e whole poem reminds us of Lucan, and of the worst parts
of Lucan,--the sea-fight in the Bay of Marseilles, for example. The
description of the two fleets during the night is perhaps the only
passage which ought to be exempted from this censure. If it was from
the Annus Mirabilis that Milton formed his opinion, when he pronounced
Dryden a good rhymer but no poet, he certainly judged correctly. But
Dryden was, as we have said, one of those writers in whom the period of
imagination does not precede, but follow, the period of observation and
reflection.

His plays, his rhyming plays in particular, are admirable subjects for
those who wish to study the morbid anatomy of the drama. He was utterly
destitute of the power of exhibiting real human beings. Even in the far
inferior talent of composing characters out of those elements into
which the imperfect process of our reason can resolve them, he was very
deficient. His men are not even good personifications; they are not
well-assorted assemblages of qualities. Now and then, indeed, he seizes
a very coarse and marked distinction, and gives us, not a likeness, but
a strong caricature, in which a single peculiarity is protruded, and
everything else neglected; like the Marquis of Granby at an inn-door,
whom we know by nothing but his baldness; or Wilkes, who is Wilkes only
in his squint. These are the best specimens of his skill. For most of
his pictures seem, like Turkey carpets, to have been expressly designed
not to resemble anything in the heavens above, in the earth beneath, or
in the waters under the earth.

The latter manner he practises most frequently in his tragedies, the
former in his comedies. The comic characters are, without mixture,
loathsome and despicable. The men of Etherege and Vanbrugh are bad
enough. Those of Smollett are perhaps worse. But they do not approach
to the Celadons, the Wildbloods, the Woodalls, and the Rhodophils of
Dryden. The vices of these last are set off by a certain fierce hard
impudence, to which we know nothing comparable. Their love is the
appetite of beasts; their friendship the confederacy of knaves. The
ladies seem to have been expressly created to form helps meet for such
gentlemen. In deceiving and insulting their old fathers they do not
perhaps exceed the license which, by immemorial prescription, has been
allowed to heroines. But they also cheat at cards, rob strong boxes, put
up their favours to auction, betray their friends, ab