natives. Marriage-A-la-mode."* treated, rallied, repartée, ridicule, tender, tour; with several others which are now considered as But of these words many had been long naturalized in England, and, with the adjectives derived from them, are used by Shakespeare and the dramatists of his age. By their being printed in italicks in the play of "Marriage-A-la-mode," Dryden only meant to mark, that Melantha, the affected coquette in whose mouth they are placed, was to use the French, not the vernacular pronunciation. It will admit of question, whether any single French word has been naturalized upon the sole authority of Dryden. Although Dryden's style has nothing obsolete, we can occasionally trace a reluctance to abandon an old word or idiom; the consequence, doubtless, of his latter studies in ancient poetry. In other respects, nothing can be more elegant than the dic * Poems from the Bannatyne Manuscript, p. 228. + Shakespeare has capricious, conversation, fatigate, (if not fatigue,) figure, gallant, good graces; incendiary is in Minshew's "Guide to the Tongues," ed. 1627. Tender often occurs in Shakespeare both as a substantive and verb. And many other of the above words may be detected by those who have time and inclination to search for them, in authors prior to Dryden's time. tion of the praises heaped upon his patrons, for which he might himself plead the apology he uses for Maimbourg, "who, having enemies, made himself friends by panegyrics." Of these lively critical prefaces, which, when we commence, we can never lay aside till we have finished, Dr Johnson has said with equal force and beauty," They have not the formality of a settled style, in which the first half of the sentence betrays the other. The clauses are never balanced, nor the periods modelled; every word seems to drop by chance, though it falls into its proper place. Nothing is cold or languid; the whole is airy, animated, and vigorous; what is little is gay, what is great, is splendid. He may be thought to mention himself too frequently; but while he forces himself upon our esteem, we cannot refuse him to stand high in his own. Every thing is excused by the play of images and the sprightliness of expression. Though all is easy, nothing is feeble; though all seems careless, there is nothing harsh ; and though, since his earlier works, more than a century has passed, they have nothing yet uncouth or obsolete." "He, who writes much, will not easily escape a manner, such a recurrence of particular modes as may be easily noted. Dryden is always another and the same. He does not exhibit a second time the same elegancies in the same form, nor appears to have any art other than that of expressing with clearness what he thinks with vigour. His style could not easily be imitated, either seriously or ludicrously; for, being always equable and always varied, it has no prominent or discriminative characters. The beauty, who is totally free from disproportion of parts and features, cannot be ridiculed by an overcharged resemblance." The last paragraph is not to be understood too literally; for although Dryden never so far copied himself as to fall into what has been quaintly called mannerism; yet accurate observation may trace in his works, the repetition of some sentiments and illustrations from prose to verse, and back again to prose. In his preface to the * The remarkable phrase, "to possess the soul in patience,” occurs in the " Hind and Panther;" and in the Essay on Satire, Vol. XIII. p. 80, we have nearly the same expression. The image of a bird's wing flagging in a damp atmosphere, occurs in Don Sebastian, and in prose elsewhere, though I have lost the reference. The same thought is found in the "Hind and Panther," but is not there used metaphorically: Nor need they fear the dampness of the sky Dryden is ridiculed by an imitator of Rabelais, for the recurrence of the phrase by which he usually prefaces his own defensive criticism. "If it be allowed me to speak so much in my own com Æneid, he has enlarged on the difficulty of vary ing phrases, when the same sense returned on the author; and surely we must allow full praise to his fluency and command of language, when, during so long a literary career, and in the course of such a variety of miscellaneous productions, we can detect in his style so few instances of repetition, or self-imitation. The prose of Dryden, excepting his translations, and one or two controversial tracts, is entirely dedicated to criticism, either general and didactic, or defensive and exculpatory. There, as in other branches of polite learning, it was his lot to be a light to his people. About the time of the Restoration, the cultivation of letters was prosecuted in France with some energy. But the genius of that lively nation being more fitted for criticism than poetry; for drawing rules from 66 mendation;-see Dryden's preface to his Fables, or to any other of his works that you please." The full title of this whimsical tract, from which Sterne borrowed several hints, is an Essay towards the theory of the intelligible world intuitively considered. Designed for forty-nine parts. Part Third, consisting of a preface, a postscript, and a little something between, by Gabriel Johnson; enriched by a faithful account of his ideal voyages, and illustrated with poems by several hands, as likewise with other strange things not insufferably clever, nor furiously to the purpose; printed in the year 17, &c." what others have done, than for writing works which might be themselves standards; they were sooner able to produce an accurate table of laws for those intending to write epic poems and tragedies, according to the best Greek and Roman authorities, than to exhibit distinguished specimens of success in either department; just as they are said to possess the best possible rules for building ships of war, although not equally remarkable for their power of fighting them. When criticism becomes a pursuit separate from poetry, those who follow it are apt to forget, that the legitimate ends of the art for which they lay down rules, are instruction or delight, and that these points being attained, by what road soever, entitles a poet to claim the prize of successful merit. Neither did the learned authors of these disquisitions sufficiently attend to the general disposition of mankind, which cannot be contented even with the happiest imitations of former excellence, but demands novelty as a necessary ingredient for amusement. To insist that every epic poem shall have the plan of the Iliad and Æneid, and every tragedy be fettered by the rules of Aristotle, resembles the principle of an architect, who should build all his houses with the same number of windows, and of sto |