unding line,
The long resounding march and energy divine."

Thus wrote Pope, using for the nonce the triplet and alexandrine by
which Dryden frequently varied the couplet. Pope himself added a
greater neatness and polish to Dryden's verse and brought the system to
such monotonous perfection that he "made poetry a mere mechanic art."

The lyrical poetry of this generation was almost entirely worthless.
The dissolute wits of Charles the Second's court, Sedley, Rochester,
Sackville, and the "mob of gentlemen who wrote with ease" threw off a
few amatory trifles; but the age was not spontaneous or sincere enough
for genuine song. Cowley introduced the Pindaric ode, a highly
artificial form of the lyric, in which the language was tortured into a
kind of spurious grandeur, and the meter teased into a sound and fury,
signifying nothing. Cowley's Pindarics were filled with something
which passed for fire, but has now utterly gone out. Nevertheless, the
fashion spread, and "he who could do nothing else," said Dr. Johnson,
{176} "could write like Pindar." The best of these odes was Dryden's
famous _Alexander's Feast_, written for a celebration of St. Cecilia's
day by a musical club. To this same fashion, also, we owe Gray's two
fine odes, the _Progress of Poesy_ and the _Bard_, written a
half-century later.

Dryden was not so much a great poet, as a solid thinker, with a
splendid mastery of expression, who used his energetic verse as a
vehicle for political argument and satire. His first noteworthy poem,
_Annus Mirabilis_, 1667, was a narrative of the public events of the
year 1666, namely: the Dutch war and the great fire of London. The
subject of _Absalom and Ahitophel_--the first part of which appeared in
1681--was the alleged plot of the Whig leader, the Earl of Shaftesbury,
to defeat the succession of the Duke of York, afterward James II., by
securing the throne to Monmouth, a natural son of Charles II. The
parallel afforded by the story of Absalom's revolt against David was
wrought out by Dryden with admirable ingenuity and keeping. He was at
his best in satirical character-sketches, such as the brilliant
portraits in this poem of Shaftesbury, as the false counselor,
Ahitophel, and of the Duke of Buckingham as Zimri. The latter was
Dryden's reply to the _Rehearsal_. _Absalom and Ahitophel_ was
followed by the _Medal_, a continuation of the same subject, and _Mac
Flecknoe_, a personal onslaught on the "true b