contemplative kind which arises
from regret for the loss of unspeakable happiness, and resignation to
inevitable fate. There is none of the fierceness of intemperate passion,
none of the agony of mind and turbulence of action, which is the result
of the habitual struggles of the will with circumstances, irritated by
repeated disappointment, and constantly setting its desires most eagerly
on that which there is an impossibility of attaining. This would have
destroyed the beauty of the whole picture. They had received their
unlooked-for happiness as a free gift from their Creator's hands, and
they submitted to its loss, not without sorrow, but without impious and
stubborn repining.

"In either hand the hast'ning angel caught
Our ling'ring parents, and to th' eastern gate
Led them direct, and down the cliff as fast
To the subjected plain; then disappear'd.
They looking back, all th' eastern side beheld
Of Paradise, so late their happy seat,
Wav'd over by that flaming brand, the gate
With dreadful faces throng'd, and fiery arms:
Some natural tears they dropt, but wip'd them soon;
The world was all before them, where to choose
Their place of rest, and Providence their guide."

LECTURE IV.
ON DRYDEN AND POPE.

Dryden and Pope are the great masters of the artificial style of
poetry in our language, as the poets of whom I have already treated,
Chaucer, Spenser, Shakspeare, and Milton, were of the natural; and
though this artificial style is generally and very justly acknowledged
to be inferior to the other, yet those who stand at the head of that
class, ought, perhaps, to rank higher than those who occupy an inferior
place in a superior class. They have a clear and independent claim upon
our gratitude, as having produced a kind and degree of excellence which
existed equally nowhere else. What has been done well by some later
writers of the highest style of poetry, is included in, and obscured by
a greater degree of power and genius in those before them: what has been
done best by poets of an entirely distinct turn of mind, stands by
itself, and tells for its whole amount. Young, for instance, Gray, or
Akenside, only follow in the train of Milton and Shakspeare: Pope and
Dryden walk by their side, though of an unequal stature, and are
entitled to a first place in the lists of fame. This seems to be not
only the reason of the thing, but the com