The celebrated Mr.Waller has been very much talked of in France,and Mr.De la Fontaine,St.Evremont,and Bayle have written his eulogium,but still his name only is known.He had much the same reputation in London as Voiture had in Paris,and in my opinion deserved it better.Voiture was born in an age that was just emerging from barbarity;an age that was still rude and ignorant,the people of which aimed at wit,though they had not the least pretensions to it,and sought for points and conceits instead of sentiments.Bristol stones are more easily found than diamonds.
Voiture,born with an easy and frivolous,genius,was the first who shone in this aurora of French literature.Had he come into the world after those great geniuses who spread such a glory over the age of Louis XIV.,he would either have been unknown,would have been despised,or would have corrected his style.Boileau applauded him,but it was in his first satires,at a time when the taste of that great poet was not yet formed.He was young,and in an age when persons form a judgment of men from their reputation,and not from their writings.Besides,Boileau was very partial both in his encomiums and his censures.He applauded Segrais,whose works nobody reads;he abused Quinault,whose poetical pieces every one has got by heart;and is wholly silent upon La Fontaine.Waller,though a better poet than Voiture,was not yet a finished poet.The graces breathe in such of Waller's works as are writ in a tender strain;but then they are languid through negligence,and often disfigured with false thoughts.The English had not in his time attained the art of correct writing.But his serious compositions exhibit a strength and vigour which could not have been expected from the softness and effeminacy of his other pieces.He wrote an elegy on Oliver Cromwell,which,with all its faults,is nevertheless looked upon as a masterpiece.To understand this copy of verses you are to know that the day Oliver died was remarkable for a great storm.His poem begins in this manner:-"Il n'est plus,s'en est fait,soumettons nous au sort,Le ciel a signale ce jour par des tempetes,Et la voix des tonnerres eclatant sur nos tetes Vient d'annoncer sa mort.
"Par ses derniers soupirs il ebranle cet ile;Cet ile que son bras fit trembler tant de fois,Quand dans le cours de ses exploits,Il brisoit la tete des Rois,Et soumettoit un peuple a son joug seul docile.
"Mer tu t'en es trouble;O mer tes flots emus Semblent dire en grondant aux plus lointains rivages Que l'effroi de la terre et ton maitre n'est plus.
"Tel au ciel autrefois s'envola Romulus,Tel il quitta la Terre,au milieu des orages,Tel d'un peuple guerrier il recut les homages;Obei dans sa vie,sa mort adore,Son palais fut un Temple,"&c.
"We must resign!heaven his great soul does claim In storms as loud as his immortal fame;His dying groans,his last breath shakes our isle,And trees uncut fall for his funeral pile:
About his palace their broad roots are tost Into the air;so Romulus was lost!
New Rome in such a tempest missed her king,And from obeying fell to worshipping.
On OEta's top thus Hercules lay dead,With ruined oaks and pines about him spread.
Nature herself took notice of his death,And,sighing,swelled the sea with such a breath,That to remotest shores the billows rolled,Th'approaching fate of his great ruler told."WALLER.
It was this elogium that gave occasion to the reply (taken notice of in Bayle's Dictionary),which Waller made to King Charles II.This king,to whom Waller had a little before (as is usual with bards and monarchs)presented a copy of verses embroidered with praises,reproached the poet for not writing with so much energy and fire as when he had applauded the Usurper (meaning Oliver)."Sir,"replied Waller to the king,"we poets succeed better in fiction than in truth."This answer was not so sincere as that which a Dutch ambassador made,who,when the same monarch complained that his masters paid less regard to him than they had done to Cromwell.
"Ah,sir!"says the Ambassador,"Oliver was quite another man--"It is not my intent to give a commentary on Waller's character,nor on that of any other person;for I consider men after their death in no other light than as they were writers,and wholly disregard everything else.I shall only observe that Waller,though born in a court,and to an estate of five or six thousand pounds sterling a year,was never so proud or so indolent as to lay aside the happy talent which Nature had indulged him.The Earls of Dorset and Roscommon,the two Dukes of Buckingham,the Lord Halifax,and so many other noblemen,did not think the reputation they obtained of very great poets and illustrious writers,any way derogatory to their quality.They are more glorious for their works than for their titles.These cultivated the polite arts with as much assiduity as though they had been their whole dependence.
They also have made learning appear venerable in the eyes of the vulgar,who have need to be led in all things by the great;and who,nevertheless,fashion their manners less after those of the nobility (in England I mean)than in any other country in the world.
