Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 59.djvu/132

 among the exiles able ‘to keep a table’ in Paris. On 27 Nov. 1651 the House of Commons, after hearing a petition from him, revoked his sentence of banishment and ordered a pardon under the great seal to be prepared for him. Here, again, the influence of Cromwell, moved by the intercession of Colonel Adrian Scrope [q. v.], who had married Waller's sister Mary, is said to have been at work. Nothing, beyond his appointment as one of the commissioners for trade in December 1655, is known of the poet's life between the date of his return and the Restoration, when, in spite of his previous vacillations, he resumed his political career.

In May 1661 he was elected for Hastings, and remained a member of the house down to the time of his death. The only matter of importance in which he was directly engaged was the impeachment of Clarendon; but, as far as his public utterances went, the second half of his parliamentary career was in every way creditable to him. He spoke with great courage against the dangers of a military despotism, and his voice was constantly raised in appeals for toleration for dissenters and more particularly for the quakers.

In spite of his usually temperate habits—he was a water-drinker—Waller was a great favourite at the courts both of Charles II and James II. But after the death (April 1677) of his second wife he seems to have spent most of his time upon his estate at Beaconsfield. He died at his house, Hall Barn, on 21 Oct. 1687, and was buried in the churchyard of the parish, where an elaborate monument marks his resting-place. Verses to his memory by various hands appeared in the following year, and an obelisk, still in existence, was subsequently erected over his grave. Waller is described by Aubrey as having been of above middle height and of a dark complexion with prominent eyes. Numerous portraits of him are in existence, of which undoubtedly the best is that by Cornelis Janssens (in the possession of the family); that in the National Portrait Gallery, London, is by Riley, to whom Rymer addressed verses ‘On painting Mr. Waller's Portrait.’ The Duke of Buccleuch has a miniature of him by Cooper, and there is in the British Museum a chalk-and-pencil portrait of him by Sir Peter Lely. A full-length portrait by Van Dyck belonged in 1868 to Sir Henry Bedingfield, bart. (Cat. Third Loan Exhib. No. 690).

It is certain that the poems of Edmund Waller had been in circulation in manuscript some considerable time before their first publication. His lines on the escape of Charles (then Prince of Wales) from drowning, near Santander, though subsequently retouched, were probably written in or about the time of the event which they celebrate; but it was not until 1645 that the first edition of his poems was published. In spite of this, his reputation was already so well established that Denham wrote of him in ‘Cooper's Hill’ (1642) as ‘the best of poets,’ and it is probable that no writer, in proportion to his merits, ever received such ample recognition from his contemporaries. Waller will always live as the author of ‘Go, lovely rose,’ the lines ‘On a Girdle,’ and ‘Of the Last Verses in the Book;’ but it is difficult at this distance of time to realise the justice of the description of him upon his monument as ‘inter poetas sui temporis facile princeps.’ He no doubt owed a very large portion of his popularity to his social position, his personal charm of manner, and his remarkable eloquence. His poems made no great demand upon the understanding of his audience, who were no doubt struck by their appropriateness to the occasions which had called them forth. He had no spontaneity, and very little imagination, and if he has been highly praised for his ‘smoothness’ and his success in the use of the couplet, this was probably because his contemporaries had lost sight of others who had preceded and surpassed him. He was deficient in critical instinct, or designedly indifferent to the performances of any but those who were manifestly his inferiors. He wrote many complimentary verses, but praised no writer of the first class. He was a subscriber to the fourth edition of ‘Paradise Lost,’ but, according to the Duke of Buckingham, his opinion of that work was that it was distinguished only by its length.

Waller's first published lines appeared in ‘Rex Redux’ in 1633. These were followed by verses before Sandys's ‘Paraphrase of the Psalms,’ and in ‘Ionsonus Virbius’ in 1638. In 1645 three editions of his collected poems were issued. That ‘printed for Thomas Walkley’ (licensed on 30 Dec. 1644) is the first of these; the edition ‘printed by I. N. for Hu. Mosley,’ the second; and that ‘printed by T. W. for Humphrey Mosley,’ the third. The third edition consists merely of the sheets of the unsold copies of the first, bound up with the additional matter contained in the second. No other edition appeared until that of 1664, which is declared to be the first published with the approbation of the author; in spite of this statement, the next edition (1668) is called the third. Others followed in 1682 and 1686, and in 1690 there appeared ‘The Second Part of Mr. Waller's