It has become the fashion to print the works of some of our poets in the order in which they were written, not as arranged and published by themselves. Cowper and Burns have been presented in this shape, and the consequence is, that light ephemeral trifles, or personal sallies, are thrust in between the more durable memorials of genius, disturbing their symmetry and effect. In the case of Dryden, however, such a chronological survey would be instructive; for between the Annus Mirabilis and the Ode to St Cecilia or the Fables, through the plays and poems, how varied is the range in style and taste! It is like the progress of Spenser's 'Good Knight,' through labyrinths of uncertainty, fantastic conceits, flowery vice, and unnatural splendour, to the sober daylight of truth, virtue, and reason. Dryden never attained to finished excellence in composition. His genius was debased by the false taste of the age, and his mind vitiated by its bad morals. He mangled the natural delicacy and simplicity of Shakspeare's Tempest; and where even Chaucer is pure, Dryden is impure. This great high-priest of all the nine,' remarks Campbell, 'was not a confessor to the finer secrets of the human breast. Had the subject of "Eloisa" fallen into his hands, he would have left but a coarse draught of her passion.' But if Dryden was deficient in the higher emotions of love and tenderness, their absence is partly atoned for in his late works, by wide surveys of nature and mankind, by elevated reasoning and declamation, and by the hearty individuality of his satire. The 'brave negligence' of his versification, and his 'long resounding line,' have an indescribable charm. His style is like his own panther, of the 'spotted kind,' and its faults and virtues lie equally mixed; but it is beloved in spite of spots and blemishes, and pleases longer than the verse of Pope, which, like the milk-white hind, is 'immortal and unchanged.' The satirical portraits of Pope, excepting those of Addison, Atossa, and Lord Hervey, are feeble compared with those of Dryden, whom he acknowledged to be his master and instructor in versification. Dryden, with his tried and homely materials, and bold pencil, was true to nature; his sketches are still fresh as a Van Dyck or Rembrandt. His language was genuine English. He was sometimes Gallicised by the prevailing taste of the day; but he felt that this was a license to be sparingly used. 'If too many foreign words are poured in upon us,' said he, 'it looks as if they were designed not to assist the natives, but to conquer them.' In better times, and with more careful culture, Dryden's genius would have avoided the vulgar descents which he seldom escaped, except in his most finished passages and his choicest lyrical odes. As it is, his muse was a fallen angel, cast down for manifold sins and impurities, yet radiant with light from heaven. The natural freedom and magnificence of his verse it would be vain to eulogise.

Character of Shaftesbury.

From Absalom and Achitophel.

Of these the false Achitophel was first;
A name to all succeeding ages curst:
For close designs and crooked counsels fit,
Sagacious, bold, and turbulent of wit,
Restless, unfixed in principles and place,
In power unpleased, impatient of disgrace:

A fiery soul, which, working out its way,
Fretted the pigmy body to decay,
And o'er-informed the tenement of clay.
A daring pilot in extremity;

Pleased with the danger, when the waves went high,
He sought the storms; but, for a calm unfit,
Would steer too nigh the sands to boast his wit.
Great wits are sure to madness near allied,
And thin partitions do their bounds divide;*
Else why should he, with wealth and honour blest,
Refuse his age the needful hours of rest?
Punish a body which he could not please;
Bankrupt of life, yet prodigal of ease?
And all to leave what with his toil he won,
To that unfeathered two-legged thing, a son;
Got, while his soul did huddled notions try,
And born a shapeless lump, like anarchy.
In friendship false, implacable in hate;
Resolved to ruin or to rule the state:
To compass this, the triple bond he broke,
The pillars of the public safety shook,
And fitted Israel for a foreign yoke:
Then, seized with fear, yet still affecting fame,
Usurped a patriot's all-atoning name.
So easy still it proves, in factious times,
With public zeal to cancel private crimes;
How safe is treason, and how sacred ill,
Where none can sin against the people's will!
Where crowds can wink, and no offence be known,
Since in another's guilt they find their own!
Yet fame deserved no enemy can grudge;
The statesman we abhor, but praise the judge.
In Israel's courts ne'er sat an Abbethdin +
With more discerning eyes, or hands more clean,
Unbribed, unsought, the wretched to redress,
Swift of despatch, and easy of access.
Oh! had he been content to serve the crown
With virtues only proper to the gown,
Or had the rankness of the soil been freed
From cockle, that oppressed the noble seed,
David for him his tuneful harp had strung,
And heaven had wanted one immortal song.
But wild ambition loves to slide, not stand,
And Fortune's ice prefers to Virtue's land.
Achitophel, grown weary to possess
A lawful fame and lazy happiness
Disdained the golden fruit to gather free,
And lent the crowd his arm to shake the tree.

Villiers, Duke of Buckingham.-From the same. Some of their chiefs were princes of the land: In the first rank of these did Zimri stand; A man so various that he seemed to be Not one, but all mankind's epitome: Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong, Was everything by starts, and nothing long; But, in the course of one revolving moon, Was chemist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon; Then all for women, painting, rhyming, drinking, Besides ten thousand freaks that died in thinking. Blest madman, who could every hour employ With something new to wish or to enjoy! Railing and praising were his usual themes, And both, to shew his judgment, in extremes;

*The proposition of Dryden, that great wit is allied to madness, will not bear the test of scrutiny. It has been successfully combated by Hazlitt and Charles Lamb. The greatest wits,' says Lamb, will ever be found to be the sanest writers. It is impossible for the mind to conceive of a mad Shakspeare. The greatness of wit, by which the poetic talent is here chiefly to be understood, manifests itself in the admirable balance of all the faculties. Madness is the disproportionate straining or excess of any one of them." Shaftesbury's restlessness was owing to his ambition and his vanity; to a want of judgment and principle, not to an excess of wit.

The Abbethdin (so spelt by Dryden) was president of the Jewish judicature, literally father (ab) of the house of judgment (beth-din).-CHristie.

So over-violent, or over-civil,

That every man with him was god or devil.
In squandering wealth was his peculiar art;
Nothing went unrewarded but desert:
Beggared by fools, whom still he found too late,
He had his jest, and they had his estate;

He laughed himself from court, then sought relief
By forming parties, but could ne'er be chief;
For, spite of him, the weight of business fell
On Absalom and wise Achitophel:
Thus, wicked but in will, of means bereft,
He left not faction, but of that was left.

Shaftesbury's Address to Monmouth.-From the same.
Auspicious prince, at whose nativity
Some royal planet ruled the southern sky,
Thy longing country's darling and desire,
Their cloudy pillar and their guardian fire;
Their second Moses, whose extended wand
Divides the seas, and shews the promised land;
Whose dawning day in every distant age
Has exercised the sacred prophet's rage:
The people's prayer, the glad diviner's theme,
The young men's vision, and the old men's dream!
Thee, Saviour, thee, the nation's vows confess,
And, never satisfied with seeing, bless:
Swift unbespoken pomps thy steps proclaim,
And stammering babes are taught to lisp thy name :
How long wilt thou the general joy detain,
Starve and defraud the people of thy reign?
Content ingloriously to pass thy days,
Like one of Virtue's fools, that feed on praise;
Till thy fresh glories, which now shine so bright,
Grow stale, and tarnish with our daily sight;
Believe me, royal youth, thy fruit must be
Or gathered ripe, or rot upon the tree :
Heaven has to all allotted, soon or late,
Some lucky revolution of their fate;

Whose motions, if we watch and guide with skill—
For human good depends on human will-
Our fortune rolls as from a smooth descent,
And from the first impression takes the bent;
But if unseized, she glides away like wind,
And leaves repenting folly far behind.

Now, now she meets you with a glorious prize,
And spreads her locks before you as she flies!
Had thus old David, from whose loins you spring,
Not dared, when fortune called him to be king,
At Gath an exile he might still remain,
And heaven's anointing oil had been in vain.
Let his successful youth your hopes engage,
But shun the example of declining age;
Behold him setting in his western skies,
The shadows lengthening as the vapours rise.
He is not now as when on Jordan's sand,
The joyful people thronged to see him land,
Covering the beach, and blackening all the strand!

The Hind and the Panther.

A milk-white Hind, immortal and unchanged,
Fed on the lawns, and in the forest ranged;
Without unspotted, innocent within,
She feared no danger, for she knew no sin.

Yet had she oft been chased with horns and hounds,
And Scythian shafts, and many winged wounds
Aimed at her heart; was often forced to fly,
And doomed to death, though fated not to die...
The Panther, sure the noblest next the Hind,
And fairest creature of the spotted kind;
Oh, could her inborn stains be washed away,
She were too good to be a beast of prey!
How can I praise or blame, and not offend,
Or how divide the frailty from the friend?
Her faults and virtues lie so mixed, that she
Nor wholly stands condemned nor wholly free.

Then, like her injured Lion, let me speak;
He cannot bend her, and he would not break.
Unkind already, and estranged in part,
The Wolf begins to shew her wandering heart.
Though unpolluted yet with actual ill,
She half commits who sins but in her will.
If, as our dreaming Platonists report,
There could be spirits of a middle sort,

Too black for heaven, and yet too white for hell,
Who just dropped halfway down, nor lower fell;
So poised, so gently she descends from high,
It seems a soft dismission from the sky.

Ode to the Memory of Mrs Anne Killigrew.*
Thou youngest virgin-daughter of the skies,
Made in the last promotion of the blest;
Whose palms, new-plucked from Paradise,
In spreading branches more sublimely rise,

Rich with immortal green above the rest:
Whether, adopted to some neighbouring star,
Thou roll'st above us, in thy wandering race,
Or, in procession fixed and regular,
Mov'st with the heaven-majestic pace;

Or, called to more superior bliss,
Thou tread'st, with seraphims, the vast abyss:
Whatever happy region is thy place,
Cease thy celestial song a little space;
Thou wilt have time enough for hymns divine,
Since Heaven's eternal year is thine.
Hear, then, a mortal Muse thy praise rehearse,
In no ignoble verse;

But such as thy own voice did practise here,
When thy first-fruits of poesy were given;
To make thyself a welcome inmate there:
While yet a young probationer,
And candidate of heaven.

If by traduction came thy mind,
Our wonder is the less to find

A soul so charming from a stock so good;
Thy father was transfused into thy blood:
So wert thou born into the tuneful strain,
An early, rich, and inexhausted vein.
But if thy pre-existing soul
Was formed at first with myriads more,

It did through all the mighty poets roll,
Who Greek or Latin laurels wore,

And was that Sappho last, which once it was before.
If so, then cease thy flight, O heaven-born mind!
Thou hast no dross to purge from thy rich ore:
Nor can thy soul a fairer mansion find

Than was the beauteous frame she left behind. Return to fill or mend the quire of thy celestial kind. . . .

O gracious God! how far have we
Profaned thy heavenly gift of Poesy!
Made prostitute and profligate the Muse,
Debased to each obscene and impious use,
Whose harmony was first ordained above
For tongues of angels, and for hymns of love!
Oh wretched we! why were we hurried down
This lubric and adulterate age-

Nay, added fat pollutions of our own

To increase the steaming ordures of the stage? What can we say to excuse our second fall? Let this thy vestal, Heaven, atone for all; Her Arethusian stream remains unsoiled, Unmixed with foreign filth, and undefiled; Her wit was more than man; her innocence a child.... When in mid-air the golden trump shall sound, To raise the nations underground;

* Daughter of Dr Henry Killigrew, a prebendary of Westminster. She died of small-pox in 1685, aged twenty-five. A volume of her poems was published after her death.

When in the valley of Jehoshaphat

The judging God shall close the book of Fate;
And there the last assizes keep

For those who wake, and those who sleep;
When rattling bones together fly
From the four corners of the sky;
When sinews o'er the skeletons are spread,

Those clothed with flesh, and life inspires the dead;
The sacred poets first shall hear the sound,
And foremost from the tomb shall bound,
For they are covered with the lightest ground;
And straight, with inborn vigour, on the wing,
Like mountain larks, to the new morning sing.
There thou, sweet saint, before the quire shall go,
As harbinger of heaven, the way to shew,
The way which thou so well hast learned below.

Satire on Shadwell.—From 'Mac-Flecknoe. All human things are subject to decay; And, when Fate summons, monarchs must obey. This Flecknoe1 found, who, like Augustus, young Was called to empire, and had governed long; In prose and verse was owned, without dispute, Through all the realms of Nonsense, absolute. This aged prince, now flourishing in peace, And blest with issue of a large increase, Worn out with business, did at length debate To settle the succession of the state; And pondering which of all his sons was fit To reign, and wage immortal war with Wit, Cried: "Tis resolved; for Nature pleads, that he Should only rule who most resembles me. Shadwell, alone, my perfect image bears, Mature in dulness from his tender years: Shadwell, alone, of all my sons, was he, Who stands confirmed in full stupidity. The rest to some faint meaning make pretence; But Shadwell never deviates into sense. Some beams of wit on other souls may fall, Strike through, and make a lucid interval; But Shadwell's genuine night admits no ray; His rising fogs prevail upon the day. Besides, his goodly fabric fills the eye, And seems designed for thoughtless majesty: Thoughtless as monarch oaks, that shade the plain, And, spread in solemn state, supinely reign. Heywood and Shirley were but types of thee, Thou last great prophet of tautology!'

From the Epistle' To my dear Friend, Mr Congreve, on his Comedy called the Double Dealer?

O that your brows my laurel had sustained!
Well had I been deposed, if you had reigned:
The father had descended for the son;
For only you are lineal to the throne.
Thus, when the state one Edward did depose,
A greater Edward in his room arose :
But now, not I, but poetry is cursed;

For Tom the second reigns like Tom the first.3
But let them not mistake my patron's part,
Nor call his charity their own desert.
Yet this I prophesy-thou shalt be seen,
Though with some short parenthesis between,
High on the throne of wit, and, seated there,
Not mine-that's little-but thy laurel wear.
Thy first attempt an early promise made,
That early promise this has more than paid.
So bold, yet so judiciously you dare,
That your least praise is to be regular.

1 Richard Flecknoe, an Irish Roman Catholic priest, and a wellknown poetaster and dramatist, who died in 1678.

2 Thomas Shadwell, the dramatic author, was a rival of Dryden, both in politics and poetry. His scenes of low comedy evince considerable talent in the style of Ben Jonson, whom he also resembled in his person and habits.

3 Thomas Shadwell and Thomas Rymer, editor of the Fædera.

Time, place, and action may with pains be wrought, But genius must be born, and never can be taught. This is your portion; this your native store; Heaven, that but once was prodigal before,

To Shakspeare gave as much; she could not give him

more.

Maintain your post: that's all the fame you need; For 'tis impossible you should proceed. Already I am worn with cares and age, And just abandoning the ungrateful stage: Unprofitably kept at Heaven's expense, I live a rent-charge on His providence ; But you, whom every Muse and Grace adorn, Whom I foresee to better fortune born, Be kind to my remains; and oh, defend, Against your judgment, your departed friend! Let not the insulting foe my fame pursue, But shade those laurels which descend to you: And take for tribute what these lines express: You merit more, nor could my love do less.

On Milton.*

Three poets, in three distant ages born,
Greece, Italy, and England did adorn.
The first in loftiness of thought surpassed;
The next in majesty; in both the last.
The force of Nature could no farther go;
To make a third, she joined the former two.

The Swallow.-From the Hind and Panther.
The swallow, privileged above the rest
Of all the birds as man's familiar guest,
Pursues the sun in summer, brisk and bold,
But wisely shuns the persecuting cold;

Is well to chancels and to chimneys known,
Though 'tis not thought she feeds on smoke alone.
From hence she has been held of heavenly line,
Endued with particles of soul divine:
This merry chorister had long possessed
Her summer seat, and feathered well her nest,
Till frowning skies began to change their cheer,
And time turned up the wrong side of the year;
The shedding trees began the ground to strow
With yellow leaves, and bitter blasts to blow:
Such auguries of winter thence she drew,
Which by instinct or prophecy she knew;
When prudence warned her to remove betimes,
And seek a better heaven and warmer climes,
Her sons were summoned on a steeple's height,
And, called in common council, vote a flight.
The day was named, the next that should be fair;
All to the general rendezvous repair;

They try their fluttering wings, and trust themselves in air.

Who but the swallow now triumphs alone?
The canopy of heaven is all her own:
Her youthful offspring to their haunts repair,
And glide along in glades, and skim in air,
And dip for insects in the purling springs,
And stoop on rivers, to refresh their wings.

Dreams.-From The Cock and the Fox, modernised from Chaucer.

Dreams are but interludes which Fancy makes;
When monarch Reason sleeps, this mimic wakes:
Compounds a medley of disjointed things,
A mob of cobblers, and a court of kings:1
Light fumes are merry, grosser fumes are sad:
Both are the reasonable soul run mad;

* Printed under a portrait of Milton prefixed to Paradise Lost, folio, 1688.

1 Perhaps a misprint, as suggested by Leigh Hunt, for

A court of cobblers, and a mob of kings.

And many monstrous forms in sleep we see,
That neither were, nor are, nor e'er can be.
Sometimes forgotten things long cast behind
Rush forward in the brain, and come to mind.
The nurse's legends are for truths received,
And the man dreams but what the boy believed.
Sometimes we but rehearse a former play,
The night restores our actions done by day,
As hounds in sleep will open for their prey.

Alexander's Feast; or, the Power of Music-A Song in
Honour of St Cecilia's Day, 1697.

'Twas 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 placed around,

Their brows with roses and with myrtles bound: (So should desert in arms be crowned).

The lovely Thaïs by his side

Sate 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.

The mighty master smiled to see
That love was in the next degree;
'Twas but a kindred sound to move,
For pity melts the mind to love.

Softly sweet in Lydian measures,
Soon he soothed his soul to pleasures;
War, he sung, is toil and trouble;
Honour but an empty bubble;

Never ending, still beginning,
Fighting still, and still destroying;
If the world be worth thy winning,
Think, O think it worth enjoying:
Lovely Thaïs sits beside thee,

Take the good the gods provide thee.
The many rend the skies with loud applause;
So Love was crowned, but Music won the cause.
The prince, unable to conceal his pain,
Gazed on the fair

Who caused his care,

And sighed and looked, sighed and looked,
Sighed and looked, and sighed again.

At length, with love and wine at once oppressed,
The vanquished victor sunk upon her breast.

Now strike the golden lyre again;

A louder yet, and yet a louder strain.
Break his bands of sleep asunder,

And rouse him like a rattling peal of thunder.
Hark! hark! the horrid sound

Has raised up his head,

As awaked from the dead,
And, amazed, he stares around.

'Revenge, revenge!' Timotheus cries;

'See the Furies arise;

See the snakes that they rear,

How they hiss in their hair,

And the sparkles that flash from their eyes!
Behold a ghastly band,

Each a torch in his hand!

Those are Grecian ghosts, that in battle were slain,
And unburied remain
Inglorious on the plain :
Give the vengeance due
To the valiant crew.

Behold how they toss their torches on high!

How they point to the Persian abodes,

And glittering temples of their hostile gods!' The princes applaud with a furious joy; And the king seized a flambeau, with zeal to destroy; Thaïs led the way,

To light him to his prey,

And, like another Helen, fired another Troy.

Theodore and Honoria.-From Boccace.

Of all the cities in Romanian lands,

The chief, and most renowned, Ravenna stands,
Adorned in ancient times with arms and arts,
And rich inhabitants with generous hearts.
But Theodore the brave, above the rest,
With gifts of fortune and of nature blessed,
The foremost place for wealth and honour held,
And all in feats of chivalry excelled.

This noble youth to madness loved a dame
Of high degree; Honoria was her name;
Fair as the fairest, but of haughty mind,
And fiercer than became so soft a kind.
Proud of her birth-for equal she had none-
The rest she scorned, but hated him alone.
His gifts, his constant courtship, nothing gained;
For she, the more he loved, the more disdained.
He lived with all the pomp he could devise,
At tilts and tournaments obtained the prize,
But found no favour in his lady's eyes:
Relentless as a rock, the lofty maid

Turned all to poison that he did or said:

Nor prayers, nor tears, nor offered vows, could move;
The work went backward; and the more he strove
T' advance his suit, the farther from her love.
Wearied at length, and wanting remedy,
He doubted oft, and oft resolved to die.
But pride stood ready to prevent the blow,
For who would die to gratify a foe?

His generous mind disdained so mean a fate;
That passed, his next endeavour was to hate.
But vainer that relief than all the rest;
The less he hoped, with more desire possessed;
Love stood the siege, and would not yield his breast.
Change was the next, but change deceived his care;
He sought a fairer, but found none so fair.
He would have worn her out by slow degrees,
As men by fasting starve the untamed disease:
But present love required a present ease.
Looking, he feeds alone his famished eyes,
Feeds lingering death, but looking not, he dies.
Yet still he chose the longest way to fate,
Wasting at once his life and his estate.

His friends beheld, and pitied him in vain,
For what advice can ease a lover's pain?
Absence, the best expedient they could find,
Might save the fortune, if not cure the mind:
This means they long proposed, but little gained,
Yet, after much pursuit, at length obtained.

Hard you may think it was to give consent,
But struggling with his own desires he went,
With large expense, and with a pompous train,
Provided as to visit France or Spain,
Or for some distant voyage o'er the main.
But Love had clipped his wings, and cut him short;
Confined within the purlieus of the court,
Three miles he went, no farther could retreat;
His travels ended at his country-seat:

To Chassi's pleasing plains he took his way,
There pitched his tents, and there resolved to stay.
The spring was in the prime; the neighbouring
grove

Supplied with birds, the choristers of love,
Music unbought, that ministered delight

To morning walks, and lulled his cares by night:

There he discharged his friends, but not the expense
Of frequent treats and proud magnificence.
He lived as kings retire, though more at large
From public business, yet with equal charge;
With house and heart still open to receive;
As well content as love would give him leave:
He would have lived more free; but many a guest,
Who could forsake the friend, pursued the feast.
It happed one morning, as his fancy led,
Before his usual hour he left his bed;
To walk within a lonely lawn, that stood
On every side surrounded by the wood:
Alone he walked, to please his pensive mind,
And sought the deepest solitude to find;
'Twas in a grove of spreading pines he strayed;
The winds within the quivering branches played,
And dancing trees a mournful music made.
The place itself was suiting to his care,
Uncouth and savage, as the cruel fair.
He wandered on, unknowing where he went,
Lost in the wood, and all on love intent:
The day already half his race had run,
And summoned him to due repast at noon,
But love could feel no hunger but his own.

Whilst listening to the murmuring leaves he stood,
More than a mile immersed within the wood,
At once the wind was laid; the whispering sound
Was dumb; a rising earthquake rocked the ground:
With deeper brown the grove was overspread;
A sudden horror seized his giddy head,
And his ears tinkled, and his colour fled;
Nature was in alarm; some danger nigh
Seemed threatened, though unseen to mortal eye.
Unused to fear, he summoned all his soul,
And stood collected in himself-and whole;
Not long for soon a whirlwind rose around,
And from afar he heard a screaming sound,
As of a dame distressed, who cried for aid,
And filled with loud laments the secret shade.

A thicket close beside the grove there stood, With briers and brambles choked, and dwarfish wood; From thence the noise, which now, approaching

near,

With more distinguished notes invades his ear;
He raised his head, and saw a beauteous maid,
With hair dishevelled, issuing through the shade;
Stripped of her clothes, and even those parts revealed
Which modest nature keeps from sight concealed.
Her face, her hands, her naked limbs were torn,
With passing through the brakes and prickly thorn;
Two mastiffs gaunt and grim her flight pursued,
And oft their fastened fangs in blood imbrued:
Oft they came up, and pinched her tender side;
'Mercy, O mercy, Heaven!' she ran, and cried;
When Heaven was named, they loosed their hold
again,

Then sprung she forth, they followed her amain.
Not far behind, a knight of swarthy face,
High on a coal-black steed pursued the chase;
With flashing flames his ardent eyes were filled,
And in his hands a naked sword he held:
He cheered the dogs to follow her who fled,
And vowed revenge on her devoted head.

As Theodore was born of noble kind,
The brutal action roused his manly mind;
Moved with unworthy usage of the maid,
He, though unarmed, resolved to give her aid.
A sapling pine he wrenched from out the ground,
The readiest weapon that his fury found.
Thus furnished for offence, he crossed the way
Betwixt the graceless villain and his prey.

The knight came thundering on, but, from afar,
Thus in imperious tone forbad the war:
'Cease, Theodore, to proffer vain relief,
Nor stop the vengeance of so just a grief;
But give me leave to seize my destined prey,
And let eternal justice take the way: