answer the expectation raised by such subjects and such a writer. With the stanza of Davenant he has sometimes his vein of parenthesis and incidental disquisition, and stops his narrative for a wise remark1.

The general fault is that he affords more sentiment than 249 description, and does not so much impress scenes upon the fancy as deduce consequences and make comparisons.

The initial stanzas have rather too much resemblance to the 250 first lines of Waller's poem on the war with Spain; perhaps such a beginning is natural, and could not be avoided without affectation". Both Waller and Dryden might take their hint from the poem on the civil war of Rome, 'Orbem jam totum 3, &c. Of the king collecting his navy, he says:

'It seems as every ship their sovereign knows,
His awful summons they so soon obey;

So hear the scaly herds when Proteus blows,
And so to pasture follow through the sea".'

It would not be hard to believe that Dryden had written the two first lines seriously, and that some wag had added the two latter in burlesque. Who would expect the lines that immediately follow, which are indeed perhaps indecently hyperbolical, but certainly in a mode totally different?

'To see this fleet upon the ocean move,

Angels drew wide the curtains of the skies;
And heaven, as if there wanted lights above,
For tapers made two glaring comets rise.'

251

The description of the attempt at Bergen will afford a very 252 compleat specimen of the descriptions in this poem:

'And now approach'd their fleet from India, fraught
With all the riches of the rising sun:

And precious sand from southern climates brought,
The fatal regions where the war begun.

* For examples see stanzas 32, 35, 36, 38.

Now for some ages had the pride of Spain

Made the sun shine on half the world in vain ;

While she bid war to all that durst supply

The place of those her cruelty made die.' WALLER, Eng. Poets, xvi. 143; ante,

WALLER, 129.

'In thriving arts long time had
Holland grown,

Crouching at home and cruel
when abroad;

Scarce leaving us the means to
claim our own;

Our King they courted, and our
merchants aw'd.' DRYDEN.
3 PETRONIUS, Sat. c. 119, l. 1.
• Stanza 15.

253

254

'Like hunted castors, conscious of their store,

Their way-laid wealth to Norway's coast they bring:
Then first the North's cold bosom spices bore,
And winter brooded on the eastern spring.

'By the rich scent we found our perfum'd prey,
Which, flank'd with rocks, did close in covert lie:
And round about their murdering cannon lay,
At once to threaten and invite the eye.

'Fiercer than cannon, and than rocks more hard,
The English undertake th' unequal war:
Seven ships alone, by which the port is barr'd,
Besiege the Indies, and all Denmark dare.
'These fight like husbands, but like lovers those:
These fain would keep, and those more fain enjoy:
And to such height their frantic passion grows,
That what both love, both hazard to destroy:
'Amidst whole heaps of spices lights a ball,
And now their odours arm'd against them fly:
Some preciously by shatter'd porcelain fall,
And some by aromatic splinters die.

'And though by tempests of the prize bereft,
In heaven's inclemency some ease we find;
Our foes we vanquish'd by our valour left,

And only yielded to the seas and wind'.'

In this manner is the sublime too often mingled with the ridiculous. The Dutch seek a shelter for a wealthy fleet: this surely needed no illustration; yet they must fly, not like all the rest of mankind on the same occasion, but 'like hunted castors'; and they might with strict propriety be hunted, for we winded them by our noses-their 'perfumes' betrayed them. The Husband' and the 'Lover,' though of more dignity than the 'Castor,' are images too domestick to mingle properly with the horrors of war. The two quatrains that follow are worthy of the author.

་

The account of the different sensations with which the two fleets retired when the night parted them is one of the fairest flowers of English poetry:

'The night comes on, we eager to pursue

The combat still, and they asham'd to leave:
'Till the last streaks of dying day withdrew,
And doubtful moon-light did our rage deceive.

Stanzas 24-30.

'In th' English fleet each ship resounds with joy,
And loud applause of their great leader's fame;
In fiery dreams the Dutch they still destroy,

And, slumbering, smile at the imagin'd flame.
'Not so the Holland fleet, who, tir'd and done,
Stretch'd on their decks like weary oxen lie;
Faint sweats all down their mighty members run
(Vast bulks, which little souls but ill supply).
'In dreams they fearful precipices tread,

Or, shipwreck'd, labour to some distant shore,
Or, in dark churches, walk among the dead:

They wake with horror, and dare sleep no more'.'

It is a general rule in poetry that all appropriated terms of art 255 should be sunk in general expressions, because poetry is to speak an universal language'. This rule is still stronger with regard to arts not liberal or confined to few, and therefore far removed from common knowledge; and of this kind certainly is technical navigation3. Yet Dryden was of opinion that a sea-fight ought to be described in the nautical language'; 'and certainly,' says he, 'as those who in a logical disputation [dispute] keep to [in] general terms would hide a fallacy, so those who do it in any poetical description would veil their ignorance".'

Let us then appeal to experience; for by experience at last we 256 learn as well what will please as what will profit. In the battle his terms seem to have been blown away; but he deals them liberally in the dock:

2

'So here some pick out bullets from the side,

Some drive old okum thro' each seam and rift:
Their left-hand does the calking-iron guide,
The rattling mallet with the right they lift.

'With boiling pitch another near at hand

(From friendly Sweden brought) the seams instops: Which, well laid [paid] o'er, the salt-sea waves withstand, And shake them from the rising beak in drops.

Stanzas 68-71.

* 'I will not give the reasons why [in translating Virgil] I writ not always in the proper terms of navigation, land-service, or in the cant of any profession. I will only say that Virgil has avoided those proprieties, because he writ not to mariners, soldiers, astronomers, gardeners, peasants, &c., but to all in general.' DRYDEN, Works, xiv. 229.

257

258

259

'Some the gall'd ropes with dawby marling bind,
Or sear-cloth masts with strong tarpawling coats:
To try new shrouds one mounts into the wind,

And one below, their ease or stiffness notes '.'

I suppose here is not one term which every reader does not wish away 2.

His digression to the original and progress of navigation, with his prospect of the advancement which it shall receive from the Royal Society, then newly instituted, may be considered as an example seldom equalled of seasonable excursion and artful return 3.

One line, however, leaves me discontented; he says, that by the help of the philosophers,

'Instructed ships shall sail to quick commerce,

By which remotest regions are allied.'

Which he is constrained to explain in a note, ' By a more exact measure of longitude.' It had better become Dryden's learning and genius to have laboured science into poetry, and have shewn, by explaining longitude, that verse did not refuse the ideas of philosophy.

His description of the Fire is painted by resolute meditation, out of a mind better formed to reason than to feel. The conflagration of a city, with all its tumults of concomitant distress, is one of the most dreadful spectacles which this world can offer to human eyes; yet it seems to raise little emotion in the breast of the poet he watches the flame coolly from street to street, with now a reflection and now a simile, till at last he meets the king, for whom he makes a speech, rather tedious in a time so busy, and then follows again the progress of the fire.

'Stanzas 146-48.

'I agree with you in your censure of the use of sea-terms in Mr. Dryden's Virgil,... because no terms of art, or cant-words, suit with the majesty and dignity of style which epic poetry requires.' POPE, Works (Elwin and Courthope), vi. 107.

Dante, in the Inferno, canto xxi, 'deals his terms liberally in the dock.' Who would wish that in Cowper's Loss of the Royal George were omitted

A land-breeze shook the shrouds'?

There are, however, in this part some passages that deserve 260 attention, as in the beginning:

'The diligence of trades, and noiseful gain,
And luxury, more late asleep were laid;
All was the night's, and in her silent reign
No sound the rest of Nature did invade.

'In this deep quiet—1'

The expression 'All was the night's' is taken from Seneca, who remarks on Virgil's line

'Omnia noctis erant placida composta quiete,'

that he might have concluded better,

'Omnia noctis erant","

The following quatrain is vigorous and animated:

'The ghosts of traytors from the bridge descend
With bold fanatick spectres to rejoice;

About the fire into a dance they bend,

And sing their sabbath notes with feeble voice 3.'

261

His prediction of the improvements which shall be made in 262 the new city is elegant and poetical, and, with an event which Poets cannot always boast, has been happily verified. The poem concludes with a simile that might have better been omitted 3.

Dryden, when he wrote this poem, seems not yet fully to have 263 formed his versification, or settled his system of propriety.

From this time he addicted himself almost wholly to the stage, 264 'to which,' says he, 'my genius never much inclined me,' merely as the most profitable market for poetry. By writing tragedies