rbolt.
He thus describes his publisher:--

"With leering looks, bull-faced, and freckled fair,
With two left legs, and Judas-colored hair,
And frowsy pores that taint the ambient air."

Argumentative or Didactic Verse.--Dryden is a master in arguing in
poetry. He was not a whit hampered by the restrictions of verse. They
were rather an advantage to him, for in poetry he could make more
telling arguments in briefer compass than in prose. The best two
examples of his power of arguing in verse are _Religio Laici_, written
in 1682, to uphold the Episcopal religion, and _The Hind and the
Panther_, composed in 1687, to vindicate the Catholic church. Verse of
this order is called didactic, because it endeavors to teach or to
explain something. The age of the Restoration delighted in such
exercises of the intellect vastly more than in flights of fancy or
imagination.

Lyrical Verse.--While most of Dryden's best poetry is either satiric
or didactic, he wrote three fine lyrical poems: _Alexander's Feast, A
Song for St. Cecilia's Day_, and _An Ode to Mrs. Anne Killigrew_. All
are distinguished by remarkable beauty and energy of expression.
_Alexander's Feast_ is the most widely read of Dryden's poems. The
opening lines of the Ode to Mrs. Anne Killigrew seem almost Miltonic
in their conception, and they show great power in the field of lyrical
poetry. Mistress Killigrew was a young lady of rare accomplishments in
both poetry and painting, who died at the age of twenty-five. Dryden
thus begins her memorial ode:--

"Thou youngest virgin daughter of the skies,
Made in the last promotion of the blest;
Whose palms, new plucked from Paradise,
In spreading branches more sublimely rise,
Rich with immortal green above the rest:
* * * * *
Thou wilt have time enough for hymns divine,
Since Heaven's eternal year is thine."

Some of his plays have songs and speeches instinct with lyrical force.
The following famous lines on the worth of existence are taken from
his tragedy of _Aurengzebe:_--

"When I consider'd life, 'tis all a cheat,
Yet, fool'd with hope, men favor the deceit,
Trust on, and think to-morrow will repay:
To-morrow's falser than the former day,
Lies worse; and while it says, we shall be blest
With some new joys, cuts off what we possest.
Strange cozenage! none would live past years again;
Yet all hope pleasure in what yet remain.
And, from t