Waller, who had also
made himself conspicuous as a volunteer Antony to the country squire
turned Caesar,
("With ermine clad and purple, let him hold
A royal sceptre made of Spanish gold,")
was more servile than Dryden in hailing the return of _ex officio_
Majesty. He bewails to Charles, in snuffling heroics,
"Our sorrow and our crime
To have accepted life so long a time,
Without you here."
A weak man, put to the test by rough and angry times, as Waller was, may
be pitied, but meanness is nothing but contemptible under any
circumstances. If it be true that "every conqueror creates a Muse,"
Cromwell was unfortunate. Even Milton's sonnet, though dignified, is
reserved if not distrustful. Marvell's "Horatian Ode," the most truly
classic in our language, is worthy of its theme. The same poet's Elegy,
in parts noble, and everywhere humanly tender, is worth more than all
Carlyle's biography as a witness to the gentler qualities of the hero,
and of the deep affection that stalwart nature could inspire in hearts of
truly masculine temper. As it is little known, a few verses of it may be
quoted to show the difference between grief that thinks of its object and
grief that thinks of its rhymes:--
"Valor, religion, friendship, prudence died
At once with him, and all that's good beside,
And we, death's refuse, nature's dregs, confined
To loathsome life, alas! are left behind.
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