DRY DEN. 299 



slip into what they write.* Of absolute originality we will 

 not speak till authors are raised by some Deucalion-and- 

 Pyrrha process and even then our faith would be small, 

 for writers who have no past are pretty sure of having no 

 future. Dryden, at any rate, always had to have his copy 

 set him at the top of the page, and wrote ill or well accord 

 ingly. His mind (somewhat solid for a poet) warmed 

 slowly, but, once fairly heated through, he had more of 

 that good-luck of self-oblivion than most men. He 

 certainly gave even a liberal interpretation to Moliere s 

 rule of taking his own property wherever he found it, 

 though he sometimes blundered awkwardly about what was 

 properly his ; but in literature, it should be remembered, a 

 thing always becomes his at last who says it best, and thus 

 makes it his own.f 



Mr. Savage Landor once told me that he said to 

 Wordsworth : &quot; Mr. Wordsworth, a man may mix poetry 



* &quot;Les poetes euxmemes s animent et s echauffent par la lecture des 

 autres poetes. Messieurs de Malherbe, Corneille, etc., se disposoient 

 an travail par la lecture des poetes qui etoient de leur gout.&quot; 

 Vigneul, Marvilliana, I. 64, 65. 

 T For example, Waller had said, 



&quot; Others may use the ocean as their road, 

 Only the English make it their abode; 



We tread on billows with a steady foot,&quot; 



long before Campbell. Campbell helps himself to both thoughts, 

 enlivens them into 



&quot; Her march is o er the mountain wave, 

 Her home is on the deep,&quot; 



and they are his forevermore. His &quot; leviathans afloat &quot; lie lifted from 

 the &quot; Annus Mirabilis ; &quot; but in what court could Dryden sue ? Again, 

 Waller in another poem calls the Duke of York s flag 



&quot;His dreadful streamer, like a comet s hair ; &quot; 



and this, I believe, is the first application of the celestial portent to 

 this particular comparison. Yet Milton s &quot;imperial ensign&quot; waves 

 defiant behind his impregnable lines, and even Campbell flaunts his 

 &quot; meteor flag&quot; in Waller s face. Gray s bard might be sent to the 

 lock-up, but even he would find bail. 



&quot; C est imiter quelqu un que de planter des choux,&quot; 



