comparing this with his Orphan, it will appear that become ftronger, and his The ftriking paffages are publick feems to judge his images were by time language more energetick. in every mouth; and the rightly of the faults and excellences of this play, that it is the work of a man not attentive to decency, nor zealous for virtue; but of one who conceived forcibly, and drew originally, by confulting nature in his own breast. Together with thofe plays he wrote the poems which are in the late collection, and tranflated from the French the Hiftory of the Triumvirate. All this was performed before he was thirty-four years old; for he died April 14, 1685, in a manner which I am unwilling to mention. Having been compelled by his neceffities to contract debts, and hunted, as is fuppofed, by the terriers of the law, he retired to a publick house on Tower-hill, where he is faid to have died of want; or, as it is related by one of his biographers, by fwallowing, after a long faft, a piece of bread which charity had fupplied. He went out, as is reported, almost naked, in the rage of hunger, and finding a gentleman in a neighbouring coffee-house, afked him for a fhillings The gentleman gave him a guinea; and Otway going away bought a roll, and was choaked with the first mouthful. All this, I hope, is not true; and there is this ground of better hope, that 'Tis thus that Heaven its empire does maintain, It may afflict, but nan must not complain. How different from that, in Shakespear's Lear, of Edgar, whofe bailard brother Edmund had been acceffary to their father Gloucefter's miferies! 4 The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices Pope, Pope, who lived near enough to be well informed, relates in Spence's memorials, that he died of a fever caught by violent purfuit of a thief that had robbed one of his friends. But that indigence, and its concomitants, forrow and defpondency, preffed hard upon him, has never been denied, whatever immediate cause might bring him to the grave. Of the poems which the late collection admits, the longeft is the Poet's Complaint of his Mufe, part of which I do not understand; and in that which is lefs obfcure I find little to commend. The language is often grofs, and the numbers are harsh. Otway had not much cultivated versification, nor much replenished his mind with general knowledge. His principal power was in moving the paffions, to which Dryden in his latter years left an illustrious teftimony. He appears by fome of his verses to have been a zealous royalist: and had what was in those times the common reward of loyalty; he lived and died neglected. * In his preface to Frefaoy's Art of Painting. Orig. Edit.“ WALLER. W ALL E R.: E DMUND WALLER was born on the third of March, 1605, at Colfhill in Hertfordshire. His father was Robert Waller, Efquire, of Agmondefham in Buckinghamshire, whofe family was originally a branch of the Kentifh Wallers; and his mother was the daughter of John Hampden, of Hampden in the fame county, and fifter to Hampden, the zealot of rebellion. His father died while he was yet an infant, but left him an yearly income of three thousand five hundred pounds; which, rating together the value of money and the customs of life, we may reckon more than equivalent to ten thousand at the present time. He was educated, by the care of his mother, at Eaton; and removed afterwards to King's College in Cambridge. He was fent to parliament in his eighteenth, if not in his fixteenth year, and frequented the court of James the Firft, where he heard a very remarkable converfation, which the writer of the Life prefixed to his Works, who seems to have been well informed informed of, facts, though he may fometimes err in chronology, has delivered as indubitably certain. 66 "He found Dr. Andrews, bishop of Winchester, ❝ and Dr. Neale, bishop of Durham, ftanding behind "his Majesty's chair; and there happened something "extraordinary," continues this writer," in the con"verfation those prelates had with the king, on which "Mr. Waller did often reflect. His Majesty asked the bishops, My Lords, cannot I take my fubjects "money, when I want it, without all this formality of "parliament?" The bishop of Durham readily an"fwered, God forbid, Sir, but you should: you are the breath of our noftrils.' Whereupon the "King turned and said to the bishop of Winchester, "Well, my Lord, what fay you?" Sir,' replied "the bishop, I have no fkill to judge of parliamen"tary cafes.' The King anfwered, "No put-offs, my Lord; anfwer me presently." Then, Sir,' "faid he, I think it is lawful for you to take my "brother Neale's money; for he offers it.' Mr. Waller "faid, the company was pleased with this answer, and "the wit of it feemed to affect the King; for, a cer"tain lord coming in foon after, his Majefty cried 66 out, Oh, my lord, they fay you lig with my "Lady." No, Sir," fays his Lordship in confusion; "" but I like her company, because she has so much " wit.' "Why then," fays the King, " do you not "dig with my Lord of Winchester there ?" 66 Waller's political and poetical life began nearly together. In his eighteenth year he wrote the poem that appears in his works, on "the Prince's Escape at St. Andero;" a piece which juftifies the obfervation made by one of his editors, that he attained, by a felicity like like instinct, a style which perhaps will never be obfolete; and that," were we to judge only by the word"ing, we could not know what was wrote at twenty, ❝ and what at fourfcore." His verfification was, in his first effay, fuch as it appears in his last performance. By the perufal of Fairfax's tranflation of Tafso, to which, as Dryden relates, he confeffed himself indebted for the smoothness of his numbers, and by his own nicety of observation, he had already formed fuch a system of metrical harmony as he never afterwards much needed, or much endeavoured, to improve. Denham corrected his numbers by experience, and gained ground gradually upon the ruggednefs of his age; but what was acquired by Denham, was inherited by Waller. The next poem, of which the fubject feems to fix the time, is fuppofed by Mr. Fenton to be the Address to the Queen, which he confiders as congratulating her arrival, in Waller's twentieth year. He is apparently mistaken; for the mention of the nation's obligations to her frequent pregnancy, proves that it was written when she had brought many children. We have therefore no date of any other poetical production before that which the murder of the Duke of Buckingham occafioned: the steadiness with which the King received the news in the chapel, deserved indeed to be rescued from oblivion. Neither of these pieces that seem to carry their own dates, could have been the fudden effufion of fancy. In the verses on the Prince's escape, the prediction of his marriage with the princefs of France must have been written after the event; in the other, the promises of the King's kindness to the defcendants of Buckingham, * Preface to his Fables. Orig. Edit. |