Troilus, in that between Antony and Ventidius, and in that
between Sebastian and Dorax. Nothing of the same kind in
Shakspeare is equal to them, except the quarrel between Brutus
and Cassius, which is worth them all three.

Some years before his death, Dryden altogether ceased to write
for the stage. He had turned his powers in a new direction, with
success the most splendid and decisive. His taste had gradually
awakened his creative faculties. The first rank in poetry was
beyond his reach; but he challenged and secured the most
honourable place in the second. His imagination resembled the
wings of an ostrich; it enabled him to run, though not to soar.
When he attempted the highest flights, he became ridiculous; but,
while he remained in a lower region, he out-stripped all
competitors.

All his natural and all his acquired powers fitted him to found a
good critical school of poetry. Indeed he carried his reforms
too far for his age. After his death our literature retrograded;
and a century was necessary to bring it back to the point at
which he left it. The general soundness and healthfulness of his
mental constitution, his information, of vast superficies, though
of small volume, his wit scarcely inferior to that of the most
distinguished followers of Donne, his eloquence, grave,
deliberate, and commanding, could not save him from disgraceful
failure as a rival of Shakspeare, but raised him far above the
level of Boileau. His command of language was immense. With him
died the secret of the old poetical diction of England,--the art
of producing rich effects by familiar words. In the following
century it was as completely lost as the Gothic method of