that, in his attempts after literary variety, he could not or would not restrict himself within these proper limits of his genius. But, besides this, Dryden was a slovenly worker within his own field. Even of what he could do best, he did little continuously in a thoroughly careful manner. In his best poem, there are not twenty consecutive lines without some logical incoherence, some confusion of metaphor, some inaccuracy of language, or some evident strain of the meaning for the sake of the metre. His strength lies in passages and weighty interspersed lines, not in whole poems. Even in Dryden's lifetime this complaint was made. It was hinted at in The Rehearsal; Rochester speaks of Dryden's "slattern muse; and Blackmore, who criticised Dryden in his old age, expresses the common opinion distinctly and deliberately "Into the melting-pot when Dryden comes, What horrid stench will rise, what noisome fumes! This is true, though it was Blackmore who said it. We think, however, that Dryden's slovenliness consisted not so much in a disposition to spare pains, as in a constitutional robustness which rendered artistic perfection all but impossible to him, even when he laboured hardest to attain it. Our notion of Dryden is that he was originally a robust man, who, when he first engaged in poetry, could produce nothing better than strong stanzas of rather wooden sound and mechanism; who, by dint of perseverance and continual work, however, drilled his genius into higher susceptibility, and a conscious aptitude and mastery in certain directions; and who, the older he grew, became mellower, more musical, and more imaginative, simply because what had been robustness at first had by long practice been subdued and welded into flexibility and nerve. It is stated of Dryden, that in his earlier life, at least, he used, as a preparation for writing, to induce on him self an artificial state of languor, by taking medicine or letting blood. The trait, we think, is characteristic. Dryden's whole literary career was but a metaphor of it. Had he died before 1670, or even before 1681, when his Annus Mirabilis was still his most ambitious production, he would have been remembered as little more than a robust versifier; but, living as he did till 1700, he performed work which has entitled him to rank among English poets. As a contributor to the actual body of our literature, and as a man who produced by his influence a lasting effect on its literary methods, Dryden's place is certainly high; and we are glad to see a new edition. of his poems so admirably edited, and put forth under such good auspices. See a Letter of Wordsworth's to Sir Walter Scoll, in Locklearts Life of Sir M.C. 11.80. 1688 DEAN SWIFT.* IN dividing the history of English literature into periods, it is customary to take the interval between the year 1688 and the year 1727 as constituting one of those periods. This interval 1727 includes the reigns of William III., Anne, and George I. If we do not bind ourselves too precisely to the year 1727 as closing the period, the division is proper enough. There are characteristics about the time thus marked out, which distinguish it from previous and from subsequent portions of our literary history. Dryden, Locke, and some other notabilities of the Restoration, lived into this period, and may be regarded as partly belonging to it; but the names more peculiarly representing it are those of Swift, Burnet, Addison, Steele, Pope, Shaftesbury, Gay, Arbuthnot, Atterbury, Prior, Parnell, Bolingbroke, Congreve, Vanbrugh, Farquhar, Rowe, Defoe, and Cibber. The names in this cluster disperse themselves over the three reigns which the period includes, some of them having already been known as early as the accession of William, while others survived the first George, and continued to add to their celebrity during the reign of his successor; but the most brilliant portion of the period was from 1702 to 1714 or thereby, when Queen Anne was on the throne. Hence the name of "wits of Queen Anne's reign," commonly applied to the writers of the whole period. A while ago this used to be spoken of as the golden or Augustan age of English literature. We do not talk in that X manner now. We feel that when we get among the authors of the times of Queen Anne and the first George, we are *BRITISH QUARTERLY REVIEW, October, 1854.-1. The English_Humourists of the Eighteenth Century. A Series of Lectures. By W. M. THACKERAY. London: 1853. 2. The Life of Swift. By SIR WALTER SCOTT. Edinburgh: 1848. xdee WartonsEssay on Poppe. 1. 1574-8.1806 among very pleasant and very clever men, but by no means among giants. In coming down to this period from those going before it, we have an immediate sensation of having left the region of "greatness" behind us. We still find plenty of good writing, characterised by certain qualities of trimness, artificial grace, and the like, to a degree not before attained; here and there also, we discern something like real power and strength, breaking through the prevailing element; but, on the whole, there is an absence of what, except by a compromise of language, could be called "great." It is the same whether we regard largeness of imaginative faculty, loftiness of moral spirit, or vigour of speculative capacity, as principally concerned in imparting the character of "greatness" to literature. What of genius in the ideal survived the seventeenth century in England, contented itself with nice little imaginations of scenes and circumstances connected with the artificial life of the time; the moral quality most in repute was kindliness or courtesy; and speculation did not go beyond that point where thought retains the form either of ordinary good sense, or of keen momentary wit. No sooner, in fact, do we pass the time of Milton, than we feel that we have done with the sublimities. A kind of lumbering largeness does remain in the intellectual gait of Dryden and his contemporaries, as if the age still wore the armour of the old literary forms, though not at home in it; but in Pope's days, even the affectation of the great" had ceased. Not slowly to build up a grand poem of continuous ideal action, not quietly and at leisure to weave forth tissues of fantastic imagery, not perseveringly and laboriously to prosecute one track of speculation and bring it to a close, not earnestly and courageously to throw one's whole soul into a work of moral agitation and reform, was now what was regarded as natural in literature. On the contrary, he was a wit, or a literary man, who, living in the midst of the social bustle, or on the skirts of it, could throw forth in the easiest manner, little essays, squibs, and jeux d'esprit, pertinent to the rapid occasions of the hour, and never tasking the mind too long or too much. This was the time when that great distinction between Whiggism and Toryism, which, for a 66 century-and-a-half has existed in Great Britain as a kind of permanent social condition, affecting the intellectual activity of all natives from the moment of their birth, first began to be practically operative. It has, on the whole, been a wretched thing for the mind of England to have had this necessity of being either a Whig or a Tory put so prominently before it. Perhaps, in all times, some similar necessity of taking one side or the other in some current form of controversy has afflicted the leading minds, and tormented the more genial among them; but we question if ever in this country in previous times there was a form of controversy, so little to be identified, in real reason, with the one only true controversy between good and evil, and so capable, therefore, of breeding confusion and mischief, when so identified in practice, as this poor controversy of Whig and Tory which came in with the Revolution. To be called upon to be either a Puritan or a Cavalier—there was some possibility of complying with that call, and still leading a tolerably free and large intellectual life; though possibly it was one cause of the rich mental development of the Elizabethan epoch that the men of that time were exempt from any personal obligation of attending even to this distinction. But, to be called upon to be either a Whig or a Tory-why, how on earth can one retain any of the larger humanities about him, if society is to hold him by the neck between two stools such as these, pointing alternately to the one and to the other, and incessantly asking him on which of the two he means to sit? Into a mind trained to regard adhesiveness to one or other of these stools as the first rule of duty or of prudence, what thoughts of any high interest can find their way? Or, if any such do find their way, how are they to be adjusted to so mean a rule? Now-a-days, our higher spirits solve the difficulty by kicking both stools down, and plainly telling society that they will not bind themselves to sit on either, or even on both put together. Hence partly it is that, in recent times, we have had renewed specimens of the "great" or "sublime" in literature-the poetry, for example, of a Byron, a Wordsworth, or a Tennyson. But, in the interval between 1688 and 1727, there was not one wit alive whom |