rectangular walks. He rather resembled our Kents and Browns, who
imitating the great features of landscape without emulating them,
consulting the genius of the place, assisting nature and
carefully disguising their art, produced, not a Chamouni or a
Niagara, but a Stowe or a Hagley.

We are, on the whole, inclined to regret that Dryden did not
accomplish his purpose of writing an epic poem. It certainly
would not have been a work of the highest rank. It would not
have rivalled the Iliad, the Odyssey, or the Paradise Lost; but
it would have been superior to the productions of Apollonius,
Lucan, or Statius, and not inferior to the Jerusalem Delivered.
It would probably have been a vigorous narrative, animated with
something of the spirit of the old romances, enriched with much
splendid description, and interspersed with fine declamations and
disquisitions. The danger of Dryden would have been from aiming
too high; from dwelling too much, for example, on his angels of
kingdoms, and attempting a competition with that great writer who
in his own time had so incomparably succeeded in representing to
us the sights and sounds of another world. To Milton, and to
Milton alone, belonged the secrets of the great deep, the beach
of sulphur, the ocean of fire, the palaces of the fallen
dominations, glimmering through the everlasting shade, the silent
wilderness of verdure and fragrance where armed angels kept watch
over the sleep of the first lovers, the portico of diamond, the
sea of jasper, the sapphire pavement empurpled with celestial
roses, and the infinite ranks of the Cherubim, blazing with
adamant and gold. The council, the tournament, the procession,
the crowded cathedral, the camp, the guard-room, the chase, were
the proper scenes for Dryden.