e closing scene of "The Spanish Friar," which indicates any
peculiar felicity of invention. For comic character, he is usually
contented to paint a generic representative of a certain class of men or
women; a Father Dominic, for example, or a Melantha, with all the
attributes of their calling and manners, strongly and divertingly
portrayed, but without any individuality of character. It is probable
that, with these deficiencies, he felt the truth of his own
acknowledgment, and that he was forced upon composing comedies to
gratify the taste of the age, while the bent of his genius was otherwise
directed.

In lyrical poetry, Dryden must be allowed to have no equal. "Alexander's
Feast" is sufficient to show his supremacy in that brilliant department.
In this exquisite production, he flung from him all the trappings with
which his contemporaries had embarrassed the ode. The language, lofty
and striking as the ideas are, is equally simple and harmonious; without
far-fetched allusions, or epithets, or metaphors, the story is told as
intelligibly as if it had been in the most humble prose. The change of
tone in the harp of Timotheus, regulates the measure and the melody, and
the language of every stanza. The hearer, while he is led on by the
successive changes, experiences almost the feelings of the Macedonian
and his peers; nor is the splendid poem disgraced by one word or line
unworthy of it, unless we join in the severe criticism of Dr. Johnson,
on the concluding stanzas. It is true, that the praise of St. Cecilia is
rather abruptly introduced as a conclusion to the account of the Feast
of Alexander; and it is also true, that the comparison,

"He raised a mortal to the sky,
She drew an angel down,"

is inaccurate, since the feat of Timotheus was metaphorical, and that of
Cecilia literal. But, while we stoop to such criticism, we seek for
blots in the sun.

Of Dryden's other pindarics, some, as the celebrated "Ode to the Memory
of Mrs. Killigrew," are mixed with the leaven of Cowley; others, like
the "_Threnodia Augustalis_," are occasionally flat and heavy. All
contain passages of brilliancy, and all are thrown into a versification,
melodious amidst its irregularity. We listen for the completion of
Dryden's stanza, as for the explication of a difficult passage in music;
and wild and lost as the sound appears, the ear is proportionally
gratified by the unexpected ease with which harmony is extracted from
discord and