32 DRYDEN. 



better word, compels us to call picturesque, and even then he 

 shows little of that finer instinct which suggests so much 

 more than it tells, and works the more powerfully as it 

 taxes more the imagination of the reader. In Donne s 

 &quot; Relic &quot; there is an example of what I mean. He fancies 

 some one breaking up his grave and spying 



&quot; A bracelet of bright hair about the bone,&quot; 

 a verse that still shines there in the darkness of the tomb, 

 after two centuries, like one of those inextinguishable lamps 

 whose secret is lost.* Yet Dry den sometimes showed a 

 sense of this magic of a mysterious hint, as in the &quot;Spanish 

 Friar&quot;: 



&quot; No, I confes?, you bade me not in words ; 

 The dial spoke not, but it made shrewd signs, 

 And pointed full upon the stroke of murder.&quot; 



This is perhaps a solitary example. Nor is he always so 

 possessed by the image in his mind as unconsciously to 

 choose even the picturesquely imaginative word. He has 

 done so, however, in this passage from &quot;Marriage & la 

 Mode &quot; : 



&quot; You ne er must hope again to see your princess, 

 Except as prisoners view fair walks and streets, 

 And careless passengers going by their grates.&quot; 



But after all, he is best upon a level, table-land, it is true, 

 and a very high level, but still somewhere between the 

 loftier peaks of inspiration and the plain of everyday life. 

 In those passages where he moralises he is always good, 

 setting some obvious truth in a new light by vigorous 

 phrase and happy illustration. Take this (from &quot;CEdipus&quot;) 

 as a proof of it : 



* Dryden, with his wonted perspicacity, follows Ben Jonson in 

 calling Donne &quot;the greatest wit, though not the best poet, of our 

 nation.&quot; (Dedication of Eleonora). Even as a poet Donne 



11 Had in him those brave translunary things 

 That our first poets had.&quot; 



To open vistas for the imagination through the blind wall of the senses, 

 as he could sometimes do, is the supreme function of poetry. 



