defendant. She even enjoys her own
argument and carries it out with a gusto into abstractions.

"But leaving that: search we the secret springs,
And backward trace the principles of things;
There shall we find, that when the world began
One common mass composed the mould of man," etc.

Dryden's grossness of taste mars his narrative at several points. The
satirist in him will not let him miss the chance for a sneer at priests
and another at William III.'s standing army. He makes his heroine's love
ignobly sensual. She is a widow, who having "tasted marriage joys," is
unwilling to live single. Dryden's _bourgeois_ manner is capable even of
ludicrous descents.

"The sudden bound awaked the sleeping sire,
And showed a sight no parent can desire."

In Keats' poem there are no characters dramatically opposed. Lorenzo and
Isabella have no individuality apart from their love; passion has
absorbed character. The tale is not evolved firmly and continuously, but
with lyrical outbursts, a poignancy of sympathy at the points of highest
tragic tensity and a swooning sensibility all through, that sometimes
breaks into weakness. There can be no question, however, which poem is
the more _felt_; no question, either, as to which method is superior--at
least as between these two artists, and as applied to subjects of this
particular kind.

"Isabella" is in _ottava rima_, "The Eve of St. Agnes" in the Spenserian
stanza. This exquisite creation has all the insignia of romantic art and
has them in a dangerous degree. It is brilliant with colour, richly
ornate, tremulous with emotion. Only the fine instinct of the artist
saved it from the overladen decoration and cloying sweetness of
"Endymion," and kept it chaste in its warmth. As it is, the story is
almost too slight for its descriptive mantle "rough with gems and gold."
Such as it is, it is of Keats' invention and of the "Romeo and Juliet"
variety of plot. A lover who is at feud with his mistress' clan ventures
into his foemen's castle while a revel is going on, penetrates by the aid
of her nurse to his lady's bower, and carries her off while all the
household are sunk in drunken sleep. All this in a night of wild weather
and on St. Agnes' Eve, when, according to popular belief, maidens might
see their future husbands in their dreams, on the performance of certain
conditions. The resemblance of this poem to "Christabel" at several
points, has already been m