ey march, a blustering band,
And ever, but in times of need, at hand:
This was the morn when, issuing on the guard,
Drawn up in rank and file they stood prepared
Of seeming arms to make a short essay,
Then hasten to be drunk, the business of the day."

In a world where what is feeble in expression is so often supposed to
indicate peculiar delicacy; where what is vague is so often deemed
peculiarly poetical; and where what is involved and crabbed and hard
to comprehend is thought to denote peculiar profundity,--it is a
pleasure to turn to a writer with a rank settled by the consensus of
successive generations, who thought clearly and wrote forcibly, who
knew always what he had to say and then said it with directness and
power. There are greater poets than he; but so long as men continue to
delight in vividness of expression, in majesty of numbers, in
masculine strength and all-abounding vigor, so long will Dryden
continue to hold his present high place among English authors.

The writings of Dryden constitute of themselves a literature. They
treat of a vast variety of topics in many different departments of
intellectual activity. The completest edition of his works was first
published in 1808 under the editorship of Walter Scott. It fills
twenty-one volumes, the first of which however is devoted to a
biography. The notes to this edition are generally excellent; the text
is very indifferent. A revised edition of it has been recently
published under the editorship of George Saintsbury. But easily
accessible is a single-volume edition of the poems alone, edited by W.
D. Christie, which furnishes a superior text, and is amply supplied
with all necessary annotations.

[Illustration: Signature (Thomas R. Lounsbury)]

FROM 'THE HIND AND THE PANTHER'

A milk-white Hind, immortal and unchanged,
Fed on the lawns and in the forest ranged;
Without unspotted, innocent within,
She feared no danger, for she knew no sin.
Yet had she oft been chased with horns and hounds,
And Scythian shafts, and many winged wounds
Aimed at her heart; was often forced to fly,
And doomed to death, though fated not to die.

Not so her young; for their unequal line
Was hero's make, half human, half divine.
Their earthly mold obnoxious was to fate,
The immortal part assumed immortal state.
Of these a slaughtered army lay in blood,
Extended o'er the Caledonian wood,
Their native walk; whose vocal bloo