French
writers, their judicious imitators. It was, indeed, during this
period chiefly, that that nation left the English behind them in the
productions of poetry, eloquence, history, and other branches of
polite letters; and acquired a superiority which the efforts of English
writers, during the subsequent age, did more successfully contest with
them. The arts and sciences were imported from Italy into this island as
early as into France; and made at first more sensible advances. Spenser,
Shakspeare, Bacon, Jonson, were superior to their contemporaries who
flourished in that kingdom. Milton, Waller, Denham, Cowley, Harvey, were
at least equal to their contemporaries. The reign of Charles II., which
some preposterously represent as our Augustan age, retarded the progress
of polite literature in this island; and it was then found, that the
immeasurable licentiousness, indulged or rather applauded at court, was
more destructive to the refined arts, than even the cant, nonsense, and
enthusiasm of the preceding period.

Most of the celebrated writers of this age remain monuments of genius,
perverted by indecency and bad taste; and none more than Dryden, both by
reason of the greatness of his talents and the gross abuse which he made
of them. His plays, excepting a few scenes, are utterly disfigured by
vice or folly, or both. His translations appear too much the offspring
of haste and hunger: even his fables are ill-chosen tales, conveyed
in an incorrect, though spirited versification. Yet amidst this great
number of loose productions, the refuse of our language, there are found
some small pieces, his Ode to St. Cecilia, the greater part of Absalom
and Achitophel, and a few more, which discover so great genius, such
richness of expression, such pomp and variety of numbers, that they
leave us equally full of regret and indignation, on account of the
inferiority or rather great absurdity of his other writings. He died in
1701, aged sixty-nine.

The very name of Rochester is offensive to modest ears, yet does his
poetry discover such energy of style and such poignancy of satire, as
give ground to imagine what so fine a genius, had he fallen in a more
happy age, and had followed better models, was capable of producing. The
ancient satirists often used great liberties in their expressions; but
their free-* *dom no more resembles the licentiousness of Rochester,
than the nakedness of an Indian does that of a common prostitute.