r witness to this assertion. While other court
poets endeavoured to turn the obnoxious statesman into ridicule on
account of his personal infirmities and extravagances, Dryden boldly
confers upon him all the praise for talent and for genius that his
friends could have claimed, and trusts to the force of his satirical
expression for working up even these admirable attributes with such a
mixture of evil propensities and dangerous qualities, that the whole
character shall appear dreadful, and even hateful, but not contemptible.
But where a character of less note, a Shadwell or a Settle, crossed his
path, the satirist did not lay himself under these restraints, but wrote
in the language of bitter irony and immeasurable contempt: even then,
however, we are less called on to admire the wit of the author, than the
force and energy of his poetical philippic. These are the verses which
are made by indignation, and, no more than theatrical scenes of real
passion, admit of refined and protracted turns of wit, or even the
lighter sallies of humour. These last ornaments are proper in that
Horatian satire, which rather ridicules the follies of the age, than
stigmatises the vices of individuals; but in this style Dryden has made
few essays. He entered the field as champion of a political party, or as
defender of his own reputation; discriminated his antagonists, and
applied the scourge with all the vehemence of Juvenal. As he has himself
said of that satirist, "his provocations were great, and he has revenged
them tragically." This is the more worthy of notice, as, in the Essay
on Satire, Dryden gives a decided preference to those nicer and more
delicate touches of satire, which consist in fine raillery. But whatever
was the opinion of his cooler moments, the poet's practice was dictated
by the furious party-spirit of the times, and the no less keen
stimulative of personal resentment. It is perhaps to be regretted, that
so much energy of thought, and so much force of expression, should have
been wasted in anatomising such criminals as Shadwell and Settle; yet we
cannot account the amber less precious, because they are grubs and flies
that are enclosed within it.

The "Fables" of Dryden are the best examples of his talents as a
narrative poet; those powers of composition, description, and narration,
which must have been called into exercise by the Epic Muse, had his fate
allowed him to enlist among her votaries. The "Knight's Tale," the