These lines have no meaning; but may we not say, in imitation of Cowley on another book, "Tis so like sense 'twill serve the turn as well ''? This endeavour after the grand and the new produced many 331 sentiments either great or bulky, and many images either just or splendid: 'I am as free as Nature first made man, 'I beg no pity for this mouldering clay; If burnt, and scatter'd in the air, the winds That strew my dust diffuse my royalty, And spread me o'er your clime; for where one atom Of mine shall light, know there Sebastian reigns ".' Of these quotations the two first may be allowed to be great, the two latter only tumid. Of such selection there is no end. I will add only a few more 332 passages; of which the first, though it may perhaps not be 333 334 335 quite clear in prose, is not too obscure for poetry, as the meaning that it has is noble: 'No, there is a necessity in Fate, Why still the brave bold man is fortunate; He keeps his object ever full in sight, And that assurance holds him firm and right; True, 'tis a narrow way that leads to bliss, But right before there is no precipice; Fear makes men look aside, and so [then] their footing miss Of the images which the two following citations afford the first is elegant, the second magnificent; whether either be just, let the reader judge: 'What precious drops are these [those], Which silently each other's track pursue, Bright as young diamonds in their infant dew"?' 'Resign your castle.' 'Enter, brave Sir; for when you speak the word, These bursts of extravagance Dryden calls the 'Dalilahs of the Theatre,' and owns that many noisy lines of Maximin and Almanzor call out for vengeance upon him; but I knew,' says he, that they were bad enough to please, even when I wrote them. There is surely reason to suspect that he pleased himself as well as his audience; and that these, like the harlots of other men, had his love, though not his approbation. He had sometimes faults of a less generous and splendid kind. He makes, like almost all other poets, very frequent use of mythology, and sometimes connects religion and fable too closely without distinction". 336 He descends to display his knowledge with pedantick ostentation; as when, in translating Virgil, he says, 'tack to the larboard' and 'veer starboard "'; and talks, in another work, of myself no reputation by the applause of fools.' Ib. vi. 406; ante, DRYDEN, 45, 48, 52, 326. Scott says, 'This celebrated apology was certainly invented to justify the fact after it was committed.' Lockhart's Scott, iii. 389. 5 Ante, DRYDEN, 238, 276, 295. Ante, MILTON, 234 n.; Aeneis iii. 525. 6 'virtue spooming before the wind'.' His vanity now and then betrays his ignorance: 'They [And] Nature's king through Nature's opticks view'd; Revers'd they view'd him lessen'd to their eyes [eye]".' He had heard of reversing a telescope, and unluckily reverses the object 3. He is sometimes unexpectedly mean. When he describes the 337 Supreme Being as moved by prayer to stop the Fire of London, what is his expression? A [An] hollow crystal pyramid he takes, In firmamental waters dipp'd above, Of this [it] a broad extinguisher he makes, And hoods the flames that to their quarry strove".' When he describes the Last Day, and the decisive tribunal, he intermingles this image: 'When rattling bones together fly, From the four quarters [corners] of the sky". It was indeed never in his power to resist the temptation of 338 a jest. In his Elegy on Cromwell : 'No sooner was the Frenchman's cause embrac❜d, Than the light Monsieur the grave Don outweigh'd; He had a vanity, unworthy of his abilities, to show, as may be 339 suspected, the rank of the company with whom he lived, by the use of French words, which had then crept into conversation; Works, ix. 185. 5 The Ode on Mrs. Killigrew, 1. 184, Ib. xi. 113. • Ante, DRYDEN, 276. A quibble was to Shakespeare the fatal Cleopatra for which he lost the world, and was content to lose it.' JOHNSON, Works, v. 118. "On the Death of Oliver Cromwell, stanza 23, Works, ix. 21. Ante, DRYDEN, 234. 8 This is taken off in The Rehearsal: 'BAYES. Mark that; I makes 'em both speak French, to shew their breeding' (p. 53). 'Ay, I gad, but is not that tuant, now, ha? is it not tuant?' (p. 99). 340 2 such as fraicheur1 for coolness, fougue for turbulence, and a few more, none of which the language has incorporated or retained 3. They continue only where they stood first, perpetual warnings to future innovators *. These are his faults of affectation; his faults of negligence are beyond recital. Such is the unevenness of his compositions that ten lines are seldom found together without something of which the reader is ashamed. Dryden was no rigid judge of his own pages; he seldom struggled after supreme excellence, but snatched in haste what was within his reach; and when he could content others, was himself contented ". He did not keep present to his mind an idea of pure perfection; nor compare his works, such as they were, with what they might be made. He knew to whom he should be opposed. 'Hither in summer evenings you To taste the fraischeur of the purer On the Coronation, l. 101, Wks., ix. 58. Than in its flames to wrap a na- Astraea Redux, 1. 203. 3 I cannot approve of their way of refining who corrupt our English idiom by mixing it too much with French. Works, iv. 234. He says of the earlier English Poets :-'I cannot find that any of them had been conversant in courts, except Ben Jonson. Greatness was not then so easy of access, nor conversation so free as now it is. ... Now if they ask me, whence it is that our conversation is so much refined, I must freely and without flattery ascribe it to the Court; and in it particularly to the King, whose example gives a law to it.' Ib. pp. 240-1. In the Preface to Don Sebastian he boasts of 'some newnesses of English, translated from the beauties of modern tongues, as well as from the elegancies of the Latin.' Ib. vii. 308. In the Dedication to the Aeneis he writes: I trade both with the living and the dead for the enrichment of our native language. We have He had more musick enough in England to supply our necessity; but if we will have things of magnificence and splendour we must get them by commerce.' Ib. xiv. 227. 'Words are not so easily coined as money.' lb. p. 224. See ante, MILTON, 270. Johnson attacks translators' whose idleness and ignorance, if it be suffered to proceed, will reduce us to babble a dialect of France.' Works, v. 49 When Garrick was extolling Dryden in a rapture that I suppose disgusted his friend, Mr. Johnson suddenly challenged him to produce twenty lines in a series that would not disgrace the poet and his admirer.' MRS. Piozzi, John. Misc. i. 185. See also Boswell's Johnson, ii. 96, where Johnson says:-'Shakespeare never has six lines together without a fault.' 'Dryden has succeeded by mere dint of genius, and in spite of a laziness and carelessness almost peculiar to himself. His faults are numberless; but so are his beauties.' CowPER, Southey's Cowper, iv. 169. 6A severe critic is the greatest help to a good wit; he does the office of a friend while he designs that of an enemy; and his malice keeps a poet within those bounds which the luxuriancy of his fancy would tempt him to overleap.' Works, iv. 230. than Waller, more vigour than Denham, and more nature than Cowley; and from his contemporaries he was in no danger. Standing therefore in the highest place he had no care to rise by contending with himself; but while there was no name above his own was willing to enjoy fame on the easiest terms. He was no lover of labour. What he thought sufficient he 341 did not stop to make better, and allowed himself to leave many parts unfinished, in confidence that the good lines would overbalance the bad. What he had once written he dismissed from his thoughts; and, I believe, there is no example to be found of any correction or improvement made by him after publication 2. The hastiness of his productions might be the effect of necessity 3; but his subsequent neglect could hardly have any other cause than impatience of study. What can be said of his versification will be little more than 342 a dilatation of the praise given it by Pope : 'Waller was smooth; but Dryden taught to join "Where then was Milton?' asks Dr. Warton. Warton's Pope's Works, iv. 37. Dryden was born in 1631; Milton died in 1674. Johnson had either forgotten Milton, or had in mind the writers of the heroic couplet. 2 Ante, DRYDEN, 201, 228. Dryden, after saying that he had freed The Indian Emperor from 'some faults which had escaped the printer,' continues:-'As for the more material faults of writing, which are properly mine, though I see many of them, I want leisure to amend them.' Works, ii. 291. He said that he was correcting his Virgil for a second edition. He wrote to Tonson:-'I have broken off my studies ... to review Virgil, and bestowed nine entire days upon him.... You cannot take too great care of the printing this edition exactly after my amendments.' Ib. xviii. 138-9. I have compared Aeneid i. 1-300 in the two editions without discovering a single amendment. The second edition of his Essay of Dramatic Poesie he revised with some care, as is shown by the list of emendations given by Malone (i. 2. 2. 135). In Absalom and Achitophel 'he made some verbal alterations, and introduced sixteen new lines.' For these see ib. i. 144, 150. In Mac Flecknoe he made a few slight alterations.' Ib. i. 170. Johnson's statement is substantially correct. Dryden in this differed from Pope, whose parental attention never abandoned his works.' Post, POPE, 307. 3 Dryden was poor, and in great haste to finish his plays, because by them he chiefly supported his family, and this made him so very incorrect.' SWIFT, Works, xviii. 269. Imit. Hor. Epis. ii. 1. 267; post, Wide o'er the fields of glory bear GRAY, Progress of Poesy, l. 103. Gray adds in a note on 1. 106:This verse and the foregoing are meant to express the stately march and sounding energy of Dryden's rhymes.' 'The majestick march of Dryden,' wrote Canning, 'is to my ear the per |