ere enough
for genuine song. Cowley introduced the Pindaric ode, a highly
artificial form of the lyric, in which the language was tortured into a
kind of spurious grandeur, and the meter teased into a sound and fury,
signifying nothing. Cowley's Pindarics were filled with something which
passed for fire, but has now utterly gone out. Nevertheless, the fashion
spread, and "he who could do nothing else," said Dr. Johnson, "could
write like Pindar." The best of these odes was Dryden's famous
_Alexander's Feast_, written for a celebration of St. Cecilia's day by a
musical club. To this same fashion, also, we owe Gray's two fine odes,
the _Progress of Poesy_ and the _Bard_. written a half-century later.

Dryden was not so much a great poet as a solid thinker, with a splendid
mastery of expression, who used his energetic verse as a vehicle for
political argument and satire. His first noteworthy poem, _Annus
Mirabilis_, 1667, was a narrative of the public events of the year 1666;
namely, the Dutch war and the great fire of London. The subject of
_Absalom and Ahitophel_--the first part of which appeared in 1681--was
the alleged plot of the Whig leader, the Earl of Shaftesbury, to defeat
the succession of the Duke of York, afterward James II., by securing the
throne to Monmouth, a natural son of Charles II. The parallel afforded
by the story of Absalom's revolt against David was wrought out by Dryden
with admirable ingenuity and keeping. He was at his best in satirical
character-sketches, such as the brilliant portraits in this poem of
Shaftesbury, as the false counselor Ahitophel, and of the Duke of
Buckingham as Zimri. The latter was Dryden's reply to the _Rehearsal..
Absalom and Ahitophel_ was followed by the _Medal_, a continuation of
the same subject, and _Mac Flecknoe_, a personal onslaught on the "true
blue Protestant poet" Thomas Shadwell, a political and literary foe of
Dryden. Flecknoe, an obscure Irish poetaster, being about to retire from
the throne of duncedom, resolved to settle the succession upon his son,
Shadwell, whose claims to the inheritance are vigorously asserted.

The rest to some faint meaning make pretense,
But Shadwell never deviates into sense....
The midwife laid her hand on his thick skull
With this prophetic blessing--_Be thou dull_.

Dryden is our first great satirist. The formal satire had been written
in the reign of Elizabeth by Donne, and by Joseph Hall, Bishop of
Exeter, and subseq