, as it
awkwardly is, among some of Dryden's own beautiful and original writing,
gives, like a borrowed and unbecoming garment, a mean and inconsistent
appearance to the whole disquisition. But these occasional imperfections
and inaccuracies are marks of the haste with which Dryden was compelled
to give his productions to the world, and cannot deprive him of the
praise due to the earliest and most entertaining of English critics.

I have thus detailed the life, and offered some remarks on the literary
character, of JOHN DRYDEN: who, educated in a pedantic taste, and a
fanatical religion, was destined, if not to give laws to the stage of
England, at least to defend its liberties; to improve burlesque into
satire; to free translation from the fetters of verbal metaphrase, and
exclude it from the licence of paraphrase; to teach posterity the
powerful and varied poetical harmony of which their language was
capable; to give an example of the lyric ode of unapproached excellence;
and to leave to English literature a name, second only to those of
Milton and of Shakespeare.

FOOTNOTES
[1] Life and Works of Arthur Maynwaring, 1715, p. 17.

[2] So says Charles Blount, in the dedication to the _Religio Laici_. He
is contradicted by Tom Brown.

[3] In a poem published on Dryden's death, by Brome, written, as Mr.
Malone conjectures, by Captain Gibbon, son of the physician.

[4] In "The Postboy," for Tuesday, May 7, 1700, Playford inserted the
following advertisement:

"The death of the famous John Dryden, Esq., Poet-Laureate to their two
late Majesties, King Charles, and King James the Second, being a subject
capable of employing the best pens; and several persons of quality, and
others, having put a stop to his interment, which is designed to be in
Chaucer's grave, in Westminster Abbey; this is to desire the gentlemen
of the two famous Universities, and others, who have a respect for the
memory of the deceased, and are inclinable to such performances, to send
what copies they please, as Epigrams, etc., to Henry Playford, at his
shop at the Temple 'Change, in Fleet Street, and they shall be inserted
in a Collection, which is designed after the same nature, and in the
same method (in what language they shall please), as is usual in the
composures which are printed on solemn occasions, at the two
Universities aforesaid."

This advertisement (with some alterations) was continued for a month in
the same paper.

[5]
"Thy