With all respect for the genius of Dryden, it is thus impossible for a truthful historian to take any but a melancholy view of his personal character, and of the mass of his writings. They are, in fact, mostly on subjects that do not fall within the legitimate province of true poetry. His "Absalom and Achitophel"—written to ridicule Monmouth and Shaftesbury, with their accomplice, Buckingham, under the name of "Zimri," and to damage the Whig party generally—is transcendently clever; but even the highest satirical and political verse is not poetry—it is only cleverness in verse; and this is the grand characteristic of Dryden's poetry—it is masterly verse. There is no creative faculty in it; it is a matter of style rather than of soul and sentiment; and in style he is a great master. This made Milton say that Dryden was a good rhymester, but no poet; and in Milton's conception of poetry, and in that which has taught us to venerate Homer, Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth, Shelley, and others, Dryden was not a poet of the highest rank. A modern critic has given him great credit for "creative power and genius" in his adaptations of some of Chaucer's tales; but this is a mistake. The creative genius is Chaucer's; Dryden has only remodelled the tales in modern language; the ideas, the invention, are all Chaucer's; Dryden's share consists in his wonderful, elastic, musical diction, in which he undoubtedly excels every English author in the heroic measure. Pope's is more artificial, but is far behind in musical rhythm and elastic vigour. Dryden's heroic verse is music itself, and music full of its highest elements. In it the trumpet sings, the drum beats, the organ blows in solemn thunder, the flute and fife shrill forth eloquence, and all mingled instruments seem to chorus in a combination of blissful sounds and feelings. In the latter part of his life Dryden, standing independent of all Government drudgery, shows more worthily both in life and verse. His translation of Virgil yet remains the best in our language. He had done with his contemptible squabbles with Elkanah Settle and Shadwell, who won from him the honours and profits of the theatre; and his "Fables," as he called them—tales from Chaucer—seemed to inspire him with a more really poetic feeling. In them he seemed to grow purer, and to open his soul to the influences of classical and natural beauty, to the charms of nature, and of old romance. These tales will always remain the truest monuments of Dryden's fame. His odes, much as they have been praised, are rather feats of art than outpourings of poetic inspiration. His "Alexander's Feast" is but a description of the effects of music on a drunken conqueror and a courtesan. Who now would dream of placing it by the side of Coleridge's "Ode to France," or Wordsworth's "Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Childhood"? But any one turning to "Palamon and Arcite" will find himself in a real fairyland of poetry, and perceive how much Keats, Leigh Hunt, and other modern poets have formed themselves on his style, and have even adopted his triplets.

We have given so much space to these the greatest poets of this period, that we have little for the rest. We have mentioned Andrew Marvell's beautiful ballad, "The Emigrants" (p. 180), and Wither's poems (p. 178), in our previous review. Sir John Denham's descriptive poem, "Cooper's Hill," had great popularity, and is a good specimen of that class of verse. Waller was a reigning favourite for his lyrics, which are elegant, but destitute of any high principle or emotion, as the man was, who wrote a panegyric on Cromwell and another on Charles II.; and when Charles told him he thought that on Cromwell the better, replied, "Sir, we poets never excel so well in writing truth as in writing fiction." Amongst the courtiers of Charles, Buckingham and Rochester were poets. Buckingham's comedy, "The Rehearsal," which was written to ridicule the heroic drama copied by Dryden from the French, still finds admirers; and the genius of Rochester was unquestionable, but still inferior to his obscenity. Sir Charles Sedley, another courtier, wrote comedies and songs almost equally famous for their dissoluteness. Charles Cotton, the author of "Virgil Travestied," was a writer of much wit, but nearly equal grossness, though he was the intimate friend of Izaak Walton, who was also no mean poet. The Earls of Roscommon and Dorset were popular, the first for his "Essay on Translated Verse," written in verse, and the other for his splendid ballad written at sea, commencing "To all you ladies now on land." Pomfret, a clergyman, wrote a didactic poem called "The Choice," which Dr. Johnson declared to be more frequently read than almost any poem in the language, and which Southey believed to be the most popular poem in the language. It is, in reality, one of the common-places gone by. Sir William Davenant, a reputed son of Shakespeare, wrote "Gondibert," a heroic poem in elegiac stanzas, which has good parts, but, as a whole, is intolerably dull. Sir Richard Fanshawe was celebrated as a translator, especially of Guarini's "Pastor Fido." Another translator from Greek and Spanish was Thomas Stanley, the learned editor of Æschylus, and the author of "The History of Philosophy." Besides these may be mentioned Bulteel, a popular songwriter; Philip Ayres, a lyrical poet; Dr. Henry More, author of a poem, "The Life of the Soul," in Spenserian stanzas; and Flatman, an imitator of Cowley.

SAMUEL BUTLER.

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The dramatic writing of the period was rather voluminous than first-rate. Davenant wrote above twenty plays, masks, etc.; but the most eminent dramatists were the unfortunate Otway, Nathaniel Lee, Sir George Etherege, Wycherley, Crowne, Southern, and Jasper Mayne. Otway's "Orphan" and "Venice Preserved" still maintain their fame; he wrote altogether ten plays. Nathaniel Lee wrote ten tragedies, a great mixture of talent and bombast. The most celebrated of them are his "Theodosius" and his "Rival Queens." Crowne wrote seventeen plays, in which the selections made by Charles Lamb in his "Dramatic Specimens" show that there exists perhaps the most pre-eminent dramatic genius of the age. Etherege is the author of three comedies of great polish and brilliancy, and set the pattern for Wycherley, and for Congreve, Farquhar, and Vanbrugh in the next period. Wycherley wrote four comedies equally remarkable for vigour and indecency. In fact, it is scarcely necessary to repeat that the whole of the dramatic literature of this period is thoroughly disfigured with the coarsest and most revolting sensuality and obscenity. Southern belongs properly to the next era, as he produced only two of his plays during this period—his tragedy of "The Loyal Brother," and his comedy of "The Disappointment." Shadwell and Settle inundated the stage with worthless plays; and Mrs. Aphra Behn, a courtesan as well as writer, was the author of a whole host of comedies, novels, and poems. Of the two comedies by Jasper Mayne—who, by-the-by, was a clergyman—"The City Match" is the better. Perhaps we ought not to close this review of the poets without a mention of the most successful poetaster of the age, Nahum Tate, who was in such estimation as to be allowed to supply our churches with his most wretched version of the Psalms, and to be employed by Dryden to continue his satire of "Absalom and Achitophel."

At the head of the prose writers of this period, as of the poets, we must place Milton. Though his writings are for the most part on controversial subjects, they were subjects of such immense importance that they acquired a lasting value. They bear a certain relation to his poetry. This in its highest exhibition celebrated the triumph of the Deity over the powers of evil. His prose writings were employed to support the struggle of liberty against the advocates of all political evil—absolutism. Poetry seemed to have become the habitual expression of his mind, and, therefore, there is in his prose style a certain awkwardness and stiffness. He moves like David in armour that he had not well proved; and his utterance, solemn and full of deep thought and erudition, is, as it were, forced and formal. But when he warms up with the greatness of his subject, he runs into a strain of grave eloquence which has scarcely an equal in the language.

The great prose works of Milton comprise his "History of England" from the earliest times to the Conquest, including all the old legends of the chroniclers, the arrival of Brute from Rome, the story of King Lear, and those fine fables which have been the storehouses of poets and dramatists; his "Tractate on Education;" his magnificent "Areopagitica;" his "Tenure of Kings and Magistrates;" the "Eikonoklastes;" the "Defensio pro Populo Anglicano" and "Defensio Secunda"—vindicating the conduct of England in deposing impracticable kings; his "Treatise on the Best Manner of Removing Hirelings out of the Church;" his essay on "Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes;" his "State Letters," written at the command of Cromwell; an "Art of Logic;" a "Treaty of True Religion, Heresy, Schism, Toleration, and what Best Means may be used against the Growth of Popery;" and his "Familiar Letters," in Latin. Besides these he left in manuscript a "Brief History of Muscovy," and a "System of Theology"—both since published. It may be safely said that scarcely any other writer has left such a sound and profound body of knowledge of all that is necessary for the maintenance of freedom, civil and religious, in the State.

Dryden is also a vigorous prose writer; but nothing can be more characteristic of the two men than the prose of Milton and Dryden. The one is grave, solemn, independent, upholding the sacred interests of religion and liberty; the other, that of Dryden—besides short lives of Polybius, Lucian, and Plutarch, and an "Essay on Dramatic Literature"—consists chiefly of a mass of his dramatic writings, couched in the most extravagant and unmanly terms of flattery. It is in vain to say that this was the spirit of the time; we have only to turn to Milton and behold that a great soul despised such sycophancy as much then as now.