hout telescopes see
the rising of some new, bright, particular star. Comets, with tails like
O'Connell, are so common as to lose attraction, and blaze by weekly into
indiscoverable realms. We have constructed an Orrery of Ebony, which we
mean to exhibit at the next great cattle-show, displaying, in their
luminous order, the orbs and orbits of all the heavenly bodies. In the
centre----but this is not the time for such high revelations. We have
now another purpose; and, leaving all those golden urns to yield light
at their leisure, we desire you to take a look along with us at the
choice critics of other days, waked by our potent voice from the
long-gathering dust. In our plainer style, we beg, ladies and gentlemen,
to draw your attention to a series of articles in _Blackwood_, of which
this is Alpha. Omega is intended for a Christmas present to your
great-grandchildren.

Ay, there were giants in those days, as well as in these--also much
dwarfs. But we shall not lose ourselves with you in the darkness of
antiquity--one longish stride backwards of some hundred and fifty years
or so, and then let us leisurely look about us for the Critics. Who
comes here? A grenadier--GLORIOUS JOHN. Him Scott, Hallam, Macaulay,
have pronounced, each in his own peculiar and admirable way, to have
been, in criticism, "a light to his people." Him Samuel Johnson called
"a man whom every English generation must mention with reverence as a
critic and a poet."

"Dryden," says the sage, in a splendid eulogium on his prose writings,
"may be properly considered as the father of English criticism--as the
writer who first taught us to determine, upon principles, the merit of
composition. Of our former poets, the greatest dramatist wrote without
rules, conducted through life and nature by a genius that rarely misled,
and never deserted him. Of the rest, those who knew the laws of
propriety had neglected to teach them." And he adds wisely--"To judge
rightly of an author, we must transport ourselves to his time, and
examine what were the wants of his contemporaries, and what were his
means of supplying them. That which is easy at one time was difficult at
another." Let us, then, examine some of Dryden's expositions of
principles; and first, those on which he defends Heroic Verse in Rhyme,
as the best language of the tragic drama.

This can be done effectually only by following him wherever he has
treated the subject, and by condensing all his opinions