"No, I confess, you bade me not in words;
The dial spoke not, but it made shrewd signs,
And pointed full upon the stroke of murder."
This is perhaps a solitary example. Nor is he always so possessed by the image in his mind as unconsciously to choose even the picturesquely imaginative word. He has done so, however, in this passage from "Marriage à la Mode":—
"You ne'er mast hope again to see your princess,
Except as prisoners view fair walks and streets,
And careless passengers going by their grates."
But after all, he is best upon a level, table-land, it is true, and a very high level, but still somewhere between the loftier peaks of inspiration and the plain of every-day life. In those passages where he moralizes he is always good, setting some obvious truth in a new light by vigorous phrase and happy illustration. Take this (from "Oedipus") as a proof of it:—
"The gods are just,
But how can finite measure infinite?
Reason! alas, it does not know itself!
Yet man, vain man, would with his short-lined plummet
Fathom the vast abyss of heavenly justice.
Whatever is, is in its causes just,
Since all things are by fate. But purblind man
Sees but a part o' th' chain, the nearest links,
His eyes not carrying to that equal beam
That poises all above."
From the same play I pick an illustration of that ripened sweetness of thought and language which marks the natural vein of Dryden. One cannot help applying the passage to the late Mr. Quincy:—
"Of no distemper, of no blast he died,
But fell like autumn fruit that mellowed long,
E'en wondered at because he dropt no sooner;
Fate seemed to wind him up for fourscore years;
Yet freshly ran he on ten winters more,
Till, like a clock worn out with eating Time,
The wheels of weary life at last stood still."[73]
Here is another of the same kind from "All for Love":—
"Gone so soon!
Is Death no more? He used him carelessly,
With a familiar kindness; ere he knocked,
Ran to the door and took him in his arms,
As who should say, You're welcome at all hours,
A friend need give no warning."
With one more extract from the same play, which is in every way his best, for he had, when he wrote it, been feeding on the bee-bread of Shakespeare, I shall conclude. Antony says,