l--from beginning to end. Never was such mouthing seen and heard
beneath moon and stars. Through the whole range of rant he rages like a
man inspired. He is the emperor of bombast. Yet these plays contain many
passages of powerful declamation--not a few of high eloquence; some that
in their argumentative amplitude, if they do not reach, border on the
sublime. Nor are their wanting outbreaks of genuine passion among the
utmost extravagances of false sentiment--when momentarily heroes and
heroines warm into men and women, and for a few sentences confabulate
like flesh and blood.

But it is with Dryden as a critic, not as a poet, that we have now to
do; and we have said these few words about his heroic plays only in
connexion with our account of his argument in support of his doctrine
with regard to heroic verse in rhyme. That blank verse is better adapted
than any other for the drama, has been settled by Shakspeare. But though
Dryden has driven his argument too far, till his doctrine, as he
promulgates it, becomes untenable, as little do we doubt that he has
made good this position, that there may be good plays in rhyme. His
heroic plays are bad, not because they are in rhyme, but because they
are absurd; the rhyme is their chief merit; 'tis not possible to dream
what they had been in blank verse. True, that "All for Love" and "Don
Sebastian" are in blank verse, and may be said, after a fashion, to be
fine plays. But they are constructed on rational principles, and in them
he was doing his best to write like Shakspeare. What reason is there for
believing that those plays, in many respects excellent, are the better
for not being in rhyme? None whatever. Rhyme, in our opinion, would have
given them both a superior charm. In his heroic plays, it often carries
us along with absurdities which we know not whether we should call tame
or wild; it gives an air of originality to trivial commonplaces; it
embellishes what is vigorous, and invigorates what is beautiful; and
among events and characters alike unnatural, its music sustains our
flagging interest, and enables us to read on. There can be no doubt,
that in representations on the stage, the same cause must have been most
effective on audiences accustomed to that kind of pleasure, and who
delighted in rhyme, to them at once a necessary and a luxury of life.
"Aurengzebe," the last of his rhyming plays, is, to our mind, little if
at all inferior to "All for Love," or "Don Sebasti