be made wholly out of prose.

"Heaven would no bargain for its blessings drive"

is an example. On the other hand, there are a few verses almost worthy of
his best days, as these:--

"Some lazy ages lost in sleep and ease,
No action leave to busy chronicles;
Such whose _supine felicity_ but makes
In story chasms, in epochas mistakes,
O'er whom Time gently shakes his wings of down,
Till with his silent sickle they are mown,"

These are all the more noteworthy, that Dryden, unless in argument, is
seldom equal for six lines together. In the poem to Lord Clarendon (1662)
there are four verses that have something of the "energy divine" for
which Pope praised his master.

"Let envy, then, those crimes within you see
From which the happy never must be free;
Envy that does with misery reside,
The joy and the revenge of ruined pride."

In his "Aurengzebe" (1675) there is a passage, of which, as it is a good
example of Dryden, I shall quote the whole, though my purpose aims mainly
at the latter verses:--

"When I consider life, 't is all a cheat;
Yet, fooled with Hope, men favor the deceit,