3i 8 DRY DEN. 



as vernacular to him as the alexandrine to the French. In 

 this he vindicates his claim as a poet. His diction gets 

 wings, and both his verse and his thought become capable of 

 a reach which was denied them when set in the stocks of the 

 couplet. The solid man becomes even airy in this new 

 found freedom : Anthony says, 



&quot;How I loved, 



Witness ye days and nights, and all ye hours 

 That danced away with down upon your feet.&quot; 



And what image was ever more delicately exquisite, what 

 movement more fadingly accordant with the sense, than in 

 the last two verses of the following passage ? 



&quot; I feel death rising higher still and higher, 

 Within my bosom ; every breath I fetch 

 Shuts up my life within a shorter compass, 

 And, like the vanishing sound of bells, grows less 

 And less each pulse, till it be lost in air.&quot;* 



Nor was he altogether without pathos, though it is rare 

 with him. The following passage seems to me tenderly 

 full of it : 



&quot;Something like 



That voice, methinks, I should have somewhere heard ; 

 But floods of woe have hurried it far olf 

 Beyond my ken of soul.&quot;t 



And this single verse from &quot; Aurengzebe &quot; : 

 &quot; Live still ! oh live ! live even to be unkind 1 &quot; 



with its passionate eagerness and sobbing repetition, is 

 worth a ship-load of the long-drawn treacle of modern self- 

 compassion. 



Now and then, to be sure, we come upon something that 

 makes us hesitate again whether, after all, Dryden was not 

 grandiose rather than great, as in the two passages that 

 next follow : 



&quot; He looks secure of death, superior greatness, 

 Like Jove when he made Fate and said, Thou art 

 The slave of my creation. &quot;J 



* Rival Ladies. t Doii Sebastian. J Ibid. 



