H. M.



WALLER.



Edmund Waller was born on the third of March, 1605, at Coleshill, in
Hertfordshire. His father was Robert Waller, Esquire, of
Agmondesham, in Buckinghamshire, whose family was originally a
branch of the Kentish Wallers; and his mother was the daughter of
John Hampden, of Hampden, in the same county, and sister to Hampden,
the zealot of rebellion.

His father died while he was yet an infant, but left him a yearly
income of three thousand five hundred pounds; which, rating together
the value of money and the customs of life, we may reckon more than
equivalent to ten thousand at the present time.

He was educated, by the care of his mother, at Eton; and removed
afterwards to King's College, in Cambridge. He was sent to
Parliament in his eighteenth, if not in his sixteenth year, and
frequented the court of James the First, where he heard a very
remarkable conversation, which the writer of the Life prefixed to
his Works, who seems to have been well informed of facts, though he
may sometimes err in chronology, has delivered as indubitably
certain:

"He found Dr. Andrews, Bishop of Winchester, and Dr. Neale, Bishop