tenderness nor dignity, it is neither magnificent nor pathetic. He seems to look round him for images which he cannot find, and what he lias he diftorts by endeavouring to enlarge them. "is," he fays, "petrified with grief," but the nmarble fometimes relents, and trickles in a joke.

The fons of art all med'cines try'd,

And every noble remedy apply'd;
With emulation each effay'd

"He

His utmost skill; nay, more, they pray'd: Was never loting 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 ferious enough to keep Heathen fables out of his religion.

With him th' 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 affail'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 almoft borne by force as in the giants war.
The pray'rs, at least, for his reprieve were heard;
His death, like Hezekiah's, was deferr'd.

There is throughout the composition a defire of splendor without wealth. In the conclufion' he seems too much pleased with the prospect of the new reign to have lamented his old master with much fincerity.

He did not miscarry in this attempt for want of skill either in lyrick or elegiack poetry. His poem on the death of Mis. Kistegrew is undoubtedly the noblest ode that our language ever has produced. The first part flows with a torrent of enthusiafm. "Fervet "Fervet immenfusque rnit." 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 fplendor of the second, there are passages which would have dignified any other poet. The first stanza is vigorous and elegant, though the word diapufon is too technical, and the thymes are too remote from one another.

From harmony, from heavenly harmony,
This univerfal frame began :

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

The tuneful voice was heard from high,
Arife, 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 diapafon closing full in man.

The conclufion is likewise striking, but it includes an image so awful in itself, that it can owe little to poetry; and I could with the antithefis of mufick untuning had found fome other place.

As from the power of facred lays
The spheres began to move,
And fung the great Creator's praife
To all the bless'd above:

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

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Of his skill in elegy he has given a specimen in his Eleonora, of which the following lines discover their author:

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 public place,
The spoils of conquer'd nations were to pass,
And but one day for triumph was allow'd
The conful was conftrain'd his pomp to crowd;
And so the swift proceffion hurry'd on,
That all, though not diftinctly, 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 preffing foremost in the mighty throng,
Ambitious to be feen, and then make room
For greater multitudes that were to come.
Yet unemploy'd no minute flipp'd away;
Moments were precious in so short a stay.
The haste of Heaven to have her was so great,
That fome 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 comparifon, 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, rife
Among the sad attendants; then the found
Soon gathers voice, and spreads the news around,
Through town and country, till the dreadful blast
Is blown to diftant colonies at last,
Who then, perhaps, were offering vows in vain,
For his long life, and for his happy reign;
So flowly by degrees, unwilling Fame
Did matchless Eleonora's fate proclaim,
Till publick as the lofs the news became.

This is little better than to say in praise of a fhrub, 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 inevitably general fixes no impression upon the reader, nor excites any tendency to love, nor much defire of imitation. Knowledge of the subject is to thre 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 confidered as a voluntary effusion; in this, therefore, it might be hoped, that the full effulgence of his genius would be found. But unhappily the fubject is rather argumentative than poetical: he intended only a fpecimen of metrical difputation:

And this unpolish'd rugged verse I chose,
As fitteft for difcourse, and nearest profe.

This, however, is a compofition of great excellence in its kind, in which the familiar is very properly diverfified with the folemn, and the grave with the humorous; in which metre has neither weakened the force, nor clouded the pers spicuity of argument: nor will it be easy to 'find another example equally happy in this middle kind of writing, which, though prosaic in some parts, rifes to high poetry in others, and neither towers to the skies, nor creeps along the ground.

Of the fame kind, or not far distant from it, is the Hind and Panther, the longest of all Dryden's original poems; an allegory intended to comprize and to decide the controverfy between the Romanifts

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manists and Proteftants. The scheme of the work is injudicious and incommodious; for what can be more absurd than that one beast should counfel anether to rest her faith upon a pope and council? He seems well enough skilled in the usual topicks of argument, endeavours to thew the neceffity of an infallible judge, and reproaches the Reformers with want of unity, but is weak enough to afk, why, fince we fee without knowing how, we may not have an infallible judge without knowing

where?

The Hind at one time is afraid to drink at the common brook, because she may be worried; but, walking home with the Panther, talks by the way of the Nicene Fathers, and at last declares herfelf to be the Catholick church.

This absurdity was very properly ridiculed in the City Mouse and Counry Mouf of Montague and Prior; and in the detection and cenfure of the incongruity of the fiction chiefly confifts the value of their performance, which, whatever reputation it might obtain by the help of temporary paffions, feems, to readers almost a century distant, not very forcible or animated.

Pope, whose judgement was perhaps a little bribed by the fubject, used to mention this poem as the most correct specimen of Dryden's verfification. It was indeed written when he had completely formed his manner, and may be supposed to exhibit, negligence excepted, his deliberate and ultimate scheme of metre.

We may therefore reasonably infer, that he did not approve the perpetual uniformity which confines the sense to couplets, fince he has broken his lines in the initial paragraph.

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