Scarborough, then waiting on the
king. Sir Charles, at Waller's request to know the "meaning" of these
swellings, told him that they showed that his "blood would no longer
run." On this the poet quietly repeated a passage from Virgil, and
returned to Beaconsfield to die. Having received the sacrament, and
shared it with his children, and expressed his faith in Christianity, he
expired on the 21st of October 1687. He was buried in the churchyard of
Beaconsfield. He left five sons and eight daughters. His eldest son
being an imbecile, Edmund, his second, inherited the estates, and having
joined the party of the Prince of Orange, sat for Agmondesham for some
years, but became ultimately a Quaker. The fortunes of the rest of his
family are not particularly interesting, and need not be related.

As a character, our opinion of Waller has been already indicated. He was
indecisive, vacillating, with more wit than judgment, and with more
judgment than earnestness. In that age of high hearts, stormy passions,
and determined purpose, he looks helpless and not at home, like a
butterfly in an eagle's eyrie. A gifted, accomplished, and apparently an
amiable man, he was a feeble, and almost a despicable character. The
parliament seem to have thought him hardly worth hanging. Cromwell bore
with him only as a kinsman, and respected him only as a scholar. Charles
II. liked to laugh at his jokes, and to Saville his company was as good
as an additional bottle of wine. His only chance of fame as a man of
action arose from his connexion with the plot, which, however, in its
issue covered him with infamy, as all bad things bungled, inevitably do
to those who attempt them.

Although he unquestionably in some points improved our correctness of
style and our versification, there is not much to be said either for or
against his poetry. It is as a whole a mass of smooth and easy, yet
systematic, trifling. Nine-tenths of it does not rise above mediocrity,
and the tenth that remains is more distinguished by grace than by
grandeur or depth. His lines on Cromwell we have already characterised.
It may seem odd, but in his verses on the head of a stag, which Johnson
singles out as bad, we see more of the soul of poetry than in any of his
other productions.

Let our readers, if they will not be convinced by our assertion, listen
to some of these lines:--

"So we some antique hero's strength,
Learn by his lance's weight and length--
As these v