Medal, the second anti-Shaftesbury satire, contains passages which are scarcely inferior. Dryden's satire is not merely a piece of special pleading for a cause to which he had "The Medal" attached himself for politic reasons; he convinces (1681). himself by his own rhetoric and is carried away by its tide; and thus all his work, however contradictory its spirit may be as a whole, has a very remarkable individual sincerity. We have already mentioned Mac Flecknoe, which forms, as it were, a premature appendix to the sufficiently malevolent picture of Og. This somewhat scurrilous poem inaugurated "Mac a form of satire-the personal recriminations of Flecknoe" (1682). literary men. An Irish priest called Flecknoe, whose scribblings are of no more importance than the "creaking couplets" of Byron's "hoarse Fitzgerald," had recently died; and Dryden describes his official abdication of the throne of dulness in favour of Shadwell, who succeeds under the obvious title of Mac Flecknoe. The poem is extremely coarse and violent, but it contains some genuine humour which seems to detach itself from the bitterness of the rest, and to appeal to us on its own merits. Beyond this it supplies a valuable commentary upon the dramatic literature of the day. It is their topical character, as we say, that renders Dryden's poems so completely interesting from every point of view. § 8. We now pass to the controversial poems. The Religio Laici and The Hind and the Panther are written from dia Controversial poetry: "Religio Laici" (1682) and "The Hind and the Panther" (1687). metrically opposite sides of the question; between them lies a great change of religious opinion with all the struggle for conviction which of necessity must accompany it. But both poems exhibit in its highest perfection Dryden's consummate mastery of the most difficult species of writing. It is not easy for a poet to combine in his verse close theological reasoning with rich illustration and picturesque imagery. We need not concern ourselves with his arguments; on either side they are the arguments which would naturally present themselves to the disputant, and are founded upon Scripture or tradition, upon induction or experience, as may best serve the writer's purpose. But the reader, following the powerful and unfettered march of the reasoning, recognising the abundance of picturesque illustration, and convinced by the noble outbursts of enthusiasm, is converted by either poem, so long as he has it in his hand, to the particular form of faith which it advocates, and acknowledges thereby that Dryden is one of the greatest of ratiocinative poets. The fable of The Hind and the Panther is, nevertheAllegory of "The Hind less, far-fetched and grotesque. The "milk-white hind," representing the Church of Rome, is involved, at the beginning, in an elaborate argument with the panther, who is the savage symbol of the Anglican Church; while the English sects are politely designated under a series of unflattering zoological epithets. We enjoy the company of and the Panther." "the bloody bear, an Independent beast," the Baptist boar, the atheist ape, and the Socinian fox-a menagerie which is not well disposed to the innocent hind. The preliminary absurdity of this fable is calculated to wreck the modern reader's interest. Dryden could hardly have made a less happy choice. The Religio Laici, which steers clear of allegory, is, as a whole, the better of the two, and its opening is incomparably fine; but Dryden's religion. in both poems the allusions which the writer makes to his own religious convictions are equally striking and worthy of note. It is very curious that Dryden, although the fundamental principle of his devout aspirations was a pious reverence for the Church to which he belonged, seldom gives a very favourable character to the clergy. Nor does he confine his irony to the priests of one religion, but impartially inveighs against pagan augurs, Turkish imaums and Egyptian hierophants, classing them in one reprobation with Christian ministers of every church and sect. On the other hand, he gives high praise to individuals; and Archbishop Sancroft, and Compton, Bishop of London, find honourable places in his satiric masterpiece as Zadok and the Sagan of Jerusalem. lyrics. $9. His lyric poetry is less in quantity than in quality. He had that talent for song-writing which was the common property of his age, and in his romantic dramas we find many beautiful and harmonious songs. But his more Dryden's serious lyric efforts are of a different order, and follow the so-called Pindaric form of ode, stringing lines of irregular length together by a loose bond of rhyme. This, for example, is the form of his elegy on Charles II, the Threnodia Augustalis, which, apart from its monstrous tone of adulation and the attendant Nemesis of bathos, is a very admirably sustained work considering its length; but a better example of the same kind of lyric is his beautiful elegy on Purcell, which was set to music by Purcell's pupil, Dr. Blow. His masterpiece, however, in this kind of verse, is his Ode in Honour of St. Cecilia's Day, written for music, and celebrating der's Feast." the power and triumphs of the art. This noble lyric "Alexan consists of a narrative or parable describing Alexander the Great's feast in the royal halls of Persepolis, and the effect of Timotheus' harping upon the conqueror's passions. Each strophe is, as it were, the lyric copy of the passion which it describes ; there is no other poem in English which conveys its impressions with so perfect and so indispensable a command of form. The poem, after leading up to the highest pitch of passionate fury, passes, without an interval, into its calm final strain, the praise of St. Cecilia, "inventress of the vocal frame," and ends with the exquisite quatrain : "Let old Timotheus yield the prize, He rais'd a mortal to the skies, She drew an angel down." translations. Dryden is said to have written this wonderful ode in the space of a few hours. At any rate, its leading characteristic, beyond its extraordinary harmony of sound and sense, is its energy. Its expression may now and then be unequal, but, for the most part, it rushes on with Pindar's own flow and swing of rhythm. In his verse translations of Juvenal and Persius, Dryden showed that he could transfer to his own language, if not perhaps the exact sense, at any rate the general Verse spirit of those difficult authors. There was a considerable similarity between the tone of mind of Dryden and of Juvenal; there was the same force, the same tendency to declamation, the same unscrupulous boldness in painting the odious and detestable; but Juvenal's outspoken frankness in delineating the incredible corruption of his age degenerates, in Dryden, into mere licentiousness. The Restoration satirist seems to gloat over details which Juvenal introduced purely with the intention of condemning vice by exhibiting all its horror. But Dryden's most extensive work in poetical translation was his English version of Virgil, which will always be regarded as one of the standard monuments of our literature. We have said that, in this case, the translator was eminently fitted for his task; but, if his own style was in its majesty truly Virgilian, it lacked something of Virgilian grace and elegance. Nevertheless, although impetuous, it was never exactly rugged; and his recorded lamentation that he had not chosen Homer as his original was founded, albeit with a certain justice, upon a too keen sense, an exaggerated consciousness, of his imperfections in this line. He might have done better with Homer, but he did very well with an author whom he knew thoroughly. On the other hand, it is certain that Pope would have been far better suited to Virgil than to Homer. § 10. The highest qualities of Dryden's genius are visible to the end-it never blazed out with greater splendour than when it was about to set in the grave. His Fables, as he Dryden's "Fables": his called them (although they are in no sense fables, Chaucerian but rather tales in verse), display all his noblest paraphrases. qualities, and are in general free from his defect of occasional coarseness. His own preface informs us that "for these reasons of time, and resemblance of genius in Chaucer and Boccace, I resolved to join them in my present work; to which I have added some original papers of my own." In his scheme of Chaucerian paraphrase he included Palamon and Arcite (the Knight's Tale), The Wife of Bath's_Tale, The Cock and the Fox (the Nun's Priest's Tale), and The Flower and the Leaf, as well as an adaptation of the character of the good parson; while from Boccaccio he took the stories of Sigismonda and Guiscardo, Theodore and Honoria, and Cymon and Iphigenia. These works are for the most part of considerable length; and Chaucer's English is, of course, modernised and freely treated. It is curious to see how Dryden, with all his deep and sincere veneration for Chaucer"as he is the father of English poetry, so I hold him in the same degree of veneration as the Grecians held Homer, or the Romans Virgil"-has failed to reproduce the more delicate and subtle qualities of his model. Its splendour, its force, its picturesqueness, are indeed there; but its tender naïveté, its almost infantine pathos, have quite evaporated, like some subtle perfume, in the process of transfusion. How far this is to be attributed to Dryden's own character-always deficient in tenderness-how far to the general tone of the age in which he lived, an age the very antipodes of sentiment, it is difficult to decide. "Chaucer," he says himself, "is a rough diamond, and must first be polished ere he shines"; and again, speaking of general opinion on the point, "Some people . look on Chaucer as a Individual dry, old-fashioned wit, not worthy reviving. I have often heard the late Earl of Leicester say that Mr. Cowley himself was of that opinion." It must be remembered that Cowley's passionless, classical talent had a great influence on Dryden, and was originally responsible for his work as a translator. Doubtless, Chaucer's archaic language has much to do with the evanescent and subtle fragrance of his work; it is certain that all who have attempted to modernise that work have in a greater or less degree encountered the same insuperable difficulty, the same necessary diminution of tenderness. And this is peculiarly obvious in such passages of Dryden as Arcite's dying speech, and in many traits of the portrait of the parson, to whom Dryden has communicated quite a modern air. It follows that these narratives, to produce their full effect, should be read as independent works of Dryden, character of without reference either to Chaucer or to Boccaccio; these parain which case they cannot fail to excite the liveliest phrases. admiration. The flowing ease with which the story is told, the frequent occurrence of beautiful lines and happy expressions, will ever make them perhaps the most favourable specimens of Dryden's peculiar merits. He gave them to the public with a pathetic but sturdy vindication of his years. "I have the excuse of an old gentleman, who, mounting on horseback before some ladies, when I was present, got up somewhat heavily, but desired of the fair spectators that they would count fourscore and eight before they judged him. By the mercy of God, I am already come within twenty years of his number, a cripple in my limbs ; but what decays are in my mind, the reader must determine." § 11. "Thoughts," he says in the same place, "come crowding on so fast upon me, that my only difficulty is to choose or to reject; to run them into verse, or to give them the other harmony of prose. I have so long studied and 3. His practised both, that they are grown into a habit, and become familiar to me." His prose, as a matter of fact, is of great value, not only for the style, but in many instances also for the matter. It is generally found in the form of essays or ENG. LIT. prose. Y prefaces prefixed to his various poems, and discussing some subject in connection with the particular matter in hand. We have mentioned his Essay on Dramatic Poesy and its deHis prefaces. fence of rhymed tragedy. His Juvenal was accompanied by a most amusing treatise on Satire; and, indeed, few of his poetical works appeared without some prose disquisition. In this way he travelled over a vast field of critical enquiry, and gave us valuable appreciations of the poets of his own and other countries. He must be regarded as the first enlightened English critic. In his rambling style of preface he followed, as he confesses, "the practice of honest Montaign," but he is far more of the genuine critic, a creature of judgment rather than of temperament. His pronouncements on Chaucer, Shakespeare, and his mighty contemporary, Milton, and a host of other authors, do equal honour to the catholicity of his taste and the courage with which he expressed his opinions. His decisions may, indeed, be sometimes erroneous, but they are always founded upon reflection, and their groundwork is at least specious if not solid. These works are, besides, admirable specimens of lively, vigorous, idiomatic English, of Their style. which no one, if he chose to avoid the occasional pedantry of employing fashionable French words, could be a greater master. His dedications to great and influential patrons, however little honour they may do to his own independence of character, are singularly ingenious and wellturned; and, in judging the tone of servility which these compositions display, we must not forget that it was the fashion of the time, and that a professional author, who lived by his pen, could hardly afford to sacrifice his interest to an assertion of dignity comprehensible to nobody at that time. Whatever prose he wrote is well worthy of study; his humour is to be found in the preface to Absalom and Achitophel; his sound judgment in the preface to the Fables; and in everything is apparent that inexhaustible energy of style whose impatient rapidity is its distinctive characteristic and possession. JOHN $12. Literature presents no personality more original than that of JOHN BUNYAN, the greatest of all masters of allegory. He was born, in 1628, at the village of Elstow, close to Bedford. His father was a tinker, and he himself, (1628-1688). in his youth, followed the same humble calling. Although born in almost the lowest rank of society, and, consequently, enjoying no further education than the mere elements of reading and writing, he had before him the example of piety and morality. At the age of sixteen he entered the military service, most probably in the Parliamentary army. His strange and interesting religious autobiography, Revelations Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners (1666), Abounding." gives a curious picture of his internal struggles, his despair, his conversion, and his acceptance by God; and the whole range of mystical literature offers no more in "Grace |