[In the following essay, Richmond looks at Waller's reputation, arguing that he merits more critical attention.]

When Waller died in 1687, his tomb at Beaconsfield was dignified by an epitaph from the Historiographer Royal. It is in the usual fulsome, empty style which dissipates trust by overemphasis, but surprisingly its claim that Waller endeared English literature to the muses is approved by Waller's most distinguished literary contemporaries. In Dryden's preface to Walsh's Dialogue Concerning Women (1691), for example, we read, “Unless he had written none of us could write”; and in his preface to The Second Part of Mr. Waller's Poems (1690) Atterbury boldly declared, thinking primarily of Waller, “I question whether in Charles the Second's Reign English did not come to its full perfection; and whether it has not had its Augustan Age.”

Modern critics have, however, responded to this rather too liberal praise with equally immoderate censure. Mr. J. B. Emperor's study of “The Catullian Influence in English Lyric Poetry” (University of Missouri Studies, 1928) alludes to the poet as “the frigid and time-serving Waller, who rhymed insipidly under both Jameses, both Charleses, and the Protector.” The same critic continues, “Perhaps none of the men considered in these studies had less of the truly poetic and lyric than he; in him the Augustan age definitely begins and begins indifferently. He is a thoroughly bad poet. His love verse is cold, artificial, and absurd.” Such severity seems hardly more discriminating than the earlier elaborate praise, but it is nevertheless shared by the best modern authorities. “No poetical reputation of the seventeenth century has been so completely and irreparably eclipsed as that of Edmund Waller,” writes Douglas Bush in his history of seventeenth-century literature. “Whereas Cowley and Cleveland can still give pleasure, Waller's name calls up scarcely more than two lyrics of attenuated cavalier grace, ‘On a Girdle’, and ‘Go Lovely Rose’, and a dim memory of much complimental verse. … For us he remains a fluent trifler, the rhymer of a court gazette.”

The sharpness of the conflict between the views of the seventeenth century and of our own suggests that Waller would present an unusually interesting figure on which to focus a study of developing critical opinion. The motives which apparently govern his decline into disrepute are unexpected and revealing, both of Waller's age and of ours. Clearly the bitterness of J. B. Emperor, and also of Edmund Gosse, in his Seventeenth Century Studies (to whom Waller was “the easy turn coat” who wrote “smooth, emasculated lyrics”), stems ultimately not from critical analysis of the poet's works so much as from a transferred judgment on Waller's apparently regrettable life. There can be no doubt that Waller's career does tempt the censorious minded, and it is bizarre enough to demand close examination and review in the light of our experience since the time when Gosse and Emperor wrote. Only so can a dispassionate estimate of his work be accomplished.

Waller's life invites censure because of its unhappy central episode—his regrettable collapse of character under threat of execution in 1643. During the early stages of the clash between parliament and king, Waller had behaved with a wisdom and integrity which marked him out as a politician of exceptional promise. Stockdale, an early editor (1772), writes in his preface without much exaggeration that: “Waller at this time acquired a very great political reputation. He vindicated the rights of the people, but he likewise supported the dignity and authority of the crown; he had chosen that just and virtuous medium, to which it is so difficult to adhere in times of tumult, fanaticism and rebellion.” He was welcomed by both parliament and the king as one of the commissioners sent to treat with Charles after Edgehill.

Nevertheless, seven months later Waller was under arrest for treason to parliament and was condemned to death soon after by a court martial. Pathetically, Waller's search for a peaceful compromise had involved him, accidentally, in a plot not merely to publicize the king's case, as Waller thought, but to further a revolt led by a royalist hothead, Sir Nicholas Crispe. Parliament refused, on discovering the plot, to disentangle these relationships, and Waller was condemned for intentions alien to his character and purpose. However, while some of his associates were hanged, Waller successfully deferred his death by desperate subterfuges—feigned madness, mass bribery, and informing on casual associates—until feeling against him declined and his sentence was reduced to fine and exile. After he spent a few penurious years abroad, Cromwell, to whom he was distantly related, allowed him to return.

This return, chiefly due to the threat of starvation if he remained abroad, is one source of censure, a rather superficial one under the circumstances. The earlier betrayals of confidence are the other grounds on which he is chiefly attacked. In the modern world, conditioned by works like Darkness at Noon and 1984, we may be less harsh, if still critical of Waller's conduct under threat of unmerited death. “Time-serving” scarcely serves to describe a man who surely felt with Marvell that “the cause was too good to have been fought for.”

This brief account may serve to set a little more in perspective the outraged censure of many of his critics who clearly share the views of Plato and Milton—that good poetry can only be written by conventionally good men. There is, however, another obstacle to Waller's return to popular esteem—ignorance. The latest edition of his poems, a “pocket” one, first appeared in 1893; and in the last twenty-five years PMLA lists only three slight references to Waller. Since the turn of the century only Mr. F. N. Bateson's “A Word for Waller” in his English Poetry (1950) makes a brief attempt at examining Waller sympathetically. On the other hand, the standard evaluation of him is stabilized because every history of English literature stereotypes him as reference point for the dawn of Augustanism. Bell's edition (1861) illustrates this interest-killing appreciation by noting, “His principal merit is that of having been the first who uniformly observed the obligations of a strict metrical system.” This editor's fullest praise is: “There are very few of his lines that do not read smoothly, and but one in which a syllabic defect can be detected.” Few histories improve on this approach—with inevitable consequences on the interest of potential readers.

There is one more complex reason for Waller's lack of reputation—the historical myth of the “unified sensibility” which Mr. Eliot fostered in his two essays “The Metaphysical Poets” and “Andrew Marvell.” Eliot seeks to demonstrate a deep and valuable tension between thought and feeling in such poets as Donne which later poets like Waller and Milton are held to lack. However, critics like Mr. Leonard Unger, in his essay “Fusion and Experience” (in The Man in the Name, 1956), have asked “Where in Donne's poetry is there a ‘felt thought,’ or a ‘thought feeling’?” and denied that the concept of such fusions is relevant to any Stuart poetry, Donne's included. Probably what we have in Donne is the blend of intellectual ingenuity with strong verbal emphasis used in the context of various stock emotional situations—partings, betrayals, attempted seductions. We value this verbal vigor and the intellectual virtuosity which Donne uses to create the scene—but neither of these resources has actually been forfeited by Waller as is usually claimed. Each quality has merely been developed to suit the social needs of a later, more urbane age. Waller's sense of conversational flow is as sure as Donne's, but more discreet, and his intellectual liveliness is at least equal to that of the author of “The Flea.”

Perhaps the easiest illustration of Waller's capacity as a wit to transform a social situation by applying his quickness and felicity of mind to it is to relate two conspicuous examples from court life which Johnson notes in his life of Waller. The first occurred when Waller “upon sight of the Duchess of Newcastle's verses on the Death of a Stag, declared he would give all his own compositions to have written them; and being charged with the exorbitance of such adulation, answered that ‘nothing was too much to be given that a lady might be saved from the disgrace of such a vile performance.’” Here we see the devastating cynicism and mocking slyness which Donne also exploits in a poem like “Woman's Constancy.” Again, when Charles reproached him on the superiority of his Panegyric to Cromwell over his Congratulation to the King, Waller answered, “Poets, Sir, succeed better in fiction than in truth.” Could Donne have found a more ingenious excuse? If these qualities of liveliness are transferred to his poetry, as I think they are, then surely Waller has a claim to our respect and is not wholly unworthy of the great predecessor to whom he is usually so unfavorably compared.

Let us examine some of these resources in his verse itself, avoiding those poems normally praised. For example, his poem about inconstancy, “Chloris! farewell,” has never been noticed by either critics or editors:

Chloris! farewell. I now must go;
For if with thee I longer stay,
Thy eyes prevail upon me so,
I shall prove blind, and lose my way.
Fame of thy beauty, and thy youth,
Among the rest, me hither brought;
Finding this fame fall short of truth,
Made me stay longer than I thought.
For I'm engaged by word and oath,
A servant to another's will;
Yet, for thy love, I'd forfeit both,
Could I be sure to keep it still.
But what assurance can I take,
When thou, foreknowing this abuse,
For some more worthy lover's sake,
Mayst leave me with so just excuse?
For thou mayst say, 'twas not thy fault
That thou didst thus inconstant prove;
Being by my example taught
To break thy oath, to mend thy love.

The poem concludes with Waller's rueful departure. These stanzas illustrate fairly Waller's virtues as a poet. The style is bare and natural, the situation precisely visualized, and the outcome both ingenious and salutary. The most effective part of the poem is the poet's insight into social and psychological patterns. The shock which tragically overtakes Beatrice in Middleton's Changeling when she discovers that murder leads to self-victimization has in Waller's poem been transposed to the level of more normal relationships. The shock effect remains in the unexpected reversal of the predictable outcome, based on what can only be called moral insight.

Ingenuity thus here acquires both literary and social value in a way comparable but superior to Waller's epigram about the Duchess of Newcastle's poem. In Waller's verse we find then at very least, the penetration of “metaphysical” wit and ingenuity into the finest texture of social relationships; and it is in this deft investigation of even conversational manners that the foundations of eighteenth-century sophistication were laid. It is not surprising that Waller's verse was so fashionable in that century, nor that, in less sophisticated modern society, he is disregarded.

Waller's resources are by no means so limited as modern critics pretend. In a stiffer, more Horatian style, Waller can be compared with Jonson or Herrick as we see in his poem “To a Lady in Retirement”:

Sees not my love how time resumes
The glory which he lent these flowers?
Though none should taste of their perfumes,
Yet must they live but some few hours;
Time what we forbear devours!
Had Helen, or the Egyptian Queen,
Been ne'er so thrifty of their graces,
Those beauties must at length have been
The spoil of age, which finds out faces
In the most retired places.
Should some malignant planet bring
A barren drought, or ceaseless shower,
Upon the autumn or the spring,
And spare us neither fruit nor flower;
Winter would not stay an hour.
Could the resolve of love's neglect
Preserve you from the violation
Of coming years, then more respect
Were due to so divine a fashion,
Nor would I indulge my passion.

This is not the feeble writing which we are led to expect from Waller. The poem is firmly organized, and sophisticated. The subdued mockery of the couplet:

The spoil of age, which finds out faces
In the most retired places.

agreeably offsets the aureate allusions introduced discreetly into the rest of the poem. It is not improper to note a hint in Waller's conclusion for the last lines of Marvell's first stanza of “To his Coy Mistress” since Waller's poems first appeared in 1645, some years before Marvell's best verse was probably written. That Marvell knew these poems and valued them is shown by the well-known and unmistakable debt owed by “The Bermudas” to Waller's “The Battle of the Summer Islands” (see Margoliouth's edition of Marvell).

In fact Waller's poem about “Dorothea” (“At Penshurst”) also probably provided a popular model for that series of “promenade poems” praising ladies which includes “Appleton House,” and of which this Waller poem is probably the first English example. It is no mean achievement to have set a precedent for Marvell's praise of the young Maria—and Cleveland's “Upon Phillis Walking in a Morning” as well. (Many lesser poets such as Hammond, Heath, and Hooke also conform to Waller's pattern.)

Waller is also by no means a trivial poet because he chooses to write lightly. The savage vehemence and aggressive ingenuity of Donne are by no means the only mood and method for effective comment on human nature. “Of Silvia” displays a lithe sinuosity of analysis coupled with an irony as inconspicuous as the poem's intention is razor-like:

Our sighs are heard; just Heaven declares
The sense it has of lover's cares;
She that so far the rest outshined,
Silvia the fair, while she was kind,
As if her frowns impaired her brow,
Seems only not unhandsome now.
So when the sky makes us endure
A storm, itself becomes obscure.
Hence 'tis that I conceal my flame,
Hiding from Flavia's self her name,
Lest she, provoking Heaven, should prove
How it rewards neglected love.
Better a thousand such as I,
Their grief untold should pine and die,
Than her bright morning, overcast
With sullen clouds, should be defaced.

Ostensibly this is the familiar lover's complaint, but the discriminations on which the progression of the poem depends are of unusually subtle character. The dogma of the moral nature of beauty, in the Platonic style, is invoked with polished ease—that which is ungracious is shown to be not fair. How lightly the effective censure of fickleness is achieved can be seen in the phrase “seems not unhandsome now.” The subjective and sentimental nature of the lover's sense of his lady's beauty is suavely stressed—but gallantly and moderately. “Not unhandsome” is a more original because a more poised mode of rejection than, say, one of Horace's blistering curses on Barine. However, the climactic irony lies in the mock gallantry of the second stanza. Lovers should not avow their loves, says Waller, because the regrettable lack of graciousness shown by a woman knowing of a lover's infatuation is bound to disgust him!

If this caustic yet urbane little poem is set against Donne's song, “Go and catch a falling star,” which makes a somewhat comparable attack on female nature, it will be seen that Donne's poem is memorable for its stylistic virtuosity, while Waller's is distinguished for its poised evaluation of social and moral tensions. Donne's poem is simply an assertion, though vivid and memorable; Waller's is an elegant algebraic demonstration. This is the quality which it shares with the first poem which we discussed; and it is that sharp sense of the significance of politely conversational exchanges which distinguishes all Waller's best verse.

This natural yet sensitive tone was certainly also his greatest social asset, restoring him to favor with the court even after his Cromwellian connection. And equally it was his political stock in trade, perfectly adapted to parliamentary eloquence. It was Waller's particular tragedy that in the middle of his life he found himself involved in events of a confusion and violence for which his unique talents were altogether unsuited. However, his contemporaries could distinguish these talents and admire them while admitting his public failures as a man.

We are less wise, and yet ironically even the one or two poems of Waller still conventionally admired, are good because of exactly those virtues which I have sought to display in his neglected verse and personality. Take his deservedly famous song:

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,
That hadst thou sprung
In deserts, where no men abide,
Thou must have uncommended died.
Small is the worth
Of beauty from the light retired;
Bid her come forth,
Suffer herself to be desired,
And not blush so to be admired.
Then die! that she
The common fate of all things rare
May read in thee;
How small a part of time they share
That are so wondrous sweet and fair!

It is ironic that Waller's best-known poem should so obviously lack that marked originality of intention which we noted in some of his other verse, for clearly this poem conforms in aim explicitly to Martial's famous admonition (“I felix rosa …”). However, this conventional frame allows us to see exactly where Waller's true originality lies. Compare the poem with Jonson's “To Celia” (in Volpone), Herrick's “Gather Ye Rosebuds,” or Marvell's “To his Coy Mistress” and it will be seen that though all these pleas for love are impressive and picturesque, none is so economical and so devoid of the “poetic.” The sentiment is expressed here with the minimum of effort—neither tone nor imagery is other than the actual situation permits. Perhaps for the first time in English the full force of poetic sensibility has focused on a social situation without distortion or heightening, and yet retained the magnetism of true art. The imagery is not exotic but drawn from immediate experience—the extraordinary tact of “Suffer herself to be desired” shows a sense of the pride of modesty which colors the poem as vividly as sensuous details. The swift conjunction of the second line, “Tell her that wastes her time and me,” shows that mastery of reserved yet pointed expression which distinguishes Waller. But most of all the spoken flow of the whole shows something definitive in English. No poem can be read without false intonation more infallibly than this one. The control is not only metrically impeccable, it is, socially speaking, masterly. Henry James could hardly seek more. Such a fascinating conversationalist as Waller here shows himself to be deserves to be more talked about himself.