"I have likewise omitted the accounts and remarks wherein some writers have busied their pens, of strange comets, inclemencies of seasons, raging diseases, or deplorable fires that are said to have happened in this age and kingdom; and are represented by some as judgments of God upon the king's reign, because I rather esteem them accidents of time or chance, such as happen in one part or other of the world, perhaps every age, at some periods of time, or from some influence of stars, or by the conspiring of some natural or casual circumstances, and neither argue the virtues or vices of princes. nor serve for example or instruction to posterity, which are the great ends of history, and ought to be the chief care of all historians."

His 'Observations upon the United Provinces of the Netherlands' is an example of a conspectus, or general view of a state of society in all its parts at a particular time. It is a model of pairstaking observation and search, and is full of sagacious remarks. After recounting the rise and progress of the Federation, he delineates their condition towards 1672 under six heads:-their Government, their Situation, their People and Dispositions, their Religion, their Trade, their Forces and Revenues. The performance is very different from the third chapter of Macaulay's History. It is as severely didactic and thorough as Macaulay's is pictorial and superficial.

JOHN DRYDEN, 1631-1700.

From the beginning to the end of his poetical career, Dryden, not content to leave his works to the chances of criticism, loved to defend in prose his principles of composition, and issued hardly anything without an apologetic or explanatory preface or dedication. In this casual form he has left some ingenious special pleading for his own practice, as well as many valuable remarks on his predecessors, and interesting comparisons of the most eminent names. Besides these stray pieces, he published, in 1668, a formal Essay of Dramatic Poesy a little discourse in dialogue, for the most part borrowed from the observations of others" which, says Johnson, "was the first regular and valuable treatise on the art of writing." It is now interesting chiefly for its defence of rhyming in tragedies-a style abandoned in the author's later works. It also contains some clever argument in favour of the superiority of modern to ancient playwriters.

After his conversion to the Catholic Church, he was employed by James II. to defend against Stillingfleet a paper found in the strong-box of the deceased king, purporting to be written by the Duchess of York in explanation of her departure from the Protestant faith. In this controversy there was little that could be called argument on either side-it was very much like other controversies of that time, a pitched battle of abuse; and Dryden,

in the exuberant and careless "horseplay" of his raillery, laid himself fatally open to the cool retorts of his antagonist.

In the list of his prose works are included two translations from the French-Bouhours' 'Life of Francis Xavier' (1687), and Du Fresnoy's Art of Painting' (1695). He also wrote the life of Plutarch prefixed to what is known as 'Dryden's Translation' of Plutarch's Lives. But the only prose works of his that are now read are his Prefaces and the Essay of Dramatic Poesy.'

The fact that these are still worth reading has been fixed in our minds by Byron's happy doggerel lines—

"Read all the Prefaces of Dryden,

For these the critics much confide in,
Though only writ at first for filling,

To raise the volume's price a shilling."

Dryden's prose, as well as Temple's, is a marked improvement on the prose of the Commonwealth generation. His expressions have not the curious felicity of Cowley's; but the sentences are much more flowing. He displays to some extent what Dr Blair considered such a beauty in Temple's composition-the "harmonious pause," the measured sentence of several members. He aims very much at antithetic point, reserving emphatic statements for the close of the sentence, and practising occasionally the abrupt introduction of a general statement before its application is known. The peculiarities of his sentence-structure may be studied in the following extract from his Preface to 'Absalom and Achitophel,' published in 1681 in it we see the rudiments of certain abrupt arts of style more fully developed by Johnson and Macaulay:

"It is not my intention to make an apology for my poem: some_will think it needs no excuse, and others will receive none. The design, I am sure, is honest; but he who draws his pen for one party must expect to make enemies of the other: for wit and fool are consequents of Whig and Tory; and every man is a knave or an ass to the contrary side. There is a treasury of merits in the Fanatic church, as well as in the Popish, and a pennyworth to be had of saintship, honesty, and poetry, for the lewd, the factious, and the blockheads: but the longest chapter in Deuteronomy has not curses enough for an Anti-Bromingham. My comfort is, their manifest prejudice to my cause will render their judgment of less authority against me. Yet if a poem have genius, it will force its own reception in the world; for there is a sweetness in good verse which tickles even while it hurts; and no man can be heartily angry with him who pleases him against his will. The commendation of adversaries is the greatest triumph of a writer, because it never comes unless extorted. But I can be satisfied on more easy terms: if I happen to please the more moderate sort, I shall be sure of an honest party, and in all probability of the best judges; for the least concerned are probably the least corrupt. And I confess I have laid in for those, by rebating the satire (where justice would allow it) from carrying too sharp an edge. They who can criticise so weakly as to imagine I have done my worst, may be convinced, at their own cost, that I can write severely with more ease than I can gently. I have but laughed at some

men's follies, where I could have declaimed against their vices; and other men's virtues I have commended as freely as I have taxed their crimes. The violent on both sides will condemn the character of Absalom, as either too favourably or too hardly drawn: but they are not the violent whom I desire to please. The fault, on the other hand, is to extenuate, palliate, and indulge; and, to confess freely, I have endeavoured to commit it. Besides the respect which I owe his birth, I have a greater for his heroic virtues; and David himself could not be more tender of the young man's life than I would be of his reputation. But since the most excellent natures are always the most easy, and, as being such, are the soonest perverted by ill counsels, especially when baited with fame and glory, it is no more a wonder that he withstood not the temptations of Achitophel, than it was for Adam not to have resisted the two devils, the serpent and the woman. The conclusion of the story I purposely forbore to prosecute, because I could not obtain from myself to show Absalom unfortunate. The frame of it was cut out but for a picture to the waist, and if the draught be so far true, it is as much as I designed.

"Were I the inventor, who am only the historian, I should certainly conclude the piece with the reconcilement of Absalom to David; and who knows but this may come to pass; things were not brought to an extremity where I left the story; there seems yet to be room left for a composure, hereafter there may be only for pity. I have not so much as an uncharitable wish against Achitophel, but am content to be accused of a good-natured error, and to hope, with Origen, that the devil himself may at last be saved; for which reason, in this poem, he is neither brought to set his house in order, nor to dispose of his person afterwards as he in wisdom shall think fit.'

Dryden had no idea of observing paragraph law; his genius was the reverse of methodical. He rambles on, making a point here and a point there, and dashing heartily away from his immediate subject whenever he sees an opening for his vigorous wit. His prose has something of the irregular zigzag lightning vigour and splendour of his verse. Any one reading his prose fragments for the strokes of comprehensive terseness, brilliant epigram, and happy aptness of expression, should be on their guard against the infection of his negligent manner; none should take it for granted that their genius is, like his, sufficient to hide any number of irregularities.

The following remarks on Laughter, from his 'Parallel between Poetry and Painting,' prefixed to the translation of Du Fresnoy, exemplify his rather incoherent agglomeration of vigorous sen

tences:

Laughter is indeed the propriety of a man, but just enough to distinguish him from his elder brother with four legs. It is a kind of bastardpleasure too, taken in at the eyes of the vulgar gazers, and at the ears of the beastly audience. Church painters use it to divert the honest countryman at public prayers, and keep his eyes open at a heavy sermon; and farce scribblers make use of the same noble invention, to entertain citizens, country-gentlemen, and Covent Garden fops. If they are merry all goes well on the poet's side. The better sort go thither too, but in despair of sense and the just images of nature, which are the adequate pleasures of the

mind; but the author can give the stage no better than what was given him by nature; and the actors must represent such things as they are capable to perform, and by which both they and the scribbler may get their living. After all, it is a good thing to laugh at any rate; and if a straw can tickle a man, it is an instrument of happiness. Beasts can weep when they suffer, but they cannot laugh.'

His remarks on Invention are more to the purpose :

"The principal parts of painting and poetry next follow. Invention is the first part, and absolutely necessary to them both; yet no rule ever was or ever can be given, how to compass it. A happy genius is the gift of nature: it depends on the influence of the stars, say the astrologers; on the organs of the body, say the naturalists; it is the particular gift of heaven, say the divines, both Christians and heathens. How to improve it, many books can teach us; how to obtain it, none; that nothing can be done without it, all agree—

Tu nihil invita dices faciesve Minerva.

Without invention, a painter is but a copier, and a poet but a plagiary of others. Both are allowed sometimes to copy, and translate; but as our author tells you, that is not the best part of their reputation. 'Imitators are but a servile kind of cattle,' says the poet; or at best, the keepers of cattle for other men: they have nothing which is properly their own: that is a sufficient mortification for me, while I am translating Virgil. But to copy the best author, is a kind of praise, if I perform it as I ought; as a copy after Raffaelle is more to be commended than an original of any indifferent painter."

And yet, on principle, he was opposed to unnecessary digressions on the larger scale :

"As in the composition of a picture the painter is to take care that nothing enter into it which is not proper or convenient to the subject, so likewise is the poet to reject all incidents which are foreign to his poem and are naturally no parts of it; they are wens and other excrescences, which belong not to the body, but deform it. No person, no incident in the piece or in the play, but must be of use to carry on the main design. All things else are like six fingers to the hand, when nature, which is superfluous in nothing, can do her work with five. A painter must reject all trifling ornaments, so must a poet refuse all tedious and unnecessary descriptions. role which is too heavy is less an ornament than a burthen.”

A

We might expect to find the prose diction of a poet highly coloured, and profusely embellished with imagery. Dryden's is the reverse of this-familiar, clear, vigorous, and full of epigrammatic point. "I have endeavoured," he says, "to write English as near as I could distinguish it from the tongue of pedants and that of affected travellers." He expressly apologises for the "poetical expressions" in his translation of Du Fresnoy; he "dares not promise that some of them are not fustian, or at least highly metaphorical," but the fault lay with the original.

There is little geniality in his style; he knew as well as anybody where his power lay, and he said of himself that "he could