"Dramatic Poetry," vindicating his own practice of rhymed heroic verse
in plays;--a stupid French innovation, which all the ingenuity of a
Dryden defended in vain. It was cast into the shape of a dialogue,--the
Duke of Dorset being one of the respondents,--and formed the first
specimen of Dryden's easy, rambling, but most vivid, vigorous, and
entertaining prose. No one was ever more ready than he to render reasons
for his writings,--for their faults as well as merits,--and to show by
more ingenious arguments, that, if they failed, they _ought_ to have
succeeded.

At this time we may consider Dryden's prosperity, although not his
powers, to have culminated. He had a handsome income, a run of
unparalleled popularity as a playwright; he was Poet-Laureate, a
favourite at court, and on terms of intimacy with many of the nobility,
and many of the eminent men of letters. The public would have at that
time bid high for his very snuff-papers, and were thankful for whatever
garbage he chose to throw at them from the stage. How different his
position from that of the great blind old man, at this time residing in
Bunhill-fields in obscurity and sorrow, and preparing to put off his
tabernacle, and take his flight to the Heavens of God! The one heard
every night the "claps of multitudes,"--the other the whispers of
angels, saying to his soul, "Sister-spirit, come away." The one was
revelling in reputation,--the other was listening to the far-off echoes
of a coming fame as wide as the world, and as permanent as the existence
of man. To do Dryden justice, he admired Milton; and although he did,
and that, too, immediately after Milton departed, venture to travestie
the "Paradise Lost" into a rhymed play, as dull as it is disgusting; and
although he knew that Milton had called him, somewhat harshly, a "good
rhymer, but no poet," yet he praised his genius at a time when it was
as little appreciated, as was the grandeur of his character.