Technically they are often clever; according to that definition of
literature which includes a moral standard, they are not literature at all.
To them, however, we shall briefly return at the end of the chapter.

JOHN DRYDEN, 1631-1700. No other English literary period is so thoroughly
represented and summed up in the works of a single man as is the
Restoration period in John Dryden, a writer in some respects akin to Ben
Jonson, of prolific and vigorous talent without the crowning quality of
genius.

Dryden, the son of a family of Northamptonshire country gentry, was born in
1631. From Westminster School and Cambridge he went, at about the age of
twenty-six and possessed by inheritance of a minimum living income, to
London, where he perhaps hoped to get political preferment through his
relatives in the Puritan party. His serious entrance into literature was
made comparatively late, in 1659, with a eulogizing poem on Cromwell on the
occasion of the latter's death. When, the next year, Charles II was
restored, Dryden shifted to the Royalist side and wrote some poems in honor
of the king. Dryden's character should not be judged from this incident and
similar ones in his later life too hastily nor without regard to the spirit
of the times. Aside from the fact that Dryden had never professed,
probably, to be a radical Puritan, he certainly was not, like Milton and
Bunyan, a heroic person, nor endowed with deep and dynamic convictions; on
the other hand, he was very far from being base or dishonorable--no one can
read his works attentively without being impressed by their spirit of
straightforward manliness. Controlled, like his age, by cool common sense
and practical judgment, he kept his mind constantly open to new
impressions, and was more concerned to avoid the appearance of bigotry and
unreason than to maintain that of consistency. In regard to politics and
even religion he evidently shared the opinion, bred in many of his