Whose greasy twigs do all new beauties take,
From the gay shows thy dainty sculptures make.
Thy lines a mess of rhyming nonsense yield,
A senseless tale, with flattering fustian fill'd.
No grain of sense does in one line appear,

Thy words big bulks of boisterous bombast bear.
With noise they move, and from players' mouths rebound,
When their tongues dance to thy words' empty sound,

By thee inspired the rumbling verses roll,

As if that rhyme and bombast lent a soul;
And with that soul they seem taught duty too;
To huffing words does humble nonsense bow,
As if it would thy worthless worth enhance,
To th' lowest rank of fops thy praise advance,
To whom, by instinct, all thy stuff is dear:
Their loud claps echo to the theatre.
From breaths of fools thy commendation spreads,
Fame sings thy praise with mouths of logger-heads.
With noise and laughing each thy fustian greets,
"Tis clapp'd by choirs of empty-headed cits,
Who have their tribute sent, and homage given,
As men in whispers send loud noise to Heaven.

"Thus I have daubed him with his own puddle: and now we are come from aboard his dancing, masking, rebounding, breathing fleet: and, as if we had landed at Gotham, we meet nothing but fools and nonsense."

Such was the criticism to which the genius of Dryden could be reduced, between rage and terror; rage with little provocation, and terror with little danger. To see the highest mind thus levelled with the meanest, may produce some solace to the consciousness of weakness, and some mortification to the pride of wisdom. But let it be remembered, that minds are not levelled in their powers but when they are first levelled in their desires. Dryden and Settle had both placed their happiness in the claps of multitudes.

An Evening's Love, or The Mock Astrologer, a comedy (1671), is dedicated to the illustrious Duke of Newcastle, whom he courts by adding to his praises those of his lady, not only as a lover, but a partner of his studies. It is unpleasing to think how many names, once celebrated, are since forgotten. Of Newcastle's works nothing is now known but his Treatise on Horsemanship.

The Preface seems very elaborately written, and contains many just remarks on the Fathers of the English drama. Shakspeare's plots, he says, are in the hundred novels of Cinthio; those of Beaumont and Fletcher in Spanish stories; Jonson only made them for himself. His criticisms upon tragedy, comedy, and farce, are judicious and profound. He endeavours to defend the immorality of some of his comedies by the example of former writers; which is only to say, that he was not the first nor perhaps the greatest offender. Against those that accused him of plagiarism he alleges a favourable expression of the king: "He only desired, that they who accuse me of thefts, would steal him plays like mine;" and then relates how much labour he spends in fitting for the English stage what he borrows from others.

Tyrannic Love, or the Virgin Martyr (1672), was another tragedy in rhyme, conspicuous for many passages of strength and elegance, and many of empty noise and ridiculous turbulence. The rants of Maximin have been always the sport of criticism; and were at length, if his own confession may be trusted, the shame of the writer.

Of this play he has taken care to let the reader know, that it was contrived and written in seven weeks. Want of time was often his excuse, or perhaps shortness of time was his private boast in the form of an apology.

It was written before The Conquest of Granada, but published after it. The design is to recommend piety. "I considered that pleasure was not the only end of Poesy; and that even the instructions of morality were not so wholly the business of a poet, as that the precepts and examples of piety were to be omitted; for to leave that employment altogether to the clergy, were to forget that religion was first taught in verse, which the

laziness or dulness of succeeding priesthood turned afterwards into prose." Thus foolishly could Dryden write, rather than not show his malice to the parsons.*

The two parts of The Conquest of Granada (1672) are written with a seeming determination to glut the public with dramatic wonders, to exhibit in its highest elevation a theatrical meteor of incredible love and impossible valour, and to leave no room for a wilder flight to the extravagance of posterity. All the rays of romantic heat, whether amorous or warlike, glow in Almanzor by a kind of concentration. He is above all laws; he is exempt from all restraints; he ranges the world at will, and governs wherever he appears. He fights without inquiring the cause, and loves in spite of the obligations of justice, of rejection by his mistress, and of prohibition from the dead. Yet the scenes are, for the most part, delightful; they exhibit a kind of illustrious depravity, and majestic madness, such as, if it is sometimes despised, is often reverenced, and in which the ridiculous is mingled with the astonishing.

In the Epilogue to the second part of The Conquest of Granada, Dryden indulges his favourite pleasure of discrediting his predecessors; and this Epilogue he has defended by a long postscript. He had promised a second dialogue, in which he should more fully treat of the virtues and faults of the English poets, who have written in the dramatic, epic, or lyric way. This promise was never formally performed; but, with respect to the dramatic writers, he has given us in his prefaces, and in this postscript, something equivalent; but his purpose being to exalt himself by the comparison, he shows faults distinctly, and only praises excellence in general terms.

A play thus written, in professed defiance of probability, naturally drew upon itself the vultures of the theatre. One of the critics that attacked it was Martin Clifford, to whom Sprat addressed the Life of Cowley, with such veneration of his critical powers as might naturally excite great expectations of instructions from his remarks. But let honest credulity beware of receiving characters from contemporary writers. Clifford's remarks, by the favour of Dr. Percy, were at last obtained; and, that no man may ever want them more, I will extract enough to satisfy all reasonable desire.

as much

In the first Letter his observation is only general; "You do live," says he, "in ignorance and darkness as you did in the womb; your writings are like a Jack-of-all-trade's shop; they have a variety, but nothing of value; and if thou art not the dullest plantanimal that ever the earth produced, all that I have conversed with are strangely mistaken in thee."

In the second he tells him that Almanzor is not more copied from Achilles than from Ancient Pistol. "But I am," says he, "strangely mistaken if I have not seen this very Almanzor of yours in some disguise about this town, and passing under another name. Pr'ythee tell me true, was not this Huffcap once the Indian Emperor? and at another time did he not call himself Maximin? Was not Lyndaraxa once called Almeria? I mean under Montezuma the Indian Emperor. I protest and vow they are either the same, or so alike, that I cannot, for my heart, distinguish one from the other. You are therefore a strange unconscionable thief; thou art not content to steal from others, but dost rob thy poor wretched self too."

Now was Settle's time to take his revenge. He wrote a vindication of his own lines; and, if he is forced to yield any thing, makes his reprisals upon his enemy. To say that

So fond was he of opportunity to gratify his spleen against the clergy, that he scrupled not to convert Chau 'er's images, in the Knighte's Tale, of "The smiler with the knif under the cloke," and of "Conteke with blody knif," into these satires on the Church. See Warton's Hist Eng. Poetry, vol. i. p. 358.

"Next stood Hypocrisy, with holy leer,

Soft-smiling, and demurely looking down,
But hid the dagger underneath the gown.

Contest with sharpened knives in cloisters drawn,
And all with blood bespread the holy lawn."-T

his answer is equal to the censure, is no high commendation. To expose Dryden's method of analysing his expressions, he tries the same experiment upon the same description of the ships in the Indian Emperor, of which however he does not deny the excellence; but intends to show, that by studied misconstruction every thing may be equally represented as ridiculous. After so much of Dryden's elegant animadversions, justice requires that something of Settle's should be exhibited. The following observations are therefore extracted from a quarto pamphlet of ninety-five pages:

"Fate after him below with pain did move,
And victory could scarce keep pace above.'

"These two lines, if he can show me any sense or thought in, or anything but bombast and noise, he shall make me believe every word in his observations on Morocco sense."

In The Empress of Morocco were these lines :—

"I'll travel then to some remoter sphere.

Till I find out new worlds, and crown you there."

On which Dryden made this remark :—

"I believe our learned author takes a sphere for a country; the sphere of Morocco; as if Morocco were the globe of earth and water; but a globe is no sphere neither, by his leave,” &c. "So sphere must not be sense, unless it relates to a circular motion about a globe, in which sense the astronomers use it. I would desire him to expound those lines in Granada :

"I'll to the turrets of the palace go,

And add new fire to those that fight below.
Thence, Hero-like, with torches by my side,
(Far be the omen though) my love I'll guide.
No, like his better fortune I'll appear,
With open arms, loose veil, and flowing hair,
Just flying forward from my rowling sphere.'

"I wonder, if he be so strict, how he dares make so bold with sphere himself, and be so critical in other men's writings. Fortune is fancied standing on a globe, not on a sphere, as

he told us in the first act.

"Because Elkanah's Similes are the most unlike things to what they are compared in the world, I'll venture to start a simile in his Annus Mirabilis: he gives this poetical description of the ship called the London :

"The goodly London in her gallant trim,

(The Phoenix daughter of the vanquish'd old,) Like a rich bride does to the ocean swim,

And on her shadow rides in floating gold.

"Her flag aloft spread ruffling in the wind,

And sanguine streamers seem the flood to fire:
The weaver, charm'd with what his loom design'd,
Goes on to sea, and knows not to retire.

"With roomy decks, her guns of mighty strength,
Whose low-laid mouths each mounting billow laves:
Deep in her draught, and warlike in her length,
She seems a sea-wasp flying on the waves.'

"What a wonderful pother is here, to make all these poetical beautifications of a ship; that is, a phœnix in the first stanza, and but a wasp in the last; nay, to make his humble comparison of a wasp more ridiculous, he does not say it flies upon the waves as nimbly as a wasp, or the like, but it seemed a wasp. But our author at the writing of this was not in his altitudes, to compare ships to floating palaces: a comparison to the purpose, was a perfection he did not arrive to till the Indian Emperor's days. But perhaps his similitude

has more in it than we imagine; this ship had a great many guns in her, and they, put all together, made the sting in the wasp's tail: for this is all the reason I can guess, why it seemed a wasp. But, because we will allow him all we can to help out, let it be a phoenix sea-wasp, and the rarity of such an animal may do much towards heightening the fancy.

"It had been much more to his purpose, if he had designed to render the senseless play little, to have searched for some such pedantry as this :—

"Two ifs scarce make one possibility.

If justice will take all and nothing give,
Justice, methinks, is not distributive.
To die or kill you is the alternative.
Rather than take your life, I will not live.'

"Observe how prettily our author chops logick in heroick verse. Three such fustian canting words as distributive, alternative, and two ifs, no man but himself would have come within the noise of. But he's a man of general learning, and all comes into his play.

""T would have done well too if he could have met with the rant or two worth the observation: such as,

"Move swiftly, Sun, and fly a lover's pace,

Leave months and weeks behind thee in thy race.'

"But surely the Sun, whether he flies a lover's or not a lover's pace, leaves weeks and months, nay years too, behind him in his race.

"Poor Robin, or any of the Philo-mathematicks, would have given him satisfaction in the point.

"If I could kill thee now, thy fate's so low,
That I must stoop, ere I can give the blow.
But mine is fixt so far above thy crown,
That all thy men,

Piled on thy back, can never pull it down.

"Now where that is, Almanzor's fate is fixt, I cannot guess: but, wherever it is, I believe Almanzor, and think that all Abdalla's subjects, piled upon one another, might not pull down his fate so well as without piling: besides I think Abdalla so wise a man, that, if Almanzor had told him piling his men upon his back might do the feat, he would scarcely bear such a weight for the pleasure of the exploit; but it is a huff, and let Abdalla do it if he dare.

"The people like a headlong torrent go,
And every dam they break or overflow.
But, unopposed, they either lose their force,
Or wind in volumes to their former course:'

"A very pretty allusion, contrary to all sense or reason. Torrents, I take it, let them wind never so much, can never return to their former course, unless he can suppose that fountains can go upwards, which is impossible; nay more, in the foregoing page he tells us so too; a trick of a very unfaithful memory.

"But can no more than fountains upward flow;'

which of a torrent, which signifies a rapid stream, is much more impossible. Besides, if he goes to quibble, and say that it is possible by art water may be made return, and the same water run twice in one and the same channel; then he quite confutes what he says: for it is by being opposed, that it runs into its former course; for all engines that make water so return, do it by compulsion and opposition. Or, if he means a headlong torrent for a tide, which would be ridiculous, yet they do not wind in volumes, but come fore-right back

(if their upright lies straight to their former course), and that by opposition of the sea-water, that drives them back again.

"And for fancy, when he lights of any thing like it, 'tis a wonder if it be not borrowed. As here, for example of, I find this fanciful thought in his Ann. Mirab.

"This Almanzor speaks of himself; and sure for one man to conquer an army within the city, and another without the city, at once, is something difficult: but this flight is pardonable to some we meet with in Granada: Osmin, speaking of Almanzor,

"Who, like a tempest that outrides the wind,

Made a just battle, ere the bodies join'd.'

Pray, what does this honourable person mean by a tempest that outrides the wind? A tempest that outrides itself. To suppose a tempest without wind, is as bad as supposing a man to walk without feet; for if he supposes the tempest to be something distinct from the wind, yet, as being the effect of wind only, to come before the cause is a little preposterous; so that, if he takes it one way, or if he takes it the other, those two ifs will scarcely make one possibility." Enough of Settle.

Marriage à-la-mode (1673) is a comedy dedicated to the Earl of Rochester; whom he acknowledges not only as the defender of his poetry, but the promoter of his fortune. Langbaine places this play in 1673. The Earl of Rochester, therefore, was the famous Wilmot, whom yet tradition always represents as an enemy to Dryden, and who is mentioned by him with some disrespect in the preface to Juvenal.

The Assignation, or Love in a Nunnery, a comedy (1673), was driven off the stage, against the opinion, as the author says, of the best judges. It is dedicated, in a very elegant address, to Sir Charles Sedley; in which he finds an opportunity for his usual complaint of hard treatment and unreasonable censure.

Amboyna (1673) is a tissue of mingled dialogue in verse and prose, and was perhaps written in less time than The Virgin Martyr; though the author thought not fit either ostentatiously or mournfully to tell how little labour it cost him, or at how short a warning he produced it. It was a temporary performance, written in the time of the Dutch war, to inflame the nation against their enemies; to whom he hopes, as he declares in his Epilogue, to make his poetry not less destructive than that by which Tyrtæus of old animated the Spartans. This play was written in the second Dutch war, in 1673.

Troilus and Cressida (1679) is a play altered from Shakspeare; but so altered, that, even in Langbaine's opinion, "the last scene in the third act is a master-piece." It is introduced by a discourse on "the Grounds of Criticism in Tragedy," to which I suspect that Rymer's book had given occasion.

The Spanish Friar (1681) is a tragi-comedy, eminent for the happy coincidence and coalition of the two plots. As it was written against the Papists, it would naturally at that time have friends and enemies; and partly by the popularity which it obtained at first, and partly by the real power both of the serious and risible part, it continued long a favourite of the public.