It followed, that Dryden could not struggle against the tide into which he was launched, and that, although it might be expected from his talents that he should ameliorate the reigning taste, or at least carry those compositions which it approved, to their utmost pitch of perfection, it could not be hoped that he should altogether escape being perverted by it, or should soar so superior to all its prejudices, as at once to admit the super-eminent excellence of a poem, which ran counter to these in so many particulars.

The versification of Milton, according to the taste of the times, was ignoble, from its supposed facility. Dryden was, we have seen, so much possessed with this prejudice, as to pronounce blank verse unfit even for a fugitive paper of verses. Even in his later and riper judgment he affirms, that, whatever pretext Milton might allege for the use of blank verse, "his own particular reason is plainly this,-that rhyme was not his talent; he had neither the ease of doing it, nor the graces of it: which is manifest in his "Juvenilia," or verses written in his youth, where his rhyme is always constrained and forced, and comes hardly from him, at an age when the soul is most pliant, and the passion of love makes

almost every man a rhymer, though not a poet."† The want of the dignity of rhyme was therefore, according to his idea, an essential deficiency in the "Paradise Lost." According to Aubrey, Dryden communicated to Milton his intention of adding this grace to his poem; to which the venerable bard gave a contemptuous consent, in these words: "Aye, you may tag my verses if you will." Perhaps few have read so far into the "State of Innocence" as to discover that Dryden did not use this licence to the uttermost, and that several of the scenes are not tagg'd with rhyme.

Dryden at this period engaged in a research recommended to him by "a noble wit of Scotland,' as he terms Sir George Mackenzie, the issue of which, in his apprehension, pointed out farther room for improving upon the epic of Milton. This was an enquiry into the "turn of words and thoughts" requisite in heroic poetry. These "turns," according to the definition and examples which Dryden has given us, differ from the points of wit, and quirks of epigram, common in the metaphysical poets, and consist in a happy, and

Essay on Satire, Vol. XIII. p. 21.

at the same time a natural recurrence of the same form of expression, melodiously varied. Having failed in his search after these beauties in Cowley, the darling of his youth, "I consulted," says Dryden, "a greater genius, (without offence to the manes of that noble author,) I mean-Milton; but as he endeavours every where to express Homer, whose age had not arrived to that fineness, I found in him a true sublimity, lofty thoughts, which were clothed with admirable Grecisms, and ancient words, which he had been digging from the mines of Chaucer and Spenser, and which, with all their rusticity, had somewhat of venerable in them. But I found not there neither that for which I looked." This judgment Addison has proved to be erroneous, by quoting from Milton the most beautiful example of a turn of words which can be found in English poetry.* But Dryden, holding it for

* "With thee conversing, I forget all time,
All seasons, and their change; all please alike:
Sweet is the breath of morn, her rising sweet,
With charm of earliest birds: pleasant the sun,
When first on this delightful land he spreads
His orient beams, on herb, tree, fruit, and flower,
Glist'ring with dew: fragrant the fertile earth
After soft show'rs, and sweet the coming on

just, conceived, doubtless, that, in his "State of Innocence," he might exert his skill successfully, by supplying the supposed deficiency, and for relieving those "flats of thought" which he complains of, where Milton, for a hundred lines together, runs on in a "track of scripture;" but which Dennis more justly ascribes to the humble nature of his subject in those passages. The graces, also, which Dryden ventured to interweave with the lofty theme of Milton, were rather those of Ovid than of Virgil, rather turns of verbal expression than of thought.

Such

Of grateful evening mild: then, silent night,
With this her solemn bird, and this fair moon,
And these the gems of heaven, her starry train:
But neither breath of morn, when she ascends
With charm of earliest birds; nor rising sun
On this delightful land; nor herb, fruit, flower,
Glist'ring with dew; nor fragrance after show'rs;
Nor grateful evening mild; nor silent night,
With this her solemn bird; nor walk by moon;
Or glittering star-light, without thee is sweet."

"The variety of images in this passage is infinitely pleasing, and the recapitulation of each particular image, with a little varying of the expression, makes one of the finest turns of words that I have ever seen; which I rather mention, because Mr Dryden has said, in his Preface to Juvenal, that he could meet with no turn of words in Milton."-Tatler, Nos. 114, 115.

is that conceit which met with censure at the

time:

66 Seraph and cherub, careless of their charge,
And wanton, in full ease now live at large;
Unguarded leave the passes of the sky,

And all dissolved in hallelujahs lie."

"I have heard," said a petulant critic, "of anchovies dissolved in sauce; but never of an angel dissolved in hallelujahs." But this raillery Dryden rebuffs with a quotation from Virgil:

"Invadunt urbem, somno vinoque sepultam."

It might have been replied, that Virgil's analogy was familiar and simple, and that of Dryden was far-fetched, and startling by its novelty.

The majesty of Milton's verse is strangely degraded in the following speeches, which precede the rising of Pandæmonium. Some of the couplets are utterly flat and bald, and, in others, the balance of point and antithesis is substituted for the simple sublimity of the original :

"Moloch. Changed as we are, we're yet from homage free; We have, by hell, at least gained liberty:

That's worth our fall; thus low though we are driven,

Better to rule in hell, than serve in heaven.

Lucifer. There spoke the better half of Lucifer!

Asmoday. 'Tis fit in frequent senate we confer,