m rare,
Find out his power, which wildest powers doth tame,
His providence, extending everywhere,
His justice, which proud rebels doth not spare,
In every page and period of the same.
But silly we, like foolish children, rest
Well pleased with colored vellum, leaves of gold,
Fair dangling ribands, leaving what is best;
On the great Writer's sense ne'er taking hold;
Or if by chance we stay our minds on aught,
It is some picture on the margin wrought.

ON DEATH

From 'Cypress Grove'

Death is a piece of the order of this all, a part of the life of this
world; for while the world is the world, some creatures must die and
others take life. Eternal things are raised far above this orb of
generation and corruption where the First Matter, like a still flowing
and ebbing sea, with diverse waves but the same water, keepeth a
restless and never tiring current; what is below in the universality
of its kind doth not in itself abide.... If thou dost complain there
shall be a time in the which thou shalt not be, why dost thou not too
grieve that there was a time in which thou wast not, and so that thou
art not as old as the enlivening planet of Time?... The excellent
fabric of the universe itself shall one day suffer ruin, or change
like ruin, and poor earthlings, thus to be handled, complain!

JOHN DRYDEN

(1631-1700)

BY THOMAS R. LOUNSBURY

John Dryden, the foremost man of letters of the period following the
Restoration, was born at Aldwinkle, a village of Northamptonshire, on
August 9th, 1631. He died May 1st, 1700. His life was therefore coeval
with the closing period of the fierce controversies which culminated
in the civil war and the triumph of the Parliamentary party; that, in
turn, to be followed successively by the iron rule of Cromwell, by the
restoration of the exiled Stuarts, and the reactionary tendencies in
politics that accompanied that event; and finally with the effectual
exclusion from the throne of this same family by the revolution of
1688, leaving behind, however, to their successors a smoldering
Jacobite hostility that perpetually plotted the overthrow of the new
government and later broke out twice into open revolt. All these
changes of fortune, with their changes of opinion, are faithfully
reflected in the productions of Dryden. To understand him thoroughly
requires therefore an intimate familiarity with the civil and
religious movements which characteri