3 o8 DRYDEN. 



never be supposed spoken by any without premeditation. 

 . . . Thus prose, though the rightful prince, yet is by 

 common consent deposed as too weak for the government of 

 serious plays, and, he failing, there now start up two com 

 petitors ; one the nearer in blood, which is blank verse ; 

 the other more fit for the ends of government, which is 

 rhyme. Blank verse is, indeed, the nearer prose, but he is 

 blemished with the weakness of his predecessor. Rhyme 

 (for I will deal clearly) has somewhat of the usurper in 

 him ; but he is brave and generous, and his dominion pleas 

 ing.&quot;* To the objection that the difficulties of rhyme will 

 lead to circumlocution, he answers in substance, that a good 

 poet will know how to avoid them. 



It is curious how long the superstition that Waller was 

 the refiner of English verse has prevailed since Dryden first 

 gave it vogue. He was a very poor poet and a purely 

 mechanical versifier. He has lived mainly on the credit of 

 a single couplet, 



&quot; The soul s dark cottage, battered and decayed, 

 Lets in new light through chinks that Time hath made,&quot; 



in which the melody alone belongs to him, and the conceit, 

 such as it is, to Samuel Daniel, who said, long before, that 

 the body s 



&quot; &quot;Walls, grown thin, permit the mind 

 To look out thorough and his frailty find.&quot; 



Waller has made worse nonsense of it in the transfusion. 

 It might seem that Ben Jonson had a prophetic foreboding 

 of him when he wrote &quot; Others there are that have no 

 composition at all, but a kind of tuning and rhyming fall, 

 in what they write. It runs and slides and only makes a 

 sound. Women s poets they are called, as you have 

 women s tailors. 



They write a verse as smooth, as soft, as cream, 

 In which there is no torrent, nor scarce stream. 



* Defence of the Essay. Dryden, in the happiness of his illustrative 

 comparisons, is almost unmatched. Like himself, they occupy a 

 middle ground between poetry and prose, they are a cross between 

 metaphor and simile. 



