DRYDEN, 287 



I have thus far cited as specimens of our poet s coarseness 

 (for poet he surely was intus, though not always in cute) 

 were written before he was forty, and he had an odd 

 notion, suitable to his healthy complexion, that poets on the 

 whole improve after that date. Man at forty, he says, 

 &quot; seems to be fully in his summer tropic, .... and I 

 believe that it will hold in all great poets that, though they 

 wrote before with a certain heat of genius which inspired 

 them, yet that heat was not perfectly digested.&quot; But 

 artificial heat is never to be digested at all, as is plain in 

 Dryden s case. He was a man who warmed slowly, and, 

 in his hurry to supply the market, forced his mind. The 

 result was the same after forty as before. In &quot; CEdipus &quot; 

 (1679) we find, 



11 Not one bolt 



Shall err from Thebes, but more be called for, more, 



New-moulded thunder of a larger size ! &quot; 



This play was written in conjunction with Lee, of whom 

 Dryden relates! that, when some one said to him, &quot; It is 

 easy enough to write like a madman,&quot; he replied, &quot;No, it 

 is hard to write like a madman, but easy enough to write 

 like a fool,&quot; perhaps the most compendious lecture on 

 poetry ever delivered. The splendid bit of eloquence, 

 which has so much the sheet-iron clang of impeachment 

 thunder (I hope that Dryden is not in the Library of 

 Congress ! ) is perhaps Lee s. The following passage almost 

 certainly is his : 



&quot; Sure t is the end of all things ! Fate has torn 

 The lock of Time off, and his head is now 

 The ghastly ball of round Eternity ! &quot; 



But the next, in which the soul is likened to the pocket of 

 an indignant housemaid charged with theft, is wholly in 

 Dryden s manner : 



&quot;No ; I dare challenge heaven to turn me outward, 

 And shake my soul quite empty in your sight.&quot; 



* Dedication of Georgics. t In a letter to Dennis, 1693. 



