conformed to the bad age on which he was
so unfortunate as to fall. Prejudice may, indeed, put in such a plea in
his defence; but the inevitable eye of common sense, distinguishing
between necessity and choice, between coarseness and corruption, between
a man's passively yielding to and actively inviting and encouraging the
currents of false taste and immorality which he must encounter, will
find that plea nugatory, and bring in against the author a verdict of
guilty.

Now this, we fear, is exactly the case of Dryden. He was neither a
"barbarian" nor a "Scythian." He was a conscious artist, not a high
though helpless reflector of his age. He had not, we think, like his
relative, Swift, originally any diseased delight in filth for its own
sake; was not--shall we say?--a natural, but an artificial _Yahoo_. He
wielded a power over the public mind, approaching the absolute, and
which he could have turned to virtuous, instead of vicious account--at
first, it might have been amidst considerable resistance and obloquy,
but ultimately with triumphant success. This, however, he never
attempted, and must therefore be classed, in this respect, with such
writers as Byron, whose powers gilded their pollutions, less than their
pollutions degraded and defiled their powers; nay, perhaps he should be
ranked even lower than the noble bard, whose obscenities are not so
gross, and who had, besides, to account for them the double palliations
of passion and of despair.

In these remarks we refer principally to Dryden's plays; for his poems,
as we remarked in the Life, are (with the exception of a few of the
Prologues, which we print under protest) in a great measure free from
impurity. We pass gladly to consider him in his genius and his poetical
works. The most obvious, and among the most remarkable characteristics
of his poetic style, are its wondrous elasticity and ease of movement.
There is never for an instant any real or apparent effort, any
straining for effect, any of that "double, double, toil and trouble," by
which many even of the weird cauldrons in which Genius forms her
creations are disturbed and bedimmed. That power of doing everything
with perfect and _conscious_ ease, which Dugald Stewart has ascribed to
Barrow and to Horsley in prose, distinguished Dryden in poetry. Whether
he discusses the deep questions of fate and foreknowledge in "Religio
Laici," or lashes Shaftesbury in the "Medal," or pours a torrent of
contempt on