Page:Lives of Poets-Laureate.djvu/157

Rh task; but to him has been justly assigned the first place in the second rank of our poets. We dare not compare even his rich endowments with Shakespeare's almost omniscience of human character, and profound penetration into the mysteries of the human heart. Spenser must remain the Lord of Allegory. Still farther is Dryden removed from the celestial purity and holy grandeur of Milton. With the satirist and dramatist of the Restoration we cannot breathe the serene atmosphere of the Empyrean, listen to the voices of angel-visitants of Eden, climb the flaming battlements of the universe, or sit at the council-table of Heaven. It may be said of Dryden:

but however sweet the notes, however brilliant the execution, those strains will bear no comparison to the holy harmonies in which seems to have been echoed through all eternity the symphonious chorus of joy and rapture hymned by triumphant hierarchies on the morn of creation.

Without raising the question of the extent to which worth, moral or intellectual, be connected with birth, it may be remarked that Dryden was a man of what is called good family. His grandfather was a baronet. The poet was born in 1630, and his father Erasmus had no occasion on Scriptural ground to be ashamed to meet his enemy at the gates, for he had thirteen children besides John. Mr. Malone's industry has made some discoveries about some of them, but brought nothing very important to light. Perhaps the longevity of one was the most remarkable thing in connection with them. This was the sister who, in spite of her ancient lineage, stooped to marry a tobacconist, and lived to the age of ninety, surviving the poet twenty years.