that it's worse than what before he writ,
But he has now another taste of wit;
And, to confess a truth, though out of time,
Grows weary of his long-loved mistress, Rhyme.
Passion's too fierce to be in fetters bound,
And Nature flies him like enchanted ground:
What verse can do, he has performed in this,
Which he presumes the most correct of his;
But spite of all his pride, a secret shame
Invades his breast at Shakespeare's sacred name:
Awed when he hears his godlike Romans rage,
He, in a just despair, would quit the stage;
And to an age less polished, more unskilled,
Does, with disdain, the foremost honours yield."

It is remarkable, as a trait of character, that, though our author
admitted his change of opinion on this long disputed point, he would not
consent that it should be imputed to any arguments which his opponents
had the wit to bring against him. On this subject he enters a protest in
the Preface to his revised edition of the "Essay of Dramatic Poesy" in
1684:--"I confess, I find many things in this discourse which I do not
now approve; my judgment being not a little altered since the writing of
it; but whether for the better or the worse, I know not: neither indeed
is it much material, in an essay, where all I have said is
problematical. For the way of writing plays in verse, which I have
seemed to favour, I have, since that time, laid the practice of it
aside, till I have more leisure, because I find it troublesome and slow:
but I am no way altered from my opinion of it, _at least with any
reasons which have opposed it_; for your lordship may easily observe,
that none are very violent against it, but those who either have not
attempted it, or who have succeeded ill in their attempt."[25] Thus
cautious was Dryden in not admitting a victory, even in a cause which,
he had surrendered.

But although the poet had admitted, that, with powers of versification
superior to those possessed by any earlier English author, and a taste
corrected by the laborious study both of the language and those who had
used it, he found rhyme unfit for the use of the drama, he at the same
time discovered a province where it might be employed in all its
splendour. We have the mortification to learn, from the Dedication of
"Aureng-Zebe," that Dryden only wanted encouragement to enter upon the
composition of an epic poem, and to abandon the thriftless task of
writing for the promiscuous audience of the thea