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began there have been very few poets indeed that have been half so rich as he. His mother, whose Christian name is lost, sent him to Eton at an early age, and transferred him thence, probably about 1618, to Cambridge; he was entered a scholar at King's College, where there is now no record of his entrance. Tradition informed the author of his Life that he was extraordinarily proficient in all his studies while at the University, which he left early that he might take part at once in public life.

We are, however, met here by a serious difficulty. The accepted story is that Waller entered parliament, as member for Amersham, at the age of sixteen,—that is to say, in 1621. According to this legend, the young poet was one of those summoned on the 16th of January in that year to consult with James I. on the crisis in Bohemia and the general distracted state of Christendom. There is no primâ facie absurdity in this, for babes and sucklings found their way into the House of Commons in those days, and no questions asked. But the poet's tomb in Beaconsfield Churchyard, the inscription on which was carefully compiled by Rymer the historiographer from documents placed in his hands by the family, states that Waller entered parliament, as member for

Amersham, when he was not yet eighteen'. This would point to the beginning of 1623, by which time, as we shall presently see, he was already deeply interested in affairs. But unhappily for these stories, cold fact steps in and mentions that Amersham had ceased to return members in the reign of Edward II., and that its burgesses did not resume the right of election until 1624, when Hakeville and Crewe represented it at Westminster during James's fourth and last parliament. There are two ways out of the difficulty: the one that Waller attended the third parliament sub silentio, which his prudent mother might think a wise mode of securing a political education; the other, that he was duly returned, but for some other borough than Amersham.

But whatever were the youth's exact relations to the court and the houses of parliament, we know that they were of such a nature as could only be attained by a personage who united precocious talents to unusual social advantages. On the 30th of December, 1621, before he had completed his seventeenth year, Waller was witness to a

1 The phrase of Rymer is precise, "Nondum octodecenalis inter ardua regni tractantes sedem habuit, a burgo de Agmondesham missus." This inscription was made in 1700, at the expense of Mary, the poet's second wife, and Edmund his son.

strange scene which imprinted itself deeply upon his memory, and which he vividly described long afterwards to Dr Birch. It was the day upon which James I. had gone to Whitehall, and had practically dissolved his third parliament by tearing the protestation of the Commons out of the journals of the House. He said that he hoped he might hear no more about liberty of speech.

At dinner-time Edmund Waller, coming into court, found the King seated at table, with the Bishops of Winchester and Durham standing behind his chair. Still out of temper with the obstinacy of the Commons, the King growled out to the two prelates, “My Lords, cannot I take my subjects' money when I want it, without all this formality in Parliament?" Neale, Bishop of Durham, hastened to reply, "God forbid, sire, but you should; you are the breath of our nostrils." Whereupon King James turned and said to the venerable and stately Lancelot Andrewes, "Well, my Lord of Winchester, what say you?" "Sire," was the answer, "I have no skill to judge of parliamentary cases." The King persisted, "No put-off, my Lord; answer me presently." "Then, Sire, I think it is lawful for you to take my brother Neale's money, for he offers it." Waller tells us that the company was pleased with this

politic reply, but the King was in no temper for wit. He brooded over it, and some time afterwards he allowed himself, with that coarseness which was native to him, to crack a vulgar jest at the expense of Bishop Andrewes' smartness.

This anecdote and a single copy of verses are all that are left to us of this earliest period of Waller's career. The copy of verses is so poor and tiresome that I should despair of interesting my readers in it, if it were not understood that in the course of our present inquiry we are not mainly on the outlook for what is beautiful or witty in itself. These verses, which Waller published as his earliest and which may be attributed to the year 1621, have a structural peculiarity which is of the most curious importance. In his Epistle to the Earl of Orrery, prefixed in 1664 to the anonymous edition of the Rival Ladies, Dryden drew attention for the first time, but in language which our later knowledge can scarcely improve, to the main peculiarity of Waller's poetical style. "Rime," he said, "has all the advantages of prose, besides its own. But the excellence and dignity of it were never fully known till Mr Waller taught it: he first made writing easily an art; first showed us how to conclude the sense, most commonly in distichs, which, in the verse of those before him, runs on for so many

lines together, that the reader is out of breath to overtake it."

Dryden here notes the fact to which I called attention in my last chapter, and which I am afraid I must insist upon at the risk of being tedious the principle of the structure of the romantic poetry was overflow, that of the classical poetry was distich. It is therefore of extraordinary interest to find Edmund Waller, as early as 1621— that is to say, nearly a quarter of a century before anyone else in England did so-writing his copy of verses "To the King on his Navy," in distichs as correct and monotonous as any that he composed to the day of his death; in thirty-two lines we find but one overflow 1.

1 "Where e'er thy Navy spreads her canvas wings
Homage to thee, and peace to all she brings;
The French and Spaniard, when thy flags appear,
Forget their hatred and consent to fear.

So Jove from Ida did both hosts survey,
And when he pleas'd to thunder part the fray;
Ships heretofore in seas like fishes sped,

The mightiest still upon the smallest fed," etc.

Written in 1621, these lines might have been signed in 1721 by some versifier of the school of Addison. But I confess that I cannot persuade myself to receive them as an untouched product of the reign of James I. The line about the French and Spaniard points to Charles I. and to 1634. There is nothing difficult of acceptation in the idea that Waller revised an old poem to suit a new occasion.

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