In the second part, written by Tate, there is a long insertion which, for its poignancy of satire, exceeds any part of the former. Personal resentment, though no laudable motive to satire, can add great force to general principles. Self-love is a busy prompter.

The Medal written upon the same principles with Absalom and Achitophel, but upon a narrower plan, gives less pleasure, though it discovers equal abilities in the writer. The superstructure cannot extend beyond the foundation: a single character or incident cannot furnish as many ideas as a series of events, or multiplicity of agents. This poem, therefore, since time has left it to itself, is not much read, nor perhaps generally understood: yet it abounds with touches both of humourous and serious satire. The picture of a man whose propensions to mischief are such that his best actions are but inability of wickedness, is very skilfully delineated and strongly coloured:

Power was his aim; but, thrown from that pretence,
The wretch turn'd loyal in his own detence,

And malice reconcil'd him to his prince.

Him, in the anguish of his soul, he serv'd;
Rewarded faster still than he deserv'd:
Behold him now exalted into trust;.
His counsels oft convenient, seldom just;
E'en in the most sincere advice he gave,
He had a grudging still to be a knave.
The frauds, he learnt in his fanatick years,
Made him uneasy in his lawful gears,
At least as little honest as he cou'd,
And like white witches, mischievously good.
To this first bias longingly, he leans;

And rather would be great by wicked means.

}

The Threnodia, which, by a term I am afraid ncither authorized nor analogical, he calls Augustalis, is not among his happiest productions. Its first and obvious defect is the irregularity of its metre, to which

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the ears of that age, however, were accustomed. What is worse, it has neither tenderness nor dignity; it is neither magnificent nor pathetick. He seems to look round him for images which he cannot find, and what he has he distorts by endeavouring to enlarge them. "He is," he says, "petrified with grief;" but the marble sometimes relents, and trickles in a joke: The sons of art all med'cines try'd, And every noble remedy apply'd: With emulation each essay'd

His utmost skill; nay, more, they pray'd.

Was never losing game with better conduct play'd.

He had been a little inclined to merriment before, upon the prayers of a nation for their dying sovereign; nor was he serious enough to keep heathen fables out of his religion :

With him the innumerable crowd of armed prayers

Knock'd at the gates of heaven, and knock'd aloud ; The first well-meaning rude petitioners

All for his life assail'd the throne,

All would have brib'd the skies by offering up their own.
So great a throng not heaven itself could bar;
'Twas almost borne by force as in the giants war.
The pray❜rs, at least, for his reprieve, were heard;
His death, like Hezekiah's, was deferred.

There is through the composition a desire of splendour without wealth. In the conclusion he seems too much pleased with the prospect of the new reign to have lamented his old master with much sincerity.

He did not miscarry in this attempt for want of skill either in lyrick or elegiack poetry. His poem on the death of Mrs. Killegrew is undoubtedly the noblest ode that our language ever has produced. The first part flows with a torrent of enthusiasm. "Fervet immensusque ruit." All the stanzas indeed are not equal. An imperial crown cannot be one

continued diamond: the gems must be held together by some less valuable matter.

In his first ode for Cecilia's day, which is lost in the splendour of the second, there are passages which would have dignified any other poet. The first stanza is vigorous and elegant, though the word diapason is too technical, and the rhymes are too remote from one another.

From harmony, from heavenly harmony,

This universal frame began ;

When nature underneath a heap of jarring atoms lay;
And could not heave her head,

The tuneful voice was heard from high,

Arise ye more than dead.

Then cold and hot, and moist and dry,

In order to their stations leap,

And musick's power obey.

From harmony from heavenly harmony,

This universal frame began:

From harmony to harmony

Through all the compass of the notes it ran,

The diapason closing full in man.

The conclusion is likewise striking; but it includes an image so awful in itself, that it can owe little to poetry; and I could wish the antithesis of musick untuning had found some other place.

As from the power of sacred lays
The spheres began to move,
And sung the great Creator's praise
To all the bless'd above:

So, when the last and dreadful hour
This crumbling pageant shall devour
The trumpet shall be heard on high,
The dead shall live, the living die,
And musick shall untune the sky.

Of his skill in elegy he has given a specimen in

his Eleonora, of which the following lines discover

Though all these rare endowments of the mind
Were in a narrow space of life confin'd,
The figure was with full perfection crown'd,
Though not so large an orb, as truly round:
As when in glory, through the publick place,
The spoils of conquer'd nations were to pass,
And but one day for triumph was allow'd,
The consul was constrain'd his pomp to crowd;
And so the swift procession hurry'd on
That all, though not distinctly, might be shown;
So, in the straiten'd bounds of life confin'd,
She gave but glimpses of her glorious mind:
And multitudes of virtues pass'd along;
Each pressing foremost in the mighty throng,
Ambitious to be seen, and then make room
For greater multitudes that were to come.
Yet unemploy'd no minute slipt away;
Moments were precious in so short a stay.
The haste of heaven to have her was so great,

That some were single acts, though each complete:
And every act stood ready to repeat.

}

This piece, however, is not without its faults; there is so much likeness in the initial comparison, that there is no illustration. As a king would be lamented, Eleonora was lamented:

As, when some great and gracious monarch dies,
Soft whispers, first, and mournful murmurs, rise
Among the sad attendants; then the sound
Soon gathers voice, and spreads the news around,
Through town and country, till the dreadful blast
Is blown to distant colonies at last,

Who then, perhaps, were offering vows in vain,
For his long life, and for his happy reign;

So slowly, by degrees, unwilling fame
Did matchless Eleonora's fate proclaim,

Till publick as the loss the news became.

This is little better than to say in praise of a shrub, that it is as green as a tree; or of a brook, that it waters a garden, as a river waters a country.

Dryden confesses that he did not know the lady whom he celebrates: the praise being therefore in

evitably general, fixes no impression upon the reader, nor excites any tendency to love, nor much desire of imitation. Knowledge of the subject is to the poet what durable materials are to the architect.

The Religio Laici, which borrows its title from the Religio Medici of Browne, is almost the only work of Dryden which can be considered as a voluntary effusion; in this, therefore, it might be hoped, that the full effulgence of his genius would be found. But unhappily the subject is rather argumentative than poetical; he intended only a specimen of metrical disputation:

And this unpolished rugged verse I chose,

As fittest for discourse, and nearest prose.

This, however, is a composition of great excellence in its kind, in which the familiar is very properly diversified with the solemn, and the grave with the humourous; in which metre has neither weakened the force, nor clouded the perspicuity of argument; nor will it be easy to find another example equally happy of this middle kind of writing, which, though prosaick in some parts, rises to high poetry in others, and neither towers to the skies, nor creeps along the ground.

Of the same kind, or not far distant from it, is The Hind and Panther, the longest of all Dryden's original poems; an allegory intended to comprise and to decide the controversy between the Romanists and Protestants. The scheme of the work is injudicious and incommodious; for what can be more absurd than that one beast should counsel another to rest her faith upon a pope and counsel? He seems well enough skilled in the usual topicks of argument, endeavours to show the necessity of an infallible judge, and reproaches the reformers with want of unity; but is weak enough to ask, why, since we see without