Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 24.djvu/355

Rh W A L W A L 331 agreed, but Clarendon refused, on the ground that he was a layman, and the refusal was sustained by the council. He thus failed in his only application for substantial evidence of the king s favour, but in every other respect the changed state of things made his old age happy and glorious. He entered parliament again, and became, Burnet says, &quot; the delight of the House, and, though old, said the liveliest things of any of them.&quot; His witty sayings were circulated through the town, and, as Johnson suspects, good things were fathered on him, a tribute to his reputation. Although a water-drinker, he was a boon companion with the roystering wits, Dorset saying that &quot; no man in England should sit in his company without drinking, except Ned Waller.&quot; Further, surviving all his early contemporaries, he found himself in higher reputa tion than ever as a poet. His poems now went through several editions, each increased by new productions, though the bulk was never large. He wrote in his formed eulo gistic fashion on topics of the day, on St James s Park, on Somerset House, the victory over the Dutch, the queen s birthday, the beauties, and other celebrities of the time. He fitted The Maid s Tragedy with a happier ending in rhymed couplets, assisted Dorset and Godolphiu in the translation of the Pompey of Corneille, and wound up his career becomingly with Divine Poems, continuing to write to the last. He died in 1687, at the age of eighty-two, and at the height of his poetic reputation. Rymer of the Foedera, the savage critic of Shakespeare, wrote the epitaph for his tomb at Beaconsfield, in which it is recorded that &quot; inter poetas sui temporis facile princeps, lauream, quam meruit adolescens, octogenarius haud abdicavit.&quot; Fenton, Pope s coadjutor in the translation of the Odyssey, edited and commented on his poems after his death, justifying the pains bestowed by comparing him to Petrarch and Malherbe. There can be no doubt that as a panegyrical poet, ready to over lay any subject, entirely irrespective of its intrinsic worth, with a cleverly woven and tastefully coloured garment of words and images, Waller deserved all the admiration he received, and would be hard to beat in our literature. Fenton showed true discern ment in urging that his excellence lay in commendation, whether or not he was right in adding that any ill-natured person could be a satirist. And complimentary poetry was so much in fashion when poets were courted and munificently rewarded by politicians that Waller s fame from the Eestoration till the time of Walpole, who dispensed with the aid of complimentary poets, is easy to understand. But Mr Gosse s recent contention that Waller must be regarded as the founder of the classical school, and that his influence changed the course of our literature for a century, must pass as a hurried exaggeration, lie was so eminently successful that he influenced minor poets at the close of his life and for a generation afterwards, but his range of subjects as well as his art was extremely limited, and much larger and wider influences were at work. He is an example of one of the tendencies, but it is absurd to represent him as a commanding influence, except in a very humble field. He influenced pane gyrical writing, and, inasmuch as this fell in with and influenced the tendency &quot;to dress nature to advantage,&quot; &quot; to raise sentiments above the vulgar pitch&quot; with the borrowed riches of genuinely impassioned poetry, it might be argued that Waller s influence extended beyond his own narrow circle of aims. But his efi ect on Drydeu or on Pope was infinitesimal. Even on the form of the favourite &quot; classical &quot; couplet Waller s single example cannot be held to have told in any considerable degree. It was already an established form for complimentary verse when he began to write. &quot;Waller was smooth,&quot; it is true, but Pope at once qualifies the compliment with a reference to his want of variety. And Pope is also strictly correct in confining Waller s metrical improve ments to his post-Restoration verse. When we place Waller s later couplets side by side with his earlier, say The Triple Combat or The Divine Poems, with His Majesty s Escape, or The Countess of Carlisle in Mourning, or The Death of Lady liich, we become aware of a marked change in his metrical scheme, notwithstanding the current opinion to the contrary. It is only in his later couplets that he aims, under French influence, as Pope justly implies, at making each distich complete in itself, varying this only with a stave of four, generally with a break in the third line. His earlier couplets are less monotonous, and were obviously modelled on the Hero and Leandcr of Marlowe and Chapman. To that noble poem, indeed, which was not known in the days when Waller s rhythm was so admired, he owed a large part of his panegyrical stock-in- trade, as anybody familiar with it can trace, not merely in his &quot; classical &quot; allusions, but also in his diction and his earlier metre. As regards smoothness and balance, there are no couplets in the edition of 1645 that could not be paralleled from the verses of his contemporaries, George Sandys and Cowley. (W. M. ) WALLIS, JOHN (1616-1703), an eminent English mathematician, logician, and grammarian, was born on the 23d November 1616 at Ashford, in Kent, of which parish his father was then incumbent. Having been previously instructed in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, he was in 1632 sent to Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and afterwards was chosen fellow of Queen s College. Having been admitted to holy orders, he left the university in 1641 to act as chaplain to Sir William Darley, and in the follow ing year accepted a similar appointment from the widow of Sir Horatio Vere. It was about this period that he displayed surprising talents in deciphering the intercepted letters and papers of the Royalists. His adherence to the Parliamentary party was in 1643 rewarded by the living of St Gabriel, Fenchurch Street, London. In 1644 he was appointed one of the scribes or secretaries of the Assembly of Divines at Westminster. During the same year he married Susanna Glyde, and thus vacated his fellowship ; but the death of his mother had left him in possession of a handsome fortune. In 1645 he attended those scientific meetings which led to the establishment of the Royal Society. When the Independents obtained the superiority, Wallis adhered to the Solemn League and Covenant. The living of St Gabriel he exchanged for that of St Martin, Ironmonger Lane ; and, as rector of that parish, he in 1648 subscribed the Remonstrance against putting Charles I. to death. Notwithstanding this act of opposition, he was in June 1649 appointed Savilian professor of geometry at Oxford. In 1654 he there took the degree of D.D., and four years later suc ceeded Dr Langbaine as keeper of the archives. After the Restoration he was named one of the king s chaplains in ordinary. While complying with the terms of the Act of Uniformity, Wallis seems always to have retained moderate and rational notions of ecclesiastical polity. He died at Oxford on the 28th of October 1703, in the eighty-seventh year of his age. The works of Wallis are numerous, and relate to a multiplicity of subjects. His Institutio Loyic&, published in 1687, was very popular, and in his Grammatica Linguae, Anglicanse, we find indica tions of an acute and philosophic intellect. The mathematical works are published some of them in a small 4to volume, Oxford, 1657, and a complete collection in three thick folio volumes, Oxford, 1695-93-99. The third volume includes, however, some theological treatises, and the first part of it is occupied with editions of treatises on harmonics and other works of Greek geometers, some of them first editions from the MSS., and in general with Latin versions and notes (Ptolemy, Porphyrius, Briennius, Archimedes, Eutocius, Aristarchus, and Pappus). The second and third volumes include also two collections of letters to and from Brouucker, Frenicle, Leibnitz, Newton, Oldenburg, Schooten, and others ; and there is a tract on trigonometry by Caswell. Excluding all these, the mathe matical works contained in the first and second volumes occupy about 1800 pages. The titles in the order adopted, but with date of publication, are as follows: &quot; Oratio Inauguralis,&quot; on his appointment (1649) as Savilian professor, 1657; &quot;Mathesis Uni- versalis, seu Opus Arithmeticum Philologice et Mathcmatice Tradi- tum, Arithmetical!! Numerosam et Speciosam Aliaque Continens, &quot; 1657; &quot;Adversus Meibomium, de Proportionibus Dialogus,&quot; 1657; &quot;De Sectionibus Conicis Nova Methodo Expositis,&quot; 1655 ; &quot; Arithmetica Infmitorum, sive Nova Mcthodus Inquirendi in Curvilineorum Quadraturam Aliaque Difliciliora Matheseos Prob- lemata,&quot; 1655; &quot;Eclipsis Solaris Observatio Oxonii Habita 2d Aug. 1654,&quot; 1655; &quot;Tractatus Duo, prior de Cycloide, posterior de Cissoide et de Curvarum turn Linearum EvfliWet turn Super- ficierum nAaruoTtai,&quot; 1659; &quot;Mechanica, sive de Motu Tractatus Geometricus,&quot; three parts, 1669-70-71; &quot;De Algebra Tractatus Historicus et Practicus, ejusdem origincrn et progrcssus varios ostendens,&quot; English, 1685 ; &quot; De Combinationibus Alternationibus et Partibus Aliquotis Tractatus,&quot; English, 1685 ; &quot;De Sectionibus Angularibus Tractatus,&quot; English, 1685; &quot;De Angulo Contactus