Waller, should turn about with every change, and celebrate the praises of each successive power, is not a matter of wonder. No sooner was the muse congratulated king restored than his pliant Charles with abundance of flattery, but it was observed that his poem to the king was inferior to his panegyrick on Cromwell, and when the goodhumoured monarch mentioned the difference to Waller, the wit replied, "We poets, Sir, succeed better in fiction than in truth." In the first parliament summoned by Charles the second, Waller was returned for Hastings, and he continued to sit in all the parliaments of that reign; his company was courted by persons of the highest rank, and even by those of the gayest character, though in his own habits, he was very temperate, and drank nothing but water. His conversation, however, was so engaging, that Mr. Saville used to say, "No man in England shall keep me company without drinking except Ned Waller." Though he still possessed a good fortune, he was not unmindful of his interests; for he solicited from the king the Provostship of Eton College, but Lord Clarendon strenuously resisted the appointment, on the ground that it could only be held by a clergyman. This made Waller one of the bitterest enemies of that great and virtuous man, against whom he uttered a most acrimonious speech in the House, which shewed, as Dr. Johnson Johnson observes, "that more than sixty years had not taught him morality."* At the accession of James the second, though Waller was then eighty years old, he was returned to parliament for the borough of Saltash, in Cornwall. He was treated with great kindness and familiarity by James, who one day took him into his closet, where he asked him how he liked one of the pictures, "My eyes," said Waller, "are dim, and I do not know it."-The king said it was the Princess of Orange. "like the greatest woman in the world." The king asked, "who was that," and was answered, "She is," said Waller, Queen Elizabeth."-" I wonder," said the king, "you should think so; but I must confess she had a wise council."-" And, Sir," said Waller, "did your Majesty ever know a fool chuse a wise council?" When the same prince was informed that Waller was about to marry his daughter to Dr. Birch, a clergyman, he sent a gentleman to tell him that "the king wondered he could think of marrying his daughter to a falling church." "The king," says Waller, "does me great honour, in taking notice of my domestic affairs; but I have lived long enough to observe that this falling church has got a trick of rising again." * Lives of the Poets. U 2 Waller Waller clearly perceived to what a condition James would bring himself by his ill-advised measures, and he said to some of his friends, that "he would be left like a whale upon the strand." He That event, however, he did not live to see, for at the close of his eighty-second year he found his legs swell, on which he went from Beaconsfield to Windsor, where Sir Charles Scarborough then attended the king, and requested him, as a friend and physician, to tell him "what that swelling meant."-" Sir," answered Scarborough, "your blood will run no longer." Waller repeated some lines of Virgil, and went home to die. His death was that of a Christian. received the sacrament from his son-in-law, and exhorted his children to pursue the paths of religion and virtue. Then it was that he related this anecdote of himself. Being present when the Duke of Buckingham talked profanely before King Charles the second, he said to him, "My Lord, I am a great deal older than your Grace, and have, I believe, heard more arguments for Atheism than ever your grace did; but I have lived long enough to see there is nothing in them; and so I hope your grace will." He died October 21, 1687, and was buried at Beaconsfield. JOHN |