DRYDEN, John, an illustrious English poet, descended of a respectable family in Huntingdonshire, was born at Aldwincle, in that county, on the 9th August 1631. He was educated under Dr Bushby at Westminster school, whence he removed to Cambridge in 1650, having been elected scholar of Trinity College, of which he appears to have been afterwards a fellow. In his earlier days he gave no extraordinary indications of genius; for even the year before he quitted the university, he wrote a poem on the death of Lord Hastings, which by no means exhibits a presage of that perfection in poetical composition which he was afterwards destined to attain.

On the death of Oliver Cromwell he wrote some “heroic stanzas” to the memory of the Lord Protector; but after the Restoration, being desirous of ingratiating himself with the new monarch, he wrote, first, a poem entitled Astroea Redux, and afterwards a panegyric on the king upon the occasion of his coronation. In 1662, he addressed a poem to the lord chancellor Hyde, presented on new year’s day; and in the same year he published a satire on the Dutch. In 1668 appeared his Annus Mirabilis, or the Year of Wonders, an historical poem, intended to celebrate the Duke of York’s victory over the Dutch. These pieces at length obtained him the favour of the crown; and Sir William Davenant having died the same year, 1668, Mr Dryden was appointed to succeed him as poet-Iaureat and historiographer to Charles II.; and accordingly he entered upon the office, though his patent was not signed until the year 1670. The pension of the two offices was L.200 a year. About this time also his inclination to write for the stage seems first to have evinced itself. For besides his concern with Sir William Davenant in the alteration of Shakspeare’s Tempest, he in 1669 produced his Wild Gallants, a comedy, which met with very indifferent success. Yet the author, not discouraged by its failure, soon published his Indian Emperor, which having experienced a more favourable reception, encouraged him to proceed. He did so, and that with so great rapidity, that in the key to the Duke of Buckingham’s Rehearsal he is recorded to have engaged himself by contract to write four plays in the year; and, indeed, in the years 1679 and 1680 he appears to have fulfilled this obligation. To this unhappy necessity which he lay under are to be attributed all those irregular and bombastic flights, and sometimes even puerile exuberances, for which he has been so severely criticised, and which, in the unavoidable hurry he usually wrote in, it was impossible for him to find time either to lop off or to correct.

In 1675, the Earl of Rochester, whose envious disposition did not allow him patiently to see growing merit meet with its due reward, and who therefore felt chagrined at the just applause with which Dryden’s dramatic pieceshad been received, was determined if possible to shake his interest at court; and he succeeded so far as to recommend one Crowne, an obscure author, to write a mask for the court, a service which of course belonged to Mr Dryden as poet-laureat. Nor was this the only attack, or indeed the most formidable one, which Dryden’s fame drew upon him; for, some years before this, the Duke of Buckingham, a man of licentious character, but of great wit, had severely ridiculed several of our author’s plays in his piece called the Rehearsal. But though the intrinsic wit which runs through this performance cannot, even at the present day, fail to excite our laughter, yet, as ridicule is not always the test of truth, it ought not to form the standard by which to fix Dryden’s poetical reputation, more especially when we consider that the pieces therein ridiculed are not the masterpieces of Dryden; that the very passages burlesqued are frequently, in their original places, much less ridiculous than when thus detached, like a rotten limb, from the body of the work, exposed to view with additional distortions, and divested of that connection with the other parts which gave it not only symmetry, but beauty; and, lastly, that the beauties, which the critic has kept in the back-ground, are infinitely more numerous than the deformities which he has thus industriously brought forth into immediate view.^[1. Dryden affected to despise the satire of the Rehearsal, which, however, he must have felt acutely. In the dedication prefixed to his translation of Juvenal and Persius, he observes, speaking of the many lampoons and libels which had been written against him, “I answered not the Rehearsal, because 1 knew the author sat to himself when he drew the picture, and was the very Bayes of his own farce; because also I knew, that my betters were more concerned than I was in that satire; and, lastly, because Mr Smith and Mr Johnson, the main pillars of it, were two such languishing gentlemen in their conversation, that I could liken them to nothing but their own relations, those noble characters of men of wit and pleasure about town.” But notwithstanding this affected insensibility, Dryden did not fail to take his revenge, as will be seen in the succeeding paragraph of the text. ]

Dryden, however, did not suffer these attacks to pass with impunity; for in 1679 there appeared an Essay οη Satire, said to have been written jointly by himself and the Earl of Mulgrave, containing some very severe reflections on the Earl of Rochester and the Duchess of Portsmouth, who, it is not improbable, might have been instrumental in the affront shown to Dryden; and in 1681 he published his Absalom and Achitophel, in which the well-known character of Zimri, drawn for the Duke of Buckingham, is certainly severe enough to repay all the ridicule thrown on him by that nobleman in the character of Bayes.^[2. Dryden left the story unfinished; and the reason he assigns for doing so is, because he could not prevail upon himself to exhibit Absalom as unfortunate. “Were I the inventor,” says he, “who am only the historian, I should certainly conclude the piece with the reconcilement of Absalom to David. And who knows but this may come to pass? Things were not brought to extremity where I left the story; there seems to be yet room left for a composure: hereafter there may be only for pity. I have not so much as an uncharitable wish against Achitophel; but am content to be accused of good-natured error, and to hope, with Origen, that the devil himself may at last be saved. For which reason, in this poem, he is neither brought to set his house in order, nor to dispose of his person afterwards.” Nevertheless, a second part of Absalom and Achiiophel was undertaken and written by Tate, at the request and under the direction of Dryden, who wrote nearly two hundred lines of it himself. ] The [7:8:223]resentment shown by these peers was, however, different and characteristic. Lord Rochester, who was a coward as well as a man of the most depraved morals, basely hired three ruffians to cudgel Dryden in a coffeehouse; whilst the Duke of Buckingham, in a more open manner, took the task upon himself, and at the same time presented the poet with a purse containing no very trifling sum of money; telling him that he inflicted the beating as a punishment for his impudence, but bestowed the gold as a reward for his wit.

In 1680 was published a translation of Ovid’s Epistles in English verse by several hands, two of which, together with the preface, were by Mr Dryden; and in 1682 appeared his ìłeligio Laici, designed as a defence of revealed religion, against deists, infidels, et hoc genus omne. Soon after the accession of King James II. our author changed his religion for that of the church of Rome, and wrote two pieces in vindication of the Catholic tenets; namely, A Defence of tire Papers written by the late King, found in his strong box; and the celebrated poem, afterwards answered by Lord Halifax, entitled The Hind and the Panther. By this extraordinary step he not only engaged himself in controversy, and incurred much censure and ridicule from the contemporary wits, but on the accomplishment of the revolution, being, by reason of his new religion, disqualified from bearing any office under the government, he was stripped of the laurel, which, to his still greater mortification, was bestowed on Richard Flecknoe, a man for whom he had a most settled aversion. This circumstance occasioned his writing the severely satirical poem called MacFlechnoe.

Dryden’s circumstances had never been affluent; but being now deprived of this little support, he found himself reduced to the necessity of writing for bread. We consequently find him from this period engaged in tasks of labour as well as genius, namely, in translating the works of others; and to this necessity perhaps our nation stands indebted for some of the best translations extant. In the year when he lost the laurel, he published the life of St Francis Xavier from the French. In 1693 appeared a translation of Juvenal and Persius; in the first of which he had a considerable hand, and of the latter the entire execution. In 1695 was published his prose version of Fresnoy’s Art of Painting ; and in the year 1697 he gave to the world that translation of Virgil’s works which still does, and perhaps ever will, hold the first place amongst all attempts of the kind. The smaller pieces of this eminent writer, such as prologues, epilogues, epitaphs, elegies, songs, and the like, are too numerous to be specified here, though now all happily collected in SiraValter Scott’s edition of his works. His last work is what is called his Fables, consisting of many of the most interesting stories in Homer, Ovid, Bocaccio, and Chaucer, translated or modernized in the most elegant and poetical manner; together with some original pieces, among which is the Ode to St Cecilia’s Day. This last composition, though written in the very decline of the author’s life, and at a period when old age and distress had conspired to damp his poetic ardour, and enfeeble the wings of fancy, possesses nevertheless as much of both as would have been sufficient to render him immortal had he never written a single line besides.

Dryden married Lady Elizabeth Howard, the daughter of the Earl of Berkshire, who survived him about eight years, though for the last four of them she was a lunatic, having been deprived of her senses by a nervous fever. By this lady he had three sons; Charles, John, and Henry. After a long life, harassed with the most laborious of all fatigues, that of the mind, and continually rendered anxious by distress and difficulty, he expired on the

1st of May 1701. Dryden had no monument erected to him for several years; a circumstance to which Mr Pope alludes in his epitaph intended for Mr Rowe. Upon this hint Sheffield duke of Buckingham erected a tomb, for which the following epitaph was originally intended:

This Sheffield rais’d—the sacred dust below

Was Dryden once; the rest, who does not know?

But this was afterwards changed into the plain inscription still to be seen on the monument, containing merely the dates of the poet’s birth and death, together with the fact of the tomb having been erected by John Sheffield, duke of Buckingham.

Mr Dryden’s character has been variously estimated by different writers, some of whom have exalted it by the highest commendation, and others debased it by the severest censure. The latter, however, we must charge to that strong spirit of party which prevailed during the greater part of Dryden’s lifetime, and which ought therefore to be taken with great allowances. From some parts of his history, however, he appears to have been unsteady, and to have too readily temporized with the several revolutions in church and state. But this might in some measure have been owing to that natural timidity and diffidence of disposition, which almost all writers seem agreed that he possessed. Congreve, whose authority cannot be suspected, has given us such an account of him as must make him appeal - no less amiable in his private character as a man, than he was illustrious in his public capacity as a poet. In the former capacity, according to Congreve, he was humane, compassionate, forgiving, and sincerely friendly; of extensive reading, tenacious memory, and ready communication; gentle in the correction of the writings of others, and patient under the reprehension of his own deficiencies; easy of access himself, but slow and diffident in his advances to others; and of all men the most modest and the most easy to be discountenanced in his approaches either to his superiors or to his equals. In the latter the highest testimonies have been borne to his merits by some of the greatest men.

Pope had a very high opinion of Dryden. In a letter to Wycherly he says, “It was certainly a great satisfaction to me to see and converse with a man whom in his writings I had so long known with pleasure; but it was a very high addition to it, to hear you at our very first meeting doing justice to your dead friend Mr Dryden. I was not so happy as to know him; Virgilium tantum vidi. Had I been born early enough, 1 must have known and loved him; for I have been assured, not only by yourself, but by Mr Congreve and Sir William Trumball, that his personal qualities were as amiable as his poetical, notwithstanding the many libellous misrepresentations of them; against which the former of these gentlemen has told me he will one day vindicate him.” But what Congreve and Pope have said of Dryden is rather in the way of panegyric than as an exact and impartial character. Other writers, however, have spoken of him with greater moderation, yet probably without doing him any injustice. Thus, according to Felton, “he at once gave the best rules, and broke them, in spite of his own knowledge, and the Pe-hearsal. His prefaces are many of them admirable upon dramatic writings: he had some peculiar notions, which he maintains with great address; but his judgment in disputed points is of less weight and value, because the inconstancy of his temper did run into his thoughts, and mixed with the conduct of his writings, as well as his life.” Voltaire describes him as “a writer whose genius was too i exuberant, and not accompanied with judgment enough • and he adds, that “if he, Dryden, had written only a tenth part of the works he left behind him, his character would [7:8:224]have been conspicuous in every part. But,” says the philosopher of Ferney, “his great fault is his having endeavoured to be universal.” “Perhaps no nation,” says Dr Johnson, “ever produced a writer that enriched his language with such a variety of models. To him we owe the improvement, perhaps the completion, of our metre, the refinement of our language, and much of the correctness of our sentiments. By him we were taught ‘ sapere et fari,’ to think naturally and express forcibly. Though Davies has reasoned in rhyme before him, it maybe perhaps maintained that he was the first who joined argument with poetry. He showed us the true bounds of a translator’s liberty. What was said of Rome adorned by Augustus, may be applied by an easy metaphor to English poetry embellished by Dryden, ‘ lateritiam invenit, marmoream reliquit he found it brick, and he left it marble.” The public voice, indeed, has assigned to Dryden the first place in the second rank of our poets; no mean station in a table of intellectual precedency so rich in illustrious names: and it is allowed that, even of the few who were his superiors in genius, none has exercised a more extensive or permanent influence on the national habits of thought and expression. In the following noble passage from an article in the Edinburgh Review (vol. xlvii. p. 29), the great attributes of Dryden’s character and genius are unfolded with striking vigour of diction and splendour of illustration.

“If Dryden had died before the expiration of the first of the periods into which we have divided his literary life, he would have left a reputation, at best, little higher than that of Lee or Davenant. He would have been known only to men of letters; and by them he would have been mentioned as a writer who threw away, on subjects which he was incompetent to treat, powers which, judiciously employed, might have raised him to eminence, whose diction and whose numbers had sometimes very high merit, but all whose works were blemished by a false taste, and by errors of gross negligence. A few of his prologues and epilogues might perhaps still have been remembered and quoted. In these little pieces, he early showed all the powers which afterwards rendered him the greatest of modern satirists. But during the latter part of his life he gradually abandoned the drama. His plays appeared at longer intervals. He renounced rhyme in tragedy. His language became less turgid, his characters less exaggerated. He did not indeed produce correct representations of human nature; but he ceased to daub such monstrous chimeras as those which abound in his earlier pieces. Here and there passages occur worthy of the best ages of the British stage. The style which the drama requires changes with every change of character and situation. He who can vary his manner to suit the variation, is the great dramatist; but he who excels in one manner only, will, when that manner happens to be appropriate, appear to be a great dramatist; as the hands of a watch which does not go point right once in the twelve hours. Sometimes there is a scene of solemn debate. This a mere rhetorician may write as well as the greatest tragedian that ever lived. We confess that to us the speech of Sempronius in Cato seems very nearly as good as Shakspeare could have made it. But when the senate breaks up, and we find that the lovers and their mistresses, the hero, the villain, and the deputy-villain, all continue to harangue in the same style, we perceive the difference between a man who can write a play and a man who can write a speech. In the same manner, wit, a talent for description, or a talent for narration, may, for a time, pass for dramatic genius. Dryden was an incomparable reasoner in verse. He was conscious of his power; he was proud of it; and the authors of the Rehearsal justly charged him with abusing it. His warriors and princesses are fond of discussing points of amorous casuistry, such as would have delighted a parliament of love. They frequently go still deeper, and speculate on philosophical necessity and the origin of evil.

“There were, however, some occasions which absolutely required this peculiar talent. Then Dryden was indeed at home. All his best scenes are of this description. They are all between men; for the heroes of Dryden, like many other gentlemen, can never talk sense when ladies are in company. They are all intended to exhibit the empire of reason over violent passion. We have two interlocutors, the one eager and impassioned, the other high, cool, and judicious. The composed and rational character gradually acquires the ascendency. His fierce companion is first inflamed to rage by his reproaches, then overawed by his equanimity, convinced by his arguments, and soothed by his persuasions. This is the case in the scene between Hector and Troilus, in that between Antony and Ventidius, and in that between Sebastian and Dorax. Nothing of the same kind in Shakspeare is equal to them, except the quarrel between Brutus and Cassius, which is worth them all three.

“Some years before his death, Dryden altogether ceased to write for the stage. He had turned his powers in a new direction, with success the most splendid and decisive. His taste had gradually awakened his creative faculties. The first rank in poetry was beyond his reach, but he challenged and secured the most honourable place in the second. His imagination resembled the wings of an ostrich. It enabled him to run, though not to soar. When he attempted the highest flights, he became ridiculous; but while he remained in a lower region, he outstripped all competitors.

“All his natural, and all his acquired powers, fitted him to found a good critical school of poetry. Indeed he carried his reforms too far for his age. After his death our literature retrograded; and a century was necessary to bring it back to the point at which he left it. The general soundness and healthfulness of his mental constitution, his information, of vast superficies though of small volume, his wit scarcely inferior to that of the most distinguished followers of Donne, his eloquence, grave, deliberate, and commanding, could not save him from disgraceful failure as a rival of Shakspeare, but raised him far above the level of Boileau. His command of language was immense. With him died the secret of the old poetical diction of England, the art of producing rich effects by familiar words. In the following century, it was as completely lost as the Gothic method of painting glass, and was but poorly supplied by the laborious and tesselat-ed imitations of Mason and Gray. On the other hand, he was the first writer under whose skilful management the scientific vocabulary fell into natural and pleasing verse. In this department he succeeded as completely as his contemporary Gibbons succeeded in the similar enterprise of carving the most delicate flowers from heart of oak. The toughest and most knotty parts of language became ductile at his touch. His versification, in the same manner, while it gave the first model of that neatness and precision which the following generation esteemed so highly, exhibited, at the same time, the last examples of nobleness, freedom, variety of pause and cadence. His tragedies in rhyme, however worthless in themselves, had at least served the purpose of nonsense-verses: they had taught him all the arts of melody which the heroic couplet admits. For bombast, his prevailing vice, his new subjects gave little opportunity; his better taste gradually discarded it.

“He possessed, as we have said, in a pre-eminent degree, [7:8:225]the power of reasoning in verse; and this power was now peculiarly useful to him. His logic is by no means uniformly sound. On points of criticism he always reasons ingeniously, and, when he is disposed to be honest, correctly; but the theological and political questions which he undertook to treat in verse were precisely those which he understood least. His arguments, therefore, are often worthless; but the manner in which they are stated is beyond all praise. The style is transparent. The topics follow each other in the happiest order. The objections are drawn up in such a manner that the whole fire of the reply may be brought to bear on them. The circumlocutions which are substituted for technical phrases are clear, neat, and exact. The illustrations at once adorn and elucidate the reasoning. The sparkling epigrams of Cowley, and the simple garrulity of the burlesque poets of Italy, are alternately employed in the happiest manner, to give effect to what is obvious, or clearness to what is obscure.

“His literary creed was catholic, even to latitudina-rianism, not from any want of acuteness, but from a disposition to be easily satisfied. He was quick to discern the smallest glimpse of merit; he was indulgent even to gross improprieties when accompanied by any redeeming talent. When he said a severe thing, it was to serve a temporary purpose, to support an argument or to tease a rival. Never was so able a critic so free from fastidiousness. He loved the old poets, especially Shakspeare. He admired the ingenuity which Donne and Cowley had so wildly abused. He did justice, amidst the general silence, to the memory of Milton. He praised to the skies the school-boy lines of Addison. Always looking on the fair side of every object, he admired extravagance, on account of the invention which he supposed it to indicate; he excused affectation in favour of wit; he tolerated even tameness for the sake of the correctness which was its concomitant.

“It was probably to this turn of mind, rather than to the more disgraceful causes which Johnson has assigned, that we are to attribute the exaggeration which disfigures the panegyrics of Dryden. No writer, it must be owned, has carried the flattery of dedication to a greater length; but this was not, we suspect, merely interested servility: it was the overflowing of a mind singularly disposed to admiration, of a mind which diminished vices, and magnified virtues and obligations. The most adulatory of his addresses is that in which he dedicates the State of Innocence to Mary of Modena. Johnson thinks it strange that any man should use such language without self-detestation; but he has not remarked, that to the very same work is prefixed an eulogium on Milton, which certainly could not have been acceptable to the court of Charles II. Many years later, when Whig principles were in a great measure triumphant, Sprat refused to admit a monument of John Philips into Westminster Abbey, because, in the epitaph, the name of Milton incidentally occurred. The walls of his church, he declared, should not be polluted by the name of a republican. Dryden was attached both by principle and interest to the court; but nothing could deaden his sensibility to excellence. We are unwilling to accuse him severely, because the same disposition which prompted him to pay so generous a tribute to the memory of a poet whom his patrons detested, hurried him Into extravagance when he described a princess distinguished by the splendour of her beauty and the graciousness of her manners.

“This is an amiable temper, but it is not the temper of great men. Where there is elevation of character there will be fastidiousness. It is only in novels and on tombstones that we meet with people who are indulgent to the faults of others and unmerciful to their own, and Dryden at all events was not one of these paragons. His charity was extended most liberally to others, but it certainly began at home. In taste he was by no means deficient. His critical works are beyond all comparison superior to any which had till then appeared in England. They were generally intended as apologies for his own poems, rather than as expositions of general principles; he, therefore, often attempts to deceive the reader by sophistry, which could scarcely have deceived himself. His dicta are the dicta, not of a judge, but of an advocate, and often of an advocate in an unsound cause; yet in the very act of misrepresenting the laws of composition he shows how well he understands them; but he was perpetually acting against his better knowledge. His sins were sins against light: he trusted that what was bad would be pardoned for the sake of what was good; what was good he took no pains to make better. He was not, like most persons who rise to eminence, dissatisfied even with his worst productions. He had set up no unattainable standard of perfection, the contemplation of which might at once improve and mortify him. His path was not attended by an unapproachable mirage of excellence, for ever receding and for ever pursued. He was not disgusted by the negligence of others, and he extended the same toleration to himself. His mind was of a slovenly character; fond of splendour, but indifferent to neatness. Hence most of his writings exhibit the sluttish magnificence of a Russian noble, all vermin and diamonds, dirty linen and inestimable sables. Those faults which spring from affectation, time and thought in a great measure removed from his poems; but his carelessness he retained to the last. If towards the close of his life he less frequently went wrong from negligence, it was only because long habits of composition rendered it more easy to go right. In his best pieces we find false rhymes, triplets in which the third line appears to be a mere intruder, and while it breaks the music, adds nothing to the meaning; gigantic Alexandrines of fourteen and sixteen syllables, and truncated verses for which he never troubled himself to find a termination or a partner.

“Such are the beauties and the faults which may be found in profusion throughout the later works of Dryden. A'more just and complete estimate of his natural and acquired powers, of the merits of his style and of its blemishes, may be formed from the Hind and Panther, than from any of his other writings. As a didactic poem, it is far superior to the Peligio Laici. The satirical parts, particularly the character of Burnet, are scarcely inferior to the best passages in Absalom and Achitophel. There are, moreover, occasional touches of a tenderness, which affects us more, because it is decent, rational, and manly, and reminds us of the best scenes in his tragedies. His versification sinks and swells in happy unison with the subject, and his wealth of language seems to be unlimited. Yet the carelessness with which he has constructed his plot, and the innumerable inconsistencies into which he is every moment falling, detract much from the pleasure which such various excellence affords.

“In Absalom and Achitophel he hit upon a new and rich vein, which he worked with signal success. The ancient satirists were the subjects of a despotic government. They were compelled to abstain from political topics, and to confine their attention to the frailties of private life. They might, indeed, sometimes venture to take liberties with public men,

Quorum Flaminia tegitur cinis atque Latina.

Thus Juvenal immortalized the obsequious senators who met to decide the fate of the memorable turbot. His fourth satire frequently reminds us of the great political [7:8:226]poem of Dryden; but it was not written till Domitian had fallen, and it wants something of the peculiar flavour which belongs to contemporary invective alone. His anger has stood so long, that though the body is not impaired, the effervescence, the first cream, is gone. Boileau lay under similar restraints, and, if he had been free from all restraint, would have been no match for our countryman.

“The advantages which Dryden derived from the nature of his subject he improved to the very utmost. His manner is almost perfect. The style of Horace and Boileau is fit only for light subjects. The Frenchman did indeed attempt to turn the theological reasonings of the Provincial Letter into verse, but with very indifferent success. The glitter of Pope is cold: the ardour of Persius is without brilliancy. Magnificent versification and ingenious combinations rarely harmonize with the expression of deep feeling. In Juvenal and Dryden alone we have the sparkle and the heat together. Those great satirists succeeded in communicating the fervour of their feelings to materials the most incombustible, and kindled the whole mass into a blaze at once dazzling and destructive. We cannot indeed think, without regret, of the part which so eminent a writer as Dryden took in the disputes of that period. There was, no doubt, madness and wickedness on both sides; but there was liberty on the one and despotism on the other. On this point, however, we will not dwell. At Talavera the English and French troops for a moment suspended their conflict to drink of a stream which flowed between them. The shells were passed across from enemy to enemy without apprehension or molestation. We, in the same manner, would rather assist our political adversaries to drink with us of that fountain of intellectual pleasure which should be the common refreshment of both parties, than disturb and pollute it with the havoc of unseasonable hostilities.

“ MacFlechnoe is inferior to Absalom and Achitophel only in the subject: in the execution it is even superior. But the greatest work of Dryden was the last, the Ode on St Cecilia’s Day. It is the masterpiece of the second class of poetry, and ranks but just below the great models of the first,. It reminds us of the Pedasus of Achilles—

<⅛, xαi ÌÌî/ìi, ι∙π ’ d) ’ ⅛!l’o∕i αi ’ αvατo∕A∙

By comparing it with the impotent ravings of the heroic tragedies, we may measure the progress which the mind of Dryden had made. He had learned to avoid a too audacious competition with higher natures, to keep at a distance from the verge of bombast or nonsense, to venture on no expression which did not convey a distinct idea to his own mind. There is none of that ζ darkness visible’ of style which he had formerly affected, and in which the greatest poets only can succeed. Every thing is definite, significant, and picturesque. His early writings resemble the gigantic works of those Chinese gardeners who attempt to rival nature herself, to form cataracts of terrific height and sound, to raise precipitous ridges of mountains, and to imitate in artificial plantations the vastness and the gloom of some primeval forest. This manner he abandoned; nor did he ever adopt the Dutch taste which Pope affected, the trim parterres and the rectangular walks. He rather resembled our Kents and Browns, who, imitating the great features of landscape without emulating them, consulting the genius of the place, assisting nature, and carefully disguising their art, produced, not a Chamouni or a Niagara, but a Stowe or a Hagley.

“We are, on the whole, inclined to regret that Dryden did not accomplish his purpose of writing an epic poem. It certainly would not have been a work of the highest rank. It would not have rivalled the Iliad, the Odyssey, or the Paradise Lost; but it would have been superior to the productions of Apollonius, Lucan, or Statius, and not inferior to the Jerusalem Delivered. It would probably have been a vigorous narrative, animated with something of the spirit of the old romances, enriched with much splendid description, and interspersed with fine declamations and disquisitions. The danger of Dryden would have been from aiming too high; from dwelling too much, for example, on his kingdoms of angels, and attempting a competition with that great writer, who in his own time had so incomparably succeeded in representing to us the sights and sounds of another world. To Milton, and to Milton alone, belonged the secrets of the great deep, the beach of sulphur, the ocean of fire, the palaces of the fallen dominations glimmering through the everlasting shade, the silent wilderness of verdure and fragrance where armed angels kept watch over the sleep of the first lovers, the porticoof diamond, the sea of jasper, the sapphire pavement empurpled with celestial roses, and the infinite ranks of the cherubim, blazing with adamant and gold. The council, the tournament, the procession, the crowded cathedral, the camp, the guard-room, the chase, were the proper scenes for Dryden.

“But we have not space to pass in review all the works which Dryden wrote. We, therefore, will not speculate longer on those which he might possibly have written. He may, on the whole, be pronounced to have been a man possessed of splendid talents, which he often abused, and of a sound judgment, the admonitions of which he often neglected; a man who succeeded only in an inferior department of his art, but who, in that department, succeeded pre-eminently; and who, with a more independent spirit, a more anxious desire of excellence, and more respect for himself, would, in his own walk, have attained to absolute perfection.”

Among the recent editions of Dryden’s works may be mentioned, the Prose Works, by Malone, 1800, in 4 vols.; the Poetical Works, with notes by Warton, and edited by Todd, 1812, in 4 vols. 8vo; and the whole of his Works, with a Life by the late Sir Walter Scott, Edinburgh, 1808, in 18 vols. 8vo.