with rhyme.

Dryden at this period engaged in a research recommended to him by "a
noble wit of Scotland," as he terms Sir George Mackenzie, the issue of
which, in his apprehension, pointed out further room for improving upon
the epic of Milton. This was an inquiry into the "turn of words and
thoughts" requisite in heroic poetry. These "turns," according to the
definition and examples which Dryden has given us, differ from the
points of wit, and quirks of epigram, common in the metaphysical poets,
and consist in a happy, and at the same time a natural, recurrence of
the same form of expression, melodiously varied. Having failed in his
search after these beauties in Cowley, the darling of his youth, "I
consulted," says Dryden, "a greater genius (without offence to the manes
of that noble author), I mean--Milton; but as he endeavours everywhere
to express Homer, whose age had not arrived to that fineness, I found in
him a true sublimity, lofty thoughts, which were clothed with admirable
Grecisms, and ancient words, which he had been digging from the mines of
Chaucer and Spenser, and which, with all their rusticity, had somewhat
of venerable in them. But I found not there neither that for which I
looked." This judgment Addison has proved to be erroneous, by quoting
from Milton the most beautiful example of a turn of words which can be
found in English poetry.[31] But Dryden, holding it for just, conceived,
doubtless, that in his "State of Innocence" he might exert his skill
successfully, by supplying the supposed deficiency, and for relieving
those "flats of thought" which he complains of, where Milton, for a
hundred lines together, runs on in a "track of scripture;" but which
Dennis more justly ascribes to the humble nature of his subject in those
passages. The graces, also, which Dryden ventured to interweave with the
lofty theme of Milton, were rather those of Ovid than of Virgil, rather
turns of verbal expression than of thought. Such is that conceit which
met with censure at the time:

"Seraph and cherub, careless of their charge,
And wanton, in full ease now live at large;
Unguarded leave the passes of the sky,
And all dissolved in hallelujahs lie."

"I have heard," said a petulant critic, "of anchovies dissolved in
sauce; but never of an angel dissolved in hallelujahs." But this
raillery Dryden rebuffs with a quotation from Virgil:

"_Invadunt urbem, somno vinoque sepultam_."

It might have been repli