With something new to wish or to enjoy!

Railing and praising were his usual themes,

And both, to shew his judgment, in extremes:
So over-violent, or over-civil,

That every man with him was god or devil.

In squandering wealth was his peculiar art;
Nothing went unrewarded but desert:

Beggared by fools, whom still he found too late,

He had his jest, and they had his estate.'

Poignancy atones for its severity, while discretion renders it more cutting. If he falls into virulent ribaldry, it is less the fault of the man than of the age, which spared no invective however libellous, and no allusion however coarse. His coarsest satire is levelled against attacks which were themselves brutal; as in the case of Shadwell, who is represented, in Mac Flecknoe, as heir to the throne of stupidity. Flecknoe,' the king of nonsense, deliberating on the choice of a worthy successor, cries:

"Tis resolved, for Nature pleads that he
Should only rule who most resembles me.
Shadwell alone my perfect image bears,
Mature in dulness from his tender years;
Shadwell alone of all my sons is he
Who stands confirmed in full stupidity.

The rest to some faint meaning make pretence,
But Shadwell never deviates into sense.
Some beams of wit on other souls may fall,
Strike through and make a lucid interval;
But Shadwell's genuine night admits no ray;
His rising fogs prevail upon the day.
Besides, his goodly fabric fills the eye,

And seems designed for thoughtless majesty.'

When he became a convert to Romanism, he wrote The Hind and the Panther in defence of his new creed. Written in the hey-day of exultation, in the interest of what he dreamed to be the winning side, his argumentative talents nowhere appear to so great advantage. The first lines, descriptive of the Romish Church, are among the most musical in the compass of poetry:

'A milk white hind, immortal and unchanged,
Fed on the lawns, and in the forest ranged;
Without unspotted, innocent within,

She feared no danger, for she knew no sin.'

All the heretical sects, as beasts of prey, worry her. The English
Church is

The Panther, sure the noblest, next the hind,
And fairest creature of the spotted kind;
Oh, could her inborn stains be washed away,
She were too good to be a beast of prey!'

1A scribbler who died in 1678. Mac, the Celtic for son.

Then he introduces the bloody Bear, an Independent; the quaking Hare, for the Quakers; then the bristled Baptist Boar. The reader can imagine the bitterness which envenoms the controversy.

Having no personal philosophy to develop, Dryden was soon reduced to the clothing of foreign ideas. He translated Persius, Ovid, Juvenal, Lucretius, Virgil, and Homer; but he could notperhaps no one can- reproduce their spirit. The dawn of credulous thought can scarcely reappear in the harsh light of a learned and manly age. His version of the Eneid was long considered his highest glory. The nation seemed interested in the event. One gave him the different editions, another supplied him with notes, Addison furnished him with the arguments of the several books, great lords vied with one another in offering him hospitality, and, notwithstanding the inherent difficulties of the subject, he produced, says Pope, 'the most noble and spirited translation that I know in any language.' He also modernized several tales of the long-neglected Chaucer. But, as he worked under contract, haste availed only to dilute, and the childlike simplicity of the original is smothered in verbiage. Thus:

The busy larke, messager of day,
Saluteth in her song the morwe gray;
And fyry Phebus riseth up so bright

That al the orient laugheth of the light.'

How artless, yet how expressive! Now compare the modernization, which loses at once the freshness of idea and the felicity of phrase:

The morning lark, the messenger of day,
Saluted in her song the morning gray;

And soon the sun arose with beams so bright

That all the horizon laughed to see the joyous sight.'1

He is too reflective and stringent for the delicacies of his master; too cold and solid for his self-abandoning tenderness and his graceful gossip.

Though he never wrote extensively in prose, his prefaces and dedications, which, to increase their value, usher in each of his poems and plays, have made him famous as a critic. Most of his criticism relates to the drama, with which he was very conversant. To afford a glimpse of his exact and simple manner, as well as of the spirit which he carried into art, we briefly quote from the earliest statement of his critical system. It will be seen that he 1 Fables, consisting of stories from Chaucer and Boccaccio.

was more excellent in theory than he has proved in practice, where he alternately ventures and restrains himself, pushed in one direction by his English bias and drawn in the other by his French rules:

'The beauties of the French poesy are the beauties of a statue, but not of a man, because not animated with the soul of poesy, which is imitation of humour and passions. . . . He who will look upon their plays which have been written till these last ten years, or thereabouts, will find it an hard matter to pick out two or three passable humours amongst them. Corneille himself, their arch-poet, what has he produced except the Liar? and you know how it was cried up in France; but when it came upon the English stage, though well translated, . . . the most favourable to it would not put it in compe tition with many of Fletcher's or Ben Jonson's. . . . Their verses are to me the coldest I have ever read, . . . their speeches being so many declamations. When the French stage came to be reformed by Cardinal Richelieu, those long harangues were introduced, to comply with the gravity of a churchman. Look upon the Cinna and the Pompey; they are not so properly to be called plays as long discourses of reasons of state; and Polyeucte, in matters of religion is as solemn as the long stops upon our organs. Since that time it is grown into a custom, and their actors speak by the hour-glass, like our parsons.... I deny not but this may suit well enough with the French; for as we, who are a more sullen people, come to be diverted at our plays, so they, who are of an airy and gay temper, come thither to make themselves more serious.

He who began in empty mouthing, and who had gradually acquired the energy of satire, ended by acquiring the rapture of the lyric. Amidst the infirmities of age and the greatest sadness, he wrote the brilliant ode of Alexander's Feast, in honor of St. Cecilia's day. The hero is on his throne, his valiant captains before him, the lovely Thais by his side. Timotheus, placed on high, sings:

'Of Bacchus ever fair, and ever young.
The jolly god in triumph comes;

Sound the trumpets, beat the drums;
Flushed with a purple grace

He shows his honest face:

Now give the hautboys breath; he comes, he comes.
Bacchus, ever fair and young,

Drinking joys did first ordain;

Bacchus' blessings are a treasure,

Drinking is the soldier's pleasure;

Rich the treasure,

Sweet the pleasure,

Sweet is pleasure after pain.'

Moved by the stirring sounds, the monarch fights his battles over, madness rises, he defies heaven and earth. A sad air depresses him, then a tender one dissolves him in sighs, and he sinks upon the breast of the fair. Now strike the golden lyre again:

'A louder yet, and yet a louder strain.

Break his bands of sleep asunder,

1 An Essay of Dramatic Poesy.

And rouse him, like a rattling peal of thunder.

Hark, hark, the horrid sound

Has raised up his head,

As awaked from the dead,

And, amazed, he stares around.

"Revenge, revenge!" Timotheus cries;

"See the Furies arise;

See the snakes that they rear,

How they hiss in their hair,

And the sparkles that flash from their eyes!

Behold a ghastly band,

Each a torch in his hand!

Those are Grecian ghosts, that in battle were slain,
And unburied remain

Inglorious on the plain:

Give the vengeance due

To the valiant crew.

Behold how they toss their torches on high,

How they point to the Persian abodes,

And glittering temples of their hostile gods."

The princes applaud with a furious joy;

And the king seized a flambeau with zeal to destroy;

Thais led the way,

To light him to his prey,

And, like another Helen, fired another Troy.'

So did the bard realize the saying of his own Sebastian,—

'A setting sun

Should leave a track of glory in the skies.'

Style.-Harmonious, rapid, and vehement, pointed and condensed, with

The varying verse, the full-resounding line,
The long majestic march, and energy divine.'

Symmetrical and precise, as of one who studied rather than felt; yet uneven, as of one who was negligent of parts because confident that the good would overbalance the bad. In prose, airy and animated, easy without being feeble, and careless without being harsh; having that conversational elasticity which comes. of familiarity with the drawing-room — companionship with men and women of the world.

Rank.-Though few eminent writers are so little read, few names are more familiar. By the suffrages of his own and succeeding generations, his place is first in the second class of English poets. Perhaps his fame would have suffered little, if he had written not one of his twenty-eight dramas. He could not produce correct representations of human nature, for his was an examining rather than a believing frame of mind; and he

wrought literature more as one apprenticed to the business than as one under the control of inspiration: he attained, however, the excellences that lie on the lower grade of the satirical, didactic, and polemic. Not to be numbered with those who have sounded the depths of soul, he is incomparable as a reasoner in verse. Pope, his imitator and admirer, has outshone him in neatness, in brilliancy, and finish, but has not approached him in flexible vigor, in fervor, or in sweep and variety of versification. 'His faults,' says Cowper, are numberless, and so are his beauties. His faults are those of a great man, and his beauties are such (at least sometimes) as Pope with all his touching and retouching could never equal.' Making a trade of his genius, he wrote too much; as a whole, heavy and tedious, never quite equal to his talent. Says Voltaire of him, 'An author who would have had a glory without a blemish, if he had only written the tenth part of his works.'

If he could not depict artless and delicate sentiments or arouse subtle sympathies, he had, beyond most, the gift of the right word, and this in common with the few great masters,― that the winged seeds of his thought embed themselves in the memory, and germinate there. Few have minted so many phrases that are still a part of our daily currency. For example:

None but the brave deserves the fair.'

Men are but children of a larger growth.'

When wild in woods the noble savage ran.'

'Love either finds equality or makes it.'

Passions in men oppressed are doubly strong.'

Few know the use of life before 'tis past."

'Time gives himself and is not valued.'

'That's empire, that which I can give away.'
"The greatest argument for love is love.'
'Why, love does all that's noble here below.'
That bad thing, gold, buys all good things.'
Trust in noble natures obliges them the more.'
'Death in itself is nothing; but we fear
To be we know not what, we know not where.'

The cause of love can never be assigned,
'Tis in no face, but in the lover's mind.'

The secret pleasure of the generous act
Is the great mind's great bribe.'