images were by time become stronger, and his language more energetick. The striking paffages are in every mouth; and the publick feems to judge rightly of the faults and excellencies of this play, that it is the work of a man not attentive to decency, nor zealous for virtue; but of one who conceived forcibly, and drew originally, by confulting nature in his own breast. Together with those plays he wrote the poems which are in the prefent collection, and tranflated from the French the Hiftory of the Triumvirate. All this was performed before he was thirtyfour years old; for he died April 14, 1685, in a manner which I am unwilling to mention. Having been compelled by his neceffities to contract debts, and hunted, as is fuppofed, by the tarriers of the law, he retired to a publick houfe on Tower-hill, where he is faid to have died of want; or, as it is related by one of his biographers, by swallowing, after a long faft, a piece of bread which charity had fupplied. He went out, as is reported, almost naked in the rage of hunger, and, and, finding a gentleman in a neighbouring coffee-house, afked him for a fhilling. The gentleman gave him a guinea; and Otway going away bought a roll, and was choaked with the first mouthful. All this, I hope, is not true; and there is this ground of better hope, that Pope, who lived near enough to be well informed, relates in Spence's Memorials, that he died of a fever caught by violent pursuit of a thief that had robbed one of his friends. But that indigence, and its concomitants, forrow and defpondency, preffed hard upon him, has never been denied, whatever immediate caufe might bring him to the grave. Of the poems which the prefent collection admits, the longest is the Poet's Complaint of bis Mufe, part of which I do not understand ; and in that which is lefs obfcure I find little to commend. The language is often grofs, and the numbers are harfh. Otway had not much cultivated verfification, nor much replenished his mind with general knowledge. His principal power was in moving the paffions, to which Dryden in his latter years In his preface to Frefnoy's Art of Painting. Dr. J. left left an illustrious teftimony. He appears by fome of his verfes to have been a zealous royalift, and had what was in those times the common reward of loyalty; he lived and died neglected. WALLER. WALLER. E DMUND WALLER was born on the third of March, 1605, at Colfhill in Hertfordshire. His father was Robert Waller, Efquire, of Agmondefham in Buckinghamfhire, whose family was originally a branch of the Kentish Wallers; and his mother was the daughter of John Hampden, of Hampden in the fame county, and fifter to Hampden, the zealot of rebellion. Դ His father died while he was yet an infant, but left him a yearly income of three thoufand five hundred pounds; which, rating together the value of money and the customs of life, we may reckon more than equivalent to ten thousand at the present time. He was educated, by the care of his mother at Eaton; and removed afterwards to King's College in Cambridge. He was fent to parliament in his eighteenth, if not in his fixteenth year, and frequented the court of James the Firft, where he heard a very remarkable converfation, which the writer of the Life prefixed to his Works, who feems to have been well informed of facts, though he may fometimes err in chronology, has delivered as indubitably certain : 66 "He found Dr. Andrews, bishop of Win chefter, and Dr. Neale, bishop of Durham, “standing behind his Majefty's chair; and "there happened fomething extraordinary," continues this writer, "in the converfation "thofe prelates had with the king, on which "Mr. Waller did often reflect. His Majesty afked the bishops, "My Lords, cannot I "take my fubjects money, when I want it, "without all this formality of parliament ?" "The bishop of Durham readily answered, “God forbid, Sir, but you fhould: you are "the breath of our noftrils.' Whereupon "the King turned and said to the bishop of |