remained without a hearer. Wallace's already high reputation was still greatly raised by the popularity of "Lurline;" and in making arrangements for the opening of her Majesty's theatre as an English opera, it was Mr E. T. Smith's first policy to engage him to compose a work for production in the course of the season. "The Amber Witch" had long been nearly comple ed, and it was now finished in time for performance on the 28th of February, 1861. The management of Covent Garden, annoyed to have lost the chance of another such success as "Lurline," now entered into a contract with the composer for three years, to produce an opera of his in each season. He accordingly wrote "Love's Triumph," which was rehearsed and announced in the spring of 1862, but not produced until November; and in the autumn of the following year appeared "The Desert Flower," the last of his acted lyric performances. About this time he had made arrangements for bringing out "Lurline" at the Italian theatre in Paris, and undertaken to write an original work for the same establishment. A very large number of detached songs, many of which are in great popular favour, swells the sum of this composer's productions. Unlike his compatriot and co-rival, Balfe, the suscessful composer of "Maritana" and "Lurline" claims our respect for the conscientious care he spent on all he wrote, and the steady purpose to make everything he produced, the lightest and the most important, worthy the artistic character to which he aspired. The occasionally redundant complexity of his orchestration resulted from an excess of this virtue, if not from a misapplication of its principles; but the elegance of his melodies is ever prominent, and gives a special charm to all his music. It was his foible that he yearned to be considered as a German musician, forgetful that the greatest honour he could attain would be to swell the musical importance of his own country. He died, 11th October, 1865.—G. A. M.
WALLER, Edmund, poet and politician, was born at Coleshill in Hertfordshire on the 3rd of March, 1605. The family was one of the most ancient and honourable in the kingdom. At an early period they held large possessions in Kent, and filled high offices. Sir Richard, a distinguished soldier, took prisoner with his own hand, at the battle of Agincourt, Charles of Orleans, retaining him in friendly custody at his castle in Kent for twenty-four years. Robert, the father of the poet, resided principally at his seat of Beaconsfield in Buckinghamshire, and married the daughter of Griffith Hampden. The poet was thus first cousin to the great Hampden, and a near connection of Cromwell's. To the care of his mother, an uncompromising royalist, Edmund was committed in his eleventh year, on the death of his father. His genius does not appear to have developed itself at the grammar-school of Market-Wickham; but at Eton, and at King's college, Cambridge, he distinguished himself so much that his talents, combined with his high birth and large income, procured his return to parliament for the borough of Agmondesham before he was seventeen years of age. The members of that borough were not then permitted to speak in the house, and so the boy sat there in silence till the dissolution in 1622. The position, however, introduced him to the court of James I., with whom he seems to have been a favourite. Meantime he was a diligent votary both of the beau monde and the muses, and in his eighteenth year gave the world his first poem—on the escape of the prince (Charles) on his voyage from Spain. Whatever be the poetic merit of the piece, which, from its subject, did not afford scope for high treatment, there can be no doubt that it exhibited a mastery of versification, a metrical polish, and a skill in the selection and use of happy images and fine turns of expression, that placed Waller at once at the head of that school that sought to make our language a thoroughly harmonious vehicle of poetic thought. At intervals other pieces followed, for he wrote slowly, and polished carefully. He resumed his position in parliament in 1625 as member for Chipping Wycombe, and two years afterwards again represented Agmondesham, with the full right of sharing in the debates. When about twenty-five years of age he married A Miss Banks, a great city heiress, and retiring to Beaconsfield he occupied himself with literature. His wife died in a few years, leaving a son and daughter, the latter of whom alone reached maturity. Waller now returned to London society. Wealthy, witty, a poet, and still a young man, he aimed high, and assailed the heart of Lady Dorothea Sydney, daughter of the earl of Leicester, rendered immortal under the name of Sacharissa by the verse of her admirer. But the passion and the poetry of Waller were alike unsuccessful with the haughty beauty, and he consoled himself with an assault upon the heart of Lady Sophia Murray, under the pseudonym of Amoret, but with as little success. Finally, he found a lady of the name of Bresse or Breux, whom he made his wife, and by her became the father of many children. Waller sat for Agmondesham in the parliament called by Charles in 1639, and made a very able speech on the occasion of the application for subsidies. While, on the one hand, he advocated the constitutional doctrine of the commons, on the other he conducted himself with great consideration for the sovereign, concluding with a proposition that the house should first consider the grievances, and then proceed to the supply. Waller's reputation as a politician was now growing, and in the Long parliament, where he again represented the same borough, he was chosen by the house to conduct the prosecution against Judge Crawley for his declaration in favour of the inherent right of the crown to levy ship money. The speech of Waller on this occasion was eloquent and argumentative, temperate and bold, exposing the danger of suffering judges to usurp the functions of legislation. When the king openly broke with the parliament, the position of Waller became embarrassing. In heart and feeling attached to his sovereign, in politics committed to the popular party, his action was that of a man ever trying to temporize between both parties. He aided the king with his purse, while he spoke against his advisers in the house. Sent as a commissioner by parliament to treat with Charles at Oxford, he suffered himself to be won over by the monarch, and committed himself to a plot in the king's favour, which afterwards nearly cost him his life. This unhappy affair casts the darkest shadow upon the fame of Waller, not, indeed, so much by reason of the plot itself, as of his conduct. Tomkins, his brother-in-law, a man of influence amongst the merchants of the city, joined Waller in his attempts to create a court and city party in favour of reinstating the king. The object was not unjustifiable, the means contemplated were peaceful. But it so happened that concurrently another plot was organized by Sir Nicholas Crispe, to raise an army and restore the king by force. The plots were discovered, and the actors in each were supposed to be in concert, and animated by a common purpose. Waller forgot his manliness and courage; in terror he confessed more than probably could be proved against him. He contrived by feigned illness to put off his trial. He appealed from the military tribunals, by whom two of his companions had been condemned and executed, to the house of commons of which he was a member; and by affecting profound contrition, and by a speech adroit, adulatory, and eloquent, sought to win an acquittal, but only obtained a respite. The commons remitted him to the military tribunal; by whom he was condemned to death, and finally, reprieved by Essex, he was fined £10,000, and banished for life. Wandering through Normandy and Switzerland in company with the accomplished Evelyn, he settled at last in Paris, where he soon became noted for the splendour and liberality of his establishment, which became the resort of the wits and courtiers of the day. Here, too, many of his poems were composed, and several of his children born. His style of living gradually impaired his means, till at last he had sold all his wife's jewels. At length he was permitted to return to England early in 1652. Retiring to Barnstall, close to Beaconsfield, where his mother was still living, he conformed to the existing state of things, associated confidentially with Cromwell, and addressed to him that "Panegyryc" which is the finest of all his compositions. Upon the Restoration, however. Waller was as ready to pay his court to royalty, and the muse whose tears were scarcely dry in bewailing "the death of the Lord Protector" congratulated "the King upon his majesty's happy return." Waller once more entered parliament for Hastings in 1661, and continued a courtier and a senator till near the end of his life, dying at Beaconsfield, in the eighty-third year of his age. The poetry of Waller was as overestimated in his own day, and in the days of Pope, as it is undervalued in ours. To say he was a great poet, is to speak of him beyond his merits; to say his compositions were "a mass of smooth and easy, yet systematic trifling," is unjust. He was a poet of no mean capacity and genius, and a great master of the art of versification. "He was," says Sir Bernard Burke, "a dubious politician, yet noted for his stern parliamentary eloquence; a fanciful lover, yet attached not fancifully, but soberly and stanchly to his own two wives and his children; a foppish cavalier, yet imbued with a strong roundhead love of English liberty; a writer of love songs, but never
