[39] The Doctor was a capital judge of the substantial value of the goods he handled, but his judgment always seems that of the thumb and forefinger. For the shades, the disposition of colors, the beauty of the figures, he has as good as no sense whatever. The critical parts of his Life of Dryden seem to me the best of his writing in this kind. There is little to be gleaned after him. He had studied his author, which he seldom did, and his criticism is sympathetic, a thing still rarer with him. As illustrative of his own habits, his remarks on Dryden's reading are curious.
[40] Perhaps the hint was given by a phrase of Corneille, monarque en peinture. Dryden seldom borrows, unless from Shakespeare, without improving, and he borrowed a great deal. Thus in "Don Sebastian" of suicide:—
"Brutus and Cato might discharge their souls,
And give them furloughs for the other world;
But we, like sentries, are obliged to stand
In starless nights and wait the appointed hour."
The thought is Cicero's, but how it is intensified by the "starless nights"! Dryden, I suspect, got it from his favorite, Montaigne, who says, "Que nous ne pouvons abandonner cette garnison du monde, sans le commandement exprez de celuy qui nous y a mis." (L. ii. chap. 3.) In the same play, by a very Drydenish verse, he gives new force to an old comparison:—
"And I should break through laws divine and human. And think 'em cobwebs spread for little man, Which all the bulky herd of Nature breaks."
[41] Not his solemn historical droning under that title, but addressed "To the Cambrio-Britons on their harp."
[42] "Les poëtes euxmêmes s'animent et s'échauffent par la lecture des autres poëtes. Messieurs de Malherbe, Corneille, &c., se disposoient au travail par la lecture des poëtes qui étoient de leur gout."—Vigneul, Marvilliana, I. 64, 65.
[43] For example, Waller had said,
"Others may use the ocean as their road,
Only the English make it their abode;
* * * * *
We tread on billows with a steady foot"—
long before Campbell. Campbell helps himself to both thoughts,
enlivens them into