genuine Buckinghamshire-and his schooldays were spent at Eton, still within the limits of his county. Waller was chosen member for Amersham, in his native vale, before he was of full age, and then he went to the City for a wife, and carried off Mistress Ann Banks, a ward of the Court of Aldermen, who had eight thousand pounds in hard cash for her portion, and who was ardently desired by more than one of the gallants of the Court. Master Waller incurred the anger both of King and Lord Mayor, but contrived to make his peace with both, and to secure his bride's dower, a moderate fine being deducted for his audacity. The poet was then twenty-six years old, and soon was left a widower, with means and leisure to indulge in more poetic amours. Much of his time was now spent at Penshurst, where he laid siege to the heart of Lady Dorothea Sidney, eldest daughter of the Earl of Leicester, wooing her in many dulcet strains as his incomparable Sacharissa. The maid, however, preferred the glitter of a coronet to the amenities of literature, and married the Earl of Sunderland. Still the poet essayed to move the hearts of exalted demoisels, and Amoret, who is said to have been a certain Lady Sophia Murray took the place of Sacharissa. In all this there was probably little serious meaning. Waller fell back on his rôle of Buckinghamshire squire without a positive heartbreak, and married a certain Miss Bresse, who had no poetic name, but who brought him a family of thirteen children. It was not about her girdle, we may assume, that he wrote some of his happiest lines:

A narrow compass, and yet there Dwelt all that's good and all that's fair. Give me but what this riband bound, Take all the rest the sun goes round. But the temperament of the poet was sadly out of accord with the character of his surroundings. There was his uncle Hampden, a good man and true, but of a serious, religious cast, like the rest of the family. There were the Fairfaxes, people most estimable and distinguished, in one of whom, indeed the translator of Tasso, whose book was to be found even in the libraries of the godly-Waller recognised his first poetic model. Naturally enough, when under the influence of his own people, he felt himself the stern, incorruptible patriot, the rigid republican. With equal facility, among the gay young rufflers of the Court, with whom his wit

and gaiety made him always welcome-so that Ned Waller's was the life of a carouse, although himself rigidly abstemious-our poet felt all the reckless abandon of those who studied not politics, but who were ever ready to draw their swords for their King or their mistress.

These were rough times for a man of such facile temperament, and thus we find, all of a sudden, the Parliament man, the nephew of Hampden, joining in some hairbrained conspiracy to raise an insurrection for the King, and deliver over the city into his hands. The stern sectaries who had the management of affairs soon had their grasp upon the conspirators, and the gay poet found himself almost in the hands of the executioner before he had realised the peril he was incurring. Waller quailed at the prospect of death, and that for a cause he had only dallied with, and for which in cold blood he had no great relish. And so he saved his life by a full confession, and saw his more determined associates led to the scaffold. Two of theseChalloner and Tomkins, the latter described as the poet's brother-in-law-were executed at the Holborn end of Fetter Lane-a spot henceforth, one would think, of terrible reproach to the infirm-minded poet.

But he soon shook off the trouble from his soul, and well mulct in a fine of ten thousand pounds, went to lead a gay extravagant life at Paris. The Puritan party must have regarded Waller as one of their own lambs gone astray, but to be dealt with tenderly; for presently Waller made his peace with Cromwell, and returned to what was left of his Buckinghamshire estates. The stern Protector had a certain tenderness for children, poets, and weak things in general, and could appreciate a well-turned verse. Waller seems to have felt a real regard for him, and his verses on Cromwell's death have an honest ring about them. And then our poet executes a demi-volte, and sings the blessings of the Restoration.

Charles, who was no bad critic, told the poet that these last verses were far inferior to the other; a thrust which Waller evaded rather meanly than wittily by declaring that a poet could deal better with fiction than with fact. But if, as is generally believed, it was by Waller's influence that Milton was left unmolested in the "white terror" of the reaction, the lesser poet's meanness may be excused.

Milton and Waller were near neighbours for a while in this same Buckinghamshire, when Milton, driven from London by the

Plague, finished his Paradise Lost in the homely cottage which is still shown to the pilgrim at Chalfont St. Giles. And that is within walking distance from Beaconsfield, where Waller had built himself a more dignified residence, known as Hall Barns. Milton's choice of a retreat was probably due to the neighbourhood being thickly peopled with families of his own way of thinking in politics and religion, among whom he would meet with the respect and reverence that were elsewhere denied him. But there would have been nothing in Milton's nature to estrange him from the bard of amorous pieces and love-songs, as he himself had written:

Whether the muse or love call thee his mate, Both them I serve, and of their train am I. As for Waller, he died full of years at his own house in Beaconsfield, and was buried in the church there, and a monument is still there to his honour. His son Edmund, who inherited the estate, a good deal impaired by the father's long and somewhat wasteful life, presently turned Quaker, and then the Wallers sank decorously into obscurity.

The county, indeed, is rich in its associations with the poets. We have Gray at Stoke Pogis, with the churchyard, which, no doubt, suggested the elegy, and the spires and antique towers of Eton in the distance. Even more closely connected with the county is Cowper, who drew from its placid scenery and quiet county society some of his best inspiration. Who does not remember the description of the rural postman:

Hark, 'tis the twanging horn! o'er yonder bridge, That with its wearisome but needful length, Bestrides the wintry flood; in which the moon Sees her unwrinkled face reflected bright; He comes the herald of a noisy world. Now, this is Olney Bridge as it used to be in Cowper's time. The bridge has been renewed, but the other features of the scene are the same-a scene not at all joyous or inspiriting, but that was the suitable medium for the poet to work in. A melancholy poet at the best of times was Cowper, whose morbid feelings were always quivering on the brink of insane confusion, so that perhaps, after all, his religious despair gave a kind of dignity to his hallucinations without doing much to cause them. Cowper lived at Olney for twenty years, in the old brick house in the market-place, dull and commonplace enough, behind which is the garden, where the poet's summer-house is still to be seen. Then for nine years

longer he sojourned close by-at Weston Underwood, near his friends, the Throckmortons. The companion of all these years was Mary Unwin, the widow of a clergyman, who, at Huntingdon, first took compassion on the shy, nervous, helpless man, and tended him with more than motherly care and affection till she herself became a helpless sufferer. Thus all the best part of Cowper's life was spent in quiet Buckinghamshire, and in the levels of the placid Ouse, and there he should have been left to die in peace; but fussy, albeit wellintentioned relatives dragged the forlorn pair to the sandy barrens of the Norfolk coast, and there, in mental anguish aggravated by uncongenial surroundings, the last days of the poor poet smouldered away in gloom and despair.

But we must not forget that while Buckinghamshire at one end seems to belong to the great fen country, on the other side it is almost suburban, with the Thames washing its shores; and the pleasant mansions of its magnates looking over the reaches of the river, as Fawley, familiar to the oarsmen of the Thames, overlooking the Henley regatta-course; and Medmenham, with its pseudo ruins and mixed Rabelaisian associations. There is the pleasant town of Great Marlow, too, which seems to be practically annexed to the empire of London; and lower down, with Hedsor looking down from its height, and the beautiful hanging woods of Cliveden, the river owes the most charming part of its scenery to the Buckinghamshire hills. Then there are Burnham Beeches, a tract of wild woodland, with weird and ancient beech-trees, the last relics, perhaps, of the once extensive forest which gave its name to the county. At some time or other the beeches of Burnham have been pollarded, to which they owed their gnarled and twisted appearance, which is not the usual character of the smooth, symmetrical tree, whose smooth white limbs, half seen among the foliage, suggest thoughts of nymphs bathing in green, translucent pools; or haply some memories of the Saxon swineherd, with his herds of swine feeding upon the plenteous pannage, in the form of beech mast scattered thickly upon the sparse grass. Reminding, too, of old Evelyn and his sylvan lore, discoursing thus of the beech, with the customary touch of self-satisfied scholarship :

"The shade, unpropitious to corn and grass, but sweet, and of all the rest most refreshing to the weary shepherd 'lentus in

umbra,' echoing Amaryllis with his oaten pipe. The stagnate water in the hollow trees cures the most obstinate tetters, scabs, and scurfs. The leaves chewed are wholesome for the gums and teeth, and the very buds, as they are in winter hardened and dried upon the twigs, made good toothpickers. Swine may be driven to mast about the end of August; but it is observed that when they feed on it before it be mature, it intoxicates them for a while. In the meantime the kernels of the mast are greedily devoured by squirrels, and above all by dormice. And what relief they give to thrushes, blackbirds, fieldfares, and other birds everybody knows."

On one of the small brooks that join the Coln, and eventually the Thames, lies Amersham in a pleasant wooded valley, and close by is Shardeloes, the ancient seat of the Drakes, a family distinguished in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries for their strong attachment to the Puritan party in politics and religion. A little book, printed in 1647, called Trodden Down Strength by the God of Strength; or, Mrs. Drake Revived, gives incidentally a curious picture of the times. Poor Mrs. Drake fell into a melancholy despondency,

cure which her friends procured succession of the ablest ministers of the day to argue with her and persuade her to better thoughts. But all in vain. Like Cowper, the poor woman was convinced that she was a castaway, and spent many years-sad and miserable to herself and others about her-in that uncomfortable conviction. In her last hours, however, she became convinced that her sins were forgiven; and for ten days and nights she had no sleep, and employed her whole time in talking on religious subjects-a succession of ministers coming and going about her couch-and singing psalms and hymns, and giving advice to her friends, children, and servants. Then she caused herself to be dressed in white like a bride, and so expired, and, at her own request, was buried in the same clothes.

Then there is High Wycombe close by, with Hughenden in its immediate neighbourhood, with its associations with the gifted Benjamin Disraeli, who took his title from the inconsiderable town on the skirt of the Beacon Hill.

At West Wycombe is a handsome church of the eighteenth century, in the LondonGrecian style, and in the churchyard is a mausoleum of the same character, which, some years ago, was the scene of a curious

ceremonial. A long procession, headed by the militia of the county, wound its way from Wycombe Park, the seat of Lord Despencer, with military music, with songs and the sound of the pipe and the hautboy, everything as classical as could be contrived with the means at command; the chief object in which was a marble urn, borne aloft in all honour-a marble urn containing the heart of a poet. With due ceremony, the urn was deposited in the mausoleum, while an incantation, set to music by Dr. Arnold, was sung by a group of choristers.

The poet whose heart was thus honoured was not one of the greater members of the fraternity. At the present day, the name of Paul Whitehead might hardly be recognised as belonging to a poet, but his poems remain-"Manners" a satire-"Honour" a satire-creditable imitations of Pope in his least happy numbers. But the man himself is worth a moment's consideration, although only his heart connects him with the county. About Milton and Shakespeare there are books on everybody's shelves, but it might be more difficult to meet with a satisfactory account of Paul Whitehead.

Whitehead, then, was born in Good Queen Ann's days, the son of a tailor living near St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, and was himself apprenticed to a woollen draper in the City of London. He might have passed as a model for Hogarth's Idle Apprentice, for, instead of devoting himself to acquire the art and mystery of woollen draping, he took to haunting play-houses, and made the acquaintance of the leading actors of the period, while he associated with the young bloods of the day and the wits and loungers at the coffee-houses. Having dissipated his little patrimony and become surety for Fleetwood, the manager at Drury Lane, for a large sum, he spent a considerable time in the liberties of the Fleet, and became one of the leading spirits of the famous debtors' prison. So far, his career was of the established type, and he might have fairly been expected to finish in George Barnwell fashion, but he had made real friends among his butterfly associates, and one of these, Sir Francis Dashwood, afterwards Lord Despencer, coming into office with Lord Bute, procured a sinecure place for his friend, who spent the rest of his life in a happy, jovial fashion, with a pleasant house on "Twitnam Common,' often spending an evening at the Thatched House or with his friends of the Beefsteak Club, of which he was an original member. Dying, he bequeathed his heart to his

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