there is elevation of character, there will be fastidiousness. It
is only in novels and on tombstones that we meet with people who are
indulgent to the faults of others, and unmerciful to their own; and
Dryden, at all events, was not one of these paragons. His charity was
extended most liberally to others; but it certainly began at home. In
taste he was by no means deficient. His critical works are, beyond all
comparison, superior to any which had, till then, appeared in England.
They were generally intended as apologies for his own poems, rather than
as expositions of general principles; he, therefore, often attempts
to deceive the reader by sophistry which could scarcely have
deceived himself. His dicta are the dicta, not of a judge, but of an
advocate:--often of an advocate in an unsound cause. Yet, in the very
act of misrepresenting the laws of composition, he shows how well he
understands them. But he was perpetually acting against his better
knowledge. His sins were sins against light. He trusted that what was
bad would be pardoned for the sake of what was good. What was good, he
took no pains to make better. He was not, like most persons who rise to
eminence, dissatisfied even with his best productions. He had set up no
unattainable standard of perfection, the contemplation of which might
at once improve and mortify him. His path was not attended by an
unapproachable mirage of excellence, for ever receding, and for ever
pursued. He was not disgusted by the negligence of others; and he
extended the same toleration to himself. His mind was of a slovenly
character,--fond of splendour, but indifferent to neatness. Hence most
of his writings exhibit the sluttish magnificence of a Russian noble,
all vermin and diamonds, dirty linen and inestimable sables. Those
faults which spring from affectation, time and thought in a great
measure removed from his poems. But his carelessness he retained to the
last. If towards the close of his life he less frequently went wrong
from negligence, it was only because long habits of composition
rendered it more easy to go right. In his best pieces we find false
rhymes,--triplets, in which the third line appears to be a mere
intruder, and, while it breaks the music, adds nothing to the
meaning,--gigantic Alexandrines of fourteen and sixteen syllables,
and truncated verses for which he never troubled himself to find a
termination or a partner.

Such are the beauties and the faults which