelled more in fiction than in truth. But the truer ex planation may be found in his increasing years, for Dryden's heroic stanzas on the death of Cromwell are far inferior to his " Annus Mirabilis." Waller was turned seventy when he penned the lines from which we have quoted to the Princess of Orange. The summer of his genius was late and short, but magnificent during its brief term, and rich in noble product. Mr. Bell says that the " Pane gyric" is immeasurably inferior to Dryden's " Heroic Stanzas." His taste or ours is strangely at fault. We greatly prefer Waller. Dryden's lines are in general cold and arti ficial, e.g.:— How shall I then begin, or where conclude, To draw a fame so truly circular? For in a round what order can be shew'd Where all the parts so equal perfect are ? Dryden has grand lines, it is true ; but his best are not equal to Waller's best. The finest stanza of Dryden is that perhaps in which he derives Cromwell's grandeur from Heaven, not fortune : His grandeur he derived from Heaven alone, For he was great ere fortune made him so ; And wars, like mists that rise against the sun, Made him but greater seem, not greater grow. Noble as these lines unquestionably are, they are yet, we think, not equal to the stanza we have already quoted from Waller. The com mercial glories of Cromwell's rule are summed up by Dryden in one verse : By his command we boldly cross'd the line And bravely fought where southern stars arise ; We traced the far-fetched gold unto the mine, And that which bribed our fathers made our prize. Compare this with the full flow of Waller's verse written some years previously : Heaven (that hath placed this island to give law, To balance Europe, and her states to awe), In this conjunction doth on Britain smile ; The greatest leader, and the greatest isle ! Whether this portion of the world were rent By the rude ocean from the continent, Or thus created, it was sure designed To be the sacred refuge of mankind. • ••• • Lords of the world's great waste, the ocean, we Whole forests send to reign upon the sea, And every coast may trouble, or relieve ; But none can visit us without your leave. Angels and we have this prerogative, That none can at our happy seats arrive ; While we descend at pleasure to invade The bad with vengeance, and the good to aid. Our little world, the image of the great, Like that, amidst the boundless ocean set, Of her own growth hath all that nature craves ; And all that's rare, as tribute from the waves. As Egypt does not on the clouds rely, But to the Nile owes more than to the sky ; So what our earth, and what our heaven, denies. Our ever constant friend, the sea, supplies. The taste of hot Arabia's spice we know, Free from the scorching sun that makes it grow; Without the worm, in Persian silks we shine; And, without planting, drink of every vine. To dig for wealth we weary not our limos : Gold, though the heaviest metal, hither swims ; Ours is the harvest where the Indians mow ; We plough the deep, and reap what others sow. Dryden slightly indicates Cromwell's " calmer influence," and the " love and mojesty" that blended in his mien ; but Waller, in some of the most splendid verses of his panegyric, draws the portrait of a benigner Caesar : Lees pleasure take brave minds in battles won, Than to restoring such as are undone ; Tigers have courage, and the rugged bear, But man alone can, whom he conquers, spare. SATURDAY, To pardon willing, and to punish loath, You strike with one hand, but you heal with both; Lifting up all that prostrate lie, you grieve You cannot make the dead again to live. The greater name of Dryden has, we think, warped Mr. Bell's judgment in this case. Take that away, and wo imagine few persons would hesitate as to which piece the palm should be assigned. We may remark here that the editor makes a curious observation in the note to Waller's lines on the Protector's death. " Gratitude," he says, " for favours to " come was, no doubt, the predominant motive " of most of the panegyrics on Charles; but the " tributes to Cromwell's memory, from which " neither pensions nor places could be looked " for, may at least be supposed to have been " sincere." This would be just enough if the Restoration had followed immediately on Crow wells' death. But as the Government he had established subsisted apparently in full force after his death, when these panegyrics were written, their authors might have conceived that they could not better deserve the favour of the ruling powers than by extolling the great Protector from whom they derived their authority. Mr. Bell's argument, if good for anything, would be good to show that all tri butes to the dead must necessarily be sincere, a conclusion manifestly absurd. Waller's genius was naturally complimen tary, and few poets have ever had the oppor tunity of panegyrising princes differing so widely in character as those who flourish in Waller's verse. James 1., Charles 1., Crom well, Charles 11., James 11., and the Prince of Orange, all received in turn the poet's homage. The compliment to the first Charles on his navy scarcely lags behind that paid to Cromwell : Should nature's self invade the world again, And o'er the centre spread the liquid main, Thy power were safe, and her destructive hand Would but enlarge the bounds of thy command; Thy dreadful fleet would style thee lord of all, And ride in triumph o'er the drowned ball ; Those towers of oak o'er fertile plains might go, And visit mountains where they once did grow. The weakness of the lines to Charles 11. on his restoration certainly did not arise from any reluctance to disparage the Government of the Protector, as Waller sings : Faith, law, and piety (that banish'd train), Justice and truth with you return again ; The city's trade and country's easy life Once more shall flourish without fraud or strife. Even of the morose James 11. could Waller sing, that— His mighty mind Esteem and reverence through the world do find. Mr. Bell, in his agreeable memoir of the poet, severely blames his weakness for en deavouring to secure his own safety by ac cusing his colleagues when arrested by the parliamentary party. This weakness, how ever, is not rare among poets, and may often be attributed to that acute sensibility which accompanies their genius. Their strength and infirmity, their glory and shame, are thus linked closely together, and they are happiest when they can escape those trials and tempta tions which draw forth the virtues of a sterner character. Life must have be en very precious to Waller, and it was on the whole so purely passed that we must regard leniently the efforts he made to save it. Of his private life fewer details are preserved than could be wished. His affection for Saccharissa seems to have been real, and he loved her with the hope of making her his wife. It must be taken, therefore, out of that class of poetic passions which are mainly imaginative or chivalric. He was mortified by his rejection, but we cannot agree with Mr. Bell, that his " imprecations of the de serted," as he calls them, conveyed in a letter to Lady Lucy Sidney on the approching marriage of her sister Saccharissa to Lord Sunderland, are " coarse raillery." To us the paragraph is an evidence of the affec tionate solicitude he still took in Saccluarissa's happiness:— May my Lady Dorothy (if we ma y y et call her so) suffer as much, and have the like passion for this young lord, whom she has preferred to the rest of mankind, as ear others have had for her ! And m a y the love, before the ygo about, make her taste of the first curse imposed on K °man kind, the pains of becoming a mother! May her firstborn be none of her own sex ; nor so like her, but that he may resemble her lord as much as herself! May she that always affected silence, and retiredness, have the house filled with the noise, and numbe r, of her children; and her expected from the slow devel.o TH ,T, , •, i z i , • time between his , . His " Panegyric," v !ri 11 1 4 0 4 , I .• o latter date, is i li . , 4 ,': ,:;91 t . e. If compared It.-• „,......: i-I T i ti)ft , kind, its great ..- k h, flt ''''' ' 4 . 4 sr ''' . How di ff erent , - -to: . - 1 ~.1 6......._ . • ~! . IC' : 1t....,9717c ne are those lines V, ' li , . . 1,, :e of the Pm( ,gI r l . , "C - i ge, in whioh the Wit 4 , •V. , • • ; . • are elebrated :