' Perhaps it may
be so; however, I much fear his instructions have edified out of their
place, and taught men to grow wiser in certain points where he never
intended they should."[32] The _monster-mongers_ is a terrible thrust,
when we remember some of the comedies and heroic plays which Dryden
ushered in this fashion. In the dedication of the "Annus" to the city of
London is one of those pithy sentences of which Dryden is ever afterwards
so full, and which he lets fall with a carelessness that seems always to
deepen the meaning: "I have heard, indeed, of some virtuous persons who
have ended unfortunately, but never of any virtuous nation; Providence is
engaged too deeply when the cause becomes so general." In his "account"
of the poem in a letter to Sir Robert Howard he says: "I have chosen to
write my poem in quatrains or stanzas of four in alternate rhyme, because
I have ever judged them more noble and of greater dignity, both for the
sound and number, than any other verse in use amongst us.... The learned
languages have certainly a great advantage of us in not being tied to the
slavery of any rhyme.... But in this necessity of our rhymes, I have
always found the couplet verse most easy, though not so proper for this
occasion; for there the work is sooner at an end, every two lines
concluding the labor of the poet.
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