A calf an alderman, a goose a justice, And rooks committee-men and trustees. He'd run in debt by disputation, And pay with ratiocination: All this by syllogism, true In mood and figure he would do. His mouth, but out there flew a trope; Teach nothing but to name his tools. RELIGION OF HUDIBRAS. He was of that stubborn crew Such as do build their faith upon The holy text of pike and gun; And prove their doctrine orthodox By apostolic blows and knocks; Which always must be carried on, As if religion were intended For nothing else but to be mended; A sect whose chief devotion lies HIS DAGGER. This sword a dagger had his page, That was but little for his age; And therefore waited on him so As dwarfs upon knights-errant do: DRYDEN. No English poet of distinction is marked by greater inequalities than JOHN DRYDEN. He was a man of superior genius, whose opinions hung somewhat loosely about him, and coming into notice at a time when a vicious taste in poetry prevailed, he took the lead in all the literary sins of his age. He gained thereby an immediate reputation which was almost unbounded; but in the "sober second thought" of posterity, he is regarded only as the first of our second-rate poets. He was engaged in active authorship for nearly half a century. During this time a decided revolution in the public taste took place. As might be expected from the character of the man, his last poems are his best. He who, on the restoration of the dissolute Charles, had been a writer of plays marked by their licentiousness even in that licentious age, became under William a profound and able inculcator of morals and religion. The difference in the moral tone of his writings is not greater than their difference as to literary merit. The subjects which first engaged his attention, do not seem to be those for which he was by nature fitted; and as he imitated false models of style, his very genius served to make those faults more glaring. It was not till late in life that he found where his forte lay. He had a strong masculine understanding and an unbounded command of language, and, with perhaps the exception of Pope, has succeeded better than any other English poet, in the difficult art of reasoning in verse. The same qualities which fitted him for serious didactic poetry, contributed to the success which attended all his efforts as a writer of satire. His writings, both in prose and verse, are exceedingly numerous. A complete edition of them was published a few years since, with a copious life by Sir Walter Scott, the whole extending to eighteen volumes. Dryden was born in 1631, and died in 1700. ARGUMENT FOR REVEALED RELIGION. (From Religio Laici.) Dim as the borrowed beams of moon and stars To lonely, weary, wandering travellers, Is Reason to the soul: and as on high, Not light us here; so Reason's glimmering ray But guide us upward to a better day. And as those nightly tapers disappear, When day's bright lord ascends our hemisphere; So dies, and so dissolves in supernatural light. From cause to cause, to nature's secret head; Or various atoms' interfering dance Leaped into form, the noble work of chance; Not e'en the Stagirite himself could see; But vanished from 'em like enchanted ground. The wiser madmen did for Virtue toil: A thorny, or at best a barren soil: In pleasure some their glutton souls would steep In this wild maze their vain endeavours end: For what could fathom God were more than He. ευρηκα, the mighty secret's found: |