enough to confute itself; for though English be mouldering ftone, as he tells us there, yet he has certainly picked the best out of a bad quarry

We are no lefs beholden to him for the new turn of verfe which he brought in, and the improvement he made in our numbers. Before his time men rhy*med indeed, and that was all: as for the harmony of measure, and that dance of words which good ears are fo much pleas'd with, they knew nothing of it. Their poetry then was made up almost entirely of monofyllables, which, when they come together in any cluster, are certainly the most harsh, untuneable things in the world. If any man doubts of this, let him read ten lines in Donne, and he will be quickly convinced. Befides, their verfes ran all into one another, and hung together, throughout a whole copy, like the hooked atoms that compofe a body in Des Cartes. There was no diftinction of parts, no regular ftops, nothing for the ear to rest upon; but as foon as the copy began, down it went like a larum, inceffantly, and the reader was fure to be out of breath before he got to the end of it: fo that really verse. in those days, was but downright profe tacked with rhymes Mr Waller removed allthefe faults, brought in more polyfyllables, and smoother measures, bound up his thoughts better, and in a cadence more agreeable to the nature of the verfe he wrote in; fo that wherever the natural ftops of that were, he contri

ved the little breakings of his fenfe fo as to fall in with them; and, for that reason, fince the ftrefs of our verfe lies commonly upon the last syllable, you will hardly ever find him ufing a word of no force there. I would fay if I were not afraid the reader would think me too nice, that he commonly closes with verbs, in which we know the life of language confifts.

Among other improvements we may reckon that of his rhymes, which are always good, and very often the better for being new. He had a fine ear, and knew how quickly that fenfe was cloy'd by the fame round of chiming words still returning upon it. It is a decided cafe by the great mafter of writing *, Quæ. funt ampla, et pulchra, diu placere poffunt; quæ lepida et concinna, (amongst which rhyme muft, whether it will or no, take its place) citò fatietate afficiunt aurium fenfum faftidiofiffimum. This he understood very well; and therefore, to take off the danger of a furfeit that way, ftrove to please by variety and new founds. Had he carried this obfervation, among others as far as it would go, it must, methinks, have shown him the incurable fault of this jingling kind of poetry, and have led his later judgment to blank verfe: but he continued an obftinate lover of rhyme to the very last: it was a mistress that neyer appeared unhandfome in his eyes, and was courted by him long after

* Ad Herennium, lib. iv.

Sachariffa was forfaken. He had raised it, and brought it to that perfection we now enjoy it in; and the poet's temper (which has always a little vanity in it)would not fuffer him ever to flight a thing he had taken fo much pains to adorn My Lord Rofcommon was more impartial; no man ever rhymed truer and evener than he; yet he is fo juft as to confefs that it is but a trifle, and to wish the tyrant dethroned, and blank verfe fet up in its room. There is a third perfon*, the living glory of our English poetry, who has difclaimed the ufe of it upon the ftage, tho' no man ever employed it there fo happily as he. It was the ftrength of his genius that firft brought it into credit in Plays, and it is the force of his example that has thrown it out again. In other kinds of writing it continues ftill, and will do fo till fome excellent fpirit arifes that has leisure enough, and refolution, to break the charm, and free us from the troublesome bondage of rhyming, as Mr. Milton very well calls it, and has proved it as well by what he has wrote in another way. But this is a thought for times at fome distance; the prefent age is a little too warlike; it may perhaps furnish out matter for a good poem in the next, but it will hardly encourage one now. Without prophefying, a man may eafily know what fort of laurels are like to be in request.

* Mr. Dryden.

Whilft I am talking of verfe, I find myself, I do not know how, betrayed into a great deal of prose. I intended no more than to put the reader in mind what refpect was due to any thing that fell from the pen of Mr. Waller. I have heard his last printed copies, which are added in the several editions of his poems, very flightly spoken of, but certainly they do not deserve it: they do indeed discover themselves to be his laft, and that is the worst we can fay of them. He is there

Jam fenior; fed cruda Deo viridifque fenectus *,

The fame cenfure, perhaps, will be paffed on the pieces of this Second Part. I shall not fo far engage for them, as to pretend they are all equal to whatever he wrote in the vigour of his youth; yet they are fo much of a piece with the reft, that any man will at firft fight know them to be Mr. Waller's. Some of them where wrote very early, but not put into for mer collections, for reasons obvious enough,but which are now ceased. The play was altered to please the court: it is not to be doubted who fat for the Two Brothers' characters. It was agreeable to the sweetnefs of Mr. Waller's temper to soften the rigour of the tragedy, as he expreffes it; but whether it be fo agreeable to the nature of tragedy itself to make every thing come off eafily, I leave to the criticks. In the

Virg. Æn. vi. v. 304.

Volume I.

E

prologue and epilogue there are a few verses that he has made ufe of upon another occafion; but the reader may be pleafed to allow that in him that has been allowed fo long in Homer and Lucretius. Exact writers drefs up their thoughts fo very well always, that when they have need of the fame fenfe, they cannot put it into other words but it must be to its prejudice. Care has been taken, in this book, to get together every thing of Mr. Waller's that is not put into the former collection; fo that between both the reader may make the fet complete.

It will, perhaps, be contended, after all, that fome of thefe ought not to have been published; and Mr. Cowley's* decifion will be urged, that a neat tomb of marble is a better monument than a great pile of rubbish. It might be answered to this, that the pictures and poems of great mafters have been always valued, though the laft hand were not put to them: and I believe none of thofe gentlemen that will make the objection would refuse a sketch of Raphael's, or one of Titian's draughts of the first fitting. I might tell them, too, what care has been taken, by the learned, to preferve the fragments of the ancient Greek and Latin poets: there has been thought to be a divinity in what they faid; and therefore the kaft pieces of it have been kept up and reverenced like religious reliques: and I am fure, take away the In the preface to his works.