uno lay unheeded by his side."

There is reason indeed to think, that, after the Revolution, Dryden's
taste was improved in this, as in some other respects. In his
translation of Juvenal, for example, the satire against women, coarse as
it is, is considerably refined and softened from the grossness of the
Latin poet; who has, however, been lately favoured by a still more
elegant, and (excepting perhaps one or two passages) an equally spirited
translation, by Mr. Gifford of London. Yet, admitting this apology for
Dryden as fully as we dare, from the numerous specimens of indelicacy
even in his later translations, we are induced to judge it fortunate
that Homer was reserved for a poet who had not known the age of Charles
II.; and whose inaccuracies and injudicious decorations may be pardoned,
even by the scholar, when he considers the probability, that Dryden
might have slipped into the opposite extreme, by converting rude
simplicity into indecency or vulgarity. The AEneid, on the other hand, if
it restrained Dryden's poetry to a correct, steady, and even flight, if
it damped his energy by its regularity, and fettered his excursive
imagination by the sobriety of its decorum, had the corresponding
advantage of holding forth to the translator no temptation to licence,
and no apology for negligence. Where the fervency of genius is required,
Dryden has usually equalled his original; where peculiar elegance and
exact propriety is demanded, his version may be sometimes found flat and
inaccurate, but the mastering spirit of Virgil prevails, and it is never
disgusting or indelicate. Of all the classical translations we can
boast, none is so acceptable to the class of readers, to whom the
learned languages are a clasped book and a sealed fountain. And surely
it is no moderate praise to say, that a work is universally pleasing to
those for whose use it is principally intended, and to whom only it is
absolutely indispensable.

The prose of Dryden may rank with the best in the English language. It
is no less of his own formation than his versification, is equally
spirited, and equally harmonious. Without the lengthened and pedantic
sentences of Clarendon, it is dignified where dignity is becoming, and
is lively without the accumulation of strained and absurd allusions and
metaphors, which were unfortunately mistaken for wit by many of the
author's contemporaries. Dryden has been accused of unnecessarily
larding his style with Gallic