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Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches — Volume 2 by Baron Thomas Babington Macaulay Macaulay
page 57 of 488 (11%)
enemy without apprehension or molestation. We, in the same
manner, would rather assist our political adversaries to drink
with us of that fountain of intellectual pleasure, which should
be the common refreshment of both parties, than disturb and
pollute it with the havoc of unseasonable hostilities.

Macflecnoe is inferior to Absalom and Achitophel only in the
subject. In the execution it is even superior. But the greatest
work of Dryden was the last, the Ode on Saint Cecilia's Day. It
is the masterpiece of the second class of poetry, and ranks but
just below the great models of the first. It reminds us of the
Pedasus of Achilles--

os, kai thnetos eon, epeth ippois athanatoisi.

By comparing it with the impotent ravings of the heroic tragedies
we may measure the progress which the mind of Dryden had made.
He had learned to avoid a too audacious competition with higher
natures, to keep at a distance from the verge of bombast or
nonsense, to venture on no expression which did not convey a
distinct idea to his own mind. There is none of that "darkness
visible" of style which he had formerly affected, and in which
the greatest poets only can succeed. Everything is definite,
significant, and picturesque. His early writings resembled the
gigantic works of those Chinese gardeners who attempt to rival
nature herself, to form cataracts of terrific height and sound,
to raise precipitous ridges of mountains, and to imitate in
artificial plantations the vastness and the gloom of some
primeval forest. This manner he abandoned; nor did he ever adopt
the Dutch taste which Pope affected, the trim parterres, and the
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