d so admirably raised by the _prosopopeia_ of nature, who
is brought in speaking to her children with so much authority and
vigour, deserve the pains I have taken with them, which, I hope, have
not been unsuccessful or unworthy of my author; at least, I must take
the liberty to own, that I was pleased with my own endeavours, which
but rarely happens to me; and that I am not dissatisfied upon the
review of any thing I have done in this author."

Lucretius is a poet of a sublimer order than Dryden. Yet have they
psychical affinities. The rush of poetical composition characterizes
both--a ready pomp and splendour--more prodigality than economy--bold
felicity rather than finish, though neither is that wanting--mastery of
language and measure--touches from the natural world, that fall in more as
a colouring of style, than the utterances of a heart imbued with a deep
love of nature. Indeed, if the genial belongs to the physiognomy of
Dryden's writing, the cordial is hardly a constituent in the character of
either poet, although at need both can find eloquent expression even for
the pathetic. In both, if in different measure, a sceptical vein is
inherent; but in Lucretius this arms itself in logic, and he appears in
his cosmogony as a philosophical atheist. In Dryden it might seem rather a
humour leaned to, because on that side lies the pleasure of mockery and
scoffing. Lucretius pleads his philosophy like a man who is incredulous in
earnest. But you can seldom say what it is that Dryden embraces with
seriousness, unless it be, in his better and happier undertakings, his
own part in executing the work. The subject-matter might seem almost
always rather accidentally brought to him, than affectionately sought by
him; once out of his hands, it is dismissed from his heart; he often seems
utterly to have forgotten opinions and persons in whom, not long before,
he had taken the liveliest interest--careless of inconsistencies even in
the same essay, assuredly one of the most self-contradicting of mortals.
No man, some say, has a right to question another's religious faith, but
all men have a right to judge of the professed principles on which it has
been adopted, when those principles have been triumphantly propounded to
the public in controversial treatises of elaborate verse. To reason
powerfully not only in verse but rhyme, is no common achievement, and such
fame is justly Dryden's; but how would the sa