King on his Navy; the Panegyric on the Queen Mother; the two poems
to the Earl of Northumberland; and perhaps others, of which the time
cannot be discovered.

When he had lost all hopes of Sacharissa, he looked round him for an
easier conquest, and gained a lady of the family of Bresse, or
Breaux. The time of his marriage is not exactly known. It has not
been discovered that his wife was won by his poetry; nor is anything
told of her, but that she brought him many children. He doubtless
praised some whom he would have been afraid to marry, and perhaps
married one whom he would have been ashamed to praise. Many
qualities contribute to domestic happiness, upon which poetry has no
colours to bestow; and many airs and sallies may delight
imagination, which he who flatters them never can approve. There
are charms made only for distant admiration. No spectacle is nobler
than a blaze.

Of this wife, his biographers have recorded that she gave him five
sons and eight daughters.

During the long interval of Parliament, he is represented as living
among those with whom it was most honourable to converse, and
enjoying an exuberant fortune with that independence and liberty of
speech and conduct which wealth ought always to produce. He was,
however, considered as the kinsman of Hampden, and was therefore
supposed by the courtiers not to favour them.

When the Parliament was called in 1640, it appeared that Waller's
political character had not been mistaken. The king's demand of a
supply produced one of those noisy speeches which disaffection and