Waller was both Kingsman and Republican—steering deftly between extremes, so as to keep himself and his estates free from harm. This will weaken your sympathy for him at once—as it should do. He lived in a grand way—affected the philosopher; was such a philosopher as quick-witted selfishness makes; yet he surely had wonderful aptitudes in dealing with language, and could make its harmonious numbers flow where and how he would. Waller has come to a casual literary importance in these days under the deft talking and writing of those dilettante critics who would make this author the pivot (as it were) on which British poesy swung away from the “hysterical riot of the Jacobeans” into measured and orderly classic cadence. It is a large influence to attribute to a single writer, though his grace and felicities go far to justify it. And it is further to be remembered that such critics are largely given to the discussion of technique only; they write as distinct art-masters; while we, who are taking our paths along English Letters for many other things besides art and rhythm, will, I trust, be pardoned for thinking that there is very little pith or weighty matter in this great master of the juggleries of sound.
Waller married early in life, but lost his wife while still very young; thenceforth, for many years—a gay and coquettish widower—he pursued the Lady Dorothy Sidney with a storm of love verses, of which the best (and it is really amazingly clever in its neatness and point) is this:
“Go, lovely Rose,
Tell her, that wastes her time and me,
That now she knows
When I resemble her to thee
How sweet and fair she seems to be.
Tell her that’s young,
And shuns to have her graces spied,