against Shaftesbury in a poem called The Medal, a Satire against Sedition. The attacks of Shadwell, a rival poet, drew from Dryden Mac-Flecknoe, another satire, even more vigorous than the former, but not so refined and delicate. A second part of Absalom and Achitophel' was published in 1684, but the body of the poem was written by Tate-Dryden contributing only about two hundred lines, containing highly wrought characters of Settle and Shadwell, under the names of Doeg and Og.

In the same year that witnessed the appearance of the second part of Absalom and Achitophel,' Dryden published his Religio Laici, a poem written to defend the Church of England against the dissenters; yet with regard to revealed religion, evincing a decided skeptical spirit. The opening of this poem is singularly solemn and majestic :

Dim as the borrow'd beams of moon and stars

To lonely, weary, wandering travellers,

Is Reason to the soul; and as on high

Those rolling fires discover but the sky,
Not light us here; so Reason's glimmering ray
Was lent; not to assure our doubtful way,
But guide us upward to a better day.
And as those nightly tapers disappear,

When day's bright lord ascends our hemisphere;

So pale grows Reason at Religion's sight,

So dies, and so dissolves, in supernatural light.

Soon after the publication of this important poem, Dryden's religious doubts, according to his own statement, were dispelled; and that he might, in future, be under the influence of what he considered an unerring guide, he embraced the Roman Catholic faith; this change of his religious views occurring at a time when his interests would be likely to be promoted by his becoming a Catholic, was regarded with much suspicion. His conduct upon this important occasion is, however, in the judgment of Dr. Johnson and Sir Walter Scott, not fairly open to the charge, so often preferred against him, of sordid and unprincipled selfishness. The first public fruits of his change of creed was his allegorical poem of the Hind and Panther, in which the main argument of the Romish Church, all that has or can be said for tradition and authority, is fully stated. The wit in the Hind and Panther,' says Hallam, 'is sharp, ready, and pleasant; the reasoning is sometimes admirably close and strong; it is the energy of Bossuet in verse.' The Hind is the Church of Rome, the Panther, the Church of England, while the Independents, the Quakers, the Baptists and other sects, are represented as bears, hares, boars, and other animals. The obloquy and censure which Dryden's change of religion entailed upon him, are alluded to in the following lines of this poem, with more depth of feeling than he usually evinced:

If joys hereafter must be purchased here
With loss of all that mortals hold so dear,

Then welcome infamy and public shame,
And last, a long farewell to worldly fame!
'Tis said with ease, but, oh, how hardly tried
By haughty souls to human honour tied!
O sharp convulsive pangs of agonizing pride!
Down, then, thou rebel, never more to rise,
And what thou didst, and dost so dearly prize,

That fame, that darling fame, make that thy sacrifice;
'T is nothing thou hast given, then add thy tears

For a long race of unrepenting years:

'T is nothing yet, yet all thou hast to give;

Then add those may-be years thou hast to live:

Yet nothing still; then poor and naked come,

Thy Father will receive his unthrift home,

And thy blest Saviour's blood discharge the mighty sum.

The Revolution, in 1688, deprived Dryden of his laureate; but the want of an independent income seems only to have stimulated his faculties, and his latter unendowed years produced the noblest of his works. Besides several of his best plays, he now gave to the world his versions of Juvenal and Persius, and a still weightier task-a translation of Virgil. The latter, however, must be considered the least happy of all his great performances. Dryden's want of sensibility unfitted him to translate an author who abounds, like Virgil, in tenderness, and in calm and serene dignity. This laborious work brought the poet about twelve hundred pounds; and had he complied with the wishes of Tonson, his publisher, and dedicated it to King William, he would doubtless have received a much larger sum.

The immortal ode to St. Cecilia, commonly called Alexander's Feast, was Dryden's next work; and it is the loftiest and most imaginative of all his compositions. No man,' says a learned and accomplished critic, 'has ever qualified his admiration of this noble poem.' In 1699, he published his Fables, for which he received three hundred pounds. The poet was now in his sixty-eighth year, but his fancy was brighter and more prolific than it had been at any earlier period of his life; it was like a brilliant sunset, or a river that expands in breadth, and fertilizes a wider tract of country, ere it is finally engulfed in the ocean. The 'Fables' are imitations of Boccacio and Chaucer, and afford the finest specimens of the author's happy versification. No narrative poems in the language have been more generally read and admired than these finished productions. They shed a glory on the last days of the poet, and sweetly embalm the remembrance of his genius. Dryden died on the first of May, 1700, and his remains, after being embalmed, and lying in state twelve days, were interred, with great pomp, in Westminster Abbey.

The range of Dryden's muse embraced almost every variety of poetical composition. He was not, however, in all equally successful. His dramas, though we occasionally find in them redeeming passages, are, as a whole, essentially and utterly bad. For character, passion, action, or interest, we search through them in vain; and it is only surprising that so superior a

mind as his confessedly was, should not have perceived its total want of dramatic sympathy. In lyric, in didactic, and in narrative poetry, his genius shines forth with almost unparalleled splendor. His odes are as nearly perfect as any odes in the language; and amongst English satirists he occupies the foremost place in the foremost ranks. The satire, notwithstanding its extreme polish and splendor, is appalling, and tremendous. It excites our indignation against its objects, not only on account of the follies, or faults, which it imputes to them, but also on account of their writhing beneath the infliction of so splendid a weapon. We forget the of fender in the awfulness and majesty of the power by which he is crushed. Instead of shrinking at the horror of the carnage, we are lost in admiration of the brilliancy of the victory. Like the lightning of heaven, the satire of Dryden throws a splendor around the object which it destroys. He has immortalized the persons whom he branded with contempt; for who would have remembered Shadwell, if he had not been handed down to everlasting fame, as MacFlecknoe. The energy, the beauty, the power, the majesty, and the delicacy of his style, in poetic narration, are unrivalled. His versification is even now, notwithstanding the efforts of Pope, and his other successors, the noblest and the most perfect in the language. As Milton in blank verse, so Dryden in the heroic rhymed measure, is without a competitor or even an approximator.

Waller was smooth, but Dryden taught to join
The varying verse, the full resounding line,
The long majestic march, and energy divine.

The following extracts are introduced in the order in which we have noticed the author's various poems. We shall not, however, present an entire scene from any one of his dramas, but shall content ourselves with selecting a few striking passages from different plays.

Love is that madness which all lovers have;
But yet 'tis sweet and pleasing so to rave.
"T is an enchantment where the reason 's bound;
But Paradise is in th' enchanted ground.

A palace void of envy, cares, and strife;
Where gentle hours delude so much of life.
To take those charms away, and set me free,
Is but to send me into misery.

And prudence, of whose cure so much you boast,
Restores those pains which that sweet folly lost.

LOVE AND BEAUTY.

[Conquest of Grenada.\

A change so swift what heart did ever feel!
It rushed upon me like a mighty stream,
And bore me in a moment far from shore.
I've loved away myself; in one short hour
Already am I gone an age of passion.

Was it his youth, his valour, or success?
These might perhaps be found in other men.
'T was that respect, that awful homage paid me;
That fearful love which trembled in his eyes,
And with a silent earthquake shook his soul.
But when he spoke, what tender words he said
So softly, that like flakes of feather'd snow,
They melted as they fell.

MIDNIGHT REPOSE.

[Spanish Friar.]

All things are hush'd, as Nature's self lay dead;
The mountains seem to nod their drowsy head,
The little birds in dreams their songs repeat,
And sleeping flowers beneath the night-dew sweat;
Even lust and envy sleep, yet love denies
Rest to my soul and slumber to my eyes.
Three days I promis'd to attend my doom,
And two long days and nights are yet to come,
"Tis sure the noise of a tumultuous fight;
They break the truce and sally out by night.

FEAR OF DEATH.

Berenice. Saint Catherine.

[Noise within.]

[Indian Emperor.]

Ber. Now death draws near, a strange perplexity

Creeps coldly on me, like a fear to die:

Courage uncertain dangers may abate,

But who can bear th' approach of certain fate?

St. Cath. The wisest and the best some fear may show,

And wish to stay, though they resolve to go.

Ber. As some faint pilgrim, standing on the shore,

First views the torrent he would venture o'er,

And then his inn upon the farther ground,

Loath to wade through, and loather to go round:
Then dipping in his staff, does trial make
How deep it is, and, sighing, pulls it back:
Sometimes resolved to fetch his leap; and then
Runs to the bank, but there stops short again:
So I at once

Both heavenly faith and human fear obey;
And feel before me in an unknown way.
For this blest voyage I with joy prepare,
Yet am asham'd to be a stranger there.

[Tyrannic Love.]

ADAM AFTER THE FALL.

Adam. Raphael. Eve.

Adam. Heaven is all mercy; labour I would choose;

And could sustain this Paradise to lose :

The bliss; but not the place. 'Here,' could I say,

'Heaven's winged messenger did pass the day;

Under this pine the glorious angel stay'd:'
Then show my wondering progeny the shade.
In woods and lawns, where'er thou didst appear,
Each place some monument of thee should bear.
I, with green turfs, would grateful altars raise,
And heaven, with gums and offer'd incense, praise.
Raph. Where'er thou art, He is, th' eternal mind
Acts through all places; is to none confined:
Fills ocean, earth, and air, and all above,
And through the universal mass does move.
Thou canst be nowhere distant; yet this place
Had been thy kingly seat, and here thy race,
From all the ends of peopled earth, had come
To reverence thee, and see their native home.
Immortal then, now sickness, care, and age,
And war, and luxury's more direful rage,

Thy crimes have brought, to shorten mortal breath,
With all the numerous family of death.

Adam. The deaths thou show'st are forced and full of strife, Cast headlong from the precipice of life.

Is there no smooth descent--no painless way

Of kindly mixing with our native clay?

Raph. There is-but rarely shall that path be trod,

Which, without horror, leads to death's abode.

Some few, by temperance taught, approaching slow,
So distant fate by easy journeys go;

Gently they lay them down, as evening sheep

On their own woolly fleeces softly sleep.

Adam. So noiseless would I live, such death to find,
Like timely fruit, not shaken by the wind,
But ripely dropping from the sapless bough,
And, dying, nothing to myself would owe.

Eve. Thus daily changing, with a duller taste
Of lessening joys, I, by degrees, would waste:
Still quitting ground, by unperceived decay,
And steal myself from life, and melt away.

ALEXANDER'S FEAST.

"T was at the royal feast, for Persia won, By Philip's warlike son:

Aloft in awful state

The godlike hero sate

On his imperial throne:

His valiant peers were plac'd around,

Their brows with roses and with myrtle bound;
So should desert in arms be crown'd.

The lovely Thais by his side

Sat, like a blooming Eastern bride,
In flower of youth and beauty's pride.
Happy, happy, happy pair;

None but the brave,

None but the brave,

None but the brave deserves the fair.

[State of Innocence.