["There's something in a flying horse,
There's something in a huge balloon;
But through the clouds I'll never float
Until I have a little Boat,
Shaped like the crescent-moon."
Wordsworth's Peter Bell, stanza i.]
[220] [For Medea's escape from the wrath of Jason, "Titaniacis ablata draconibus," see Ovid., Met., vii. 398.]
[221] [In his "Essay, Supplementary to the Preface," to his "Poems" of 1815, Wordsworth, commenting on a passage on Night in Dryden's Indian Emperor, says, "Dryden's lines are vague, bombastic, and senseless.... The verses of Dryden once celebrated are forgotten." He is not passing any general criticism on "him who drew Achitophel." In a letter to Sir Walter Scott (November 7, 1805), then engaged on his great edition of Dryden's Works, he admits that Dryden is not "as a poet any great favourite of mine. I admire his talents and genius highly, but he is not a poetical genius. The only qualities I can find in Dryden that are essentially poetical, are a certain ardour and impetuosity of mind, with an excellent ear" (Life of Wordsworth, by W. Knight, 1889, ii. 26-29). Scott may have remarked on Wordsworth's estimate of Dryden in conversation with Byron.]
[DE] {178}While swung the signal from the sacred tower.—[MS.]