wledged merit, was as rare then as it is still. The envy of the
literary man too often crowns his gray hairs with a chaplet of
nightshade, and pours its dark poison into the latest cup of existence.

His "Annus Mirabilis" is another instance of perverted power, and
ingenuity astray. Written in that bad style he found prevalent in his
early days--the style of the metaphysical poets, Cowley, Donne, and
Drayton--the author ever and anon soars out of his trammels into strong
and simple poetry, fervid description, and in one passage--that about
the future fortunes of London--into eloquent prophecy. The fire of
London is vigorously pictured, but its breath of flame should have
burned up petty conceit and tawdry ornament. He should have sternly
daguerreotyped the spectacle of the capital of the civilised world
burning--a spectacle awful, not only in the sight of men, but, as Hall
says of the French Revolution, in that of superior beings. We need not
dwell on the far-famed absurdities which the poem contains--about God
turning a "crystal pyramid into a broad extinguisher" to put out the
fire--of the ship compared to a sea-wasp floating on the waves--and of
men in the fight killed by "aromatic splinters" from the Spice Islands!
Criticism has long ago said its best and its worst about these early
escapades of a writer whose taste, to the last, was never commensurate
with his genius.

His Translations we have not included in this edition, as we reserve
them, along with other masterpieces of translated verse, for a separate
issue afterwards. That of the "Art of Poetry," sometimes included in
editions of his works, was not his, but only revised by him. We may say
here, in general, however, that although there are more learned and more
correct translators than Dryden, there are few who have produced
versions so vigorous, so full of exuberant life, and, in those parts of
the authors suitable to the peculiarities of the translator's own
genius, so faithful to their spirit and soul, if not to their letter and
their body, as he. Parts of Virgil he does not translate well; he has no
sympathy with Maro's elegance, _concinnitas_, chaste grandeur, and
minute knowledge of nature; but wherever Virgil begins to glow and
gallop, Dryden glows and gallops with him; and wherever Virgil is
nearest Homer, Dryden is nearest him.

We have reserved to the close his Fables, as, on the whole, forming the
culmination of Dryden the artist, if not, perhaps