Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 3.djvu/601

] within the legitimate province of true poetry; they would have boon more in place as prose political essays, and now-a-days would have figured as "Quarterly" articles. The "Absalom and Achitophel"—written to ridicule Monmouth and Shaftesbury, with their accomplice, Buckingham, under the name of "Zimri," and to damage the whig party generally—is transcendently clever; but even the highest satirical and political verse is not poetry—it is only cleverness in verse; and this is the grand characteristic of Dryden's poetry—it is masterly verse. There is no creative faculty in it; it is a matter of style rather than of soul and sentiment; and in style he is a great master. This made Milton say that Dryden was a good rhymster but no poet; and assuredly, in Milton's conception of poetry, and in that which has taught us to venerate Homer, Shakespeare, Milton, Herbert, Wordsworth, Shelley, &c., he was no poet, or a very third-rate one. A modern critic has given him great credit for "creative power and genius" in his adaptations of some of Chaucer's tales; but this is a mistake. The creative genius is Chaucer's; Dryden has only remodelled them in modern language; the ideas, the invention, are all Chaucer's; Dryden's part in them consists of his wonderful, elastic, musical diction, in which he undoubtedly excels every English author in the heroic measure. Pope's is more artificial, but is for behind in musical rhythm and elastic vigour. His heroic verse is music itself, and music full of its highest elements. In it the trumpet sings, the drum boats, the organ blows in solemn thunder, the flute and fife shrill forth eloquence, and all mingled instruments seem to chorus in a combination of blissful sounds and feelings. In the latter part of his life Dryden, standing independent of all government drudgery, shows more worthily both in life and verse. His translation of Virgil yet remains the best in our language. He had done with his contemptible squabbles with Elkanah Settle and Shadwell, who won from him the honours and profits of the theatre; and his "Fables," as he called them—tales from Chaucer—seemed to inspire him with a more really poetic feeling. In them he seemed to grow purer, and to open his soul to the influences of classical and natural beauty, to the charms of nature, and of old romance. These tales will always remain the truest monuments of Dryden's fame. His odes, much as they have been praised, are rather feats of art than outpourings of poetic inspiration. His "Alexander's Feast" is but a description of the effects of music on a drunken conqueror and a courtesan. Who now would dream of placing it by the side of Coleridge's "Ode to France," or "Wordsworth's "Intimations of Immortality drawn from childhood." But any one turning to "Palamon and Arcite" will find himself in a real fairy-land of poetry, and perceive how much Keats, Leigh Hunt, and other modern poets have founded themselves on his style, and have even adopted his triplets. Compare the opening of "Rimini" with the opening of "Palamon and Arcite," when Theseus enters Athens with his Amazonian queen:—

Or take as a specimen of delicious maiden beauty, Emilia, the queen's sister, going out a-Maying:—

We have given so much space to these the greatest poets of this period, that we have little for the rest. We have noticed Andrew Marvel's satires and his beautiful ballad, "The Emigrants," and Wither's poems, in our previous review. Sir John Denham's descriptive poem, "Cooper's Hill," had great popularity, and is a good specimen of that class of verse. Waller was a reigning favourite for his lyrics, which are elegant, but destitute of any high principle or emotion, as the man was who wrote a panegyric on Cromwell and another on Charles II.; and when Charles told him plainly he thought that on Cromwell the best, replied, "Sir, we poets never excel so well in writing truth as in writing fiction." Amongst the courtiers of Charles, Buckingham and Rochester were poets. Buckingham's comedy, "The Rehearsal," which was written to ridicule the heroic drama copied by Dryden from the French, still finds admirers; and the genius of Rochester was unquestionable, but still inferior to his obscenity. Sir Charles Sedley, another courtier, wrote comedies and songs almost equally famous for their dissoluteness. Charles Cotton, the author of "Virgil Travestied," was a writer of much wit, but nearly equal grossness, though he was the intimate friend of Izaak Walton, who was also no mean poet. The earls of Roscommon and Dorset were popular, the first for his "Essay on Translated Verse," written in verse, and the other for his splendid ballad written at sea, commencing "To all you ladies now at land." Pomfret, a clergyman, wrote a didactic poem called "The Choice," which Dr. Johnson declared to be more frequently read than almost any poem in the language, and which Southey believed to be the most popular poem in the language. It is, in reality, one of the commonplaces gone by. Sir William Davenant, a reputed son of Shakespeare, wrote "Gondibert," an heroic poem in elegiac stanzas, which has good parts, but, as a whole, is intolerably dull. Sir Robert Fanshawe was celebrated as a translator, especially of