Page:The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets, Volume 1.djvu/370

 Sir Charles Scarborough then attended the King, and requested him, as both 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.

As the disease increased upon him, he composed himself for his departure; and calling upon Dr. Birch to give him the holy sacrament, he desired his children to take it with him, and made an earnest declaration of his faith in Christianity. It now appeared, what part of his conversation with the great could be remembered with delight. He related, that being present when the duke of Buckingham talked profanely before King Charles, 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, with a monument Rh