like parasites, were bought and destroyed. The poet plays about the subject with elegance unusual even in him, who seldom wrote otherwise than as a courtier and a gentleman. He refers to the wonders of old, the cities built to music, the magic instrumentation of Orpheus and Amphion. "Those antique minstrels sure were Charles-like kings, Cities their lutes, and subjects' hearts their strings, On which with so divine a hand they strook Consent of motion from their breath they took." The augury is perhaps a little unhappy, to us who can see this Orpheus-like Charles presently torn to pieces by the outraged liberties of England, and that comely head floating down the Hebrus of the Revolution, but the allusion-for a classical allusion-was pretty, and the verse wonderfully polished. With singular skill Waller interweaves this strain of panegyric, this warm cloud of incense waved under the nostrils of Charles, with accurate and prosaic information about the edifice described. He tells us that the Choir is nearly finished,— which conveniently helps us to the date, 1635; that the western end, with its stately Corinthian portico, was raised at the King's personal expense, and what share private bounty had in paying for the rest of the architecture. We have but to consider how difficult it would "Paul's, the late theme of such a Muse whose flight But here, in 1642, And for fear that his readers should not know who "the best of Poets' was, Denham adds a note, "Master Waller," a note in subsequent editions reduced to M. W. before Waller had printed a line, we find him boldly addressed as "the best of Poets" by the pupil who was treading most closely in his footsteps, and who, though ten years his junior, had outstripped him in the date of publication. We must reserve consideration of Denham, however, until our next chapter, and glance for a few moments at the poem which called forth such eulogy from him. We find it to be of the class which we are beginning to expect from Waller— that is, an adroit and graphic account in graceful distichs of an event which was happening at that moment to entertain the public. The commissioners had met to discuss the question of rebuilding St Paul's in 1632, and in the following spring the mean buildings which were clustered around the cathedral, and which clung to its sides to literature, but we may close our present examination of his services by a brief survey of these years, in order that we may escape the need to return to them in our next chapter. For a little while Waller took a position in public affairs more prominent than that which any other English poet has attained, a position which might easily have placed him where Lamartine was placed long afterwards in France. When the breach widened between the Houses and the King, Waller found himself suspended between the two parties in a perilous isolation. There was a great deal to attract him in each party. Clarendon tells us that he was always welcome at court, because of his parts and courtesy, and because he had the tact never to ask for any honours or preferments. On the other hand, he was the nephew of Hampden, the cousin of Cromwell, a country gentleman who suffered as his neighbours did from the intolerable tax of ship-moneys. His subsequent fiasco made him contemned by each party, but a careful study of what Lord Clarendon, no quite unimpeachable witness, has written, and above all of Waller's own speeches in the House of Commons, leads me to believe that he was not a hypocrite or a traitor, in the worst sense, but a vacillating and trimming creature, dowered, like all poets, with a mixture of farsightedness and nearsightedness which was fatal to him as a politician. He saw that the statesmen of Charles had, in his own words, "dipped their dart in such a poison that, so far as in them lay, the commonwealth might never receive a cure1;" he could not believe in the power of the nation to find an antidote, and, while believing the Houses to be in the right, he yet plotted to betray them to the King, because he thought their opposition was hopeless, and would merely launch England upon massacre. In 1641, he wavered so far on the popular side, that he was chosen by the Commons to impeach Judge Crawley, on whom the sin of ship-money had been fastened. His speech was scathing in its eloquent denunciation of the venal lawyer, but it is almost the only proof we have of his adherence to Pym and Hampden. It was during the famous debate of February 8th, 1642, on the ecclesiastical petitions, that Waller seems to have made up his mind to quit the party which was presently to become that of Root and Branch. In company with Falkland and Digby, he took his place in the Episcopalian group which that debate created. Two months later his pungent questionings brought down on him a rough reply from Maynard, who 1 "Speech in the Painted Chamber," delivered July 6, 1641. roundly told him he had no business to sit in that house. In November he was still more publicly reprimanded for his outspoken criticism, and forced to apologise. All that year Waller was noiselessly drifting closer and closer to the King. In 1642, he sent Charles £1,000 to Nottingham, to support his army, and throughout that year, according to Clarendon, "he spoke every day with impunity against the sense and proceedings of the House" of Commons. Yet the Roundheads seem to have trusted him no less than the Royalists, and after the battle of Edgehill, he was sent down with other free commissioners, to propose terms of peace to the King at Oxford. They found Charles walking in the garden of Christchurch, and all his companions being peers, Waller was the last to kiss the King's hand. Charles I. said, in a very marked manner, “Though you are the last, Mr Waller, you are not the worst, nor the least in our favour." There can be no doubt that these too-gracious words were but the prelude to one of those fatal confidences by which Charles lightly threw away the lives of his best servants, as a chess-player abandons his pawns. It is not to be doubted that before Waller left Oxford he was pledged to treason against the Houses of Parliament. |