passages, both original and imitated; with not a few symptoms, especially in his dealings with the Canterbury Tales, that betray a very imperfect sense of the merit of his model. His translation of the Æneid, as imperfect a picture of the original as Pope's of the Iliad, is indeed deficient in grace, but full of vigour; and it equals any of his works as a specimen of the heroic couplet, a measure never so well written in our language, either before Dryden or since.*

* JOHN DRYDEN.

1. From the "Knight's Tale," modernized and altered from Chaucer.

1. THE INTRODUCTION TO THE TOURNAMENT.
The day approached when Fortune should decide
The important enterprise, and give the bride:
For now the rivals round the world had sought,
And each his number well-appointed brought.
The nations far and near contend in choice,
And send the flower of war by public voice;
That, after or before, were never known
Such chiefs, as each an army seemed alone.
Beside the champions, all of high degree,
Who knighthood loved and deeds of chivalry,
Thronged to the lists, and envied to behold
The names of others, not their own, enrolled.
Nor seems it strange; for every noble knight
Who loves the fair, and is endued with might,

In such a quarrel would be proud to fight.

There breathes not scarce a man on British ground,
(An isle for love and arms of old renowned,)

But would have sold his life to purchase fame,

To Palamon or Arcite sent his name;

And, had the land selected of the best,

Half had come hence, and let the world provide the rest.

2. THE DEATH OF ARCITE.

"Have pity on the faithful Palamon!"

This was his last: for death came on amain,

And exercised below his iron reign:

Then upward to the seat of life he goes:

Sense fled before him: what he touched he froze:

Yet could he not his closing eyes withdraw,

Though less and less of Emily he saw :

So, speechless for a little while he lay ;

Then grasped the hand he held, and sighed his soul away.

1. From "Theodore and Honoria," versified from Boccaccio's prose.

THE APPARITION.

While listening to the murmuring leaves he stood,

More than a mile immersed within the wood,

9. The poetical character of this illustrious but unfortunate man has been portrayed, with equal kindliness and justice, by one who himself founded a poetical school very unlike his.

"The distinguishing characteristic of Dryden's genius seems to

At once the wind was laid; the whispering sound
Was dumb; a rising earthquake rock'd the ground:
With deeper brown the grove was overspread;
A sudden horror seized his giddy head,
And his ears tingled, and his colour fled.
Nature was in alarm: some danger nigh
Seem'd threaten'd, though unseen to mortal eye.
Unused to fear, he summon'd 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 fill'd with loud laments the secret shade.

A thicket close beside the grove there stood,
With briars 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:
Two mastiffs, gaunt and grim, her flight pursued,
And oft their fasten'd fangs in blood imbrued:
Oft they came up and pinch'd her tender side:

"Mercy, oh mercy, heaven!" she ran, and cried.
When heaven was named, they loosed their hold again :
Then sprung she forth: they followed her amain.

III. From "Absalom and Achitophel."

CHARACTER OF ELKANAH SETTLE, A SMALL POET OF THE DAY.

Doeg, though without knowing how or why,

Made still a blundering kind of melody;

Spurred boldly on, and dash'd through thick and thin,

Through sense and nonsense, never out nor in:

Free from all meaning, whether good or bad,

And, in one word, heroically mad.

He was too warm on picking-work to dwell,
But fagoted his notions as they fell:
And if they rhymed and rattled, all was well.
Spiteful he is not, though he wrote a satire ;
For still there goes some thinking to ill-nature.
He needs no more than birds or beasts to think:
All his occasions are to eat and drink.

If he call rogue and rascal from a garret,
He means you no more mischief than a parrot:
The words for friend and foe alike were made;
To fetter them in verse is all his trade.

have been the power of reasoning, and of expressing the result in appropriate language. This may seem slender praise: yet these were the talents that led Bacon into the recesses of philosophy, and conducted Newton to the cabinet of nature. The prose works of Dryden bear repeated evidence to his philosophical powers. * * The early habits of his education and poetical studies gave his researches somewhat too much of a metaphysical character; and it was a consequence of his mental acuteness, that his dramatic personages often philosophized or reasoned when they ought only to have felt. The more lofty, the fiercer, the more ambitious feelings, seem also to have been his favourite studies. * * Though his poetry, from the nature of his subjects, is in general rather ethic and didactic than narrative; yet no sooner does he adopt the latter style of composition, than his figures and his landscapes are presented to the mind with the same vivacity as the flow of his reasoning, or the acute metaphysical discrimination of his characters. * * The satirical powers of Dryden were of the highest order. He draws his arrow to the head, and dismisses it straight upon his object of aim. But, while he seized, and dwelt upon, and aggravated, all the evil features of his subject, he carefully retained just as much of its laudable traits, as preserved him from the charge of want of candour, and fixed down the resemblance upon the party. And thus, instead of unmeaning caricatures, he presents portraits which cannot be mistaken, however unfavourable ideas they may convey of the originals. The character of Shaftesbury, both as Achitophel, and as drawn in 'The Medal,' bears peculiar witness to this assertion. * * The 'Fables' of Dryden are the best examples of his talents as a narrative poet; those powers of composition, description, and narration, which must have been called into exercise by the Epic Muse, had his fate allowed him to enlist among her votaries. The account of the procession of the fairy chivalry in the 'Flower and the Leaf;' the splendid description of the champions who came to assist at the tournament in the 'Knight's Tale;' the account of the battle itself, its alternations and issue: if they cannot be called improvements on Chaucer, are nevertheless so spirited a transfusion of his ideas into modern verse, as almost to claim the merit of originality. Many passages might be shown, in which this praise may be carried still higher, and the merit of invention added to that of imitation. Such is, in the 'Knight's Tale,' the description of the commencement of the tourney, which is almost entirely original; and such are most of the ornaments in the translations from Boccaccio, whose prose fictions demanded more additions from the poet than the exuberant imagery of Chaucer.

To select instances would be endless: but every reader of poetry has by heart the description of Iphigenia asleep: nor are the lines in 'Theodore and Honoria,' which describe the approach of the apparition, and its effects upon animated and inanimated nature, even before it becomes visible, less eminent for beauties of the terrific order."*

* Sir Walter Scott: Life of Dryden.

CHAPTER IX.

THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.

A. D. 1702-A. D. 1800.

SECTION FIRST: THE LITERARY CHARACTER AND CHANGES

OF THE PERIOD.

1. Character of the Period as a Whole-Its Relations to Our Own Time.2. Literary Character of its First Generation-The Age of Queen Anne and George I.-3. Literary Character of its Second and Third Generations-From the Accession of George II.-4. The Prose Style of the First Generation-Addison-Swift.-5. The Prose Style of the Second and Third Generations-Johnson.

1. No period in our literary history has been, at various times, estimated so variously as the Eighteenth Century. If it was overvalued by those who lived in it, it is assuredly undervalued in our day; a natural result of circumstances, but not the less a result to be regretted. In regard to ages more remote, the beautifying charm of antiquity tempts us to err, oftenest, by entertaining for their great men and great deeds, although the principles may be very unlike ours, a respect exceeding that which is their due. But the century immediately preceding our own is not far enough distant to be reverenced as ancient; while its distance is sufficient to have caused, in the modes of thinking and varieties of taste, changes so material as to incapacitate us for sympathizing readily with its characteristics.

It is true, no doubt, that in England, as elsewhere in Europe, the temper of the eighteenth century was cold, dissatisfied, and hypercritical. Alike in the theory of literature and in that of society, in the theory of knowledge and in that of religion, old principles were peremptorily called in question; and the literary man and the statesman, the philosopher and the theologian, alike found the task allotted them to be mainly that of attack or defence. It is true, likewise, that the opinions which kept the firmest hold on the minds