"Had in him those brave translunary things
That our first poets had."
To open vistas for the imagination through the blind wall of the
senses as he could sometimes do, is the supreme function of poetry.
[73] My own judgment is my sole warrant for attributing these
extracts from Oedipus to Dryden rather than Lee.
[74] Recollections of Rogers, p. 165.
[75] Nicholls's Reminiscences of Gray. Pickering's edition of Gray's Works, Vol. V. p. 35.
[76] Let one suffice for all. In the "Royal Martyr," Porphyrius. awaiting his execution, says to Maximin, who had wished him for a son-in-law:—
"Where'er thou stand'st, I'll level at that place
My gushing blood, and spout it at thy face;
Thus not by marriage we our blood will join;
Nay, more, my arms shall throw my head at thine."
"It is no shame," says Dryden himself, "to be a poet, though it is to
be a bad one."
[77] Gray, ubi supra, p. 38.
[78] Scott had never seen Pepys's Diary when he wrote this, or he would have left it unwritten: "Fell to discourse of the last night's work at Court, where the ladies and Duke of Monmouth acted the 'Indian Emperor,' wherein they told me these things most remarkable that not any woman but the Duchess of Monmouth and Mrs. Cornwallis did anything but like fools and stocks, but that these two did do most extraordinary well: that not any man did anything well but Captain O'Bryan, who spoke and did well, but above all things did dance most incomparably."—14th January, 1668.