is irritation by assaulting him in prose and verse.
Dennis was equally ready, although not equally capable of returning the
poet's blows, and when free from the impotence of anger, made several
shrewd critical thrusts which his antagonist felt keenly.

Dennis aspired to be a poet and dramatist. He wrote a bombastic poem in
blank verse called _The Monument_, sacred to the immortal memory of 'the
good, the great, the god-like, William III.'; a poem, also in blank
verse, and still more 'tremendous,' to quote his favourite word, on the
_Battle of Blenheim_, in which he frequently invokes his soul to say and
sing a thousand things far beyond his soul's reach--and a poem equally
laboured and grandiloquent, on the Battle of Ramillies, in which there
are passages that read like a burlesque of Milton. Dennis observes in
his _Grounds of Criticism in Poetry_ (1704) that 'poetry unless it
pleases, nay, and pleases to a height, is the most contemptible thing in
the world.' This is just criticism, but the writer did not recognize
that his own verse was contemptible. In this essay, which contains many
sound critical remarks and an appreciation of Milton seldom felt at that
time, he has the bad taste to quote as an illustration of the sublime, a
passage from his own paraphrase of the Te Deum:

'Where'er at utmost stretch we cast our eyes
Through the vast frightful spaces of the skies,
Ev'n there we find Thy glory, there we gaze
On Thy bright Majesty's unbounded blaze;
Ten thousand suns prodigious globes of light
At once in broad dimensions strike our sight;
Millions behind, in the remoter skies,
Appear but spangles to our wearied eyes;
And when our wearied eyes want farther strength
To pierce the void's immeasurable length
Our vigorous towering thoughts still further fly,
And still remoter flaming worlds descry;
But even an Angel's comprehensive thought
Cannot extend so far as Thou hast wrought;
Our vast conceptions are by swelling, brought,
Swallowed and lost in Infinite, to nought.'

It is significant of Dennis's judgment of his own verse that these
inflated lines follow one of the loveliest passages contained in
_Paradise Lost_. Milton describes the moon unveiling her peerless light;
and the poet-critic exhibits in juxtaposition his 'vigorous towering
thoughts' about the stars. The comparison forced upon the reader is
unfortunate.

His tragedies, _Iphigenia_ (17