though his Pharonnida was pitched in a higher key, rhymed upon any word, however insignificant, that came in his way. All these were men of great poetical talent, some of them, indeed, of undoubted genius, capable of seducing others by their example. But in the same age, just as heresies have had the effect of causing true doctrines to be more strictly defined, Sir John Davies and Sir William Davenant, avoiding equally the opposite faults of too artificial and too careless a style, wrote in numbers which, for precision, and clearness, and felicity, and strength, have never been surpassed.

That Sir John Denham began a reformation in our verse, is one of the most groundless assertions that ever obtained belief in literature. More thought and more skill had been exercised before his time in the construction of English metre, than he ever bestowed upon the subject, and by men of far greater attainments and far higher powers. To improve, indeed, either upon the versification or the diction of our great writers, was impossible; it was impossible to exceed them in the knowledge or in the practice of their art, but it was easy to avoid the more obvious faults of inferior authors; and in this he succeeded, just so far, as not to be included in

The mob of gentlemen who wrote with ease;

nor consigned to oblivion with the "Persons of Quality" who contributed their vapid effusions to the miscellanies of those days. His proper place is among those of his contemporaries and successors who called themselves Wits, and have since been entitled Poets

by the courtesy of England. And as Denham has no claim to the praise which has been awarded him on this ground, Waller, to whom a larger portion has been assigned, deserves it little more. No one who, in attempting to write poetry, considered it as any thing more than an amusement for leisure hours, has ever derived improvement in the art from the writings of either.

Dryden has indeed delivered a contrary opinion in favour of both these minor poets. But Dryden was not well read in his own art; and moreover, he often allowed his critical judgement to be biassed by motives of temporary convenience. His enemies wronged him when they asserted that he had been influenced by no better motives in declaring himself a convert to the Romish church. That corrupt church, whose system is the greatest work of human wisdom and human wickedness, ever has found, and ever will find, converts among those who require narcotics either for the understanding or the conscience. I know not that Dryden ever regarded the licentiousness of his dramatic works as a sin to be repented of; nor does it appear in his writings that a state of doubt upon the most momentous subjects occasioned in him any of that uneasiness, and of those aspirations after the blessings of full faith, which are so strongly indicated in the works of his friend Davenant. His conversion appears to have been less an affair of the feelings than of the intellect, and that intellect not a comprehensive one. In his age, as in ours, the foundations on which alone the peace of individuals, as well as the security of states can rest, had been shaken. He saw the evils of

fanaticism, and of religious factions at home; and he had not seen abroad the abominations consequent upon and inseparably connected with a system of established imposture. By inclination he was a sceptic 12, by habit a conformist, professing obedience to authority as a sure and safe principle whereon to rest. But he was willing to make a merit of this obedience, and saved the pride of his philosophy by pleading that, as he believed the fundamental mysteries of revealed religion, he was bound in consequence to believe also all that the Romish church had superadded 13. The very weakness of the argument is proof of his sincerity; for in matters of criticism, when he was reasoning against his own better judgement, that sort of

12

Being naturally inclined," he says, "to scepticism in philosophy, I have no reason to impose my opinions in a subject which is above it; but whatever they are, I submit them with all reverence to my mother church, accounting them no farther mine, than as they are authorised, or at least uncondemned, by her."

This was said in the preface to his Religio Laici, while he was yet a member of the Church of England.

13

To take up half on trust, and half to try,

Name it not faith, but bungling bigotry.

Both knave and fool the merchant we may call,

To pay great sums and to compound the small:

For who would break with Heaven, and would not break for all? Hind and Panther.

This argument comes to the vulgar saying, "In for a penny, in for a pound," which holds good only of risks and expenses rashly or inevitably incurred. If so base a metaphor may be allowed upon such a subject, the real state of the case is explained by saying, we pay the penny because it is a just debt, but we refuse to be swindled out of the pound.

ability which makes the worse appear the better reason, was never wanting in him. He was too skilful and too sagacious ever to have advanced what was palpably fallacious, unless he had imposed upon himself by it.

But Dryden is not entitled to the same credit for sincerity in the opinions which he delivered upon poetry. He seems to have been the first eminent author in this country who practised literature as a profession, and regarding it exclusively as such, gave up his mind to temporary subjects, and contented himself with obtaining immediate profit by the easiest means. Adulation was so common in his days, that probably he never thought himself degraded by using it; and one who offered this kind of incense without scruple, would not hesitate, among the ways of flattery, to adopt the opinions of those whom he wished to propitiate, however repugnant to his own better judgement. After telling the Marquis of Newcastle that the piece which he then dedicated to him " pretended to be nothing more than a foil to his lordship's composition;" and calling that truly noble personage, in all other respects," the most noble poet of his age and nation;" no wonder can be felt when he asserts that his contemporaries might "justly claim precedence of Shakespeare in heroic plays," .. that " Shakespeare's whole style is so packed with figurative expressions, that it is as affected as it is obscure," .. that "well placing of words, for the sweetness of pronunciation, was not known till Mr. Waller introduced it,”. and that Sir John Denham's poem upon Cooper's Hill

"is and ever will be, for majesty of style, the exact standard of good writing!"

66

When Dryden was a boy, he was more delighted with the bombastic passages in Sylvester's Du Bartas, than with Spenser. When he commenced his career as a poet, which was not at an early age, he took Davenant for his model, and composed his Annus Mirabilis in quatrains, "judging them," he said, more noble and of greater dignity, both for the sound and number, than any other verse in use amongst us." At that time he envied the advantages which the ancients enjoyed in not being tied to the slavery of any rhyme, and regretted that the moderns were "constrained' in the close of that one syllable, which often confines and more often corrupts the sense of all the rest. But in this necessity of our rhymes," said he, "I have always found the couplet verse most easy, -for there the work is soonest at an end, every two lines concluding the labour of the poet; but in quatrains he is to carry it farther on; and not only so, but to bear along in his head the troublesome sense of four lines together. For those who write correctly in this kind must needs acknowledge that the last line of the stanza is to be considered in the composition of the first."

Perhaps this passage may disclose the reason why Dryden employed the couplet in his translations, and when he contracted with Jacob Tonson to furnish verses by the thousand. He could have chosen no other measure for his modernized versions of Chaucer ; but the same course of reflection which, after he had