Mr. Waller died of a dropsy October 21, 1687.  Finding his distemper encrease, and having yielded all hopes of recovery, he ordered his son-in-law Dr. Peter Birch, to desire all his children to join with him, and give him the sacrament.  He at the same time professed himself a believer in revealed religion with great earnestness, telling them, that he remembered when the duke of Buckingham, once talked profanely before King Charles, he told him, ’My lord, I am a great deal older than your grace, and I believe I have heard more arguments for atheism, than ever your grace did; but I have lived long enough to see, there was nothing in them, and so I hope will your grace.’  It is said, that had Mr. Waller lived longer, he would have inclined to the revolution, which by the violent measures of James ii. he could foresee would happen.  He was interred in the church-yard of Beaconsfield, where a monument is erected to his memory, the inscriptions on it were written by Mr. Thomas Rymer.

He left several children behind him:  He bequeathed his estate to his second son Edmund, his eldest, Benjamin, being so far from inheriting his father’s wit, that he had not a common portion.  Edmund, the second Son, used to be chosen member of Parliament for Agmondesham, and in the latter part of his life turned Quaker.  William, the third son, was a merchant in London, and Stephen, the fourth, a civilian.  Of the daughters, Mary was married to Dr. Peter Birch, prebendary of Westminster; another to Mr. Harvey of Suffolk, another to Mr. Tipping of Oxfordshire.

These are the most material circumstances in the life of Mr. Waller, a man whose wit and parts drew the admiration of the world upon him when he was living, and has secured him the applause of posterity.  As a statesman, lord Clarendon is of opinion, he wanted steadiness, and even insinuates, that he was deficient in point of honour; the earl at least construes his timidity, and apparent cowardice, in a way not very advantageous to him.

All men have honoured him as the great refiner of English poetry, who restored numbers to the delicacy they had lost, and joined to melifluent cadence the charms of sense.  But as Mr. Waller is unexceptionally the first who brought in a new turn of verse, and gave to rhime all the graces of which it was capable, it would be injurious to his fame, not to present the reader with the opinions of some of the greatest men concerning him, by which he will be better able to understand his particular excellencies, and will see his beauties in full glow before him.  To begin with Mr. Dryden, who, in his dedication to the Rival Ladies, addressed to the earl of Orrery, thus characterizes Waller.

’The excellency and dignity of rhime were never fully known till Mr. Waller sought it:  He first made writing easily an art; first shewed us to conclude the sense most commonly in distichs, which in the verses of those before him, runs on for so many lines together, that the reader is out of breath to overtake it.’