Page:The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets, Volume 2.djvu/146

140 His prediction of the improvements which shall be made in the new city is elegant and poetical, and with an event which Poets cannot always boast has been happily verified. The poem concludes with a simile that might have better been omitted.

Dryden when he wrote this poem, seems not yet fully to have formed his versification, or settled his system of propriety.

From this time he addicted himself almost wholly to the stage, "to which," says he, "my genius never much inclined me," merely as the most profitable market for poetry. By writing tragedies in rhyme, he continued to improve his diction and his numbers. According to the opinion of Harte, who had studied his works with great attention, he settled his principles of versification in 1676, when he produced the play of Aureng Zeb; and according to his own account of the short time in which he wrote Tyrannic Love, and the State of Innocence, he soon obtained the full effect of diligence, and added facility to exactness. Rh