troduced by Milton is of a greater density and
conciseness than anything to be found in English literature before it. It
is our nearest native counterpart to the force and reserve of the high
Virgilian diction. In his _Discourse of the Original and Progress of
Satire_, Dryden has called attention to the close-wrought quality of
Virgil's work. "Virgil," he says, "could have written sharper satires
than either Horace or Juvenal, if he would have employed his talent that
way. I will produce a verse and a half of his, in one of his Eclogues, to
justify my opinion; and with commas after every word, to show that he has
given almost as many lashes as he has written syllables: it is against a
bad poet, whose ill verses he describes:--

_non tu, in triviis, indocte, solebas_
_Stridenti, miserum, stipula, disperdere, carmen?_"
[Wouldst thou not, blockhead, in the public ways,
Squander, on scrannel pipe, thy sorry lays?]

Dryden appreciated the terrible force of this kind of writing for the
purposes of satire. At its best, his own satire attains to something like
it, as, for instance, in his description of Shaftesbury's early life:--

Next this (how wildly will ambition steer),
A vermin wriggling in the usurper's ear,
Bartering his venal wit for sums of gold,
He cast himself into the saint-like mould;
Groaned, sighed, and prayed, while godliness was gain,
The loudest bagpipe of the squeaking train.

Except the first line, which is wholly idle, there is nothing that could
be spared here. Pope, also, knew the value of condensation; but he works
in antithetic phrases, so that his single words are less telling; and
where Dryden's lines are swords edged with contempt, Pope's are stings,
pointed with spite. Thus, of Lord Hervey:--

Amphibious thing! that acting either part,
The trifling head, or the corrupted heart,
Fop at the toilet, flatterer at the board,
Now trips a lady, and now struts a lord.
Eve's tempter thus the Rabbins have exprest,
A cherub's face, a reptile all the rest;
Beauty that shocks you, parts that none will trust,
Wit that can creep, and pride that licks the dust.

The necessities of rhyme sometimes hamper both Dryden and Pope; and the
nearest parallel to the manner of Virgil is to be sought in Milton. The
famous line describing Samson--

Eyeless, in Gaza, at the mill, with slaves--

is a good example; the sense of humiliation and abasement is intensified