Edmund Waller Biography Quotes 22 Report mistakes

Early Life and Family
Edmund Waller was born in 1606 at Coleshill near Amersham, into a prosperous Buckinghamshire family whose estate centered on Beaconsfield. His father died when he was young, and Waller inherited wealth that secured his independence. Through his mother, a member of the Hampden family, he was kin to John Hampden, the future parliamentary leader. Educated at Eton and then at Cambridge, and admitted at Lincoln's Inn while still in his teens, he came of age amid the manners of court and the training of the law, acquiring the poise and eloquence that would serve him in the House of Commons and in verse.

Entry into Public Life
Waller entered Parliament early, sitting for several constituencies in the 1620s and 1630s. In a chamber that included powerful voices such as John Pym and his cousin John Hampden, he acquired a reputation for polished oratory, skilled in balance and antithesis. His speeches, like his poems, prized cadence and clarity, and he moved with ease in circles that bridged court, City, and country gentry.

Courtship, Marriage, and the Making of a Poet
His personal life colored his art. He first married Anne Banks, an heiress whose fortune reinforced his own; after her early death, he later married Mary Bracey, and their household produced many children. The episode that fixed his name in literary memory was his courtship of Dorothy Sidney, daughter of Robert Sidney, Earl of Leicester. Unsuccessful in love, he transmuted desire into the poised lyrics addressed to his Sacharissa, among them the celebrated Go, lovely Rose! Dorothy married Henry Spencer, later Earl of Sunderland, and Waller's poems settled into their role as refined witnesses to a love unsatisfied yet artistically fruitful.

Poetry Before the Wars
Before the Civil War, Waller wrote occasional verse for court and nation, including lines on the youthful Prince Charles's dangers at St. Andero and narrative pieces such as The Battell of the Summer Islands. His models included Ben Jonson and the late Elizabethans, but he favored a smoother music, moving the English couplet toward the even, lucid flow that later would be associated with John Dryden and Alexander Pope. At salons tied to Leicester House and other courtly gatherings, he earned a reputation for grace rather than metaphysical intricacy.

Civil War and Waller's Plot
The Civil War brought peril. In 1643 he was implicated in the so‑called Waller's Plot, a Royalist design to seize London from within. Arrested with conspirators such as Tomkyns and Chaloner, he faced a capital sentence. His confession and cooperation, while preserving his life, stained his public repute; he was heavily fined and banished. The episode fixed an enduring image of political flexibility that his later career both confirmed and complicated.

Exile, Revisions, and the Protectorate
Waller withdrew to France, living chiefly in Rouen and Paris among English exiles and the cosmopolitan world that clustered around Queen Henrietta Maria. A collection of his Poems appeared in 1645, and over the next decade he revised and polished his work. The turn of policy under the Protectorate opened a path home. He wrote A Panegyric to my Lord Protector in praise of Oliver Cromwell, a measured celebration of order restored, and resumed a life divided between letters and public business.

Restoration Poet and Parliamentarian
With the Restoration of Charles II, Waller again adjusted to the times, welcoming the king with To the King, upon his Majesty's Happy Return. He returned to the Commons in the Cavalier Parliament and served intermittently for the remainder of his long life. His occasional poems marked naval victories and courtly scenes; Instructions to a Painter commemorated maritime warfare and royal leadership, and prompted later satiric ripostes by Andrew Marvell. He addressed the Duke of York, the future James II, on sea battles, and moved among writers including John Dryden, whose broader range and dramatic power would eventually overshadow Waller's narrower but elegant gift.

Style, Themes, and Reputation
Waller's importance lies in the finish of his line. He brought the couplet a new evenness, purging the roughness of earlier practice while retaining wit and decorum. Love lyrics such as On a Girdle and the Sacharissa poems epitomize a courtly ideal that prizes clarity, proportion, and urbane restraint; his public verse, whether for Cromwell or for Charles II, exhibits the controlled rhetoric of a statesman-poet. Later generations recognized the innovation. Dryden praised his numbers, and Pope, surveying the lineage of smoothness and correctness in English verse, regularly placed Waller near the fountainhead. If his range was modest, his craft proved foundational for the Augustan manner.

Character and Anecdote
Waller's political pliancy made him a symbol of adaptability in an age of convulsion. The famous court anecdote has Charles II asking why the panegyric to Cromwell seemed the stronger poem, and Waller answering that poets succeed best in fiction, a poised reply that captures both wit and worldly tact. Friends and observers from Abraham Cowley to the diarist John Evelyn noticed in him an urbane temper, at once sociable and shrewd.

Later Years and Death
In later life he divided his time between London and Hall Barn at Beaconsfield, reshaping his estate and writing occasional pieces such as Of St. James's Park. Age did not erode the lucidity of his line, though the era's taste advanced beyond the minor lyric and the ceremonial ode. He died at Beaconsfield in 1687 and was buried there, closing a life that had witnessed and survived the whole arc of Stuart revolution and restoration.

Legacy
Waller's enduring legacy is technical. He steered English verse toward the lucid, balanced couplet that would dominate the next century, providing a model for public poetry and the polished lyric. While his political record remains mixed and his themes narrow beside the achievements of Milton or Dryden, his best poems retain their crystalline poise, and his example stands at the hinge between the intricate energies of the early seventeenth century and the measured harmony of the Augustans.

Our collection contains 22 quotes who is written by Edmund, under the main topics: Wisdom - Love - Writing - Faith - Poetry.