Trust on, and think to-morrow will repay;
To-morrow's falser than the former day,
Lies worse, and, while it says we shall be blest
With some new joys, cuts off what we possest.
Strange cozenage! none would live past years again,
Yet all hope pleasure in what yet remain,
And from the dregs of life think to receive
What the first sprightly running could not give.
I'm tired of waiting for this chymic gold
Which fools us young and beggars us when old."

The "first sprightly running" of Dryden's vintage was, it must be
confessed, a little muddy, if not beery; but if his own soil did not
produce grapes of the choicest flavor, he knew where they were to be had;
and his product, like sound wine, grew better the longer it stood upon
the lees. He tells us, evidently thinking of himself, that in a poet,
"from fifty to threescore, the balance generally holds even in our colder
climates, for he loses not much in fancy, and judgment, which is the
effect of observation, still increases. His succeeding years afford him
little more than the stubble of his own harvest, yet, if his constitution
be healthful, his mind may still retain a decent vigor, and the gleanings
of that of Ephraim, in comparison with others, will surpass the vintage
of Abiezer."[12] Since Chaucer, none of our poets has had a constitution
more healthful, and it was his old age that yielded the best of him. In
him the understanding was, perhaps, in overplus for his entire good
fortune as a poet, and that is a faculty among the earliest to mature. We
have seen him, at only ten years, divining the power of reason in
Polybius.[13] The same turn of mind led him later to imitate the French
school of tragedy, and to admire in Ben Jonson the most correct of
English poets. It was his imagination that needed quickening, and it is