Three poets in three distant ages born
Greece, Italy, and England did adorn;
The first in loftiness of thought surpassed;
The next in majesty; in both the last.
The force of nature could no further go;
To make a third, she joined the other two.
The foregoing is not very good poetry, but it is very good epigram, as might have been expected—for Dryden is a master epigrammatist, if but an indifferent poet. Do not scrutinize the present epigram too nicely, and how admirable it is! The last two lines are the gist of it. What precedes is only preparation for these two. Necessary preparation, but as criticism, not ideal. For though “loftiness of thought,” answering for sublimity, may doubtfully do to stand as the chief characteristic of Homer, and though Virgil’s quality may fairly well be expressed in the single word “majesty,” these two things, conceived as different from one another, can not be said to compose together the character of Milton. Milton surpasses in sublimity, no doubt, and he is surpassingly majestic; but you would hardly balance the one attribute against the other to express summarily his complement of qualities. The two attributes, sublimity and majesty, resemble each other too much to be good antitheses. But this paper is not to be a criticism.
Let us have a sharp contrast next. Gray in his ode on the “Progress of Poets:”
Nor second he,
(The poet means not second to Shakspere, whom he has just celebrated)