nd Warton denying it any merit. We
incline to a mediate view. It has bold passages; the first and the last
stanzas are very powerful, and the whole is full of that rushing
torrent-movement characteristic of the poet. But the sinkings are as
deep as the swellings, and the inequality disturbs the general effect.
This is still more true of "Threnodia Augustalis," the ode on the death
of Charles II. Not only is its spirit fulsome, and its statement of
facts grossly partial, but many of its lines are feeble, and the whole
is wire-spun. Yet what can be nobler in thought and language than the
following, descriptive of the joy at the king's partial recovery!--

"Men met each other with erected look,
The steps were higher that they took;
Each to congratulate his friend made haste,
And long inveterate foes saluted as they pass'd."

How admirably this last line describes that sudden solution of the
hostile elements in human nature-that swift sense of unity in society,
produced by some glad tidings or great public enthusiasm, when for an
hour the Millennium is anticipated, and the poet's wish, that

"Man wi' man, the warld o'er,
Shall brithers be, for a' that,"

is fulfilled!

The two odes on St Cecilia's Day are both admirable in different ways.
"Alexander's Feast," like Burns's "Tam o' Shanter," seems to come out at
once "as from a mould." It is pure inspiration, but of the second
order--rather that of the Greek Pythoness than of the Hebrew prophet.
Coleridge or Wordsworth makes the objection to it, that the Bacchus it
describes is the mere vulgar deity of drink--

"Flush'd with a purple grace,
He shows his honest face"--

not the ideal Bacchus, clad in vine-leaves, returning from the conquest
of India, and attended by a procession of the lions and tigers he had
tamed. But this, although a more imaginative representation of the god
of wine, had not been so suitably sung at an entertainment presided over
by an Alexander and a Thais, a drunk conqueror and a courtezan. Dryden
himself, we have seen, thought this the best ode that ever was or would
be written in the English language. In a certain sense he was right. For
vivacity, freedom of movement, and eloquence, it has never been
equalled. But there are some odes--such as Coleridge's "Ode to France"
and Wordsworth's "Power of Sound"--which as certainly excel it in
strength of imagination, grandeur of conception, and unity of execution
and effect.

Of Dry