to his diction and his versification. It was on this account, in
all probability, that he so eagerly adopted, and so reluctantly
abandoned, the practice of rhyming in his plays. What is
unnatural appears less unnatural in that species of verse than in
lines which approach more nearly to common conversation; and in
the management of the heroic couplet Dryden has never been
equalled. It is unnecessary to urge any arguments against a
fashion now universally condemned. But it is worthy of
observation, that, though Dryden was deficient in that talent
which blank verse exhibits to the greatest advantage, and was
certainly the best writer of heroic rhyme in our language, yet
the plays which have, from the time of their first appearance,
been considered as his best, are in blank verse. No experiment
can be more decisive.

It must be allowed that the worst even of the rhyming tragedies
contains good description and magnificent rhetoric. But, even
when we forget that they are plays, and, passing by their
dramatic improprieties, consider them with reference to the
language, we are perpetually disgusted by passages which it is
difficult to conceive how any author could have written, or any
audience have tolerated, rants in which the raving violence of
the manner forms a strange contrast with the abject tameness of
the thought. The author laid the whole fault on the audience,
and declared that, when he wrote them, he considered them bad
enough to please. This defence is unworthy of a man of genius,
and after all, is no defence. Otway pleased without rant; and so
might Dryden have done, if he had possessed the powers of Otway.
The fact is, that he had a tendency to bombast, which, though
subsequently corrected by time and thought, was never wholly