nbid, and every fragrant flower
Flew from their stalks to strew thy nuptial bower:
The furr'd and feather'd kinds the triumph did pursue,
And fishes leap'd above the streams the passing pomp to view."

Hats off--bravo--bravo--hurra--hurra!--Of such stuff is made, in the
"State of Innocence," Dryden's implicit criticism on the _Paradise Lost_
of Milton.

Peace be with his shade! and its forgiveness with us. It is dangerous to
unite the functions of judge and executioner. The imperturbable bosom of
the seated judge calmly gives forth the award of everlasting Justice, and
the mandate for the punishment that must expiate or appease her violated
majesty. But the judge who is obliged to turn lictor, and must step down
from the tribunal to take his criminal farther in hand, undoubtedly runs a
risk, when he feels his hand in, of being carried too far by his excited
zeal. After all, we have stayed ours. And now, having discharged a
principal part of our office, what remains, but that we turn round, heal
with our right hand what our left has inflicted, and lift up Glorious John
to the skies? And lift him up we will; and with good reason; for we are
far indeed from being done with this first era of deliberate and formal
criticism in English literature. Extol him to the clouds and to the stars
we will, but not now; for lo! where another great name beckons!

The close of the seventeenth century for ever shut the eyes of John Dryden
upon the clouded and fluctuating daylight of our sublunary world. It may
have been, in the same year, that a solitary boy, then twelve years old,
wrote five stanzas which any man might have been glad to have written--and
which you have by heart--an "Ode to Solitude"--conspicuous in the annals
of English poetry as the dawn-gleam of a new sun that was presently to
arise, and to fill the region that Dryden had left.

A feeble frame has dedicated many a student. This, with other causes about
this time, took the boy, ALEXANDER POPE, from schools where he learned
little, to commit him, under the guardian more than guiding love of
indulgent parents, to his own management of his own studies. And study he
did--instinctively, eagerly, ramblingly through books of sundry
kinds--helping himself as he could to their languages--devouring more than
he digested--wedding himself to the high and gracious muses--seeking for,
and finding, his own extraordinary powers--and diminishing the small
quantity of delicate he