[6] Life of Lucian.
[7] "The great man must have that intellect which puts in motion the intellect of others."—Landor, Im. Con., Diogenes and Plato.
[8] Character of Polybius (1692).
[9] "For my own part, who must confess it to my shame that I never read anything but for pleasure." Life of Plutarch (1683).
[10] Gray says petulantly enough that "Dryden was as disgraceful to the office, from his character, as the poorest scribbler could have been from his verses."—Gray to Mason, 19th December, 1757.
[11] Essay on the Origin and Progress of Satire.
[12] Dedication of the Georgics.
[13] Dryden's penetration is always remarkable. His general judgment of Polybius coincides remarkably with that of Mommsen. (Röm. Gesch. II. 448, seq.)
[14] "I have taken some pains to make it my masterpiece in English." Preface to Second Miscellany. Fox said that it "was better than the original." J.C. Scaliger said of Erasmus: "Ex alieno ingenio poeta, ex suo versificator."
[15] In one of the last letters he ever wrote, thanking his cousin Mrs. Steward for a gift of marrow-puddings, he says: "A chine of honest bacon would please my appetite more than all the marrow-puddings; for I like them better plain, having a very vulgar stomach." So of Cowley he says: "There was plenty enough, but ill sorted, whole pyramids of sweetmeats for boys and women, but little of solid meat for men." The physical is a truer antitype of the spiritual man than we are willing to admit, and the brain is often forced to acknowledge the inconvenient country-cousinship of the stomach.