melodramatic, for the grandiloquent, and for the obscene. He knew the
taste of Charles, and that he, above all cooks, could dress up a
_ragout_ of that putrid perfection which his king relished. And he set
himself with his whole might so to do, and for thirty years and more
continued his degradation of genius--a degradation unexampled, whether
we consider the powers of the writer, the coarseness, quantity, and
elaboration of the pollutions he perpetrated, or the length of time in
which he was employed, in thus "profaning the God-given strength and
marring the lofty line."

His other biographers--Dr Johnson, alone, with brevity and seeming
reluctance--have enumerated and characterised all Dryden's plays. We
have decided only to speak of them very generally, and that for the
following reasons:--1st, We are reprinting none of them; 2dly, From what
we have read of them, we are certain that, even as works of art, they
are utterly unworthy of their author, and that in morals they are, as a
whole, a disgrace to human nature. We are not the least lenient or
indulgent of critics. We have every wish to pity the errors, and to bear
with the frequent escapades and aberrations of genius. But when we see,
as in Dryden's case, what we are forced to consider either a deliberate
and systematic attempt to poison the sources of virtue, or, at least, an
elaborate and incessant habit of conformity to the bad tastes of a bad
age, we can think of no plea fully available for his defence. Vain to
say, "he wrote for bread." He did not--he wrote only for the luxuries,
not the staff of life. Vain to say, "he consulted the taste of his
audience, and suited their atmosphere." But why did he _select_ that
atmosphere as his? And why so much gratuitous and superfluous iniquity
in his works? "But he wrote to gratify his monarch." This would form a
good enough excuse for a Sporus, "a white curd of ass' milk," but not
for a strong man like Dryden. But he was "no worse than others of his