write a speech. In the same manner, wit, a talent for description, or a talent for narration, may, for a time, pass for dramatic genius. Dryden was an incomparable reasoner in verse. He was conscious of his power; he was proud of it; and the authors of the Rehearsal justly charged him with abusing it. His warriors and princesses are fond of discussing points of amorous casuistry, such as would have delighted a Parliament of Love. They frequently go still deeper, and speculate on philosophical necessity and the origin of evil.

fell into natural and pleasing verse. In this department, he succeeded as completely as his contemporary Gibbons succeeded in the similar enterprise of carving the most delicate flowers from heart of oak. The toughest and most knotty parts of language became ductile at his touch. His versification in the same manner, while it gave the first model of that neatness and precision which the following generation esteemed so highly, exhibited, at the same time, the last examples of nobleness, freedom, variety of pause and cadence. His tragedies in rhyme, however worthless in themselves, had at least served the purpose of nonsenseverses: they had taught him all the arts of melody which the heroic couplet admits. For bombast, his prevailing vice, his new subjects gave little opportunity; his better taste gradually discarded it.

There were, however, some occasions which absolutely required this peculiar talent. Then Dryden was indeed at home. All his best scenes are of this description. They are all between men; for the heroes of Dryden, like many other gentlemen, can never talk sense when ladies are in company. They are all intended to exhibit the empire of reason over He possessed, as we have said, in a previolent passion. We have two interlocutors, eminent degree, the power of reasoning in the one eager and impassioned, the other high, verse; and this power was now peculiarly usecool, and judicious. The composed and ra- ful to him. His logic is by no means unitional character gradually acquires the ascend-formly sound. On points of criticism, he al ency. His fierce companion is first inflamed to rage by his reproaches, then overawed by his equanimity, convinced by his arguments, and soothed by his persuasions. This is the case in the scene between Hector and Troilus, in that between Antony and Ventidius, and in that between Sebastian and Dorax. Nothing of the same kind in Shakspeare is equal to them, except the quarrel between Brutus and Cassius, which is worth them all three.

Some years before his death, Dryden altogether ceased to write for the stage. He had turned his powers in a new direction, with success the most splendid and decisive. His taste had gradually awakened his creative faculties. The first rank in poetry was beyond his reach, but he challenged and secured the most honourable place in the second. His imagination resembled the wings of an ostrich. It enabled him to run, though not to soar. When he attempted the highest flights, he became ridiculous; but while he remained in a lower region, he outstripped all competitors.

ways reasons ingeniously; and, when he is disposed to be honest, correctly. But the theological and political questions, which he undertook to treat in verse, were precisely those which he understood least. His arguments, therefore, are often worthless. But the manner in which they are stated is beyond all praise. The style is transparent. The topics follow each other in the happiest order. The objections are drawn up in such a manner, that the whole fire of the reply may be brought to bear on them. The circumlocutions which are substituted for technical phrases, are clear, neat, and exact. The illustrations at once adorn and elucidate the reasoning. The sparkling epigrams of Cowley, and the simple garrulity of the burlesque poets of Italy, are alternately employed, in the happiest manner, to give effect to what is obvious; or clearness to what is obscure.

His literary creed was catholic, even to latitudinarianism; not from any want of acuteness, but from a disposition to be easily satisAll his natural and all his acquired powers fied. He was quick to discern the smallest fitted him to found a good critical school of glimpse of merit; he was indulgent even to poetry. Indeed, he carried his reforms too far gross improprieties, when accompanied by any for his age. After his death, our literature re-redeeming talent. When he said a severe trograded; and a century was necessary to bring it back to the point at which he left it. The general soundness and healthfulness of his mental constitution; his information, of vast superficies, though of small volume; his wit, scarcely inferior to that of the most distinguished followers of Donne; his eloquence, grave, deliberate, and commanding, could not save him from disgraceful failure as a rival of Shakspeare, but raised him far above the level of Boileau. His command of language was immense. With him died the secret of the old poetical diction of England-the art of producing rich effects by familiar words. In the following century, it was as completely lost as the Gothic method of painting glass, and was but poorly supplied by the laborious and tesselated imitations of Mason and Gray. On the other hand, he was the first writer under whose skilful management the scientific vocabulary

thing, it was to serve a temporary purpose,— to support an argument, or to tease a rival. Never was so able a critic so free from fastidi ousness. He loved the old poets, especially Shakspeare. He admired the ingenuity which Donne and Cowley had so wildly abused. He did justice, amidst the general silence, to the memory of Milton. He praised to the skies the schoolboy lines of Addison. Always look ing on the fair side of every object, he admired extravagance on account of the invention which he supposed it to indicate; he excused affectation in favour of wit; he tolerated even tameness for the sake of the correctness which was its concomitant.

It was probably to this turn of mind, rather than to the more disgraceful causes which Johnson has assigned, that we are to attribute the exaggeration which disfigures the pancgyrics of Dryden. No writer, it must be

owned, has carried the fiattery of dedication to a greater length. But this was not, we suspect, merely interested servility; it was the overflowing of a mind singularly disposed to admiration, of a mind which diminished vices, and magnified virtues and obligations. The most adulatory of his addresses is that in which he dedicates the State of Innocence to Mary of Modena. Johnson thinks it strange that any man should use such language without self-detestation. But he has not remarked that to the very same work is prefixed an eulogium on Milton, which certainly could not have been acceptable at the court of Charles the Second. Many years later, when Whig principles were in a great measure triumphant, Sprat refused to admit a monument of John Philips into Westminster Abbey, because, in the epitaph, the name of Milton incidentally occurred. The walls of his church, he declared, should not be polluted by the name of a republican! Dryden was attached, both by principle and interest to the court. But nothing could deaden his sensibility to excellence. We are unwilling to accuse him severely, because the same disposition, which prompted him to pay so generous a tribute to the memory of a poet whom his patrons detested, hurried him into extravagance when he described a princess, distinguished by the splendour of her beauty, and the graciousness of her manners.

his writings exhibit the sluggish magnificence of a Russian noble, all vermin and diamonds, dirty linen and inestimable sables. Those faults which spring from affectation, time and thought in a great measure removed from his poems. But his carelessness he retained to the last. If towards the close of his life he less frequently went wrong from negligence, it was only because long habits of composition rendered it more easy to go right. In his best pieces, we find false rhymes-triplets, in which the third line appears to be a mere intruder, and, while it breaks the music, adds nothing to the meaning-gigantic Alexandrines of fourteen and sixteen syllables, and truncated verses for which he never troubled himself to find a termination or a partner.

Such are the beauties and the faults which may be found in profusion throughout the later works of Dryden. A more just and complete estimate of his natural and acquired powers, of the merits of his style and of its blemishes, may be formed from the Hind and Panther, than from any of his other writings. As a didactic poem, it is far superior to the Religio Laici. The satirical parts, particularly the character of Burnet, are scarcely inferior to the best passages in Absalom and Achitophel There are, moreover, occasional touches of a tenderness which affects us more, because it is decent, rational, and manly, and reminds us of the best scenes in his tragedies. His versification sinks and swells in happy unison with the subject; and his wealth of language seems to be unlimited. Yet the carelessness with which he has constructed his plot, and the innumerable inconsistencies into which he is every moment falling, detract much from the pleasure which such varied excellence affords.

In Absalom and Achitophel he hit upon a new and rich vein, which he worked with signal success. The ancient satirists were the subjects of a despotic government. They were compelled to abstain from political topics, and to confine their attention to the frailties of private life. They might, indeed, sometimes venture to take liberties with public men,

"Quorum Flaminia tegitur cinis atque Latina."

This is an amiable temper; but it is not the temper of great men. Where there is elevation of character, there will be fastidiousness. It is only in novels, and on tombstones, that we meet with people who are indulgent to the faults of others, and unmerciful to their own; and Dryden, at all events, was not one of these paragons. His charity was extended most liberally to others, but it certainly began at home. In taste he was by no means deficient. His critical works are, beyond all comparison, superior to any which had, till then, appeared in England. They were generally intended as apologies for his own poems, rather than as expositions of general principles; he, therefore, often attempts to deceive the reader by sophistry, which could scarcely have deceived himself. His dicta are the dicta, not Thus Juvenal immortalized the obsequious of a judge, but of an advocate; often of an senators, who met to decide the fate of the advocate in an unsound cause. Yet, in the memorable turbot. His fourth satire frequently very act of misrepresenting the laws of com- reminds us of the great political poem of Dryposition, he shows how well he understands den; but it was not written till Domitian had them. But he was perpetually acting against fallen, and it wants something of the peculiar his better knowledge. His sins were sins against flavour which belongs to contemporary invec His anger has stood so long, that, light. He trusted, that what was bad would tive alone. be pardoned for the sake of what was good. though the body is not impaired, the efferves What was good, he took no pains to make bet-cence, the first cream, is gone. Boileau lay ter. He was not, like most persons who rise under similar restraints; and, if he had been to eminence, dissatisfied even with his best free from all restraint, would have been no productions. He had set up no unattainable match for our countryman. The advantages which Dryden derived from standard of perfection, the contemplation of which might at once improve and mortify him, the nature of his subject he improved to the His path was not attended by an unapproach- very utmost. His manner is almost perfect. able mirage of excellence, forever receding The style of Horace and Boileau is fit only for and forever pursued. He was not disgusted light subjects. The Frenchman did indeed by the negligence of others, and he extended attempt to turn the theological reasonings of the same toleration to himself. His mind was the Provincial Letters into verse, but with of a slovenly character-fond of splendour, very indifferent success. The glitter of Pope but indifferent to meatness. Hence most of is cold.

VOL. 7

The ardour of Persius is without

E

parterres and the rectangular walks. He rather resembled our Kents and Browns, who, imitating the great features of landscape without emulating them, consulting the genius of the place, assisting nature and carefully disguising their art, produced, not a Chamouni nor a Niagara, but a Stowe or a Hagley.

brilliancy. Magnificent versification and ingenious combinations rarely harmonize with the expression of deep feeling. In Juvenal and Dryden alone we have the sparkle and the heat together. Those great satirists succeeded in communicating the fervour of their feelings to materials the most incombustible, and kindled the whole mass into a blaze at once dazzling and destructive. We cannot, indeed, We are, on the whole, inclined to regret that think, without regret, of the part which so emi- Dryden did not accomplish his purpose of nent a writer as Dryden took in the disputes writing an epic poem. It certainly would not of that period. There was, no doubt, madness have been a work of the highest rank. It and wickedness on both sides. But there was would not have rivalled the Iliad, the Odyssey, liberty on the one, and despotism on the other. or the Paradise Lost; but it would have been On this point, however, we will not dwell. At superior to the productions of Apollonius, Talavera the English and French troops for a Lucan, or Statius, and not inferior to the Jerumoment suspended their conflict, to drink of a salem Delivered. It would probably have been stream which flowed between them. The a vigorous narrative, animated with something shells were passed across from enemy to ene- of the spirit of the old romances, enriched with my without apprehension or molestation. We, much splendid description, and interspersed in the same manner, would rather assist our with fine declamations and disquisitions. The political adversaries to drink with us of that danger of Dryden would have been from aimfountain of intellectual pleasure which shoulding too high; from dwelling too much, for exbe the common refreshment of both parties, than disturb and pollute it with the havoc of unseasonable hostilities.

Macflecnoe is inferior to Absalom and Achitophel, only in the subject. In the execution it is even superior. But the greatest work of Dryden was the last, the Ode on Saint Cecilia's day. It is the masterpiece of the second class of poetry, and ranks but just below the great models of the first. It reminds us of the Pedasus of Achilles,

ος, και θνητος των, επεθ' ίπποις αθανάτοισι. By comparing it with the impotent ravings of the heroic tragedies, we may measure the progress which the mind of Dryden had made. He had learned to avoid a too audacious competition with higher natures, to keep at a distance from the verge of bombast or nonsense, to venture on no expression which did not convey a distinct idea to his own mind. There is none of that "darkness visible" of style which he had formerly affected, and in which the greatest poets only can succeed. Every thing is definite, significant, and picturesque. His early writings resembled the gigantic works of those Chinese gardeners who attempt to rival nature herself, to form cataracts of terrific height and sound, to raise precipitous ridges of mountains, and to imitate in artificial plantations the vastness and the gloom of some primeval forest. This manner he abandoned; nor did he ever adopt the Dutch taste which Pope affected, the trim

ample, on his angels of kingdoms, and attempting a competition with that great writer, who in his own time had so incomparably succeeded in representing to us the sights and sounds of another world. To Milton, and to Milton alone, belonged the secrets of the great deep, the beach of sulphur, the ocean of fire; the palaces of the fallen dominations, glimmering through the everlasting shade, the silent wilderness of verdure and fragrance where armed angels kept watch over the sleep of the first lovers, the portico of diamond, the sea of jasper, the sapphire pavement empurpled with celestial roses, and the infinite ranks of the Cherubim, blazing with adamant and gold. The council, the tournament, the procession, the crowded cathedral, the camp, the guardroom, the chase, were the proper scenes for Dryden.

But we have not space to pass in review all the works which Dryden wrote. We, therefore, will not speculate longer on those which he might possibly have written. He may, on the whole, be pronounced to have been a man possessed of splendid talents, which he often abused, and of a sound judgment, the admoni. tions of which he often neglected; a man who succeeded only in an inferior department of his art, but who, in that department, succeeded pre-eminently; and who, with a more independent spirit, a more anxious desire of excellence, and more respect for himself, would, in his own walk, have attained to absolute per fection.

HISTORY.*

[EDINBURGH REVIEW, 1828.]

To write history respectably-that is, to ab- talent for description and dialogue, and the breviate despatches, and make extracts from pure sweet flow of his language, place him at speeches, to intersperse in due proportion the head of narrators. He reminds us of a epithets of praise and abhorrence, to draw up delightful child. There is a grace beyond the antithetical characters of great men, setting reach of affectation in his awkwardness, a forth how many contradictory virtues and malice in his innocence, an intelligence in his vices they united, and abounding in withs and nonsense, an insinuating eloquence in his lisp. withouts; all this is very easy. But to be a We know of no writer who makes such inreally great historian is perhaps the rarest of terest for himself and his book in the heart of intellectual distinctions. Many Scientific works the reader. At the distance of three-and-twenty are, in their kind, absolutely perfect. There centuries, we feel for him the same sort of are Poems which we should be inclined to pitying fondness which Fontaine and Gay are designate as faultless, or as disfigured only by said to have inspired in society. He has blemishes which pass unnoticed in the general written an incomparable book. He has writblaze of excellence. There are Speeches, ten something better perhaps than the best some speeches of Demosthenes particularly, history; but he has not written a good history; in which it would be impossible to alter a he is, from the first to the last chapter, an inword, without altering it for the worse. But ventor. We do not here refer merely to those. we are acquainted with no History which ap-gross fictions with which he has been reproachproaches to our notion of what a history oughted by the critics of later times. We speak of to be; with no history which does not widely that colouring which is equally diffused over depart, either on the right hand or on the left, his whole narrative, and which perpetually from the exact line. leaves the most sagacious reader in doubt The cause may easily be assigned. This what to reject and what to receive. The most province of literature is a debatable land. It authentic parts of his work bear the same relies on the confines of two distinct territories.lation to his wildest legends, which Henry the It is under the jurisdiction of two hostile Fifth bears to the Tempest. There was an powers; and, like other districts similarly expedition undertaken by Xerxes against situated, it is ill defined, ill cultivated, and ill Greece; and there was an invasion of France. regulated. Instead of being equally shared There was a battle at Platea; and there was between its two, rulers, the Reason and the a battle at Agincourt. Cambridge and Exeter, Imagination, it falls alternately under the sole the Constable and the Dauphin, were persons and absolute dominion of each. It is some- as real as Demaratus and Pausanias. times fiction. It is sometimes theory. harangue of the Archbishop on the Salic Law History, it has been said, is philosophy and the Book of Numbers differs much less teaching by examples. Unhappily what the from the orations which have in all ages prophilosophy gains in soundness and depth, the ceeded from the Right Reverend bench, than examples generally lose in vividness. A per- the speeches of Mardonius and Artabanus, fect historian must possess an imagination from those which were delivered at the Coun sufficiently powerful to make his narrative cil-board of Susa. Shakspeare gives us enuaffecting and picturesque. Yet he must con- merations of armies, and returns of killed and trol it so absolutely as to content himself with wounded, which are not, we suspect, much the materials which he finds, and to refrain less accurate than those of Herodotus. There from supplying deficiencies by additions of his are passages in Herodotus nearly as long as own. He must be a profound and ingenious acts of Shakspeare, in which every thing is reasoner. Yet he must possess sufficient self- told dramatically, and in which the narrative command to abstain from casting his facts in serves only the purpose of stage-directions. It the mould of his hypothesis. Those who can is possible, no doubt, that the substance of some justly estimate these almost insuperable diffi- real conversations may have been reported culties will not think it strange that every to the historian. But events which, if they writer should have failed, either in the narra- ever happened, happened in ages and nations tive or in the speculative department of his so remote that the particulars could never have been known to him, are related with the greatest minuteness of detail. We have all that Candaules said to Gyges, and all that passed between Astyages and Harpagus. We are, therefore, unable to judge whether, in the account which he gives of transactions, respecting which he might possibly have been well informed, we can trust to any thing beyond the naked outline; whether, for example, the answer of Gelon to the ambassadors of he

tory.

It may be laid down as a general rule, though subject to considerable qualifications and exceptions, that history begins in Novel and ends in Essay. Of the romantic historians Herodotus is the earliest and the best. His animation, his simple-hearted tenderness, his wonderful

The Romance of History. England. By HENRY

NEELE, London, 1828.

The

Grecian confederacy, or the expressions which thority, but in itself not improbable, it was passed between Aristides and Themistocles at their famous interview, have been correctly transmitted to us. The great events are, no doubt, faithfully related. So, probably, are many of the slighter circumstances; but which of them it is impossible to ascertain. The fic-collected multitudes, proud of the Grecian tions are so much like the facts, and the facts so much like the fictious, that, with respect to many most interesting particulars, our belief is neither given nor withheld, but remains in an uneasy and interminable state of abeyance. We know that there is truth, but we cannot exactly decide where it lies.