"the king wondered he could think of marrying his daughter to a
falling church." "The king," said Waller, "does me great honour in
taking notice of my domestic affairs; but I have lived long enough
to observe that this falling church has got a trick of rising
again."

He took notice to his friends of the king's conduct; and said that
"he would be left like a whale upon the strand." Whether he was
privy to any of the transactions that ended in the revolution is not
known. His heir joined the Prince of Orange.

Having now attained an age beyond which the laws of nature seldom
suffer life to be extended, otherwise than by a future state, he
seems to have turned his mind upon preparation for the decisive
hour, and therefore consecrated his poetry to devotion. It is
pleasing to discover that his piety was without weakness; that his
intellectual powers continued vigorous; and that the lines which he
composed when "he, for age, could neither read nor write," are not
inferior to the effusions of his youth.

Towards the decline of life he bought a small house, with a little
land, at Coleshill; and said "he should be glad to die, like the
stag, where he was roused." This, however, did not happen. When he
was at Beaconsfield, he found his legs grow tumid: he went to
Windsor, where Sir Charles Scarborough then attended the king, and
requested him, as both a friend and physician, to tell him "what
that swelling meant." "Sir," answered Scarborough, "your blood will
run no longer." Waller repeated some lines of Virgil, and went home
to die.