The imagination is notoriously most active when the external
world is shut out. In sleep its illusions are perfect. They
produce all the effect of realities. In darkness its visions are
always more distinct than in the light. Every person who amuses
himself with what is called building castles in the air must have
experienced this. We know artists who, before they attempt to
draw a face from memory, close their eyes, that they may recall a
more perfect image of the features and the expression. We are
therefore inclined to believe that the genius of Milton may have
been preserved from the influence of times so unfavourable to it
by his infirmity. Be this as it may, his works at first enjoyed
a very small share of popularity. To be neglected by his
contemporaries was the penalty which he paid for surpassing them.
His great poem was not generally studied or admired till writers
far inferior to him had, by obsequiously cringing to the public
taste, acquired sufficient favour to reform it.

Of these, Dryden was the most eminent. Amidst the crowd of
authors who, during the earlier years of Charles the Second,
courted notoriety by every species of absurdity and affectation,
he speedily became conspicuous. No man exercised so much
influence on the age. The reason is obvious. On no man did the
age exercise so much influence. He was perhaps the greatest of
those whom we have designated as the critical poets; and his
literary career exhibited, on a reduced scale, the whole history
of the school to which he belonged,--the rudeness and
extravagance of its infancy,--the propriety, the grace, the
dignified good sense, the temperate splendour of its maturity.
His imagination was torpid, till it was awakened by his judgment.
He began with quaint parallels and empty mouthing. He gradually