Page:Lives of Poets-Laureate.djvu/182

168 he profusely panegyrized the late King and his successor. The death of Charles II. was lamented in almost as many poems as had hailed his restoration. On the melancholy event, verses Latin and English were copiously poured forth. Afra Behn among others, vented a Pindaric Ode. Dryden, who on other occasions has shown that the Poetry of Sorrow was not beyond his reach, failed lamentably when he bewailed the death of a Prince whom, while he hints that he had been a niggard patron, he yet overwhelms with epithets of praise. There has been a highly edifying controversy about the correctness of the use of the word "Augustalis." Doctors have disagreed, and we cannot decide, but the poem is as uninteresting as the dispute. It is a prosaic, frigid, and bombastic attempt to give a circumstantial account of the King's death. A perusal of it is intolerable after reading the perfect prose description of Mr. Macaulay. The best passage is that in which he describes Charles's patronage of the poets:

But there is a lurking sarcasm in the lines

In contrast to these, we must quote one couplet more, which contains a very choice conceit:

Before we read this, we had imagined that a vast number of kings had been made by "Nature's journeymen." Dryden also finished "Albion and Albanius," with