Upon the marriage of that lady to lord Spenser, afterwards earl of Sunderland, which was solemnized July 11, 1639, Mr. Waller wrote the following letter to lady Lucy Sidney, her sister, which is so full of gallantry, and so elegantly turned, that it will doubtedly give pleasure to our readers to peruse it.
Madam,
'In this common joy at Penshurst[1], I know, none to whom complaints may come less unseasonable than to your ladyship, the loss of a bedfellow, being almost equal to that of a mistress, and therefore you ought, at least, to pardon, if you consent not to the imprecations of the deserted, which just Heaven no doubt will hear. May my lady Dorothy, if we may yet call her so, suffer as much, and have the like passion for this young lord, whom she has preferred to the rest of mankind, as others have had for her; and may his love, before the year go about, make her taste of the first curse imposed upon womankind, the pains of becoming a mother. May her first born be none of her own sex, nor so like her, but that he may resemble her lord, as much as herself. May she, that always affected silence and retirement, have the house filled with the noise and number of her children, and hereafter of her grand-children; and then may [244] she arrive at that great curse, so much declined by fair ladies, old age; may she live to be very old, and yet seem young; be told so by her glass, and have no aches to inform her of the truth; and when she shall appear to be mortal, may her lord not mourn for her, but go hand in hand with her to that place, where we are told there is neither marrying, nor giving in marriage, that being there divorced, we may all have an equal interest in her again! my revenge being immortal, I wish all this may befall her posterity to the world's end, and afterwards! To you, madam, I wish all good things, and that this loss may, in good time, be happily supplied, with a more constant bedfellow of the other sex. Madam, I humbly kiss your hands, and beg pardon for this trouble, from
'Your ladyship's
'most humble servant,
'E. Waller.'
He lived to converse with lady Sunderland when she was very old, but his imprecations relating to her glass did not succeed, for my lady knew she had the disease which nothing but death could cure; and in a conversation with Mr. Waller, and some other company at lady Wharton's, she asked him in raillery, 'When, Mr. Waller, will you write such fine verses upon me again?' 'Oh Madam,' said he, 'when your ladyship is as young again.'
In the year 1640, Mr. Waller was returned Burgess for Agmondesham, in which Parliament he opposed the court measures. The writer of his [245] life observes[2], 'that an intermission of Parliaments for 12 years disgusted the nation, and the House met in no good humour to give money. It must be confessed, some late proceedings had raised such jealousies as would be sure to discover themselves, whenever the King should come to ask for a supply; and Mr. Waller was one of the first to condemn those measures. A speech he made in the House upon this occasion, printed at the end of his poems, gives us some notion of his principles as to government.' Indeed we cannot but confess he was a little too inconstant in them, and was not naturally so steady, as he was judicious; which variable temper was the cause of his losing his reputation, in a great measure, with both parties, when the nation became unhappily divided. His love to poetry, and his indolence, laid him open to the insinuations of others, and perhaps prevented his fixing so resolutely to any one party, as to make him a favourite with either. As Mr. Waller did not come up to the heighths of those who were for unlimited monarchy, so he did not go the lengths of such as would have sunk the kingdom into a commonwealth, but had so much credit at court, that in this parliament the King particularly sent to him, to second his demands of some subsidies to pay the army; and Sir Henry Vane objecting against first voting a supply, because the King would not accept it, unless it came up to his proportion; Mr. Waller spoke earnestly to Sir Thomas Jermyn, comptroller of the houshold, to save his master from the effects of so bold a falsity; for, says he, I am but a country gentleman, and cannot pretend to know the King's mind: but Sir Thomas durst not contradict the secretary; and his son [246] the earl of St. Alban's, afterwards told Mr. Waller, that his father's cowardice ruined the King.
In the latter end of the year 1642, he was one of the commissioners appointed by the Parliament, to present their propositions for peace to his Majesty at Oxford. Mr. Whitelocke, in his Memorials, tells us, that when Mr. Waller kissed the King's hand in the garden at Christ's Church, his Majesty said to him, 'though you are last, yet you are not the worst, nor the least in our favour.' The discovery of a plot, continues Mr. Whitelocke, 'then in hand in London to betray the Parliament, wherein Mr. Waller was engaged, with Chaloner, Tomkins, and others, which was then in agitation, did manifest the King's courtship of Mr. Waller to be for that service.'
In the beginning of the year 1643, our poet was deeply engaged in the design for the reducing the city of London, and the Tower, for the service of his Majesty, which being discovered, he was imprisoned, and fined ten thousand pounds. As this is one of the most memorable circumstances in the life of Waller, we shall not pass it slightly over, but give a short detail of the rise, progress, and discovery of this plot, which issued not much in favour of Mr. Waller's reputation.