judicious; which variable temper was the cause of his losing his reputation, in a great measure, with both parties, when the nation became unhappily divided.  His love to poetry, and his indolence, laid him open to the insinuations of others, and perhaps prevented his fixing so resolutely to any one party, as to make him a favourite with either.  As Mr. Waller did not come up to the heighths of those who were for unlimited monarchy, so he did not go the lengths of such as would have sunk the kingdom into a commonwealth, but had so much credit at court, that in this parliament the King particularly sent to him, to second his demands of some subsidies to pay the army; and Sir Henry Vane objecting against first voting a supply, because the King would not accept it, unless it came up to his proportion; Mr. Waller spoke earnestly to Sir Thomas Jermyn, comptroller of the houshold, to save his master from the effects of so bold a falsity; for, says he, I am but a country gentleman, and cannot pretend to know the King’s mind:  but Sir Thomas durst not contradict the secretary; and his son the earl of St. Alban’s, afterwards told Mr. Waller, that his father’s cowardice ruined the King.

In the latter end of the year 1642, he was one of the commissioners appointed by the Parliament, to present their propositions for peace to his Majesty at Oxford.  Mr. Whitelocke, in his Memorials, tells us, that when Mr. Waller kissed the King’s hand in the garden at Christ’s Church, his Majesty said to him, ’though you are last, yet you are not the worst, nor the least in our favour.’  The discovery of a plot, continues Mr. Whitelocke, ’then in hand in London to betray the Parliament, wherein Mr. Waller was engaged, with Chaloner, Tomkins, and others, which was then in agitation, did manifest the King’s courtship of Mr. Waller to be for that service.’

In the beginning of the year 1643, our poet was deeply engaged in the design for the reducing the city of London, and the Tower, for the service of his Majesty, which being discovered, he was imprisoned, and fined ten thousand pounds.  As this is one of the most memorable circumstances in the life of Waller, we shall not pass it slightly over, but give a short detail of the rise, progress, and discovery of this plot, which issued not much in favour of Mr. Waller’s reputation.

Lord Clarendon observes[3], ’that Mr. Waller was a gentleman of very good fortune and estate, and of admirable parts, and faculties of wit and eloquence, and of an intimate conversation and familiarity with those who had that reputation.  He had, from the beginning of the Parliament, been looked upon by all men, as a person of very entire affections to the King’s service, and to the established government of church and state; and by having no manner of relation to the court, had the more credit and interest to promote the service of it.  When the ruptures grew so great between the King, and the two houses, that many of the Members withdrew from those councils,