Waller's Life ascribes to him the first practice of what Erythraeus
and some late critics call "Alliteration," of using in the same
verse many words beginning with the same letter. But this knack,
whatever be its value, was so frequent among early writers, that
Gascoigne, a writer of the sixteenth century, warns the young poet
against affecting it; Shakespeare, in the "Midsummer Night's Dream,"
is supposed to ridicule it; and in another play the sonnet of
Holofernes fully displays it.

He borrows too many of his sentiments and illustrations from the old
mythology, for which it is vain to plead the example of ancient
poets; the deities, which they introduced so frequently, were
considered as realities, so far as to be received by the
imagination, whatever sober reason might even then determine. But
of these images time has tarnished the splendour. A fiction, not
only detected but despised, can never afford a solid basis to any
position, though sometimes it may furnish a transient allusion, or
slight illustration. No modern monarch can be much exalted by
hearing that, as Hercules had his "club" he has his "navy."

But of the praise of Waller, though much may be taken away, much
will remain; for it cannot be denied that he added something to our
elegance of diction, and something to our propriety of thought; and
to him may be applied what Tasso said, with equal spirit and
justice, of himself and Guarini, when, having perused the Pastor
Fido, he cried out, "If he had not read Aminta, he had not excelled
it."

As Waller professed himself to have learned the art of versification
from Fairfax, it has been thought proper to subjoin a specimen of