DRYDEN. 293 



have ended unfortunately, but never of any virtuous nation ; 

 Providence is engaged too deeply when the cause becomes so 

 general.&quot; In his &quot;account&quot; of the poem in a letter to Sir 

 Robert Howard he says : &quot; I have chosen to write my poem 

 in quatrains or stanzas of four in alternate rhyme, because 

 I have ever judged them more noble and of greater dignity, 

 both for the sound and number, than any other verse in use 

 amongst us. ... The learned languages have certainly a 

 great advantage of us in not being tied to the slavery of any 



rhyme But in this necessity of our rhymes, I have 



always found the couplet verse most easy, though not so 

 proper for this occasion ; for there the work is sooner at an 

 end, every two lines concluding the labour of the poet.&quot; A 

 little further on : &quot; They (the French) write in alexandrines, 

 or verses of six feet, such as amongst us is the old transla 

 tion of Homer by Chapman : all which, by lengthening their 

 chain,* makes the sphere of their activity the greater.&quot; I 

 have quoted these passages because, in a small compass, they 

 include several things characteristic of Dry den. &quot; I have 

 ever judged,&quot; and &quot; I have always found,&quot; are particularly 

 so. If he took up an opinion in the morning, he would 

 have found so many arguments for it before night that it 

 would seem already old and familiar. So with his reproach 

 of rhyme ; a year or two before he was eagerly defending 

 it;t again a few years, and he will utterly condemn and 



* He is fond of this image. In the &quot;Maiden Queen&quot; Celadon 

 tells Sabina that, when he is with her rival Florimel, his heart is 

 still her prisoner, &quot;it only draws a longer chain after it.&quot; _ Gold 

 smith s fancy was taken by it ; and everybody admires in the 

 &quot;Traveller &quot; the extraordinary conceit of a heart dragging a lengthen 

 ing chain. The smoothness of too many rhymed pentameters is that 

 of thin ice over shallow water ; so long as we glide along rapidly, 

 all is well ; but if we dwell a moment on any one spot, we may 

 find ourselves knee-deep in mud. A later poet, in trying to improve 

 on Goldsmith, shows the ludicrousness of the image : 



&quot; And round my heart s leg ties its galling chain.&quot; 

 To write imaginatively a man should have imagination ! 



t See his epistle dedicatory to the &quot;Rival Ladies&quot; (1664). For 

 the other side, see particularly a passage in his &quot;Discourse on Epic 

 Poetry&quot; (1697)? 



