What though he frown, and to tumult do incline;
Thou the flame

Kindled in his breaft canft tame

With that fnow which unmelted lies on thine.

He feldom indeed fetches an amorous fentiment from the depths of fcience; his thoughts are for the most part cafily understood, and his images fuch as the fuperficies of nature readily fupplies; he has a juft claim to popularity, because he writes to common degrees of knowledge, and is free at leaft from philofophical pedantry, uniefs perhaps the end of a fong to the Sun may be excepted, in which he is too much a Copernican. To which may be added the fimile of the Palm in the verfes on her palling through a crowd; and aline in a more ferious poem on the Restoration, about vipers and treacle, which can only be understood by thofe who happen to know the compofition of the Theriaca.

His thoughts are fometimes hyperbolical, and his images unnatural:

The plants admire,

No less than thofe of old did Orpheus' lyre;
If the fit down, with tops all tow'rds her bow'd;
They round about her into arbours crowd
Or if the walks, in even ranks they stand,
Like fome well-marfhal'd and obfequious band.

In another place;

While in the park I fing, the liftening deer
Attend my paflion, and forget to fear:
When to the beeches I report my flame,
They bow their heads, as if they felt the fame.
To gods appealing, when I reach their bowers,
With loud complaints they answer me in showers,

To thee a wild and cruel foul is given,

More deaf than trees, and prouder than the heaven!
On the head of a Stag:-

O fertile head which every year.
Could fuch a crop of wonder bear!
The teeming earth did never bring
So foon, fo hard, fo huge a thing:
Which might it never have been caft,
Each year's growth added to the laft,
Thefe lofty branches had fupply'd,"
The Earth's bold fon's prodigious pride:
Heaven with thefe engines had been feal'd,
When mountains heap'd on mountains fail'd.,

Sometimes having fucceeded in the first part, he makes a feeble conclufion. In the fong of " Sacha"riffa's and Amoret's Friendship," the two laft ftanzas ought to have been omitted.

His images of gallantry are not always in the highest degree delicate,

Then fhall my love this doubt difplace,

And gain fuch truft that I may come
And banquet fometimes on thy face,

But make my conftant meals at home.

Some applications may be thought too remote and unconsequential as in the verfes on the Lady dancing:

The fun in figures fuch as thefe,

Joys with the moon to play:

To the sweet strains they advance,
Which do refult from their own fpheres;
As this nymph's dance

Moves with the numbers which the hears.

Sometimes a thought, which might perhaps fill a diftich, is expanded and attenuated till it grows weak and almoft evanefcent.

Chloris! fince firft our calm of peace
Was frighted hence, this good we find,
Your favours with your fears increase,
And growing mifchiefs make you kind.
So the fair tree, which ftill preferves

Her fruit, and ftate, while no wind blows,
In ftorms from that uprightnefs fwerves;
And the glad earth about her ftrows

With treasure from her yielding boughs.

His images are not always diftinct; as, in the fol lowing paffage, he confounds Love as a perfon with love as a paffion :

Some other nymphs, with colours faint,
And pencil flow, may Cupid paint,
And a weak heart in time deftroy;
She has a stamp, and prints the Boy:
Can, with a fingle look, inflame
The coldeft breast, the rudeft tame.

His fallies of cafual flattery are fometimes elegant and happy, as that in return for the Silver Pen; and fometimes empty and trifling, as that upon the Card torn by the Queen. There are a few lines written in the Dutchefs's Taffo, which he is faid by Fenton to have kept a fummer under correction. It happened to Waller, as to others, that his fuccefs was not always in proportion to his labour.

Of these petty compofitions, neither the beauties nor the faults deferve much attention. The amorous verfes have this to recommend them, that they are lefs hyperbolical than those of some other poets. Waller is not always at the laft gafp; he does not die of a frown, nor live upon a smile. There is, however, too much love, and too many trifles. Little things are rade too important; and the Empire of Beauty is re

presented

presented as exerting its influence further than can be allowed by the multiplicity of human paffions, and the variety of human wants. Such books, therefore, may

be confidered as fhewing the world under a falfe appearance, and, fo far as they obtain credit from the young and unexperienced, as misleading expectation, and mifguiding practice.

Of his nobler and more weighty performances, the greater part is panegyrical; for of praise he was very lavish, as is obferved by his imitator, Lord Lansdown: No fatyr stalks within the hallow'd ground,

But queens and heroines, kings and gods abound;
Glory and arms and love are all the found.

}

In the first poem, on the danger of the Prince on the coaft of Spain, there is a puerile and ridiculous mention of Arion at the beginning; and the last paragraph, on the Cable, is in part ridiculously mean, and in part ridiculously tumid. The poem, however, is fuch as may be juftly praised, without much allowance for the state of our poetry and language at that time.

The two next poems are upon the King's behaviour at the death of Buckingham, and upon his Navy. He has, in the firft, ufed the pagan deities with great propriety:

'Twas want of fuch a precedent as this

Made the old heathen frame their gods amifs.

In the poem on the Navy, thofe lines are very no ble, which fuppofe the King's power fecure against a fecond Deluge; so noble, that it were almost criminal to remark the mistake of centre for furface, or to say that the empire of the fea would be worth little if it were not that the waters terminate in land.

The poem upon

Sallee has forcible fentiments; but the conclufion is feeble. That on the Repairs of St. Paul's has fomething vulgar and obvious; fuch as the mention of Amphion; and fomething violent and harth, as

So all our minds with his confpire to grace
The Gentiles' great apoftle, and deface
Thofe ftate-obfcuring fheds, that like a chain.
Seem'd to confine, and fetter him again:
Which the glad faint fhakes off at his command,
As once the viper from his facred hand.

So joys the aged oak, when we divide

The creeping ivy from his injur'd fide.

Of the two laft couplets, the firft is extravagant, and the fecond mean.

His praise of the Queen is too much exaggerated; and the thought, that the "faves lovers, by cutting "off hope, as gangrenes are cured by lopping the -limb," prefents nothing to the mind but difguft and -horror.

Of the Battle of the Summer Islands, it seems not eafy to fay whether it is intended to raise terror or merriment. The beginning is too fplendid for jeft, and the conclufion too light for seriousness. The verfification is studied, the scenes are diligently displayed, and the images artfully amplified; but as it ends neither in joy nor forrow, it will scarcely be read a fecond time.

The Panegyrick upon Cromwell has obtained from the publick a yery liberal dividend of praise, which however cannot be faid to have been unjustly lavished; - for fuch a series of verfes had rarely appeared before in the English language. Of the lines fome are grand, fome are graceful, and all are mufical. There is now

and