Next we
have, in 1660, "Astraea Redux" on the "happy restoration" of Charles II.
In this also we can forebode little of the full-grown Dryden but his
defects. We see his tendency to exaggeration, and to confound physical
with metaphysical, as where he says of the ships that brought home the
royal brothers, that
"The joyful London meets
The princely York, himself alone a freight,
The Swiftsure groans beneath great Gloster's weight"
and speaks of the
"Repeated prayer
Which stormed the skies and ravished Charles from thence."
There is also a certain everydayness, not to say vulgarity, of phrase,
which Dryden never wholly refined away, and which continually tempts us
to sum up at once against him as the greatest poet that ever was or could
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.
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