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 been 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 affectionate solicitude he
still took in Saccluarissa's happiness:—
May my Lady Dorothy (if we may yet 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 may 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 number, of her children; and her

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