"The Ode, for St. Cecilia's day, perhaps the last effort of his poetry, has been always considered as exhibiting the highest flight of fancy, and the exactest nicety of art. This is allowed to stand without a rival. If indeed there is any excellence beyond it, in some other of Dryden's works that excellence must be found. Compared with the Ode on Killigrew it may be pronounced perhaps superior in the whole, but without any single part equal to the first stanza of the other.

"It is said to have cost Dryden a fortnight's labour; but it does not want its negligences; some of the lines are without correspondent rhymes; a defect which I never detected but after an acquaintance of many years, and which the enthusiasm of the writer might hinder him from perceiving.

"His last stanza has less emotion than the former, but is not less elegant in the diction. The conclusion is vitious: the music of Timotheus, which raised a Monarch to the skies, had only a metaphorical power; that of Cecilia, which drew an Angel down, had a real effect: the crown therefore could not reasonably be divided.”

"In the general survey of Dryden's labours, he appears to have had a mind very comprehensive by nature, and much enriched with acquired knowledge. His compositions are the effects of a vigorous genius operating upon large materials.

"The power that predominated in his intellectual operations was rather strong reason than: quick sensibility. Upon all occasions that were presented he studied rather than felt, and produced.

sentiments not such as nature enforces, but meditation supplies. With the simple and elemental passions, as they spring separate in the mind, he seems not much acquainted, and seldom describes them but as they are complicated by the various relations of society, and confused in the tumults and agitations of life.

"He is therefore, with all his variety of excellence, not often pathetic, and had so little sensibility of the power of effusions purely natural that he did not esteem them in others. Simplicity gave him no pleasure; and for the first part of his life he looked on Otway with contempt, though at last, indeed very late, he confessed that in his play there was nature, which is the chief beauty.

"We do not always know our own motives. I am not certain whether it was not rather the dif ficulty which he found in exhibiting the genuine operations of the heart, than a servile submission to an injudicious audience, that filled his plays with false magnificence. It was necessary to fix attention; and the mind can be captivated only by recollection, or by curiosity; by reviving former thoughts or impressing new sentences were readier at his call than images; he could more easily fill the ear with some splendid novelty than awaken those ideas that slumber in the heart.

"The favourite exercise of his mind was ratiocination, and, that argument might not be too soon at an end, he delighted to talk of liberty and necessity, destiny and contingence; these he discusses in the language of the schools with so much

profundity that the terms which he uses are seldom understood. It is indeed learning, but learning out of place.

When once he had engaged himself in disputation, thoughts flowed in on either side: he was now no longer at a loss; he had always argument at command; verbaque provisam rem-gave him matter for his verse, and he finds without difficulty verse for his matter.

"In Comedy, for which he professes himself not naturally qualified, the mirth which he excites will perhaps not be found so much to arise from any original humour, or peculiarity of character nicely distinguished and diligently pursued, as from incidents and circumstances, artifices and surprises; from jests of action rather than of sentiment. What he had of humorous or passionate, he seems to have had not from nature, but from other poets; if not always as a plagiary, at least as

an imitator.

"Next to argument, his delight was in wild and daring sallies of sentiment, in the irregular and eccentric violence of wit. He delighted to tread upon the brink of meaning, where light and darkness begin to mingle; to approach the precipice of absurdity, and hover over the abyss of unideal vacancy. This inclination sometimes produced nonsense, which he knew."

"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. He had more music 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 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 the publication. The hastiness of his productions might be the effect of necessity; 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 a dilatation of the praise given it by Pope :

"Waller was smooth; but Dryden taught to join

"The varying verse, the fall-resounding line,

The long majestic march, and energy divine.

Some improvements had been already made in English numbers, but the full force of our language was not yet felt; the verse that was smooth was commonly feeble. If Cowley had sometimes a finished line, he had it by chance: Dryden knew how to chuse the flowing and the sonorous words, to vary the pauses, and adjust the accents, to diversify the cadence, and yet preserve the smoothness of his metre.

"Of Dryden's works it was said by Pope, that he could select from them better specimens of every mode of poetry than any other English writer could supply. Perhaps no nation ever produced a writer that enriched his language with such 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 are taught sapere et fari, to think naturally and express forcibly. He taught us that it was possible to reason in rhyme. He shewed 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.