"He who lives to please, must please to live."

Without earnest convictions, no great or sound literature is conceivable.
But if Dryden mostly wanted that inspiration which comes of belief in and
devotion to something nobler and more abiding than the present moment and
its petulant need, he had, at least, the next best thing to that,--a
thorough faith in himself. He was, moreover, a man of singularly open
soul, and of a temper self-confident enough to be candid even with
himself. His mind was growing to the last, his judgment widening and
deepening, his artistic sense refining itself more and more. He confessed
his errors, and was not ashamed to retrace his steps in search of that
better knowledge which the omniscience of superficial study had
disparaged. Surely an intellect that is still pliable at seventy is a
phenomenon as interesting as it is rare. But at whatever period of his
life we look at Dryden, and whatever, for the moment, may have been his
poetic creed, there was something in the nature of the man that would not
be wholly subdued to what it worked in. There are continual glimpses of
something in him greater than he, hints of possibilities finer than
anything he has done. You feel that the whole of him was better than any
random specimens, though of his best, seem to prove. _Incessu patet_, he
has by times the large stride of the elder race, though it sinks too
often into the slouch of a man who has seen better days. His grand air
may, in part, spring from a habit of easy superiority to his competitors;
but must also, in part, be ascribed to an innate dignity of character.
That this pre-eminence should have been so generally admitted, during his
life, can only be explained by a bottom of good sense, kindliness, and
sound judgment, whose solid worth could afford that many a flurry of
vanity, petulance, and even error should flit across the surface and be
forgotten. Whatever else Dryden may have been, the last and abiding