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sixth, tenth, and sixteenth satires; and of Persius the whole work. The 14th of Juvenal was the performance of John, and the seventh of Charles, sons of Dryden-He prefixed a very ample preface in the form of a dedication to Lord Dorset, and there gives an account of the design which he had once formed to write an epic poem on the actions either of Arthur or the Black Prince. This plan he charged Blackmore with stealing.

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In 1694 he began the most laborious and difficult of all his works, the translation of "Virgil;" from which he borrowed two months that he might Fresnoy's Art of Painting" into English prose The preface, which he boasts to have written in twelve mornings, exhibits a parallel of poetry and painting with a miscellaneous collection of critical remarks, such as cost a mind like his no labour to produce them.

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In 1697 he published his version of the works of Virgil;" and in 1699 his last work, his Fables, made its appearance in consequence, as is supposed, of a contract which obliged him, in consideration of three hundred pounds, to finish for the press ten thousand verses. In this volume is comprised the well-known Ode on St. Cecilia's day.

The time was now at hand which was to put an end to all his schemes and labours. On the 1st of May 1701, having been some time, as he tells us, a cripple, he died in Gerrard-street of a mortification in his limbs. He was buried among the poets in Westminster Abbey, where he lay long without distinction till the Duke of Buckinghamshire gave him

a tablet inscribed only with the name of DRYDEN. "There are men whose powers operate only at leisure and in retirement, and whose intellectual vigour deserts them in conversation; whom merriment confuses, and objection disconcerts; whose bashfulness restrains their exertions, and suffer's them not to speak till the time of speaking is past, or whose attention to their own character makes them unwilling to utter at hazard what has not been considered and cannot be recalled.

"Of Dryden's sluggishness in conversation it is in vain to search or to guess the cause. He certainly wanted neither sentiments, nor language; his intellectual treasures were great, though they were locked up from his own use. His thoughts, when he wrote, flowed upon him so fast that his only care was which to chuse, and which to reject. Such rapidity of composition naturally promises a flow of talk, yet we must be content to believe what an enemy says of him, when he likewise says it of himself. But, whatever was his character as a companion, it appears that he lived in familiarity with the highest persons of his time. It is related, by Carte of the Duke of Ormond, that he used often to pass a night with Dryden and those with whom Dryden consorted: who they were Carte has not told, but certainly the convivial table at which Ormond sat was not surrounded with a plebeian society. He was indeed reproached with boasting of his familiarity with the great; and Horace will support him in the opinion, that to please superiors is not the lowest kind of merit.”

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Dryden may be properly considered as the father of English criticism, as the writer who first taught us to determine upon principles the merit of composition. Of our former poets the greatest dramatist wrote without rules, conducted through life and nature by a genius that rarely missed, and rarely deserted him. Of the rest, those who knew the laws of propriety had neglected to teach them.

"Dryden's "Essay on Dramatic Poetry" was the first regular treatise on the art of writing. He who, having formed his opinions in the present age of English literature, turns back to peruse this dialogue, will not perhaps find much increase of knowledge, or much novelty of instruction; but he is to remember that critical principles were then in the hands of a few who had gathered them partly from the ancients, and partly from the Italians and French. The structure of dramatic poems was not then generally understood. Audiences applauded by instinct, and poets perhaps often pleased by chance."

"The Dialogue of the Drama was one of his first essays of criticism, written when he was yet a timorous candidate for reputation, and therefore laboured with that diligence which he might allow himself somewhat to remit when his name gave sanction to his positions, and his awe of the public was abated, partly by custom, and partly by success. It will not be easy to find, in all the opulence of our language, a treatise so artfully variegated with successive representations of opposite probabilities, so enlivened with imagery, so brigtened with

illustrations. His portraits of the English Dramatists are wrought with great spirit and diligence. The account of Shakespeare may stand as a perpetual model of encomiastic criticism, exact without minuteness, and lofty without exaggeration - The praise lavished by Longinus on the attestation of the heroes of Marathon by Demosthenes fades away before it. In a few lines is exhibited a character so extensive in its comprehension, and so curious in its limitations, that nothing can be added, diminished, or reformed; nor can the Editors and Admirers of Shakespeare, in all their emulation of reverence, boast of much more than of having diffused and paraphrased this epitome of excellence, of having changed Dryden's gold for baser metal, of lower value though of greater bulk."

"As to his learning (says Johnson), it will be difficult to prove that Dryden ever made any great advances in literature. Having distinguished himself at Westminster under the tuition of Busby, who advanced his scholars to a height of knowledge very rarely attained in Grammar-Schools, and resided afterwards at Cambridge, it is not to be supposed that his skill in the ancient languages was deficient, compared with that of common students, but his scholastic acquisitions seem not proportionate to his opportunities and abilities. He could not, like Milton or Cowley, have made his name illustrious merely by his learning. He mentions but few books, and those such as lie in the beaten track of regular study, from which if ever he departs he is in danger of losing himself in unknown regions.

"Criticism, either didactic or defensive, occupies almost all his prose, except those pages which he had devoted to his patrons; but none of his prefaces were ever thought tedious. 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 any over-charged resemblance.

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