DR YDEN, 295 



sion : we are thinking of the close, when we should 

 be employed in adorning the thought. It makes a 

 poet giddy with turning in a space too narrow for his 

 imagination.&quot; * 



Dry den himself, as was not always the case with him, 

 was well satisfied with his work. He calls it his best 

 hitherto, and attributes his success to the excellence of his 

 subject, &quot; incomparably the best he had ever had, excepting 

 only the Royal Family&quot; The first part is devoted to the 

 Dutch war ; the last to the fire of London. The martial 

 half is infinitely the better of the two. He altogether 

 surpasses his model, Davenant. If his poem lack the 

 gravity of thought attained by a few stanzas of &quot; Gondi- 

 bert,&quot; it is vastly superior in life, in picturesqueness, in 

 the energy of single lines, and, above all, in imagination. 

 Few men have read &quot; Gondibert,&quot; and almost every one 

 speaks of it, as commonly of the dead, with a certain sub 

 dued respect. And it deserves respect as an honest effort 

 to bring poetry back to its highest office in the ideal treat 

 ment of life. Davenant emulated Spenser, and if his poem 

 had been as good as his preface, it could still be read in 

 another spirit than that of investigation. As it is, it 

 always reminds me of Goldsmith s famous verse. It is 

 remote, unfriendly, solitary, and, above all, slow. Its 

 shining passages, for there are such, remind one of distress- 

 rockets sent up at intervals from a ship just about to 

 founder, and sadden rather than cheer, f 



* Essay on Satire. What he has said just before this about Butler 

 is worth noting. Butler had had a chief hand in the &quot; Rehearsal,&quot; 

 but Dryden had no grudges where the question was of giving its just 

 praise to merit. 



t The conclusion of the second canto of Book Third is the best 

 continuously fine passage. Dryden s poem has nowhere so much 

 meaning in so small space as Davenant, when he says of the sense of 

 honour that, 



&quot; Like Power, it grows to nothing, growing less.&quot; 



Davenant took the hint of the stanza from Sir John Davies. Wyatt 

 first used it, so far as I know, in English, 



