nature; he wants the rich traditions of a spirit that knows "no relish of an earthly thought," the soul that kindles into splendour as some lofty thought or high imagining darts into its solemn sanctuaries.2

It would be impossible within our limits to give any thing like an adequate criticism on the merits of Dryden in each of the different departments of literature which engaged his attention. We shall, therefore, confine ourselves to sketching, more clearly than we have yet done, the revolutions which took place in his taste, and to pointing out that general character of mind which is discernible in all his writings. There are three stages in the history of Dryden's mind which it is important to mark. The first of these embraces the brief period during which he abandoned himself to the style introduced by the precepts and examples of Donne and Cowley. It has always struck us that this was a style of writing in which Dryden would have especially excelled. Possessed of ample stores of knowledge,―able to recall these stores at a moment's warning, and to embody his conceptions in harmonious verse, he would have united the attractions of Waller and Cowley, and, with a little practice, would have as easily surpassed the one in the multiplicity of his allusions, and the extravagance of his analogies, as he did the other in command of diction and exquisite flow of rhythm. Fortunately for his fame he was preserved from making the attempt by a change of fashion, and the style he now adopted was diametrically opposite. In this-the second of the three stages-he became a disciple in the school of heroic poetry,-one not less artificial than that which he had just abandoned. Banishing the cold conceits, frigid analogies and icy similes, which form the glory of the Astrea Redux,' and 'Annus Mirabilis,' he crossed over at one stride to the contrary extreme, and overdid Termagaunt himself in the vehemence of his passion, and the fury of his declamation. His poetry had hitherto been addressed to the head alone; he now left the head altogether out of the question, and attempted to appeal at once to the heart. Instead of artificial fireworks, he now launched forth real flames in an endless profusion. It is unnecessary to point out the faults of this hyperbolic school. Suffice it to say, that Dryden was delivered from the gulf into which he had fallen by another change of fashion, and learned at last, that, after all, nature is the best and surest mistress. It is not improbable that this change of opinions was in part effected by his own reflection on the abstract propriety of things; for the prefaces prefixed to many of his plays, and his celebrated essay on dramatic poesy, show, that even in the midsummer-madness of the heroics, his critical acumen had dis

The difference between Dryden and these writers is so admirably illustrated by Mr Macauley, in an article in Vol. XLVII. of the Edinburgh Review, that we shall be readily excused for giving the extract entire:-" In looking over the admirable designs which accompany the Faust, we have always been much struck by one which represents the wizard and the tempter riding at full speed. The demon sits on his furious horse as heedlessly as if he were reposing in a chair. That he should keep his saddle in such a posture would seem impossible to any who did not know that he was secure in the privileges of a superhuman nature. The attitude of Faust, on the contrary, is the perfection of finished horsemanship. Poets of the first order might safely write as desperately as Mephistophiles rode. But Dryden, though admitted to communion with higher spirits, though armed with a portion of their power, and intrusted with some of their secrets, was of another race. What they might securely venture to do, it was madness in him to attempt. It was necessary that taste and critical science should supply his deficiencies."

covered some broken rays of truth; and indeed he was of too large a soul to be permanently cramped and pinioned by ridiculous affectations. Thus, then, he arrived at the prime manhood of his taste and wit. The first indications of this change are to be found in Aurengzebe, and probably the success of his satires confirmed him in an attachment to a manly, straight forward, English style of thinking and writing. If, then, we wish to view Dryden in his highest excellency, we must study those of his writings which appeared between the publication of Aurengzebe and his death. These are the true monuments of his fame. Passages in his preceding productions might have been admired,-the fine madness of his Almanzor might have been applauded by a few critics, -grammarians might have celebrated his amazing command over the English language,—and the world would have heard of him as a writer of great popularity in the days of Charles the Second; but had it not been for the immortal works which he produced in this the third stage of his career, he would never have existed in the minds of posterity as 'glorious John Dryden,'-the man who imparted a bias to our literature, of which the effects are yet visible, and the greatest poet that the country has seen since it gave birth to Milton.

Having thus briefly sketched the history of Dryden's taste, we must now attempt to delineate the more prominent features of his mind. The great endowment which he received from the hands of nature was a remarkable power of acute, original, independent reasoning. Whatever may have been his faults, they were all his own. He grasped a subject for himself with the strong grasp of conscious genius; and if ever the arguments of others entered his head, they served no other purpose than to elucidate his own view of the question. He seems never to have dreamed of bowing to authority, or of admitting the force of any argument he did not himself originate, but to have relied confidently on the adequacy of his own powers, and calmly to have worked out for himself, in the depths of his own spirit, the conclusion at which he arrives. We give him our implicit belief when he tells us that his dislike of rhyming plays was not occasioned by the arguments of those who impugned them. Even where he brings forward opinions which others have entertained long before, there is an impress of originality on his mode of stating them, which shows that if he did not originate them, he has at least verified them for himself. It would be difficult to peruse any part of Dryden's works without being struck with the preponderance of this over his other intellectual powers. The only passages in his heroic plays, which are read with much pleasure, are those in which he stops the progress of the action, while his characters reason on the nature of love, or on the abstract questions of foreknowledge, free will, and fate. The Religio Laici,' and ' The Hind and the Panther,' would alone have been sufficient to buoy up his name on the sea of time and their merit consists almost entirely in the clearness and vivacity of the reasoning,-in the lucid statement of the arguments, and in the exquisite skill with which they are brought out and placed in the most advantageous light. He possessed also an extraordinary measure of that which is the soul of all talent,-energetic ardour. It was this which, in so many cases, vitiated his reasoning. He could not stay coolly to examine the grounds of his opinions; they struck him forcibly; he could muster up strong arguments in their favour, and

the impression was too vivid to allow of reflection. His mind readily supplied him with ideas, and the fire of his nature made him pour them forth without due examination. The inevitable consequence was that correctness was ofttimes sacrificed to force. There is, in all his writings, a masculine vigour which carries the reader forward so rapidly, that he scarcely notices the occasional roughness and inequality of the way. If to these endowments we add a tenacious memory,-a keen observation,—an astonishing readiness in bringing his mind to bear on any given subject,—and, as the natural result of these qualifications, an exquisite taste which seldom misled him when he chose to make use of it, and an unrivalled command of the English language, we shall have a fair summary of Dryden's leading excellencies. His great defect was the want of imagination. Hence resulted the thousand errors into which he fell. He says that the finest passages in preceding poets were those in which they gave the freest scope to the imagination, and ventured on the boldest flights, and he strove to imitate them. But he had not the animating principle,—the sacred fire, the strong pinions which lifted the bards of an elder time to the clear sky of poetry, and, aiming at sublimity, he fell into bombast. Hence it was that his tyrants and lovers raved and felt like Mrs Quickly's "harlotry players" at a rehearsal. Hence it was that his sketch of Shaftesbury is inimitable, his delineation of Almanzor a daub. Hence it was that he substituted declamatory rant for the glowing emanations of souls which were transported on a sudden "into utterance of strange conceptions," as if inspired by the presiding genius of the Delphic oracle. Hence it was that he murdered the Tempest,' and "tagged" Milton's verses with rhyme. He was essentially of the earth,-earthy. Like Illo, he could discern with a serviceable eye the common and terrestrial, but whatever "full of mysterious import," nature reserves for those only who can mount on the "purple wings" of phantasie, was to him as a sealed book. He could describe, and none better, the persons and characters which he saw around him, he could enumerate in sounding verse the striking qualities of any object submitted to his view,—but he had not that higher order of intellect which can summon up new existences,-which can travel out of this visible sphere to other worlds and other modes of being;-he had not that intellect by which Shakspeare embodied the fairy court of Titania,-the wild horrors of the wierd sisters, the dreaded shapes of Sycorax and Caliban,-or the sublime idea of a Hamlet, and Milton depicted in undying colours the livid flames,—the lightless, yet ever-burning sulphur,-the vast caverns uncheered by a single ray of sunshine, the visible darkness,-the gloomy palaces, and the fell inhabitants of the bottomless pit.

6

But with all these defects, let us not be unmindful of his extraordinary talents, or the debt of gratitude we owe to him for vast improvements effected in our literature. In our remarks upon his character, we have omitted much that ought to have been noticed. Let it not be forgotten that he was the founder of our school of critical disquisition,— that he was the first man who, in a native poetic diction, united harmony and strength,-that he was one of the most nervous prose-writers of his age,—that he possessed a mastery over the English tongue, unrivalled before or since, that he was the author of the finest lyric which our language can produce,—and that he was the most accom

plished satirist England has ever seen. His name will form one of our great national trophies as long as any trace or memorial of our literature exists.

The works of Dryden of any importance which we have not already mentioned, are 'ŒEdipus' and The Duke of Guise,' tragedies written in conjunction with Nat. Lee;- Britannia Rediviva,' a poem on the birth of the prince of Wales;-translations of the Life of St Francis Xavier, and of a part of Mainebourg's history of the League;-Tracts in a controversy with Stillingfleet;-a Character of Polybius;—a Life of Lucian, and translations of the principal satires of Juvenal and of all Persius, to which is prefixed a long Essay on Satire. Besides these, there is a vast storehouse of prologues, epilogues, epistles, prefaces, translations, epitaphs, odes, songs, letters, elegies, and occasional poems. The only collections of his writings, which it is material to notice, are his Miscellaneous Works,' containing all his original poems and translations, in 4 vols. 8vo. London, 1760. edited by Derrick;-- Critical and Miscellaneous Prose works,' with notes, and a life by Malone, in 4 vols. 8vo. London, 1800;- Poetical Works' by Todd, with notes by Warton, in 4 vols. 8vo. London, 1812;—and the complete edition of his works, with valuable notes, and a life by Sir Walter Scott, in 18 vols. 8vo. London, 1808.

John Locke.

BORN A. D. 1632.-DIED A. D. 1704.

Few names occur in the history of English literature more deserving of veneration than that of Locke. The study of metaphysics is never likely to become very common, and those who are unacquainted with its applications, and its important bearings on almost every branch of moral science, are usually inclined to regard it as more favourable to dangerous speculation than productive of any practical good. Under this impression, the bulk of general readers lose sight of the influence which the metaphysical writers of all ages have secretly exercised on the other branches of literature. They forget that both the poet and the moralist, if they be men of education, generally owe much to this class of philosophers; that criticism, as a science, is almost entirely founded on their discoveries; and that, considered in another light, metaphysics is to literature what chemistry is to external nature, the study which helps us to discover its proper elements, and separate the pure metal from its alloy. To the writers, therefore, who, like Locke, first fixed the attention of scholars on inquiries of this nature, the highest gratitude is due; they have deepened the channels of thought itself; they have raised the value of pursuits purely intellectual by showing how subordinate all others are to that which concerns the management of the mind; and by directing curiosity to the mysterious movements of the soul, have led men to look with such steadiness upon that portion of their being, that they have become as it were more intensely conscious of their spirituality-more assured of the distinct place they occupy as human creatures in the scale of existence. At the time when the subject of this memoir appeared in the field of letters, considerable