we are farther informed, that he was placed at Eton; having been previously trained in grammarlearning, as we learn from Wood, under Mr. Dobson, Minister of Great Wycombe in Bucks. He was, subsequently, sent to King's College, Cambridge: but there his stay could not have been long; for, before he was eighteen, he was chosen into the third parliament of James I. as Burgess for Agmondesham.

At this time he frequented the court, where upon one occasion he heard the following very remarkable conversation:

His Majesty asked the Bishops (Dr. Andrews Bishop of Winchester, and Dr. Neale Bishop of Durham, then standing behind his chair), “My Lords, cannot I take my subjects' money, when I want it, without all this formality of parliament ? " The Bishop of Durham readily answered, "God forbid, Sir, but you should: you are the breath of our nostrils." Whereupon the King turned and said to the Bishop of Winchester, "Well, my Lord, what say you?" "Sir," replied the Bishop, "I have no skill to judge of parliamentary cases." The King answered, "No put-offs, my Lord; answer me presently." Then, Sir," said he, " I think it is lawful for you to take my brother Neale's money; for he offers it." Mr. Waller said, the company was pleased with this answer, and the wit of it seemed to affect the King; for, a certain Lord coming in soon afterward, his Majesty cried out, "Oh, my Lord, they say you lig with my Lady." "No, Sir," replied his Lordship in confusion; "but I like her company, because she has so much wit." 66 Why then," said the King, you not lig with my Lord of Winchester there?”

66

6

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That Mr. Waller began to exercise his poetical talents very early, appears from a copy of verses in his works," Upon the danger his Majesty (then Prince) escaped in the road of St. Andero;'* for there Prince Charles had nearly been cast away, in returning from Spain in 1623. It was not however his wit, or his poetry, which first introduced him to the public; but his carrying off Mrs. Banks, the daughter and heiress of a rich citizen, against his rival Mr. Croft, whose interest was espoused by the court.

It is not known, at what time he married his first lady: but he became a widower† before he was five and twenty; and being young, rich, vain, amorous, and ambitious, fell in love with the Lady Dorothy Sydney, daughter to the Earl of Leicester, whom he has immortalised under the name of Saccharissa.‡

*This piece, says Dr. Johnson, justifies the observation made by one of his editors, that he attained by a felicity like instinct a stile, which perhaps will never be obsolete; and that, were we to judge only by the wording, we could not know what was written at twenty, and what at fourscore. His versification was, in his first essay, such as it appears in his last performance. By the perusal of Fairfax's translation of Tasso, to which (as Dryden relates) he confessed himself indebted for the smoothness of his numbers, and by his own nicety of observation, he had already formed such a system of metrical harmony, as he never afterward much needed or much endeavoured to improve. Denham corrected his numbers by experience, and gained ground gradually upon the ruggedness of his age; but what was acquired by Denham, was inherited by Waller.

+ His wife, who died in child-bed, had brought him a son who died young, and a daughter subsequently married to Mr. Dormer of Oxfordshire.

This name (observes Johnson) "derived from the Latin appellation of sugar, if it means any thing, implies a spiritless mildness and dull good-nature; such as excites rather tenderness VOL. IV.

R

This Lady however did not favour his passion, though he paid court to her in such strains,

"As moved all hearts, but hers he wished to move."

It was after his first marriage, that Mr. Waller began to be known at court; and from that time he was caressed by all the people of quality, who had any relish for wit and polite literature, and elected into the celebrated club, of which Lord Falkland, Mr. Chillingworth, and other eminent men were members. At one of their meetings, they heard a noise in the street, and being told that a son' of Ben Jonson's was arrested, they sent for him into the room he proved to be Mr. George Morley, afterward Bishop of Winchester. Waller, delighted with his manners and appearance, though not prodigal of his money, undertook to pay the debt (which was about 100%.) on condition that he would live with him at Beaconsfield. With this stipulation Morley complied, and for eight or ten years rendered himself extremely useful to his liberal friend in improving his taste and assisting his studies.

He was again returned Burgess for Agmondesham, in the parliament which assembled in April 1640, in which he freely censured the arbitrary measures of the court.* The same spirit likewise he

than esteem, and such as though always treated with kindness, is never honoured or admired." She married in 1639 the Earl of Sunderland, who died at Newbury in the King's cause.

By another lady, whom he celebrated in his poems under the name of Amoret, he is said to have meant Lady Sophia Murray.

In this vehement speech, in which he both quoted Hooker and copied him without quoting, he contended that 'grievances ought to be redressed before supplies are granted;' a position,

manifested in the Long Parliament, which met in the November following; and he was chosen to im

which even Johnson admits to be "agreeable to law and reason.' The biographer subsequently introduces with considerable commendation a speech of Waller's in favour of Episcopacy, which, though not inserted in his works, had been fortunately retrieved from a paper printed at that time by the writers of the Parliamentary History. In this, after protesting strongly against the admission of mob-influence, he observes, "We have already showed, that Episcopacy and the evils thereof are mingled like water and oil; we have also, in part, severed them: but I believe you will find, that our laws and the present government of the Church are mingled like wine and water; so inseparable, that the abrogation of, at least, a hundred of our laws are desired in these petitions. I have often heard a noble answer of the Lords, commended in this house, to a proposition of like nature but of less consequence; they gave no other reason of their refusal but this, Nolumus mutare leges Anglia. It was the Bishops, who so answered then; and it would become the dignity and wisdom of this house to answer the people, now, with a Nolumus mutarė.

"I see some are moved with a number of hands against the Bishops; which, I confess, rather inclines me to their defence: for I look upon Episcopacy as a counter-scarp, or out-work; which, if it be taken by this assault of the people, and withal this mystery once revealed, That we must deny them nothing when they ask it thus in troops, we may in the next place have as hard a task to defend our property, as we have lately had to recover it from the prerogative. If by multiplying hands and petitions, they prevail for an equality in things eccle siastical, the next demand perhaps may be Lex Agraria, the like equality in things temporal.

"The Roman story tells us, that when the people began to flock about the senate, and were more curious to direct and know what was done than to obey, that Commonwealth soon came to rúin: their Legem rogare grew quickly to be a Legem ferre; and afterward, when their legions had found that they could make a Dictator, they never suffered the senate to have a voice any more in such election.

"If these great innovations proceed, I shall expect a flat and level in learning too, as well as in church-preferments: Honos

peach Judge Crawley, for his extrajudicial opinion in the affair of Ship-Money, which he did in a nervous and eloquent harangue in July, 1641. "He was probably the more ardent (remarks Johnson) upon this occasion, as his uncle Hampden had been particularly engaged in the dispute, and by a sentence which seems generally to be thought unconstitutional (a wonderful concession!) particularly injured." This speech was so highly relished by the public, that 20,000 copies of it were sold in one day.

At the latter end of 1642, he was one of the Commissioners appointed by parliament to bear to the King at Oxford their propositions of peace. Upon this occasion, Charles said to him, on their being presented, "Though you are the last, you are not the lowest nor the least in my favour." Whitlock, who

alit artes. And though it be true, that grave and pious men do study for learning-sake, and embrace virtue for itself; yet it is true that youth, which is the season when learning is gotten, is not without ambition, nor will ever take pains to excel in any thing, when there is not some hope of excelling others in reward and dignity.

"There are two reasons chiefly alleged against our churchgovernment:

"First, Scripture, which (as some men think) points out another form;

"Second, The abuses of the present superiors.

"For Scripture, I will not dispute it in this place; but I am confident that, whenever an equal division of lands and goods shall be desired, there will be as many places in Scripture found out, which seem to favour that, as there are now alleged against the prelacy or preferment of the Church. And as for abuses, when you are now in the Remonstrance told 'what this and that poor man hath suffered by the Bishops,' you may be presented with a thousand instances of poor men that have received hard measure from their landlords, and of worldly goods abused to the injury of others, and disadvantage of the owners."