TO MY LORD OF FALKLAND.*

BRAVE Holland leads, and with him Falkland goes.†
Who hears this told, and does not straight suppose
We send the Graces and the Muses forth,
To civilize and to instruct the north?

* The gallant and accomplished Lucius Cary, second Viscount Falkland, who fell at the battle of Newbury, in the 34th year of his age, four years after the expedition into Scotland, to which this poem refers. The memorable panegyric of Clarendon upon the character of this remarkable man has been assailed with some justice by Horace Walpole. But whatever inconsistencies may be alleged against his public conduct in a crisis where much allowance may be reasonably made for conscientious doubts, his personal courage, lofty integrity, and extensive attainments must always command respect and admiration. His early death, under circumstances peculiarly affecting, invests his memory with an interest almost romantic; and of him it may well be said, Whom the gods love die young!'

In May, 1638, the Marquis of Hamilton was sent as High Commissioner into Scotland to appease the tumults arising out of the Covenant; and in the following November he dissolved the General Assembly, in consequence of their having rejected the King's authority in church matters. The result was, that the Scotch made a declaration of war, raised an army under Leslie, and seized upon Edinburgh. The expedition which occasioned these verses was organized in March, 1639, when the King, at the head of a considerable force, marched towards Berwick on the road to Scotland. In that expedition Henry Rich, Earl of Holland, held the command of lord-general of the horse, under the Earl of Arundel. The prophecy of the poem was frustrated by the treachery of the Earl of Holland, who, faithless to the cause in which he had embarked, betrayed it in the presence of the enemy. Having been ordered with the flower of the English troops to engage an inferior body of the Scotch under Leslie, he advanced against them, and then retired, without striking a blow. His whole public conduct was marked by similar contradictions, not to apply a severer term to his political infidelities. Mr. Forster, in his admirable biographies of the Statesmen of the Commonwealth, tells us that he was one of the lords who, with Pym and Hampden, took an active part at the London meetings of the Scotch commissioners from the Covenant; yet, notwithstanding his apparent relations with the Parliament, he made a last effort on behalf of the King, conspicuous equally by its folly and rashness. He finally expiated his errors on the scaffold; and, distrusted by both parties, and lamented by none, was executed in March, 1648-9.

Waller appropriately associates Lord Holland with the graces. He was celebrated for the courtliness and gallantry of his manners, and his handsome person is familiar to us in the portraits of Vandyck. His true character, says one writer, was elegans formarum spectator.

Not that these ornaments make swords less sharp;
Apollo bears as well his bow as harp ;*
And though he be the patron of that spring,
Where, in calm peace, the sacred virgins sing,
He courage had to guard the invaded throne
Of Jove, and cast the ambitious giants down.
Ah, noble friend! with what impatience all
That know thy worth, and know how prodigal
Of thy great soul thou art, (longing to twist
Bays with that ivy which so early kissed
Thy youthful temples) with what horror we
Think on the blind events of war and thee!
To fate exposing that all-knowing breast
Among the throng, as cheaply as the rest;
Where oaks and brambles (if the copse be burned)
Confounded lie, to the same ashes turned.
Some happy wind over the ocean blow
This tempest yet, which frights our island so!
Guarded with ships, and all the sea our own,
From heaven this mischief on our heads is thrown.
In a late dream, the genius of this land,
Amazed, I saw, like the fair Hebrew stand,
When first she felt the twins begin to jar,t
And found her womb the seat of civil war.
Inclined to whose relief, and with presage
Of better fortune for the present age,

Heaven sends, quoth I, this discord for our good,
To warm, perhaps, but not to waste our blood;
To raise our drooping spirits, grown the scorn
Of our proud neighbours, who ere long shall mourn
(Though now they joy in our expected harms)
We had occasion to resume our arms.

It was, probably, in consideration of these attractive qualifications that he was selected, when he was Lord Kensington, by James I. to negociate in Paris the treaty of marriage between Charles and the Princess Henrietta, upon whose heart he is said to have made an early impression, and with whom he is known to have been a distinguished favourite.

* Horace, Ode iv., lib. 3.

+ Gen. xxv. 22.

A lion so with self-provoking smart,

(His rebel tail scourging his nobler part) Calls up his courage; then begins to roar, And charge his foes, who thought him mad before.*

TO MY LORD NORTHUMBERLAND,

UPON THE DEATH OF HIS LADY.†

To this great loss a sea of tears is due;

But the whole debt not to be paid by you.
Charge not yourself with all, nor render vain
Those showers the eyes of us your servants rain.
Shall grief contract the largeness of that heart,
In which nor fear, nor anger, has a part?

Virtue would blush if time should boast (which dries,
Her sole child dead, the tender mother's eyes)
Your mind's relief, where reason triumphs so
Over all passions, that they ne'er could grow
Beyond their limits in your noble breast,
To harm another, or impeach your rest.
This we observed, delighting to obey
One who did never from his great self stray;
Whose mild example seemed to engage

The obsequious seas, and teach them not to rage.
The brave Æmilius, his great charge laid down,
(The force of Rome, and fate of Macedon)

* Mr. Fenton traces this passage to Tasso, still more familiar to Waller in the translation of his favourite Fairfax :

'And as a lion strikes him with his train,
His native wrath to quicken and to move;
So he awaked his fury and disdain,' &c.

The lady whose death is the subject of this piece was the Lady Anne Cecil, daughter of the Earl of Salisbury. The Earl of Northumberland, then Lord Percy, married her against the vehement protest of his father, who considered Lord Salisbury the chief cause of his committal to the Tower, where he was confined for fifteen years on a false charge of having been concerned in the Gunpowder Plot. See, also, note, p. 63. The date of this poem is conjectured to have been about 1639.

In his lost sons did feel the cruel stroke
Of changing fortune, and thus highly spoke
Before Rome's people: 'We did oft implore,
That if the heavens had any bad in store
For your Æmilius, they would pour that ill
On his own house, and let you flourish still.'
You on the barren seas, my lord, have spent
Whole springs and summers to the public lent;
Suspended all the pleasures of your life,

And shortened the short joy of such a wife;
For which your country's more obliged than
For many lives of old less happy men.
You, that have sacrificed so great a part
Of youth, and private bliss, ought to impart
Your sorrow too, and give your friends a right
As well in your affliction as delight.

Then with Emilian courage bear this cross,
Since public persons only public loss

Ought to affect. And though her form and youth,

Her application to your will and truth,

That noble sweetness, and that humble state,
(All snatched away by such a hasty fate!)
Might give excuse to any common breast,
With the huge weight of so just grief oppressed;
Yet let no portion of your life be stained
With passion, but your character maintained
To the last act. It is enough her stone
May honoured be with superscription

*

Of the sole lady who had power to move

The great Northumberland to grieve, and love.

* An example of the female rhyme which rarely occurs in Waller, and one of the very few blemishes he carried down from the old writers.

TO MY LORD ADMIRAL,

OF HIS LATE SICKNESS AND RECOVERY.

WITH joy like ours, the Thracian youth invades

Orpheus, returning from the Elysian shades;

Embrace the hero, and his stay implore;
Make it their public suit he would no more
Desert them so, and for his spouse's sake,
His vanished love, tempt the Lethean lake.
The ladies, too, the brightest of that time,
(Ambitious all his lofty bed to climb)
Their doubtful hopes with expectation feed,
Who shall the fair Eurydice succeed:
Eurydice! for whom his numerous moan

Makes listening trees and savage mountains groan;
Through all the air his sounding strings dilate
Sorrow, like that which touched our hearts of late.
Your pining sickness, and your restless pain,
At once the land affecting, and the main,
When the glad news that you were admiral

Scarce through the nation spread,* 'twas feared by all
That our great Charles, whose wisdom shines in you,
Would be perplexèd how to choose a new.

So more than private was the joy and grief,
That at the worst it gave our souls relief,
That in our age such sense of virtue lived,
They joyed so justly, and so justly grieved.

* The Earl of Northumberland was appointed Lord High Admiral about 1638. Sir William Monson does not appear to have formed a very high estimate of the Earl's talents in his naval capacity; and observes that, had his own opinion been consulted with reference to the armament which was placed under the Earl's command in 1636, and which was not attended with successful results, he should have advised a course that would have brought Holland and all her wealth to his Majesty's mercy. Clarendon represents the Earl of Northumberland to have been a man of indomitable pride, who, by the mere force of the reserve with which he held aloof from familiar intercourse with others (thinking everybody inferior to himself), obtained a reputation for wisdom and ability which he did not possess.