6, in the map of Galicia, near Cape Finisterre, "Namancos T," (i.e. Turris). “In this map castle of Bayona makes a very conspicuous figure." 5. 163. angel: i.e. St. Michael. [ruth. What derivative of this word is still in use? What cognate verb ?] 164. O ye Dolphins, &c. As in the old days a dolphin had borne Arion safely through - seas to land. See Herod. I. i. 24; Ovid, Fast. ii. 83-118; Wordsworth's Power of und, ix. =1-3: waft, "to carry through the air or the water." (Johnson.) See King John, II. "In brief, a braver choice of dauntless spirits 165. Warton compares Spenser's Ecl. Nov.; Epith. Damonis, 201-8; Ode on the Death a fair Infant, stanza x. 26. 166. your sorrow. So love, care, joy, delight, pride, hope, are used in a concrete sense. o in Latin and Greek amor, spes, пóvoc, wdic, &c. 167. watery floar. Comp. Shakspere's "floor of heaven," Merchant of Venice, i. 58. 168. the day-star = the sun. So" diurnal star," Paradise Lost, x. 1069. 169. Comp. Gray's Bard, of the "orb of day": "To-morrow he repairs the golden flood." 170. tricks. See Il Pens. 123. spangled. See Hymn Nat. 21. ore metal. So Paradise Lost, i. 673. 173. See St. Matthew xiv. 22. that walk'd the waves. Paradise Lost, i. 520: So Spenser: "She wander'd many a wood." "And o'er the Celtic roamed the utmost isles." - 272, "a phoenix gazed by all." So in Shakspere, " muse," "smile," &c. &c., govern ccusatives. So "myself was then travelling that land," Tennyson's Golden Supper. 174. Comp. Virg. Æn. vi. 641; Wordsworth's Laodamia. 175. Comp. Hor. Od. III. iv. 61. oozy. Hymn Nat. 124. 176. unexpressive. Hymn Nat. 116. So "inenarrabile carmen," in his poem Ad Patrem. Comp. "insuppressive," Shakspere, Julius Cæsar, II. i. 134. nuptiall song. See the Revelation xxii. 17. 179. Comp. Paradise Lost, xi. 82. "Milton's angelic system. Lombard." (Warton.) is to be seen at large in Thomas Aquinas and Peter 181. See Isaiah xxv. 8; Rev. vii. 17. 183. Comp. the story of Melicerta or Palæmon. Ov. Met. iv. 522; Fast. vi. 485; Virg. Georg. i. 436. "these ventages" in Hamlet, III. ii. 372. 26. 188. stops = "His flying fingers and harmonious quill Strike seven distinguish'd notes, and seven at once they fill." 189. warbling. Another of Milton's favourite words. Dorick lay = poem in the pastoral style. Theocritus, Bion, Moschus, wrote in the Doric dialect. 190. the hills, that is, their shadows. Comp. Virg. Ecl. i. 83. 191. was dropt. See above, 1. 97. 192. twitch'd. Comp. Juvenal's "Tyrias humero revocante lacernas" (Sat. i. 27). mantle blew. Blue was the colour of a shepherd's dress, and the poet here personates a poetic shepherd. It was also a common colour for servant-men. Ben Jonson speaks of servants as "the blue order;" also of "a blue waiter." In Beaumont and Fletcher a footman is called "a blue-bottle," a familiar phrase still. 193. Comp. Theocr. Id. i. 145: 66 “ χαίρετ' ἐγὼ δ ̓ ὕμμιν καὶ ἐς ὕστερον ἅδιον ἔσω.” DRYDEN. 1. JOHN DRYDEN was born on the 9th of August, 1631 (the year before Locke was born), ›bably in the house of his maternal grandfather, at Aldwincle All Saints, near Oundle, in ›rthamptonshire. His father, of a family belonging originally to Cumberland, was the ›prietor of a small estate at Blakesley, a village near Aldwincle All Saints. In course of e he was sent to Westminster School, then under the superintendence of Dr. Busby, and sequently to Trinity College, Cambridge. Leaving the University in 1657, without, it would em, having specially distinguished himself there, he went up to London, and devoted himself politics and to literature. Amongst his family connexions were certain important members the Puritan party. The death of Cromwell soon provided him with a poetical subject. His iting an elegy on that occasion did not prevent him, any more than Waller, and other poets the day, from welcoming back with a poem Charles the Second. With the Restoration new field was thrown open to the wits of the time in the shape of the stage, which for some ghteen years had been altogether, or partially, shut up. Dryden turned play-writer. He rote comedies, tragedies, tragi-comedies: the comedies, in prose; the tragedies, the earliest blank verse, then some in rhyme, on the model of the French tragic drama, the latest in ank verse. His subjects he drew mostly from the old romances, and from history. He reoduced three of Shakspere's plays, Troilus and Cressida, Antony and Cleopatra (which he lled All for Love), and The Tempest. In 1671 his plays were heartily, and not undeservedly, diculed in the Rehearsal, written by the Duke of Buckingham, assisted, it is said, by Hudibras" Butler, and others. All this time he was winning more lasting fame by the arious critical essays with which his plays, when published, were frequently prefaced. In 563 he married the Lady Elizabeth Howard, a daughter of the Earl of Berkshire, who by no eans proved a congenial consort. y. 2. It was not till Dryden was some fifty years old that he fully discovered where his strength Before 1681 he had written other poetical pieces, as his Annus Mirabilis (published 1667, the same year with Paradise Lost), besides his plays, and everything he had written ad been marked by a certain power and might; but in that year his Absalom and Achitophel isplayed his characteristic talents in their fullest and completest vigour. The nation was at hat time in a state of profound excitement; the struggle between Absolutism and Conitutionalism was rapidly nearing its final crisis; the contest between the Court party and the Exclusionists, an important passage in that other all-comprehensive struggle, had just reached s utmost fury. Dryden stood forth as the champion of the Court party; in his Absalom and Achitophel he dealt the Exclusionists the severest blows his genius could inflict, and they were erribly effective. That poem was speedily followed by another, The Medal, aimed at that ame Achitophel; and this by another, Mac Flecknoe, aimed at Shadwell, the chief poet of the Whig side. At this same memorable period of his life he wrote also Religio Laici, to indicate Revelation against Atheism, and Protestantism against Tradition. How well the Stuarts rewarded his great services appears from the fact that it was only with much appealing and difficulty he could procure the payment of the salary due to him as Poet Laureate. Not long after the succession of James II. he became a Roman Catholic; with his usual fervour and brilliancy he in 1686 wrote his Hind and Panther (published the following year), in which he defended that tradition of which in the Religio Laici he had made so light. When the boy was born who was afterwards known as "the Pretender," Dryden celebrated the event in his Britannia Rediviva; but that birth was in fact the signal for the combined action of a justly indignant nation, and the irreparable fall of the Stuart dynasty. 3. Dryden fell with his patrons. Whatever may be thought of the consistency of his previous life, he certainly refused overtures now made to him by the triumphant Protestant party. His political life ended; his literary activity was as intense as ever. He now set himself to the translation of certain classical poets. His version of Persius and Juvenal was published in 1693; that of the Eneid in 1697, in which same year he wrote also his now best-known poem, his Alexander's Feast. His modernizations of Chaucer and other pieces-his Fables -appeared in 1700. Thus his vigour remained to the end, for in 1700 he died. Of his twenty-eight plays scarcely any one is now at all known; and perhaps not much more deserves to be known. The comedies abound in wit, those written in the heroic metre in fine versification; but Dryden was wanting in dramatic power, he was wanting in humour, in tenderness, in delicacy. He could describe in a masterly manner, but this is not the dramatist's great function; he had not the art of making his characters develop themselves -describe themselves by their actions, so to speak. He could lay bare all the motives that actuated them, but he could not show them in a state of action obedient to those motives: in short, his power was rather of the analytical kind. His descriptive power was of the highest. Our literature has in it no more vigorous portrait-gallery than that he has bequeathed it. He succeeds better in his portraits of enemies than of friends; perhaps because, as it happened, the Whig leaders excited in him more disgust than the Tories admiration. The general type of character which that age presented was in an eminent degree calculated not to stir enthusiasm. Dryden fell upon evil times. What he for the most part saw was flagrant corruption in Church and in State, and in society he lived the best years of his life in the most infamous period of English history; he was getting old when a better time began. The poet reflects his age: there was but little noble for Dryden to reflect. Naturally, he turned satirist. His power of expression is beyond praise. language: he uses always the right word. There is always a singular fitness in his He is one of our greatest masters of metre: metre was, in fact, no restraint to him, but rather it seems to have given him freedom. It has been observed that he argues better in verse than in prose: verse was the natural costume of his thoughts. As a prose-writer he is excellent; but verse-writing was his proper province. MAC FLECKNOE. INTRODUCTION. THIS piece was directed against Shadwell, the leading Whig poet of the day, as Dryden was the Tory. It was published in October 1682. Johnson therefore mistakes when he says that it was occasioned by Shadwell's being appointed to succeed Dryden as Poet Laureate (see his Life of Dryden); for that superseding did not take place till after the Revolution. In spite of what is said in the following Satire, Shadwell was a comic poet of no mean power, and but for his lavish indecency would well deserve to be read. He was certainly a better play-writer than his satirist. Dryden and he had once been friends, and indeed low-workers, and in those days Dryden had not been blind to his merits. the Volunteers, one of Shadwell's plays, he speaks of him as erson. "The great support of the comic stage, Born to expose the follies of the age, First of our times, and second but to Ben." In the Epilogue This praise must have been particularly welcome to Shadwell, not only as coming from hom it did come, but for its form; for Shadwell modelled himself upon Ben Jonson. He, o, aimed at representing "humours." He is said to have resembled him somewhat in He found no difficulty in resembling him in his affection for the tavern. Had he ved some half-century sooner he would no doubt have gladly been enrolled in what Jonson mself called "the tribe of Ben." If Jonson wrote Masques, Shadwell wrote an opera, Pysche. course of time Dryden and he became enemies. Dryden had spoken disparagingly of Ben onson (see his Essay on Dramatic Poetry); Shadwell sneered at Aureng-zebe. When the arful factious excitements connected with the Exclusion Bill and the Popish Plot came to a ead in 1678, and the two following years, Dryden and Shadwell were ranged on opposite des. Shadwell answered the Medal with his Medal of John Bayes; he took part also in a mpoon called The Tory Poets, aimed at Dryden and Otway. In October 1682 appeared Tac Flecknoc: A Satire on the True Blue Protestant Poet, T.S.; and in the following onth the Portrait of Shadwell under the name of Og in the Second Part of Absalom and chitophel. For the name, Shadwell would have been proud to be called the "Son of Ben; " Dryden alls him the "Son of Flecknoe," the heir of one of the meanest versifiers of the century. Of is poor poetaster, Flecknoe, the very name would now barely be known but for the immorality Dryden thus gave him. Dryden plucked him from oblivion to become a proverb of adness. Thus Swift writes in his On Poetry, a Rhapsody, 1744: "Remains a difficulty still To purchase fame by writing ill. From Flecknoe down to Howard's time, How few have reached the low sublime!" Besides its great intrinsic merit, Mac Flecknoe has the additional interest of having mainly ggested the form of Pope's Dunciad. "I doubt not," says Pope himself in a note to Flecknoe's Irish Throne" (Dunciad, ii. 2), our author took occasion to mention him in espect to the poem of Mr. Dryden, to which this bears some resemblance, though of a haracter more different from it than that of the Eneid from the Iliad, or the Lutrin of Boileau from the Défait de Bonts Rimées [sic] of Sarazin." 27. 3. Flecknoe. See Introduction. Augustus was just thirty-three years of age when he overthrew his formidable rival Antony, and became the undisputed master of the Roman world. He held that mastership or forty-four years. See Class. Dict. or Hist. Rom. [In what year did he accept the mperium proconsulare? In what year did he die ?] 8. [Explain the exact meaning of a large increase. In what relation do the words tand to issue?] increase is often used particularly for family or progeny. See 1 Sam. ii. 33. So Shakspere's Coriolanus, III. iii. 114; Pope's Odyssey: "Him young Thoosa bore, the bright increase |