that look sadly as though they were manufactured to satisfy a public demand, but of genuine lyrics dedicated to Lady Dorothy Sidney we do not possess enough to form the thinnest of pamphlets. It is, of course, possible that as none of these poems were printed until long after the suit was over, and as Waller affected indifference for merely literary glory, many were written which the young lady and her friends neglected to preserve. seems to me probable, however, that Waller did. not address her very often, or upon any occasions except those on which he was sure to make a direct social sensation.

It

There is nothing tender, nothing personal in any of these famous verses. They form a straightforward and manly statement of devotion, after its kind, but they are as far from passion as from indiscretion. The lover addresses his mistress as if in the hearing of a large and courtly throng of persons, who seem lightly to applaud a suit so elegant and so genteel. He is as deliberate, as allusive, as calm and as gentlemanlike as Magdelon in the Précieuses Ridicules wishes her suitor to be, and we have an indescribable sensation that the verses are composed and recited by a person whose wig and gloves and shoe-strings are invariably in the most admirable order. We feel in reading

these Sacharissa poems that we are slipping into the classical atmosphere, with its horror of the personal note. Not thus have the English poets hitherto made love, Drayton with his

"Since there's no help, come, let us kiss and part," or Donne with his

"O more than Moon,

Draw not thy seas to drown me in thy sphere."

There is no whisper here, no trouble of the pulses, no mystery. We are positively astonished to hear this grave and wealthy young man at Beaconsfield discoursing so placidly and decorously of his sorrows:

In vain, he says:—

"In vain I struggled with the yoke
Of mighty Love; that conqu'ring look,
When next beheld, like lightning strook
My blasted soul; and made me bow
Lower than those I pity'd now.

So the tall stag, upon the brink
Of some smooth stream about to drink,
Surveying there his armèd head,
With shame remembers that he fled
The scornèd dogs; resolves to try
The combat next: but if their cry
Invades again his trembling ear,
He straight resumes his wonted care;

Leaves the untasted spring behind,

And, winged with fear, outflies the wind."

We feel that nothing could be more gracefully turned; we seem to hear a murmur run through the audience of "Charming! Charming!" but the last thing that crosses our mind is to sympathize with the stricken deer.

To see in how conscious and how public a spirit the whole suit was conducted, we have only to examine the very curious piece entitled The Story of Phœbus and Daphne applied. Here Waller calls himself Thirsis :

"Thirsis, a youth of the inspirèd Train,
Fair Sacharissa loved, but loved in vain;
Like Phoebus sung the no less amorous boy,
Like Daphne she as lovely and as coy."

The confident conceit of these verses is very remarkable. He positively ventures to say that he, Mr Edmund Waller, is pursuing the flying Nymph "with numbers such as Phœbus' self might use" and with an eye turned directly to the auditorium, does not even hesitate to declare that

"What he sung in his immortal strain, Though unsuccessful, was not sung in vain."

Many of the poets of the seventeenth century, from Shakespeare downwards, prophesied for the

objects of their passion an immortality in their verse, but this of Waller's is a singular instance of a poet promising himself immortality, in spite of the object of his verse. This resolute self-aggrandizement, too nobly born to seem vulgar or fatuous, must be taken into consideration as a factor in Waller's poetical success1. From the summit of a position to which his wealth, his social graces, his wit and his adroitness had raised him, he gravely announced himself to the world as Phabi Sacerdos, not a priest only, but the highpriest of Apollo.

We can form but a very vague idea of Lady Dorothy Sidney from the Sacharissa poems; she is everywhere overshadowed by Waller himself. We are told that she can sleep when she pleases, and this inspires a copy of verses; but later on we are told that she can do anything but sleep when she pleases, and this leads to another copy of verses which leave us exactly where we were when we started. We are told of a misreport of her being painted, of the likelihood of her being painted, in another sense, by Vandyke, of a crowd in which she nearly became crushed, of how her

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1 Malherbe, his French prototype, had possessed the same sacerdotal dignity. In his sonnet to the King he had remarked :Les ouvrages communs vivent quelques années, Ce que Malherbe écrit dure éternellement.

lover keeps away from her lest he should love her more. There is nothing positive, nothing concrete; we move about among rumours that are unfounded and events that never happen. Yet it is noticeable that each arquebusade of wit, each cunning attack upon this battlemented beauty, is made at a moment when the eyes of society are upon her and him. A great poet of the generation before Waller's had said-in lines which have no appearance of having been intended for publication, and which in fact were never published during his lifetime

"Twere profanation of our joys

To tell the laity our love."

The Sacharissa cycle is at the extreme opposite of this tender and intimate manner of poetry. If the laity is not listening, and if the laity is not largely composed of persons of quality, Waller is silent as a lover.

And yet the Sacharissa poems contain some exquisite numbers, and it is to be noted that, under the influence of George Morley, Waller lost for a time that persistence in the heroic distich which had distinguished his early youth, and was to be the unbroken habit of his middle and later life. The Song to a Rose is well known, but deserves repetition :