change their nature and their name if pushed to excess. Of
justice and prudence, therefore, Dryden leaves his favourites
destitute. He did not care to give them what he could not give
without measure. The tyrants and ruffians are merely the heroes
altered by a few touches, similar to those which transformed the
honest face of Sir Roger de Coverley into the Saracen's head.
Through the grin and frown the original features are still
perceptible.

It is in the tragi-comedies that these absurdities strike us
most. The two races of men, or rather the angels and the
baboons, are there presented to us together. We meet in one
scene with nothing but gross, selfish, unblushing, lying
libertines of both sexes, who, as a punishment, we suppose, for
their depravity, are condemned to talk nothing but prose. But,
as soon as we meet with people who speak in verse, we know that
we are in society which would have enraptured the Cathos and
Madelon of Moliere, in society for which Oroondates would have
too little of the lover, and Clelia too much of the coquette.

As Dryden was unable to render his plays interesting by means of
that which is the peculiar and appropriate excellence of the
drama, it was necessary that he should find some substitute for
it. In his comedies he supplied its place, sometimes by wit, but
more frequently by intrigue, by disguises, mistakes of persons,
dialogues at cross purposes, hair-breadth escapes, perplexing
concealments, and surprising disclosures. He thus succeeded at
least in making these pieces very amusing.

In his tragedies he trusted, and not altogether without reason,