SOURCE: Richmond, H. M. “The Fate of Edmund Waller.” South Atlantic Quarterly 60 (1961): 230-38.

In the following essay, Richmond looks at Waller's reputation, arguing that he merits more critical attention.

When Waller died in 1687, his tomb at Beaconsfield was dignified by an epitaph from the Historiographer Royal. It is in the usual fulsome, empty style which dissipates trust by overemphasis, but surprisingly its claim that Waller endeared English literature to the muses is approved by Waller's most distinguished literary contemporaries. In Dryden's preface to Walsh's Dialogue Concerning Women (1691), for example, we read, “Unless he had written none of us could write”; and in his preface to The Second Part of Mr. Waller's Poems (1690) Atterbury boldly declared, thinking primarily of Waller, “I question whether in Charles the Second's Reign English did not come to its full perfection; and whether it has not had its Augustan Age.”

Modern critics have, however...