Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 24.djvu/354

Rh 330 W A L W A L were received at a banquet by the three colonels, and murdered by several dragoons. Butler, accompanied by Captain Devereux and a number of soldiers, then hurried to the house where Wallenstein was staying, and broke into his room. He had just taken a bath, and was standing in his shirt ready to go to bed. He was instantly killed by a thrust of Devereux s partisan. The body was taken to the citadel, and laid beside those of his murdered comrades. Wallenstein was buried at Gitschin, but in 1732 the remains were removed to the castle chapel of Miinchen- gratz. No direct orders for the murder of Wallenstein had been issued, but it was well understood that tidings of his death would be welcome at court. The murderers were handsomely rewarded for what they had done, and their deed was commended as a necessary act of justice. Wallenstein was tall, thin, and pale, with reddish hair, and eyes of remarkable brilliancy. He was of a proud and imperious temper, and was seldom seen to laugh. He worked hard, and invariably acted on the motto that if speech is silvern silence is golden. In times of supreme difficulty he listened carefully to the advice of his counsellors, but the final decision was always his own, and he rarely revealed his thoughts until the moment for action arrived. Few generals have surpassed him in the power of quickly organiz ing great masses of men and of inspiring them with confidence and enthusiasm ; and as a statesman he was distinguished for the boldness of his conceptions and the liberality of his sentiments. All his good qualities were, however, marred by a furious lust for power, in the gratification of which he allowed no scruples to stand in his way. See Forster, Albrecht von WaUenstein (1834) ; BarthoM, Geschichte des grossen deutschen Kriegs (1842-43) ; Aretin, Wallenstein (184C) ; Helbig, Wallenstein und Arnim, 163%-3k (1850), and Kaiser Ferdinand und der Ilerzog ran Friedland, 1633-3b (1853); Hurter, Zur Geschichte Wallensteins (1855); Fiedler, Zur Geschichte Wallaisteins (I860); L. von Kanke, Geschichte Wallensteins (3d ed., 1872); Gindely, Geschichte des dreissigjahriyen Kriegs (18G9). (J. SI.) WALLER, EDMUND (1605-1687), enjoyed in the latter half of his long life a high reputation as a poet, which has been partly fixed by the compliments of Dryden and Pope. Waller is a singular and piquant figure in the history of the 17th century; his relations with Charles I., with the Long Parliament, with Cromwell, with Charles II., his position as a poet, as a courtier, as a privileged water- drinker among the bibulous Restoration wits, form a com bination that has no parallel. The character might be paralleled, but the run of incidents is unique. He was born at Coleshill, in Hertfordshire, March 3, 1605, and came of distinguished ancestry, landed gentry, with estates in Kent and other counties, and prominent places in the public service from the reign of Henry V. downwards. He inherited a position of difficulty in view of the civil strife that began when he reached manhood ; his mother was herself an ardent Royalist, but was connected by blood with Hampden and by marriage with Cromwell. His father died when he was eleven years old. He entered parliament at sixteen, and sat also in the first and in the third parliaments of Charles I. He was thus, as Clarendon put it, nursed in parliament, and this early experience helped him to make a figure afterwards ; but he took no active part at the time, the chief use that he made of his advantages as a courtier and a youth of fashion being to marry a wealthy city heiress. With this addition to the handsome fortune left him by his father, he retired to his estate at Beaconsfield and studied literature. This Avas about 1632. When he first began to write verses is a doubtful and disputed point. Clarendon says that he began at an age when most men leave off, and if we put this at thirty there is no published or even probable evidence to the contrary; but, on the other hand, it is argued that he began at the age of eighteen, in 1623, this being the date of the subject of his first poem, Prince Charles s escape from a storm at St Andero. This earliest date must be increased by at least two years, the whole point of the poem being Charles s marriage with his queen Henrietta, which took place in 1625. The exact date of his beginning acquires some interest from Johnson s dictum that he wrote as smoothly at eighteen as at eighty, &quot;smoothness&quot; being his established merit; and the difficulty of determining the date arises from his not having &quot;gathered his sticks into a faggot&quot; and published till 1645. The incidents that furnished him with themes for his peculiar artificial and decorative treatment occurred long before, for example, the duke of Buckingham s death in 1628, the taking of Salle in 1632, the repair of St Paul s in 1633, the death of the earl of Carlisle in 1636, his courtship of Lady Dorothy Sidney &quot; Saccharissa &quot; between the death of his first wife in 1634 and Saccharissa s marriage to another in 1639. But that the poems, as we now have them, were written immediately after the incidents glorified in his verse is an uncertain assumption, considering his elaborating habits, the strongly Royalist tone of his verses on public events, and the express statement of Clarendon, who was likely to have known if copies had been circulated in the society of the court long before they appeared in print. If they were at least retouched by him between the ages of thirty and forty, the wonder of his uniformity of manner from first to last which, after all, has been somewhat exaggerated is considerably lessened. In the struggle between king and parliament, Waller tried at first to mediate, holding the king s demands un constitutional, but endeavouring through his advisers to induce him to modify them. He made such a mark as a speaker in the Short Parliament that at the opening of the Long Parliament he was chosen by the Commons to conduct the impeachment of Judge Crawley for his ship- money decision. Thereafter, as the struggle became fiercer, with a view apparently to prevent parliament from pro ceeding to extremities, he engaged in what was known as Waller s plot. The object of the plot seems to have been to restrain the extreme Parliamentarians by some public declaration of moderate opinion, but it was complicated with another plot, the object of which was to assist the king with armed force. All Waller s relations, except his mother, were anti-Royalist, and it is said that his complicity was discovered by domestic treachery. He behaved with the most abject meanness when arrested by order of Pym on May 31, 1643, saved himself by at once turning informer and making disclosures that were at least unreserved, and was let off eventually with a fine of 10,000 and banish ment. It was from his exile in Paris, in 1645, that he directed his first publication of poems. He lived there in high repute as a wit and a munificent host till 1654, when Cromwell, at the intercession of his anti-Royalist relatives, allowed him to return to England, and try to mend his impaired estate. He celebrated the Protector s greatness in a lofty panegyric, and Cromwell is said to have relished his pleasant qualities as a companion. It deserves to be noted, as evidence of a real admiration, that he wrote also a lament &quot; Upon the Death of the Lord Protector,&quot; when the sincerity of his panegyric was less open to question. The poem contains two famous lines of bathos Under the tropic is our language spoke And part of Flanders hath received our yoke. But otherwise it does not fall beneath the poet s steady level. Upon the Restoration Waller hastened to express his joy, mingled with trembling, &quot; Upon His Majesty s Happy Return,&quot; and found little difficulty in making his peace. He met the king s complaint that his congratulation was inferior to his panegyric on the Protector with the famous retort, &quot; Poets, Sire, succeed better in fiction than in truth.&quot; He was soon on such terms with Charles that he applied for the provostship of Eton ; the king