little of our hero's intellect, or so much of his heart, as to credit
this story. Though not aged, he was by far too old to be caught with
such chaff. He knew, too, before, Charles' private sentiments towards
him, and we incline with some of his biographers to suppose that these
words of royalty were simply the signal to Waller to fire the train
which the king knew right well had already been prepared.

Poets are in general poor politicians and miserable plotters. They
seldom, even in verse or fiction, manage a state plot well. Scott, at
least, has completely failed in his treatment of the Popish plot in
"Peveril," and they always bungle it in reality. They are either too
unsuspicious or too scheming, too shallow or too profound. That mixture
of transparency and craft, of simplicity and subtlety, requisite to all
deep schemes, and which Poe (himself a confused compound of the genius,
the simpleton, and the scoundrel) has so admirably exemplified in the
"Purloined Letter," is not often competent to men of imagination and
impulse. Waller was not a very creative spirit; but here he was true to
his class, and failed like a very poet. He had a brother-in-law named
Tomkins, clerk of the Queen's Council, and possessed of much influence
in the city. Consulting together on national affairs, it struck them
simultaneously that energetic measures might yet save the court. They
saw, or thought they saw, a reaction in favour of the royal cause, and
they determined to try and unite the royalists together in a peaceful
but strong combination against the parliament. They appointed
confidential agents to make out, in the different parishes and wards,
lists of those persons who were or were not friendly to their cause; and
to secure secresy, they prohibited more than three of their party from
meeting in one place, and no individual was to reveal the design to more
than two others. Lord Conway, fresh from Ireland, joined the
confederacy, and probably the counsels of such an ardent soldier served