e.
Or were these gems sent to adorn his skin,
The cabinet of a richer soul within?
No comet need foretell his change drew on,
Whose corps might seem a constellation."

Criticism cannot be rendered sufficiently vituperative to characterize
properly such a passage. It is fuller of conceits than ever Cowley
crowded into the same space; and lines more crabbed and inharmonious
Donne never succeeded in perpetrating. Its production upsets all
principles of prophecy. The wretchedest of poetasters can take
courage, when he contemplates the profundity of the depth out of which
uprose the greatest poet of his time.

[Illustration: John Dryden.]

Dryden is, in fact, an example of that somewhat rare class of writers
who steadily improve with advancing years. Most poets write their best
verse before middle life. Many of them after that time go through a
period of decline, and sometimes of rapid decline; and if they live to
reach old age, they add to the quantity of their production without
sensibly increasing its value. This general truth is conspicuously
untrue of Dryden. His first work gave no promise of his future
excellence, and it was by very slow degrees that he attained to the
mastery of his art. But the older he grew, the better he wrote; and
the volume published a few months before his death, and largely
composed almost under its shadow, so far from showing the slightest
sign of failing power, contains a great deal of the best poetry he
ever produced.

As Dryden's relatives were Puritans, and some of them held place under
the government, it was natural that upon coming to London he should
attach himself to that party. Accordingly it is no surprise to find
him duly mourning the death of the great Protector in certain 'Heroic
Stanzas Consecrated to the Memory of Oliver Cromwell.' The first
edition bears the date of 1659, and so far as we know, the production
was Dryden's second venture in poetry. It was written in the measure
of Davenant's 'Gondibert,' and is by no means a poor piece of work,
though it has been sometimes so styled. It certainly pays not simply a
high but a discerning tribute to the genius of Cromwell. Before two
years had gone by, we find its author greeting the return of Charles
with effusive loyalty, and with predictions of prosperity and honor to
attend his reign, which events were soon woefully to belie. The poet
has been severely censured for this change of at