-give him matter for his verse, and he finds without difficulty verfe for his matter.

In Comedy, for which he professes himself not naturally qualified, the mirth which he excites will perhaps not be found fo much to arife from any original humour, or peculiarity of character nicely diftinguished and diligently purfued, as from incidents and circumftances, artifices and furprizes; from jefts of action rather than of fentiment. What he had of humorous or paffionate, 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 fallies of fentiment, in the irregular and excentrick violence of wit. He delighted to tread upon the brink of meaning, where light and darkness begin to mingle; to approach the precipice of abfurdity, and hover over the abyfs of unideal vacancy. This inclination sometimes produced nonsense, which he knew; as,

Move swiftly, fun, and fly a lover's pace, Leave weeks and months behind thee in thy race.

Amariel flies

To guard thee from the demons of the air;
My flaming fword above them to display,
All keen, and ground upon the edge of day.
And fometimes it iffued in abfurdities, of which
perhaps he was not confcious:

fhall
Then we upon our orb's laft verge go,
And fee the ocean leaning on the sky;
From thence our rolling neighbours we

fhall know,

And on the lunar world fecurely pry.

There

These lines have no meaning; but may we not say, in imitation of Cowley on another book,

'Tis fo like fenfe 'twill ferve the turn as well?

This endeavour after the grand and the new produced many fentiments either great or bulky, and many images either juft or fplendid; I am as free as Nature firft made man, Ere the base laws of fervitude began, When wild in woods the noble savage

ran.

'Tis but because the Living death ne'er knew,

They fear to prove it as a thing that's new;
Let me th' experiment before you try,
I'll fhow you first how eafy 'tis to die.
-There with a forest of their darts he strove,
And stood like Capaneus defying Jove;
With his broad fword the boldest beating
down,

While Fate grew pale left he should win the

town,

And turn'd the iron leaves of his dark book To make new dooms, or mend what it mistook.

-I beg no pity for this mouldering clay;
For if you give it burial, there it takes
Poffeffion of your earth;

If burnt, and fcatter'd in the air, the winds
That strew my duft diffuse my royalty,

And spread me o'er your clime; for where

ed to be great, the two latter only tumid.

Of fuch felection 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 object 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 following citations afford, the first is elegant, the fecond magnificent; whether either be juft, let the reader judge.

What precious drops are these,

Which filently each other's track purfue Bright as young diamonds in their infant dew? -Refign your castle

-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.

Thefe bursts of extravagance, Dryden calls the Dalilabs 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 pleafe, even when I wrote them. There is furely reafon to suspect that he pleased himself as well as his audience; and that thefe, like the harlots of

other

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 connects religion and fable too clofely, without distinction.

He defcends to difplay 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 Spooming before the wind. His vanity now and then betrays his ignorance:

They Nature's king thro' Nature's opticks viewed;

Revers'd they view'd him leffen'd to their eyes. He had heard of reverfing a telescope, and unluckily reverses the object.

He is fometimes unexpectedly mean. When he describes the Supreme Being as moved by prayer to stop the Fire of London, what is his expreffion?

A hollow crystal pyramid he takes,

In firmamental waters dipp'd above, Of this a broad extinguifer he makes, And hoods 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 Cromwel: No fooner was the Frenchman's caufe embrac'd, Than the light Monfieur the grave Don outweigh'd;

His fortune turn'd the fcale

He had a vanity unworthy of his abilities; to fhew, as may be fufpected, 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 ftood 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 compofitions, that ten lines are feldom found together without something of which the reader is afhamed. Dryden was no rigid judge of his own pages; he feldom ftruggled after fupreme excellence, but snatched in hafte 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, fuch as they were, with what they might be made. He knew to whom he should be opposed. 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 ftop 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,