322 DRYDEN. 



This is certainly, from beginning to end, in what used to be 

 called the grand style, at once noble and natural. I have 

 not undertaken to analyse any one of the plays, for (except 

 in &quot; All for Love &quot;) it would have been only to expose their 

 weakness. Dryden. had no constructive faculty ; and in 

 every one of his longer poems that required a plot, the plot 

 is bad, always more or less inconsistent with itself, and 

 rather hitched-on to the subject than combining with it. It 

 is fair to say, however, before leaving this part of Dryden s 

 literary work, that Home Tooke thought &quot; Don Sebastian&quot; 

 &quot;the best play extant.&quot;* Gray admired the plays of 

 Dryden, &quot; not as dramatic compositions, but as poetry.&quot;f 

 &quot;There are as many things finely said in his plays as 

 almost by anybody,&quot; said Pope to Spence. Of their rant, 

 their fustian, their bombast, their bad English, of their 

 innumerable sins against .Dryden s own better conscience 

 both as poet and critic, I shall excuse myself from giving 

 any instances.^ I like what is good in Dryden so 

 much, and it is so good, that I think Gray was justified in 

 always losing his temper when he heard &quot;his faults 

 criticised.&quot; 



It is as a satirist and pleader in verse that Dryden is best 

 known, and as both he is in some respects unrivalled. His 

 satire is not so sly as Chaucer s, but it is distinguished by 

 the same good-nature. There is no malice in it. I shall 

 not enter into his literary quarrels further than to say he 



* Recollections of Eogers, p. 165. 



t Nicholls s Reminiscences of Gray. Pickering s edition of Gray s 

 Works, Vol. V. p. 35. 



+ Let one suffice for all. In the &quot;Royal Martyr,&quot; Porphyrius, 

 awaiting his execution, says to Maximm, who had wished him for a 

 son-in-law : 



&quot; Where er thou stand st, I ll level at that place 

 My gushing blood, and spout it at thy face ; 

 Thus not by marriage we our blood will join ; 

 Nay, more, my arms shall throw my head at thine.&quot; 



&quot; It is no shame,&quot; says Dryden himself, &quot; to be a poet, though it is 

 to be a bad one.&quot; 

 Gray, ubl supra, p. 38. 



