Page:The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets, Volume 2.djvu/176

170 highest flight of fancy, and the exactest nicety of art. This is allowed to stand without a rival. If indeed there is any excellence beyond it in some other of Dryden's works, that excellence must be found. Compared with the Ode on Killigrew, it may be pronounced perhaps superior in the whole; but, without any single part, equal to the first stanza of the other.

It is said to have cost Dryden a fortnight's labour; but it does not want its negligences; some of the lines are without correspondent rhymes; a defect, which I never detected but after an acquaintance of many years, and which the enthusiasm of the writer might hinder him from perceiving.

His last stanza has less emotion than the former; but it is not less elegant in the diction. The conclusion is vicious; the musick of Timotheus, which raised a mortal to the skies, had only a metaphorical power; that of Cecilia, which drew an angel down, had a real effect: the crown therefore could not reasonably be divided. 2