lating them, consulting the genius of the place,
assisting nature and carefully disguising their art, produced, not a
Chamouni or a Niagara, but a Stowe or a Hagley.

We are, on the whole, inclined to regret that Dryden did not accomplish
his purpose of writing an epic poem. It certainly would not have been
a work of the highest rank. It would not have rivalled the Iliad, the
Odyssey, or the Paradise Lost; but it would have been superior to the
productions of Apollonius, Lucan, or Statius, and not inferior to the
Jerusalem Delivered. It would probably have been a vigorous narrative,
animated with something of the spirit of the old romances, enriched with
much splendid description, and interspersed with fine declamations and
disquisitions. The danger of Dryden would have been from aiming too
high; from dwelling too much, for example, on his angels of kingdoms,
and attempting a competition with that great writer who in his own
time had so incomparably succeeded in representing to us the sights and
sounds of another world. To Milton, and to Milton alone, belonged the
secrets of the great deep, the beach of sulphur, the ocean of fire, the
palaces of the fallen dominations, glimmering through the everlasting
shade, the silent wilderness of verdure and fragrance where armed angels
kept watch over the sleep of the first lovers, the portico of diamond,
the sea of jasper, the sapphire pavement empurpled with celestial roses,
and the infinite ranks of the Cherubim, blazing with adamant and gold.
The council, the tournament, the procession, the crowded cathedral, the
camp, the guard-room, the chase, were the proper scenes for Dryden.

But we have not space to pass in review all the works which Dryden
wrote. We, therefore, will not speculate longer on those which he might
possibly have written. He may, on the whole, be pronounced to have been
a man possessed of splendid talents, which he often abused, and of a
sound judgment, the admonitions of which he often neglected; a man who
succeeded only in an inferior department of his art, but who, in that
department, succeeded pre-eminently; and who with a more independent
spirit, a more anxious desire of excellence, and more respect for
himself, would, in his own walk, have attained to absolute perfection.

HISTORY. (May 1828.)

"The Romance of History. England." By Henry Neele.
London, 1828.

To write history respectably--that is, to abbreviate despatches, and
mak