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ing its influence further than can be allowed by the multiplicity of human paffions, and the variety of human wants. therefore may be confidered as fhewing the world under a falfe appearance, and, fo far as they obtain credit from the young and unexperienced, as misleading expectation, and mifguiding practice.

Of his nobler and more weighty performances, the greater part is panegyrical; for of praise he was very lavish, as is obferved by his imitator, Lord Lanfdown?

No fatyr ftalks within the hallow'd ground, But queens and heroines, kings and gods abound;

Glory and arms and love are all the found,

In the first poem, on the danger of the Prince on the coast of Spain, there is a pue rile and ridiculous mention of Arion at the beginning; and the last paragraph, on the Cable, is in part ridiculously mean, and in part ridiculously tumid. The poern, however, is fuch as may be juftly praised, without much allowance for the ftate of our poetry and language at that time.

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The two next poems are upon the King's behaviour at the death of Buckingham, and upon his Navy.

He has, in the first, used the pagan with great propriety;

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'Twas want of fuch a precedent as this
Made the old heathen frame their gods amifs.

In the poem on the Navy, those lines are very noble, which fuppofe the King's power fecure against a fecond Deluge; fo noble, that it were almost criminal to remark the mistake of centre for furface, or to say that the empire of the fea would be worth little if it were not that the waters terminate in land.

The poem upon Sallee has forcible fentiments; but the conclufion is feeble. That on the Repairs of St. Paul's has fomething vulgar and obvious; fuch as the mention of Amphion; and fomething violent and harsh,

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So all our minds with his confpire to grace
The Gentiles' great apoftle, and deface
Those state-obfcuring fheds, that like a chain
Seem'd to confine, and fetter him again :
Which the glad faint shakes off at his command,
As once the viper from his facred hand.
So joys the aged oak, when we divide

The creeping ivy from his injur'd fide.

Of the two last couplets, the first is extravagant, and the fecond mean.

His praise of the Queen is too much exaggerated; and the thought, that she "faves "lovers, by cutting off hope, as gangrenes "are cured by lopping the limb," prefents nothing to the mind but disgust and horror.

Of the Battle of the Summer Islands, it feems not easy to fay whether it is intended to raise terror or merriment. The beginning is too fplendid for jeft, and the conclufion too light for seriousness. The verfification is ftudied, the scenes are diligently difplayed, and the images artfully amplified; but as it ends neither in joy nor forrow, it will fcarcely be read a fecond time.

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The Panegyrick upon Cromwell has obtained from the publick a very liberal dividend of praife, which however cannot be faid to have been unjustly lavished; for such a feries of verfes had rarely appeared before in the English language. Of the lines fome are grand, fome are graceful, and all are mufical. There is now and then a feeble verfe, or a trifling thought; but its great fault is the choice of its hero.

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The poem of The War with Spain begins with lines more vigorous and striking than Waller is accustomed to produce. The fucceeding parts are variegated with better paffages and worse. There is fomething too farfetched in the comparison of the Spaniards drawing the English on, by faluting St. Lucar with cannon, to lambs awakening the lion by bleating. The fate of the Marquis and his Lady, who were burnt in their fhip, would have moved more, had the poet not made him die like the Phoenix, because he had fpices about him, nor expreffed their affection and their end by a conceit at once false and vulgar:

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Alive, in equal flames of love they burn'd,
And now together are to afhes turn'd.

The verfes to Charles, on his Return,. were doubtless intended to counterbalance the panegyric on Cromwell. If it has been thought inferior to that with which it is naturally compared, the caufe of its deficience has been already remarked.

The remaining pieces it is not neceffary to examine fingly. They must be supposed to have faults and beauties of the fame kind with the reft. The Sacred Poems, however, deferve particular regard; they were the work of Waller's declining life, of those hours in which he looked upon the fame and the folly of the time past with the fentiments which his great predeceffor Petrarch bequeathed to pofterity, upon his review of that love and poetry which have given him immortality.

That natural jealoufy which makes every man unwilling to allow much excellence in another, always produces a difpofition to believe

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