great poets, for the reason that in Dryden's own words he is larger and more comprehensive than any of them. But with the exception of Shakespeare, the greatest poets in different styles are, in the eyes of a sound poetical criticism, very much on an equality. Dryden's peculiar gift, in which no poet of any language has surpassed him, is the faculty of treating any subject which he does treat poetically. His range is enormous, and wherever it is deficient, it is possible to see that external circumstances had to do with the apparent limitation. That the author of the tremendous satire of the political pieces should be the author of the exquisite lyrics scattered about the plays; that the special pleader of Religio Laici should be the taleteller of Palamon and Arcite, are things which, the more carefully I study other poets and their comparatively limited perfection, astonish me the more. My natural man may like Kubla Khan, or the Ode on a Grecian Urn, or the Ode on Intimations of Immortality, or O World! O Life! O Time! with an intenser liking than that which it feels for anything of Dryden's. But that arises from the pure accident that I was born in the first half of the nineteenth century, and Dryden in the first half of the seventeenth. The whirligig of time has altered and is altering this relation between poet and reader in every generation. But what it cannot alter is the fact that the poetical virtue which is present in Dryden is the same poetical virtue that is present in Lucretius and in Eschylus, in Shelley and in Spenser, in Heine and in Hugo. INDEX. Absalom and Achitophel, 73-74, | Chaucer, 132-134, 135, 153, 154, 77, 80-84, 88-90, 92, 96, 100, 109, 112, 136, 180 Addison, 56, 105, 128, 130 Annus Mirabilis, 28, 33-37, 109 Bacon, 122, 130 Behn, Mrs. Aphra, 62, 177 Boccaccio, 135, 153, 155-156, 164 Bolingbroke, 182 Britannia Rediviva, 98 Buckingham, Duke of, 51, 77, 81 Butler, Samuel, 16, 51-52, 75 Canons Ashby, 1-3, 7, 179 Castlemaine, Lady, 28 155, 158-160, 163, 174 Chesterton, 4, 168 Churchill, 76 Clarendon, Lord, 75, 121, 122, 130; poem to, 28, 32 Cleveland, Duchess of, 70 Collier, Jeremy, 119, 156-157, 166 Couplet, the heroic, 17, 28-29, 31, Creed, Mrs. (Dryden's cousin), 5, Cromwell, stanzas on death of, Crowne, John, 52, 53-54, 59, 69, Curll, Edmund, bookseller, 177- Davenant, Sir W., 13, 17, 19, 34, Denham Court, seat of Sir William Charles II., 43, 72, 73, 84, 91, 92, Denham, Sir J., 7 101 Charleton, Dr., 28 Charlton, 3, 25, 33, 183 Diderot, 119 Donne, John, 15-16, 75 Dorset, Lord, 68, 113 175 Draghi, the composer, 110 Drayton, the poet, 172 Dryden, Erasmus (father), 2, 4, 9, Dryden, Erasmus (son), 66, 179 As a writer: conceits, 11, 18, versification, didactic poems, 79, Biographies of, v, vi; editions Durfey, Tom, 62 Eleonora, 151 Epic Poetry, Discourse on, 152 Fables, the, 115, 128, 131, 153-172, Fetter Lane, 66-67 note Hastings, Lord, elegy on, 7-8, 16, Heroic play, origin of, 19 Hind and the Panther, 79-80, 92, Howell, 67 Hudson, Dr., 14 Hyde, Anne, 107 Hyde, Lawrence, 52, 116 James II., 91, 92, 101, 104, 106 Juvenal, 128, 144-145 Keats, 191 Operas. See Plays Ormond, Duke of, 128, 155-156 Painting (Dufresnoy's), Art of, 152 Pickering, Mary (Dryden's mother), Killegrew, Mrs. Anne, Ode to the Pickering, Rev. Henry, 1 Memory of, 94-95, 151 Kneller, Sir G., 151 League, History of the, 128 Lucian, Life of, 152 Macaulay, Lord, 64, 68, 103, 149, Malone, 67 Marston, 75 Marvill, 75 Mary, Queen, 114-115 Medal, The, 83, 84-85, 100, 112, Milton, 12, 55-56, 63, 108, 121, Miscellanies, The, 110, 141 Molière, 41, 42, 44, 73, 115 Monmouth, Duke of, 81 Pickering, Sir Gilbert, 10, 12 114, 116; All for Love, 55, 58- Montague, Charles, 98, 161, 179, Poetry, Metaphysical School of, '182 Morris, William, 171 15-18 Pope, 77, 111, 146-147 Mulgrave, Lord, 68-70, 139, 146, Popish Plot, the, 24, 72, 81, 99 149, 182 Nene Valley, the, 3, 4, 183 Ode on St. Cecilia's Day, 110 Pordage, Samuel, 83, 85, 105 Queen Mary, 114 |