Lives of the English Poets : Waller, Milton, Cowley

Poetry pleases by exhibiting an idea more grateful to the mind than things themselves afford.  This effect proceeds from the display of those parts of nature which attract, and the concealment of those which repel, the imagination: but religion must be shown as it is; suppression and addition equally corrupt it; and such as it is, it is known already.

From poetry the reader justly expects, and from good poetry always obtains, the enlargement of his comprehension and elevation of his fancy: but this is rarely to be hoped by Christians from metrical devotion.  Whatever is great, desirable, or tremendous, is comprised in the name of the Supreme Being.  Omnipotence cannot be exalted; Infinity cannot be amplified; Perfection cannot be improved.

The employments of pious meditation are Faith, Thanksgiving, Repentance, and Supplication.  Faith, invariably uniform, cannot be invested by fancy with decorations.  Thanksgiving, the most joyful of all holy effusions, yet addressed to a Being without passions, is confined to a few modes, and is to be felt rather then expressed.  Repentance, trembling in the presence of the judge, is not at leisure for cadences and epithets.  Supplication of man to man may diffuse itself through many topics of persuasion; but supplication to God can only cry for mercy.

Of sentiments purely religious, it will be found that the most simple expression is the most sublime.  Poetry loses its lustre and its power, because it is applied to the decoration of something more excellent than itself.  All that pious verse can do is to help the memory and delight the ear, and for these purposes it may be very useful; but it supplies nothing to the mind.  The ideas of Christian Theology are too simple for eloquence, too sacred for fiction, and too majestic for ornament; to recommend them by tropes and figures, is to magnify by a concave mirror the sidereal hemisphere.

As much of Waller’s reputation was owing to the softness and smoothness of his numbers, it is proper to consider those minute particulars to which a versifier must attend.

He certainly very much excelled in smoothness most of the writers who were living when his poetry commenced.  The poets of Elizabeth had attained an art of modulation, which was afterwards neglected or forgotten.  Fairfax was acknowledged by him as his model; and he might have studied with advantage the poem of Davies, which, though merely philosophical, yet seldom leaves the ear ungratified.

But he was rather smooth than strong; of “the full resounding line,” which Pope attributes to Dryden, he has given very few examples.  The critical decision has given the praise of strength to Denham, and of sweetness to Waller.

His excellence of versification has some abatements.  He uses the expletive “do” very frequently; and, though he lived to see it almost universally ejected, was not more careful to avoid it in his last compositions than in his first.  Praise had given him confidence; and finding the world satisfied, he satisfied himself.

His rhymes are sometimes weak words: “so” is found to make the rhyme twice in ten lines, and occurs often as a rhyme through his book.

His double rhymes, in heroic verse, have been censured by Mrs. Phillips, who was his rival in the translation of Corneille’s “Pompey;” and more faults might be found were not the inquiry below attention.

He sometimes uses the obsolete termination of verbs, as “waxeth,” “affecteth;” and sometimes retains the final syllable of the preterite, as “amazed,” “supposed,” of which I know not whether it is not to the detriment of our language that we have totally rejected them.

Of triplets he is sparing; but he did not wholly forbear them: of an Alexandrine he has given no example.

The general character of his poetry is elegance and gaiety.  He is never pathetic, and very rarely sublime.  He seems neither to have had a mind much elevated by nature nor amplified by learning.  His thoughts are such as a liberal conversation and large acquaintance with life would easily supply.  They had however then, perhaps, that grace of novelty which they are now often supposed to want by those who, having already found them in later books, do not know or inquire who produced them first.  This treatment is unjust.  Let not the original author lose by his imitators.