1623, aged 18, and soon after was transplanted to Lincoln College, where he continued for some years a commoner; thence he was preferred to be chaplain at sea to Henry Earl of Holland, who was admiral of a squadron of ships sent for a supply to the Isle of Ré. Afterwards he was domestic chaplain to Thomas Earl of Cleveland, who had an especial respect for him, for his ingenuity and excellent parts. In his service he continued six years; had a benefice in Lincolnshire, which he kept for a time; and in 1633 took the degree of bachelor of divinity by accumulation, being then much in esteem with the poetical wits of that time, particularly with Philip Massinger, who called him his son; Will Davenant, John Mennis, &c. From his benefice in Lincolnshire he removed to King's Nympton in Devonshire; and leaving a curate there, he went as chaplain to the before-mentioned Earl of Holland, Lieut.-general of the English forces in the first expedition against the Scots. Returning thence soon after, he settled at King's Nympton, where he resided during all the changes of government, by compliance with the power that was uppermost. After his majesty's return, he was made one of the canons of St. Peter's Cathedral in Exeter, archdeacon of Barnstaple, chaplain to Edward Earl of Clarendon, and in July 1661 he was actually created doctor of divinity. In the next year he became chanter of Exeter, in the place of Dr. S. Ward, promoted to the episcopal see of that place; and in 1663 was presented to the rectory of Alphington, in Devonshire (at which time he resigned King's Nympton and his archdeaconry), where he finished his course. His chief works that are of poetry are in Musarum Delicia, or the Muses' Recreation, containing several pieces of poetic wit; and in Wit Restored, in several select poems; which book, I say, is mostly of our author Smith's composition. At the end of which is his translation, a poem called The Innovation of Penelope and Ulysses, a mock poem; and at the end of that, also, is Cleveland's Rebel Scot, translated into Latin. He also composed "certain anthems"-not the musical, but poetical part of them-which are to this day used and sung in the cathedral church at Exeter. At length, paying his last debt to nature, at Alphington, on the 20th of June, 1667, his body was conveyed to King's Nympton, before mentioned, and was buried in the chancel belonging to the church there, near to the body of Elizabeth, his first wife.’

"Dr. Smith lived in cheerless times," adds the editor of the Wit's Recreation (1817), "and amongst a sour people. Mirth was then a mortal sin; and however innocent a fair, fat, laughing face might be, it was considered as the portrait of Lucifer; and poetry, except * Wood, Athen. Oxon. vol. ii.

Sternhold and Hopkins's (if that be an exception), as little less than the sign of a reprobate mind, void of all grace. It is strange that he had the hardihood to publish his poems during the usurpation; but the Restoration was at hand, when such a muse could breathe freely in an atmosphere perfectly congenial to him.

"Lasciva est nobis pagina, vita proba est,' seems, from all we can learn of them, very applicable to our poet and his coadjutor Sir J. Mennis; and it must be owned that the admission leaves an abundance to marvel at in a 'religious' knight and a doctor of divinity."

WILLIAM HABINGTON.

(1605-1645.)

William, eldest son of the Thomas Habington, Queen Elizabeth's godson, who was compromised by the Gunpowder-plot, was born at Hendlip, November 5, 1605, and was educated at the Jesuits' College at St. Omer's, and afterwards at Paris, with a view to induce him to take the habit of the order, which he declined. On his return from the continent, he resided principally with his father, who became his preceptor, and evidently sent him into the world a man of elegant accomplishments and virtues. Although allied to many noble families, and occasionally mixing in the gaieties of high life, his natural disposition inclined him to the pleasures of rural life. He was probably very early a poet and a lover, and in both successful. He married Lucy, daughter of William Herbert, first Lord Powis, by Eleanor, daughter of Henry Percy, eighth earl of Northumberland, by Katherine, daughter and co-heir of John Neville, Lord Latimer. It is to this lady that we are indebted for his poems, most of which were written in allusion to his courtship and marriage. She was the Castara who animated his imagination with tenderness and elegance, and purified it from the grosser opprobria of the amatory poets. His poems, as was not unusual in that age, were written occasionally, and dispersed confidentially. In 1635 they appear to have been first collected into a volume, which Oldys calls the second edition, under the title of Castara.

His other works are, the Queen of Arragon, tragi-comedy. The author having communicated the manuscript to Philip Earl of Pembroke, lord chamberlain of the household to King Charles I., he caused it to be acted, and afterwards published against the author's consent. It was revived, with the revival of the stage, at the Restoration, about the year 1666, when a new prologue and epilogue

were furnished by the author of Hudibras. Observations upon History, consisting of some particular pieces of history in the reigns of Henry II. and Richard I., &c. The History of Edward IV. (1640), which was written and published at the desire of Charles I. Wood insinuates that Habington "did run with the times, and was not unknown to Oliver the Usurper;" but we have no evidence of any such compliance with a system of political measures so diametrically opposite to those which we may suppose belonged to the education and principles of a Roman Catholic family. He died Nov. 13, 1645, and was buried at Hendlip in the family vault.

His poems are distinguished from those of most of his contemporaries by delicacy of sentiment, tenderness, and a natural strain of pathetic reflection. His favourite subjects, virtuous love and conjugal attachment, are agreeably varied by strokes of fancy and energies of affection. Somewhat of the extravagance of the metaphysical poets is occasionally discernible, but with very little affectation of learning, and very little effort to draw his imagery from sources with which the Muses are not familiar.

EDMUND WALLER.*

(Circa 1605-1687.)

Edmund Waller was born on the 3d of March, 1605, at Coleshill in Hertfordshire. His father was Robert Waller, Esq., of Agmondesham in Buckinghamshire, whose family was originally a branch of the Kentish Wallers; and his mother was the daughter of John Hampden, of Hampden in the same county, and sister to Hampden the zealot of rebellion.

His father died while he was yet an infant, but left him a yearly income of 35007.; which, rating together the value of money and the customs of life, we may reckon more than equivalent to 10,000l. at the present time.

He was educated, by the care of his mother, at Eton; and removed afterwards to King's College in Cambridge. He was sent to Parliament in his 18th, if not in his 16th year, and frequented the court of James I., where he heard a very remarkable conversation, which the writer of the life prefixed to his works, who seems to have been well informed of facts, though he may sometimes err in chronology, has delivered as indubitably certain :

* Johnson.

"He found Dr. Andrews, Bishop of Winchester, and Dr. Neale, Bishop of Durham, standing behind his majesty's chair; and there happened something extraordinary," continues this writer, "in the conversation those prelates had with the king, on which Mr. Waller did often reflect. His majesty asked the bishops, 'My lords, cannot I take my subjects' money when I want it, without all this formality of Parliament?' The Bishop of Durham readily answered, God forbid, sir, but you should; you are the breath of our nostrils.' Whereupon the king turned and said to the Bishop of Winchester, 'Well, my lord, what say you?' 'Sir,' replied the bishop, I have no skill to judge of parliamentary cases.' The king answered, 'No put-offs, my lord; answer me presently.' Then, sir,' said he, 'I think it is lawful for you to take my brother Neal's money; for he offers it.' Mr. Waller said the company was pleased with this answer, and the wit of it seemed to affect the king; for a certain lord coming in soon after, his majesty cried out, 'Oh, my lord, they say you lig with my lady.' 'No, sir,' says his lordship in confusion; but I like her company, because she has so much wit.' 'Why, then,' says the king, 'do you not lig with my lord of Winchester there?" "

Waller's political and poetical life began nearly together. In his eighteenth year he wrote the poem that appears first in his works, on the prince's escape at St. Andero;" a piece which justifies the observation made by one of his editors, that he attained, by a felicity like instinct, a style which perhaps will never be obsolete ; and that " were we to judge only by the wording, we could not know what was wrote at twenty and what at fourscore." His versification was, in his first essay, such as it appears in his last performance. By the perusal of Fairfax's translation of Tasso, to which, as Dryden* relates, he confessed himself indebted for the smoothness of his numbers, and by his own nicety of observation, he had already formed such 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 ruggedness of his age; but what was acquired by Denham was inherited by Waller.

The next poem, of which the subject seems to fix the time, is supposed by Mr. Fenton to be the Address to the Queen, which he considers 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 occasioned: the steadiness with which the king re* Preface to his Fables. Dr. J.

ceived 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 sudden effusion of fancy. In the verses on the prince's escape, the prediction of his marriage with the princess of France must have been written after the event; in the other, the promises of the king's kindness to the descendants of Buckingham, which could not be properly praised till it had appeared by its effects, show that time was taken for revision and improvement. It is not known that they were published till they appeared long afterwards with other poems.

Waller was not one of those idolaters of praise who cultivate their minds at the expense of their fortunes. Rich as he was by inheritance, he took care early to grow richer, by marrying Mrs. Banks, a great heiress in the city, whom the interest of the court was employed to obtain for Mr. Crofts. Having brought him a son, who died young, and a daughter, who was afterwards married to Mr. Dormer, of Oxfordshire, she died in childbed, and left him a widower of about five-and-twenty, gay and wealthy, to please himself with another marriage.

Being too young to resist beauty, and probably too vain to think himself resistible, he fixed his heart, perhaps half fondly and half ambitiously, upon the Lady Dorothea Sidney, eldest daughter of the Earl of Leicester, whom he courted by all the poetry in which Sacharissa is celebrated: the name is derived from the Latin appellation of sugar, and implies, if it mean any thing, a spiritless mildness and dull good-nature, such as excites rather tenderness than esteem, and such as, though always treated with kindness, is never honoured or admired.

Yet he describes Sacharissa as a sublime predominating beauty, of lofty charms and imperious influence, on whom he looks with amazement rather than fondness, whose chains he wishes, though in vain, to break, and whose presence is wine that inflames to mad

ness.

His acquaintance with this high-born dame gave wit no opportunity of boasting its influence; she was not to be subdued by the powers of verse, but rejected his addresses, it is said, with disdain, and drove him away to solace his disappointment with Amoret or Phillis. She married in 1639 the Earl of Sunderland, who died at Newberry in the king's cause; and in her old age, meeting somewhere with Waller, asked him when he would again write such verses upon her: "When you are as young, madam," said he, "and as handsome as you were then."