Of these quotations the two firft 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 paffages; of which the first, though it may perhaps not be quite clear in profe, is not too obfcure for poetry, as the meaning that it has is noble;

No, there is a neceffity in Fate,

Why ftill the brave bold man is fortunate;
He keeps his obje& ever full in fight,

And that affurance holds him firm and right;
True, 'tis a narrow way that leads to blifs,
But right before there is no precipice;

Fear makes men look afide, and fo their footing miss.

}

Of the images which the two following citations afford, the first is elegant, the fecond magnificent; whether either be just, let the reader judge;

What precious drops are these,

Which filently each other's track pursue,
Bright as young diamonds in their infant dew?

Refign your caftle

-Enter, brave Sir; for when you speak the word,

The gates

fhall open

of their own accord;

The genius of the place its Lord fhall meet,
And bow its towery forehead at your feet.

These bursts of extravagance, Dryden calls the Dalilahs of the Theatre; and owns that many noify lines of Maxamin and Almanzor call out for vengeance upon him; but I knew, fays he, that they were bad enough to please, even when I wrote them. There is furely reafon to fufpect 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 fometimes faults of a lefs generous and fplendid kind. He makes, like almost all other poets, very frequent ufe of mythology, and fometimes conpects religion and fable too closely without diftinction.

He defcends to display his knowledge with pedantick oftentation; as when, in tranflating Virgil, he fays, tack to the larboard-and veer Starboard; and talks, in another work, of virtue fpcoming before the wind. His vanity now and then betrays his ignorance:

They Nature's king through Nature's opticks view'd ;
Revers'd they view'd him lessen'd to their eyes.

He had heard of reverfing a telescope, and unluckily reverses the object.

He is fometimes unexpectedly mean.

When he de

fcribes the Supreme Being as moved by prayer to ftop the Fire of London, what is his expreffion?

A hollow cryftal pyramid he takes,

In firmamental waters dipp'd above,
Of this a broad extinguifher he makes,

And boods the flames that to their quarry ftrove.

When he defcribes the Laft Day, and the decifive tribunal, he intermingles this image:

When rattling bones together fly,

From the four quarters of the fky.

It was indeed never in his power to refift the temptation of a jeft. In his Elegy on Cromwell :

No fooner was the Frenchman's cause embrac'd,
Than the light Monfuur the grave Don outweigh'd;
His fortune turn'd the fcale-

He had a vanity, unworthy of his abilities, to shew, as may be fufpected, the rank of the company with whom he lived, by the ufe of French words, which

had

had then crept into converfation; fuch 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 ftood first, perpetual warnings to future innovators.

Thefe are his faults of affectation; his faults of negligence are beyond recital. Such is the unevenness of his compofitions, that ten lines are feldom found together without fomething of which the reader is afhamed. Dryden was no rigid judge of his own pages; he feldom struggled after fupreme excellence, but fnatched in hafte what was within his reach; and when he could content others, was himself contented. He did not keep prefent to his mind an idea of pure perfection; nor compare his works, fuch as they were, with what they might be made. He knew to whom he fhould be oppofed. He had more musick 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 rife 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 fufficient, 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 difmiffed from his thoughts; and, I believe, there is no example to be found of correction or improvement made by him after publication. The hastiness of his productions might be the effect of neceffity; but his fubfequent neglect could hardly have any other cause than impatience of study.

any

What

What can be faid of his verfification, will be little more than a dilatation of the praise given it by Pope :

Waller was fmooth; but Dryden taught to join
The varying verfe, the full-refounding line,
The long majestick 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 fometimes a finished line, he had it by chance. Dryden knew how to chufe the flowing and the fonorous words; to vary the pauses, and adjust the accents; to diverfify the cadence, and yet preferve the fmoothness of his metre.

Of Triplets and Alexandrines, though he did not introduce the ufe, he established it. The triplet has long fubfifted among us. Dryden feems 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.

The Alexandrine was, I believe, firft ufed by Spenfer, for the fake of clofing his ftanza with a fuller found. We had a longer measure of fourteen fyllables, into which the Eneid was tranflated by Phaer, and other works of the ancients by other writers; of which Chapman's Iliad was, I believe, the last.

The two first lines of Phaer's third Eneid will exemplify this measure:

When Afia's ftate was overthrown, and Priam's kingdom ftout,

All guiltlefs, by the power of gods above was rooted out.

As

As thefe lines had their break or cafura, always at the eighth fyllable, it was thought, in time, commodious to divide them; and quatrains of lines, alternately, confifting of eight and fix fyllables, make the most soft and pleafing of our lyrick measures ;

as,

Relentless Time, deftroying power,

Which stone and brafs obey,
Who giv'ft to every flying hour

To work fome new decay.

In the Alexandrine, when its power was once felt, fome poems, as Drayton's Polyolbion, were wholly written; and fometimes the measures of twelve and fourteen fyllables were interchanged with one another. Cowley was the first that inferted the Alexandrine at pleasure among the heroick lines of ten fyllables, and from him Dryden profeffes to have adopted it.

The Triplit and Alexandrine are not universally approved. Swift always cenfured them, and wrote fome lines to ridicule them. In examining their propriety, it is to be confidered that the effence of verse is regularity, and its ornament is variety. To write verfe, is to difpofe fyllables and founds harmonically by fome known and fettled rule; a rule however lax enough to substitute fimilitude 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 fpondees differently combined; the English heroick admits of acute or grave fyllables variously difpofed. The Latin never deviates into seven feet, or exceeds the number of seventeen fyllables; but the English Alexandrine breaks the law

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