Later Poems and Purpose.
Far on in 1682, when our Dryden was waxing oldish, and when he had given over play-going for somewhat more of church-going, he wrote, in the same verse with his satires, and with the same ringing couplets of sound, a defence of the moderate liberal churchmanship that does not yield to ecclesiastic fetters, and that thinks widely. A little later, in 1687, he writes in a more assured vein, assuming bold defence of Romanism—as it existed in that day in England—to which faith he had become a convert. This last is a curiously designed poem, showing how little he had the arts of construction in hand; it is a long argument between a Hind and a Panther, in the shades of a forest. Was ever ecclesiasticism so recommended before? Yet there are brave and unforgetable lines in it: instance the noble rhythm, and the noble burden of that passage beginning—like a trumpet note—
“What weight of ancient witness can prevail,
If private reason hold the public scale?”
And again the fine tribute to “the Church:”
“Thus one, thus pure, behold her largely spread,
Like the fair ocean from her mother bed;
From East to West triumphantly she rides;
All shores are watered by her wealthy tides;
The Gospel-sound, diffused from pole to pole