It was in reference to this eulogy on Cromwell that Waller made to King Charles II the reply found in Bayle's dictionary. The King, to whom Waller had just presented, according to the custom of kings and poets, a poem stuffed with praise, reproached him with having done better for Cromwell. Waller replied: "Sir, we poets succeed better in fiction than in truth." That answer was not so sincere as the one made by the Dutch ambassador who, when the same king complained that people had less respect for him than for Cromwell, said, "Ah, sir, that Cromwell was something else again."

—Voltaire, Philosophical Letters