dissolve the image of the battle in a moment. The whole poem
reminds us of Lucan, and of the worst parts of Lucan,--the sea-
fight in the Bay of Marseilles, for example. The description of
the two fleets during the night is perhaps the only passage which
ought to be exempted from this censure. If it was from the Annus
Mirabilis that Milton formed his opinion, when he pronounced
Dryden a good rhymer but no poet, he certainly judged correctly.
But Dryden was, as we have said, one of those writers in whom the
period of imagination does not precede, but follow, the period of
observation and reflection.

His plays, his rhyming plays in particular, are admirable
subjects for those who wish to study the morbid anatomy of the
drama. He was utterly destitute of the power of exhibiting real
human beings. Even in the far inferior talent of composing
characters out of those elements into which the imperfect process
of our reason can resolve them, he was very deficient. His men
are not even good personifications; they are not well-assorted
assemblages of qualities. Now and then, indeed, he seizes a very
coarse and marked distinction, and gives us, not a likeness, but
a strong caricature, in which a single peculiarity is protruded,
and everything else neglected; like the Marquis of Granby at an
inn-door, whom we know by nothing but his baldness; or Wilkes,
who is Wilkes only in his squint. These are the best specimens
of his skill. For most of his pictures seem, like Turkey
carpets, to have been expressly designed not to resemble anything
in the heavens above, in the earth beneath, or in the waters
under the earth.

The latter manner he practises most frequently in his tragedies,