ties of cutting and burning, made me certainly conclude, that the gout was a companion that ought to be treated like an enemy, and by no means like a friend, and that grew troublesome chiefly by good usage; and this was confirmed to me by considering that it haunted usually the easy and the rich, the nice and the lazy, who grow to endure much, because they can endure little; that make much of it as soon as it comes, and yet leave not making much of themselves too; that take care to carry it presently to bed, and keep it safe and warm, and indeed lay up the gout for two or three months, while they give out that the gout lays up them. On the other side it hardly approaches the rough and the poor, such as labour for meat, and eat only for hunger; that drink water, either pure or but discoloured with malt; that kuow no use of wine, but for a cordial, as it is, and perhaps was only intended: or if such men happen by their native constitutions to fall into the gout, either they mind it not at all, having no leisure to be sick; or they use it like a dog, they walk on, or they toil and work as they did before, they keep it wet and cold; or if they are laid up, they are perhaps forced by that to fast more than before, and if it lasts, they grow impatient, and fall to beat it, or whip it, or cut it, or burn it; and all this while, perhaps, never know the very name of gout." Taste. As might be inferred from his character, our author's style is very highly refined. Affectation of terms or phrases, abruptness, extravagance, maudlin sentimentality, coarse invective, are as foreign as may be to his characteristic manner. If the standard of a good English style is the style that shall please the majority of educated Englishmen, he errs on the side of too great refinement. In many respects he is a contrast to Macaulay, still more to Carlyle. KINDS OF COMPOSITION Narrative. In a preface to the third part of Temple's 'Memoirs,' Swift claims him as the first Englishman "(at least of any consequence) who ever attempted that manner of writing." Though it is a personal record, the style, as already noticed, is not gossipping and diffuse, but on the contrary compact and brief to the verge of abstruseness. As the principal actor in some of the transactions, he had exceptional advantages for knowing the hid. den springs of events. At one time he intended to write a History of England, having often felt the want of a good general history, and being far from satisfied with the Chroniclers. Obliged by pressure of other employments to abandon this design, he completed an Introduction to the History of England,' "from the first originals, as far as he could find any ground of probable story, or of fair conjecture," through the great and memorable changes of names, people, customs, and laws that passed here, until the end of the first Norman reign." The work is instructive, abounding in sagacious criticism of social and political institutions. It is interesting to contrast his views of history with Macaulay's : "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 aud 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 painstaking 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, 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 merit 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 Auti-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 declaimel 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 gl ry, 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 Absalon 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 bastard pleasure 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 bocks 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. A role which is too heavy is less an ornament than a burthen." 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 any body where his power lay, and he said of himself that "he could write severely with more ease than he could write gently." When |