a performance, which owes nothing to the fubject. But compofitions merely pretty have the fate of other pretty things, and are quitted in time for fomething useful; they are flowers fragrant and fair, but of fhort duration; or they are bloffoms to be valued only as they foretell fruits.

Among Waller's little poems are fome, which their excellency ought to fecure from oblivion; as, To Amoret, comparing the different modes of regard with which he looks on her and Sachariffa; and the verfes On Love, that begin, Anger in hafty words or blows.

In others he is not equally fuccefsful; fometimes his thoughts are deficient, and fometimes his expreffion.

The numbers are not always mufical; as,

Fair Venus, in thy foft arms.

The god of rage confine;

For thy whispers are the charms

Which only can divert his fierce defign.

What though he frown, and to tumult do incline;

Thou the flame

Kindled in his breaft canft tame

With that fnow which unmelted lies on thine.

He feldom indeed fetches an amorous fentiment from the depths of fcience; his thoughts are for the moft part easily understood, and his images fuch as the fuperficies of nature readily fupplies; he has a just claim to popularity, because he writes to common degrees of knowledge; and is free at least from philofophical pedantry, unless perhaps the end of a fong to the Sun may be excepted, in which he is tco much a Copernican. To which may be added the

fimile of the Palm in the verfes on her paffing through a crowd; and a line in a more ferious poem on the Restoration, about vipers and treacle, which can only be understood by those who happen to know the compofition of the Theriaca.

His thoughts are fometimes hyperbolical, and his images unnatural:

-The plants admire,

No less than thofe of old did Orpheus' lyre;
If fhe fit down, with tops all tow'rds her bow'd;
They round about her into arbours crowd:
Or if the walks, in even ranks they ftand,
Like fome wall-marfhal'd and obfequious band,

In another place;

While in the park I fing, the liftening deer
Attend my paffion, and forget to fear:
When to the beeches I report my flame,
They bow their heads, as if they felt the fame.
To gods appealing, when I reach their bowers,
With loud complaints they answer me in showers.
To thee a wild and cruel foul is given,

More deaf than trees, and prouder than the Heaven!

On the head of a stag.

O fertile head! which every year
Could fuch a crop of wonder bear!
The teeming Earth did never bring.
So foon, fo hard, fo huge a thing:
Which might it never have been caft,
Each year's growth added to the last,
These lofty branches had supply'd
The Earth's bold fon's prodigious pride;
Heaven with thefe engines had been fcal'd
When mountains heap'd on mountains fail'd.

Some

Sometimes having fucceeded in the first part, he makes a feeble conclufion. In the fong of " Sacha"riffa's and Amoret's Friendship," the two laft ftanzas ought to have been omitted.

His images of gallantry are not always in the highest degree delicate.

Then shall my love this doubt displace,
And gain fuch trust that I may come
And banquet fometimes on thy face,
But make my conftant meals at home.

Some applications may be thought too remote and unconfequential: as in the verfes on the Lady Dancing:

The fun in figures fuch as these

Joys with the moon to play:

To the sweet strains they advance,

Which do refult from their own spheres ;

As this nymph's dance

Moves with the numbers which fhe hear

Sometimes a thought, which might perhaps fill a diftich, is expanded and attenuated till it

and almost evanefcent.

Chloris fince firft our calm of peace
Was frighted hence, this good we find,
Your favours with your fears increase,
And growing mischiefs make you kind.
So the fair tree, which ftill preferves

grows weak

Her fruit, and ftate, while no wind blows,
In ftorms from that uprightness fwerves;

And the glad earth about her ftrows
With treasure from her yielding boughs.

His images are not always diftinct; as, in the following paffage, he confounds Love as a perfon with Love as a paffion:

Some other nymphs, with colours faint,
And pencil flow, may Cupid paint,
And a weak heart in time deftroy;
She has a ftamp, and prints the Boy:
Can, with a fingle look, inflame
The coldeft breast, the rudest tame.

His fallies of cafual flattery are fometimes elegant and happy, as that in return for the Silver Pen; and fometimes empty and trifling, as that upon the Card torn by the Queen. There are a few lines written in the Dutchess's Taffo, which he is faid by Fenton to have kept a fummer under correction. It happened to Waller, as to others, that his fuccefs was not always in proportion to his labour.

Of these pretty compofitions, neither the beauties nor the faults deferve much attention. The amorous verfes have this to recommend them, that they are lefs hyperbolical than those of fome other poets. Waller is not always at the laft gafp; he does not die of a frown, nor live upon a fmile. There is, however, too much love, and too many trifles. Little things are made too important; and the Empire of Beauty is reprefented as exerting its influence further than can be allowed by the multiplicity of human paffions, and the variety of human wants. Such books, therefore, may be confidered as fhewing the world under a falfe appearance, and, so far as they obtain credit from the young and unexperienced, as mifleading expectation, and mifguiding practice.

Of his nobler and more weighty performances, the greater part is panegyrical: for of praise he was very lavish, as is obferved by his imitator, Lord Lanfdowne:

No fatyr ftalks within the hallow'd ground,

But queens and heroines, kings and gods abound;
Glory and arms and love are all the found.

}

In the first poem, on the danger of the Prince on the coaft of Spain, there is a puerile and ridiculous mention of Arion at the beginning; and the last paragraph, on the Cable, is in part ridiculously mean, and in part ridiculously tumid. The poem, however, is fuch as may be justly praised, without much allowance for the ftate of our poetry and language at that time.

The two next poems are upon the King's behaviour at the death of Buckingham, and upon his Navy. He has, in the firft, ufed the Pagan deities with great propriety :

'Twas want of fuch a precedent as this

Made the old Heathens frame their gods amifs.

In the poem on the Navy, thofe lines are very noble which fuppofe the King's power fecure against a fecond Deluge; fo noble, that it were almoft criminal to remark the mistake of centre for furface, or to say that the empire of the fea would be worth little if it were not that the waters terminate in land.

The poem upon Sallee has forcible fentiments; but the conclufion is feeble. That on the Repairs of St. Paul's has fomething vulgar and obvious; fuch