at Eton; and, in fine, at King's College, Cambridge. Accounts vary as to
his proficiency--one Bigge, who had been his school-fellow at Wickham,
told Aubrey that he never expected Waller to have become such an eminent
poet, and that he used to write his exercises for him. Others, on the
contrary, have alleged that it was the fame of his scholarship which led
to his election for Agmondesham, a borough in Bucks, when he was only
sixteen years of age. This story, so far as his premature learning goes,
seems rather apocryphal; but certain it is, that when scarcely eighteen,
he had become M.P. for the above-mentioned borough. The parliament in
which he found himself, was one of those subservient and cringing
assemblies which James I. was wont to summon to sit till they had voted
the supplies, and then contemptuously to dismiss. It met in November
1621, and after passing a resolution in support of their privileges,
which James tore out of the Journals with his own hand, and granting the
usual supplies, was dissolved on the 6th of January 1622. Waller was
probably as silent and servile as any of his neighbours. He began,
however, to feel his way as a courtier, and overheard some curious and
not very canonical talk of James with his lords and bishops, the record
of which reminds you of some of the richer scenes of the "Fortunes of
Nigel." The next parliament was not called till 1624, when Waller was
not elected. The electors of Agmondesham, who had, meantime, obtained
fuller privileges, chose two matured members to represent them, and the
precocious boy lost his seat.

Waller's "political and poetical life began nearly together." It was in
his eighteenth year that he wrote his first poetical piece--that on the
escape of Prince Charles from a tempest on his return from Spain. It is
a tissue of smooth and musical mediocrity. It shews a kind of stunted
prematurity. The perfection which is attained by a single effort is
generally a poor and tame one. This poem of Waller's, like several of