in his own peculiar and admirable way, to have been, in criticism, "a light to his people." Him Samuel Johnson called "a man whom every English generation must mention with reverence as a critic and a poet."

"Dryden," says the sage, in a splendid eulogium on his prose writings, "may be properly considered as the father of English criticism—as the writer who first taught us to determine, upon principles, the merit of composition. Of our former poets, the greatest dramatist wrote without rules, conducted through life and nature by a genius that rarely misled, and never deserted him. Of the rest, those who knew the laws of propriety had neglected to teach them." And he adds wisely—"To judge rightly of an author, we must transport ourselves to his time, and examine what were the wants of his contemporaries, and what were his means of supplying them. That which is easy at one time was difficult at another." Let us, then, examine some of Dryden's expositions of principles; and first, those on which he defends Heroic Verse in Rhyme, as the best language of the tragic drama.

This can be done effectually only by following him wherever he has treated the subject, and by condensing all his opinions into one consecutive argument.

His first play, (a comedy,) "The Wild Gallant," was brought on the stage in February 1662-3, and with indifferent success, though he has told us that it was more than once the divertisement of Charles II. by his own command, and a favourite with "the Castlemain." "The Rival Ladies" (a tragi-comedy) was acted and published in the year following, and the serious scenes are executed in rhyme. Of its success we know nothing in particular; but Sir Walter thinks that the flowing verse into which some part of the dialogue is thrown, with the strong point and antithesis which all along distinguished his style, especially his argumentative poetry, tended to redeem the credit of the author of the "Wild Gallant." Up to this time Dryden, now in his thirty-third year, had not written much; but in his "Heroic Stanzas on the death of Oliver Cromwell," "Astrea Redux, or Poem on the Happy Restoration and Return of his Sacred Majesty," and "A Panegyric on his Coronation," he had not only shown his measureless superiority to the Sprats and Wallers—poetasters of the same class after all, though Sprat was always but a small fish, while Waller was long thought like a whale—but manifested a vigour of thought and expression that gave assurance of a veritable poet. In those noble compositions he exults in his conscious power of numerous verse; and, like an eagle in the middle element, sweeps along majestically on easy wings. In "The Rival Ladies," the rhymed dialogue is exceedingly graceful, the blank verse somewhat cumbrous; and, in his dedication to the Earl of Orrery, he justifies himself "for following the new way; I mean, of writing scenes in verse." It may here, once for all, be remarked, that in all his disquisitions, by "verse" he usually means rhyme as opposed to blank verse. "To speak properly," he says, "it is not so much a new way amongst us, as an old way revived; for many years before Shakspeare's plays was the tragedy of 'Queen Gorboduc,' in English verse, written by that famous Lord Buckhurst, afterwards Earl of Dorset." Dryden here shows how little conversant he then was with the old English drama. For the tragedy of "Ferrex and Porrex" was first surreptitiously published under the title of "Gorboduc," who is not Queen, but King of England; and it is not written in rhyme, but, excepting the choruses, in blank verse; while Sackville's part of the play comprehends only the two last acts, of themselves sufficient to place him in the highest order of Noble Authors. "But supposing," he continues, "our countrymen had not received this writing till of late, shall we oppose ourselves to the most polished and civilized nations of Europe? * * * All the Spanish and Italian tragedies I have yet seen are writ in rhyme. * * * Shakspeare (who, with some errors not to be avoided in that age, had undoubtedly a larger soul of poesy than ever any of our nation,) was the first who, to shun the pains of continual rhyming, invented that kind of writing which we call blank verse, but the French more properly prose mesurée; into which the English tongue so naturally glides, that in writing prose it is hardly to be avoided." Here again, it is hardly indeed worth while to remark, is another mistake; Marlow and several other dramatists having used blank verse (but how inferior to the divine man's!) before Shakspeare. Coleridge somewhere quotes a verse or two forming itself in prose composition as a rarity and a fault; but, though it had better perhaps be avoided, and though its frequent recurrence would be offensive, yet, when words in their natural order do form a verse, it might be difficult to give a good reason why they may not be permitted to do so, more especially if they are not felt to be a verse insulated among the circumfluent prose. From the very best prose we could pick out thousands of single verses, which are to be found only when you seek for them; and not from rich prose only like Coleridge's own or Jeremy Taylor's, but from the poorest, like Dr Blair's or Gerald's of Aberdeen. Dryden says he cannot "but admire how some men should perpetually stumble in a way so easy"—that is, as blank verse—"into which the English tongue so naturally glides," and should strive to attain it by inverting the order of the words, to make the "blanks" sound more heroically—as, for example, instead of "Sir, I ask your pardon," "Sir, I your pardon ask." And adds—"I should judge him to have little command of English, when the necessity of a rhyme should force often upon this rock; though sometimes it cannot easily be avoided; and, indeed, this is the only inconvenience with which rhyme can be charged." In this lively style does he pursue his argument in favour of rhyme. For this it is which makes its adversaries say rhyme is not natural! But the fault lies with the poet who is not master of his art, and either makes a vicious choice of words, or places them, for rhyme's sake, so unnaturally as no man would in ordinary speech. But when it is so judiciously ordered that the first word in the verse seems to beget the second, and that again the next, till that becomes the last word in the line, which, in the negligence of prose, would be so; it must then be granted, that rhyme has all the advantages of prose—besides its own.

"Glorious John" (who must have been laughing in his sleeve) then declares, that the "excellence and dignity of it were never fully known till Mr Waller taught it;" that it was afterwards "followed in the epic by Sir John Denham, in his 'Cooper's Hill,' a poem which your lordship knows, for the majesty of the style, is, and ever will be, the exact standard of good writing;" and that we are "acknowledging for the noblest use of it to Sir William D'Avenant, who at once brought it upon the stage, and made it perfect in the Siege of Rhodes!"

Having thus carried things all his own way, he triumphantly declares, that the advantages which rhyme has over blank verse are so many, that "it were lost time to name them." And then, with fresh vigour, he sets himself to name some of the chief—and first, that one illustrated by Sir Philip Sidney in his "Defence of Poesy," "the help it brings to memory, which rhyme so knits up by the affinity of sound, that by remembering the last word in one line, we often call to mind both the verses." Then, in the quickness of repartees (which in discoursive scenes fall very often) it has, he says, so particular a grace, and is so aptly united to them, that the sudden smartness of the answer, and the exactness of the rhyme, set off the beauty of each other.

But its greatest benefit of all, according to Dryden, is, that it bounds and circumscribes the fancy. The great easiness of blank verse