that and the round circle of the year to | world, did not live long enough to cry. I have never seen it; but that such a version there is, or has been, perhaps some old catalogue informed me. With not much better success, Trapp, when his Tragedy and his Prelections' had given him reputation, attempted another blank version of the Æneid; to 'And Neptune shall resign the fasces of the which, notwithstanding the slight regard sea.' 'The scorpion ready to receive thy laws.' "No, he would not then have gotten out of his way so fast." Ver. 56. with which it was treated, he had afterwards perseverance enough to add the Eclogues and Georgics. His book may continue in existence, as long as it is the clandestine refuge of schoolboys. Since the English ear has been accusbers, and the diction of poetry has become tomed to the mellifluence of Pope's nummade to translate Virgil; and all his more splendid, new attempts have been works have been attempted by men better qualified to contend with Dryden. I will not engage myself in an invidious comparison, by opposing one passage to another; a work of which there would be no end, and which might be often offensive without use. that the merit of great works is to be It is not by comparing line with line estimated, but by their general effects and ultimate result. It is easy to note a 'Though Proserpine affects her silent seat.' weak line, and write one more vigorous "What made her then so angry within its place; to find a happiness of exAscalaphus, for preventing her return? She was now used to Patience under the determinations of Fate, rather than fond of her residence." 'O wheresoe'er thou art, from thence iucline, Such were the strictures of Milbourne, who found few abettors, and of whom it may be reasonably imagined, that many who favoured his design were ashamed of his insolence. When admiration had subsided, the translation was more coolly examined, and found, like all others, to be sometimes erroneous, and sometimes licentious. Those who could find faults, thought they could avoid them; and Dr. Brady attempted in blank verse a translation of the Eneid, which, when dragged into the pression in the original, and transplant it by force into the version: but what is given to the parts may be subducted from the whole, and the reader may be weary, though the critic may commend. Works of imagination excel by their allurement and delight; by their power of attracting and detaining the attention. That book is good in vain, which the reader throws away. He only is the master, who keeps the mind in pleasing captivity; whose pages are perused with eagerness, and in hope of new pleasure are perused again; and whose conclusion is perceived with an eye of sorrow, such as the traveller casts upon departing day. By his proportion of this predomination I will consent that Dryden should be tried; of this, which, in opposition to reason, makes Ariosto the darling and the pride of Italy; of this, which, in defiance of criticism, continues Shakspeare the sovereign of the drama. His last work was his Fables,' in which he gave us the first example of a mode of writing which the Italians call refaccimento, a renovation of ancient writers, by modernizing their language. Thus the old poem of Boiardo has been new-dressed by Domenichi and Berni. The works of Chaucer, upon which this kind of rejuvenescence has been bestowed by Dryden, require little criticism. The tale of the Cock seems hardly worth re vival; and the story of Palamon and Arcite, containing an action unsuitable to the times in which it is placed, can hardly be suffered to pass without censure of the hyperbolical commendation which Dryden has given it in the general Preface, and in a poetical Dedication, a piece where his original fondness of remote conceits seems to have revived. 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. What he says of Love may contribute Of the three pieces borrowed from Boccace, Sigismunda may be defended by the celebrity of the story. Theodore and Honoria, though it contains not much moral, yet afforded opportunities of strik-to the explanation of his character: ing description. And Cymon was formerly a tale of such reputation, that at the revival of letters it was translated into Latin by one of the Beroalds. Whatever subjects employed his pen he was still improving our measures, and embellishing our language. In this volume are interspersed some short original poems, which, with his prologues, epilogues, and songs, may be comprised in Congreve's remark, that even those, if he had written nothing else, would have entitled him to the praise of excellence in his kind. One composition must however be distinguished. 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 it is not less elegant in the diction. The conclusion is vicious; the music of Timotheus, which raised a mortal 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 a general survey of Dryden's labours, he appears to have a mind very comprehensive by nature, and much enriched with acquired knowledge. His compositions are the effects of a vigorous genins operating upon large materials. The power that predominated in his It stirs in gentle bosoms gentle fire, Dryden's was not one of the gentle bosoms: Love, as it subsists in itself, with no tendency but to the person loved, and wishing only for correspondent kindness; such Love as shuts out all other interest, the Love of the Golden Age, was too soft and subtle to put his faculties in motion. He hardly conceived it but in its turbulent effervescence with some other desires; when it was inflamed by rivalry, or obstructed by difficulties; when it invigorated ambition, or exasperated revenge. He is therefore, with all his variety of excellence, not often pathetic; and had so little sensibility of the power of effnsions 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 difficulty 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 natural sentiments, or impressing new appearances of things: sentences were readier at his call than images; he could more easily fill the ear with 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 school, with so much pro fundity, that the terms which he uses are not always understood. It is indeed learning, but learning out of place. When once he had engaged himself in disputation, thoughts flowed on either side: he was now no longer at a loss; he had always objections and solutions at command; verbaque provisam rem 'give 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; as, Move swiftly, Sun, and fly a lover's pace, Leave weeks and months behind thee in thy Amamel flies race. To guard thee from the demons of the air; And sometimes it issued in absurdities, And on the lunar world securely.pry.' 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 sentiments either great or bulky, and many images either just or splendid: I am as free as Nature first made man, Ere the base laws of servitude began, When wild in woods the noble savage ran. 'Tis but because the Living death ne'er They fear to prove it as a thing that's new: -There with a forest of their darts he strove, And stood like Capaneus defying Jove, Of these quotations the two first may be allowed to be great, the two latter only tumid. Of such selection there is no end. 1 will add only a few more passages; of which the first, though it may not perhaps be 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 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, 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 The gates shall open of their own accord; word, The genius of the place its Lord shall meet, And bow its towery forehead at your feet.' 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. He descends to display his knowledge with pedantic ostentation; as when, in translating Virgil, he says, "tack to the larboard" and " veer starboard ;" and talks in another work, of "virtue spoon ing before the wind."-His vanity now and then betrays his ignorance: They Nature's king through Nature's optics view'd; Reversed, they view'd him lessen'd to their eyes.' He had heard of reversing a telescope, and unluckily reverses the object. He is sometimes unexpectedly mean. A hollow crystal pyramid he takes, When he describes the Last Day, and the decisive tribunal, he intermingles this image: When rattling hones together fly, It was indeed never in his power to resist the temptation of a jest. In his Elegy on Cromwell: No sooner was the Frenchman's cause embraced, Than the light Monsieur the grave Don outweigh'd; His fortune turn'd the scale? 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 publication. hastiness of his productions might be the effect of necessity; but his subsequent neglect could hardly have any other cause than impatience of study. The 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 full-resounding line, Some improvements had been already force of our language was not yet felt; made in English numbers; but the full the verse that was smooth was commonly feeble. If Cowley had sometimes a finished line, he had it by chance. Dryden knew how to choose the flowing and the sonorous words; to vary the pauses, and adjust the accents; to diversify the cadence, and yet preserve the smooth He had a vanity, unworthy of his abi-ness of his metre. lities, to show, as may be suspected, the rank of the company with whom he lived, by the use of French words, which had then crept into conversation; such as fraicheur for coolness, fougue for turbulence, and a few more, none of which the language has incorporated or retained. They continue only where they stood first, perpetual warnings to future inno vators. no Of Triplets and Alexandrines, though he did not introduce the use, he established it. The Triplet has long subsisted among us. Dryden seems not to have traced it higher than to Chapman's Homer; but it is to be found in Phaer's Virgil, written in the reign of Mary; and in Hall's Satires, published five years before the death of Elizabeth. into which the Æneid was translated by The two first lines of Phaer's third The Alexandrine was, I believe, first These are his faults of affectation; his used by Spenser, for the sake of closing faults of negligence are beyond recital. his stanza with a fuller sound. We had Such is the unevenness of his composi-a longer measure of fourteen syllables, tions, that ten lines are seldom found together without something of which the reader is ashamed. Dryden was 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 him-ing of our lyric measures; as, self; but, while there was no name above his own, was willing to enjoy fame on the easiest terms. rooted out.' As these lines had their break, or cesura, always at the eighth syllable, it divide them: and quatrains of lines, alwas thought, in time, commodious to ternately, consisting of eight and six syllables, make the most soft and pleas 'Relentless Time, destroying power, In the Alexandrine, when its power was once felt, some poems, as Drayton's 'Polyolbion,' were wholly written; and sometimes the measures of twelve and fourteen syllables were interchanged with one another. Cowley was the first that inserted the Alexandrine at pleasure among the heroic lines of ten syllables, and from him Dryden professes to have adopted it. The Triplet and Alexandrine are not universally approved. Swift always censured them, and wrote some lines to ridicule them. In examining their propriety, it is to be considered that the essence of verse is regularity, and its ornament is variety. To write verse, is to dispose syllables and sounds harmonically by some known and settled rule; a rule, however, lax enough to substitute similitude for identity, to admit change without breach of order, and to relieve the ear without disappointing it. Thus a Latin hexameter is formed from dactyls and spondees differently combined; English heroic admits of acute or grave syllables variously disposed. The Latin never deviates into seven feet, or exceeds the number of seventeen syllables; but the English Alexandrine breaks the lawful bounds, and surprises the reader with two syllables more than he expected. the The effect of the Triplet is the same: the ear has been accustomed to expect a new rhyme in every couplet; but is on a sudden surprised with three rhymes together, to which the reader could not accommodate his voice, did he not obtain notice of the change from the braces of the margins. Surely there is something unskilful in the necessity of such mechanical direction. Considering the metrical art simply as a science, and consequently excluding all casualty, we must allow that Triplets and Alexandrines, inserted by caprice, are interruptions of that constancy to which science aspires. And though the variety which they produce may very justly be desired, yet, to make poetry exact, there ought to be some stated mode of admitting them. But till some such regulation can be formed, I wish them still to be retained in their present state. They are sometimes convenient to the poet. Fenton was of opinion, that Dryden was too libe ral, and Pope too sparing, in their use. The rhymes of Dryden are commonly just, and he valued himself for his readiness in finding them; but he is sometimes open to objection. It is the common practice of our poets to end the second line with a weak or grave syllable: 'Together o'er the Alps methinks we fly, Fill'd with ideas of fair Italy.' Dryden sometimes puts the weak rhyme in the first: Laugh, all the powers that favour tyranny, And all the standing army of the sky.' Sometimes he concludes a period or paragraph with the first line of a couplet, which, though the French seem to do it without irregularity, always displeases in English poetry. The Alexandrine, though much his favourite, is not always very diligently fabricated by him. It invariably requires a break at the sixth syllable; a rule which the modern French poets never violate, but which Dryden sometimes neglected: And with paternal thunder vindicates his throne.' 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 were tanght 'sapere et fari,' to think naturally and express forcibly. Though Davies has reasoned in rhyme before him, it may be 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 invocation before the Georgics is here inserted from Mr. Milbourne's version, that, according to his own proposal, his verses may be compared with those which he censures. 'What makes the richest tilth, beneath what signs To plough, and when to match your elms and What care with flocks, and what with herds vines; agrees, And all the management of frugal bees; stroke From rending earth the fiery courser broke, |