but to any purpose for which it might be required, and in which the vernacular and the literary elements should be properly blended and adjusted. It is scarcely too much to say that if, as some critics have inclined to think, the influence of Dryden tended to narrow the sphere and cramp the efforts of English poetry, it tended equally to enlarge the sphere and develope the energies of English prose. It has often been noticed that poets, when they have any faculty for prose writing, are among the best of prose writers, and of no one is this more true than it is of Dryden.

Set prose passages of laboured excellence are not very common with Dryden. But the two following, the first being the famous character of Shakespeare from the Essay on Dramatic Poesy, the second an extract from the preface to the Fables, will give some idea of his style at periods separated by more than thirty years. The one was his first work of finished prose, the other his last :

As Neander was beginning to examine "The Silent Woman," Eugenius, earnestly regarding him; I beseech you, Neander, said he, gratify the company, and me in particular, so far, as before you speak of the play, to give us a character of the author; and tell us frankly your opinion, whether you do not think all writers, both French and English, ought to give place to him. I fear, replied Neander, that in obeying your commands I shall draw some envy on myself. Besides, in performing them, it will be first necessary to speak somewhat of Shakespeare and Fletcher, his rivals in poesy; and one of them, in my opinion, at least his equal, perhaps his superior. To begin then with Shakespeare. He was the man who of all modern, and perhaps ancient poets, had the largest and most comprehensive soul. All the images of nature were still present to him, and he drew them not laboriously, but luckily : when he describes anything, you more than see it, you feel it too. Those who accuse him to have wanted learning, give him

the greater commendation: he was naturally learned; he needed not the spectacles of books to read nature; he looked inwards, and found her there. I cannot say he is everywhere alike; were he so, I should do him injury to compare him with the greatest of mankind. He is many times flat, insipid; his comick wit degenerating into clenches, his serious swelling into bombast. But he is always great, when some great occasion is presented to him; no man can say he ever had a fit subject for his wit, and did not then raise himself as high above the rest of poets,

Quantum lenta solent inter viburna cupressi.

The consideration of this made Mr. Hales of Eton say, that there was no subject of which any poet ever writ but he would produce it much better done in Shakespeare; and however others are now generally preferred before him, yet the age wherein he lived, which had contemporaries with him, Fletcher and Jonson, never equalled them to him in their esteem: and in the last king's court, when Ben's reputation was at highest, Sir John Suckling, and with him the greater part of the courtiers, set our Shakespeare far above him.

As for the religion of our poet,' he seems to have some little bias towards the opinions of Wickliffe, after John of Gaunt, his patron; somewhat of which appears in the "Tale of Pierce Plowman," yet I cannot blame him for inveighing so sharply against the vices of the clergy in his age: their pride, their ambition, their pomp, their avarice, their worldly interest, deserved the lashes which he gave them, both in that, and in most of his Canterbury Tales. Neither has his contemporary, Boccace, spared them. Yet both those poets lived in much esteem with good and holy men in orders; for the scandal which is given by particular priests, reflects not on the sacred function. Chaucer's Monk, his Canon, and his Friar, took not from the character of his Good Parson. A satirical poet is the check of the laymen on bad priests. We are only to take care

1 Chaucer.

that we involve not the innocent with the guilty in the same condemnation. The good cannot be too much honoured, nor the bad too coarsely used; for the corruption of the best becomes the worst. When a clergyman is whipped, his gown is first taken off, by which the dignity of his order is secured. If he be wrongfully accused, he has his action of slander; and it is at the poet's peril, if he transgress the law. But they will tell us, that all kind of satire, though never so well deserved by particular priests, yet brings the whole order into contempt. Is then the peerage of England anything dishonoured, when a peer suffers for his treason? If he be libelled, or any way defamed, he has his scandalum magnatum to punish the offender. They who use this kind of argument, seem to be conscious to themselves of somewhat which has deserved the poet's lash, and are less concerned for their publick capacity, than for their private; at least there is pride at the bottom of their reasoning. If the faults of men in orders are only to be judged among themselves, they are all in some sort parties; for, since they say the honour of their order is concerned in every member of it, how can we be sure that they will be impartial judges ? How far I may be allowed to speak my opinion in this case, I know not; but I am sure a dispute of this nature caused mischief in abundance betwixt a King of England and an Archbishop of Canterbury; one standing up for the laws of his land, and the other for the honour (as he called it) of God's church; which ended in the murder of the Prelate, and in the whipping of his Majesty from post to pillar for his penance. The learned and ingenious Dr. Drake has saved me the labour of enquiring into the esteem and reverence which the priests have had of old; and I would rather extend than diminish any part of it: yet I must needs say, that when a priest provokes me without any occasion given him, I have no reason, unless it be the charity of a Christian, to forgive him: prior læsit is justification sufficient in the civil law. I answer him in his own language, self-defence, I am sure, must be allowed me; and if I carry it farther, even to a sharp recrimination, somewhat may be indulged to human frailty. Yet my resentment has not wrought so far, but that I have

If

followed Chaucer in his character of a holy man, and have enlarged on that subject with some pleasure; reserving to myself the right, if I shall think fit hereafter, to describe another sort of priests, such as are more easily to be found than the Good Parson; such as have given the last blow to Christianity in this age, by a practice so contrary to their doctrine. But this will keep cold till another time. In the mean while I take up Chaucer where I left him.

These must suffice for examples of the matter as well as of the manner of the literary criticism which forms the chief and certainly the most valuable part of Dryden's prose works. The great value of that criticism consists in its extremely appreciative character, and in its constant connexion with the poet's own constructive work. There is much in it which might seem to expose Dryden to the charge of inconsistency. But the truth is, that his literary opinions were in a perpetual state of progress, and therefore of apparent flux. Sometimes he wrote with defective knowledge, sometimes, though not often, without thinking the subject out, sometimes (and this very often) with a certain one-sidedness of view having reference rather to the bearing of the point on experiments he was then trying or about to try, than to any more abstract considerations. He never aimed at paradox for its own sake, but he never shrank from it; and on the whole his criticisms, though perhaps nowadays they appeal rather to the expert and the student than to the general reader, are at least as interesting for their matter as for their form. The importance of the study of that form in the cultivation of a robust English style has never been denied.

CHAPTER VII.

PERIOD OF TRANSLATION.

Ir is in many cases a decidedly difficult problem to settle the exact influence which any writer's life and circum. stances have upon his literary performances and career. Although there are probably few natures so absolutely self-sufficing and so imperial in their individuality that they take no imprint from the form and pressure of the time, the exact force which that pressure exercises is nearly always very hard to calculate. In the case of Dryden, however, the difficulty is fortunately minimized. There was never, it may safely be said, so great a writer who was so thoroughly occasional in the character of his greatness. The one thing which to all appearance he could not do, was to originate a theme. His second best play, according to the general judgment, his best as I venture to think, is built, with an audacity to which only great genius or great folly could lead, on the lines of Shakespeare. His longest and most ambitious poem follows with a surprising faithfulness the lines of Chaucer. His most effective piece of tragic description is a versified paraphrase -the most magnificent paraphrase perhaps ever written -of the prose of Boccaccio. of Boccaccio. Even in his splendid satires he is rarely successful, unless he has what is called in modern literary slang a very definite "peg" given him to