removed, and which showed itself in performances not designed to
please the rude mob of the theatre.

Some indulgent critics have represented this failing as an
indication of genius, as the profusion of unlimited wealth, the
wantonness of exuberant vigour. To us it seems to bear a nearer
affinity to the tawdriness of poverty, or the spasms and
convulsions of weakness. Dryden surely had not more imagination
than Homer, Dante, or Milton, who never fall into this vice. The
swelling diction of Aeschylus and Isaiah resembles that of
Almanzor and Maximin no more than the tumidity of a muscle
resembles the tumidity of a boil. The former is symptomatic of
health and strength, the latter of debility and disease. If ever
Shakspeare rants, it is not when his imagination is hurrying him
along, but when he is hurrying his imagination along,--when his
mind is for a moment jaded,--when, as was said of Euripides, he
resembles a lion, who excites his own fury by lashing himself
with his tail. What happened to Shakspeare from the occasional
suspension of his powers happened to Dryden from constant
impotence. He, like his confederate Lee, had judgment enough to
appreciate the great poets of the preceding age, but not judgment
enough to shun competition with them. He felt and admired their
wild and daring sublimity. That it belonged to another age than
that in which he lived and required other talents than those
which he possessed, that, in aspiring to emulate it, he was
wasting, in a hopeless attempt, powers which might render him
pre-eminent in a different career, was a lesson which he did not
learn till late. As those knavish enthusiasts, the French
prophets, courted inspiration by mimicking the writhings,
swoonings, and gaspings which they considered as its symptoms, he