Dryden, at any rate, always had to have his copy set him at the
top of the page, and wrote ill or well accordingly. His mind (somewhat
solid for a poet) warmed slowly, but, once fairly heated through, he had
more of that good-luck of self-oblivion than most men. He certainly gave
even a liberal interpretation to Moliere's rule of taking his own
property wherever he found it, though he sometimes blundered awkwardly
about what was properly _his_; but in literature, it should be
remembered, a thing always becomes his at last who says it best, and thus
makes it his own.[43]
Mr. Savage Landor once told me that he said to Wordsworth: "Mr.
Wordsworth, a man may mix poetry with prose as much as he pleases, and it
will only elevate and enliven; but the moment he mixes a particle of
prose with his poetry, it precipitates the whole." Wordsworth, he added,
never forgave him. The always hasty Dryden, as I think I have already
said, was liable, like a careless apothecary's 'prentice, to make the
same confusion of ingredients, especially in the more mischievous way. I
cannot leave the "Annus Mirabilis" without giving an example of this.
Describing the Dutch prizes, rather like an auctioneer than a poet, he
says that
"Some English wool, vexed in a Belgian loom,
And into cloth of spongy softness made,
Did into France or colder Denmark doom,
To ruin with worse ware our staple trade.
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