impurity. We pass gladly to consider him in his genius and his poetical
works. The most obvious, and among the most remarkable characteristics
of his poetic style, are its wondrous elasticity and ease of movement.
There is never for an instant any real or apparent effort, any
straining for effect, any of that "double, double, toil and trouble," by
which many even of the weird cauldrons in which Genius forms her
creations are disturbed and bedimmed. That power of doing everything
with perfect and _conscious_ ease, which Dugald Stewart has ascribed to
Barrow and to Horsley in prose, distinguished Dryden in poetry. Whether
he discusses the deep questions of fate and foreknowledge in "Religio
Laici," or lashes Shaftesbury in the "Medal," or pours a torrent of
contempt on Shadwell in "MacFlecknoe," or describes the fire of London
in the "Annus Mirabilis," or soars into lyric enthusiasm in his "Ode on
the Death of Mrs Killigrew," and "Alexander's Feast," or paints a
tournament in "Palamon and Arcite," or a fairy dance in the "Flower and
the Leaf,"--he is always at home, and always aware that he is. His
consciousness of his own powers amounts to exultation. He is like the
steed who glories in that tremendous gallop which affects the spectator
with fear. Indeed, we never can separate our conception of Dryden's
vigorous and vaulting style from the image of a noble horse, devouring
the dust of the field, clearing obstacles at a bound, taking up long
leagues as a little thing, and the very strength and speed of whose
motion give it at a distance the appearance of smoothness. Pope speaks
of his

"Long resounding march, and energy divine."

Perhaps "_ease_ divine" had been words more characteristic of that
almost superhuman power of language by which he makes the most obstinate
materials pliant, melts down difficulties as if by the touch of magic,