"[67]
Nor was he altogether without pathos, though it is rare with him. The
following passage seems to me tenderly full of it:--
"Something like
That voice, methinks, I should have somewhere heard;
But floods of woe have hurried it far off
Beyond my ken of soul."[68]
And this single verse from "Aurengzebe":--
"Live still! oh live! live even to be unkind!"
with its passionate eagerness and sobbing repetition, is worth a
ship-load of the long-drawn treacle of modern self-compassion.
Now and then, to be sure, we come upon something that makes us hesitate
again whether, after all, Dryden was not grandiose rather than great, as
in the two passages that next follow:--
"He looks secure of death, superior greatness,
Like Jove when he made Fate and said, Thou art
The slave of my creation."[69]
"I'm pleased with my own work; Jove was not more
With infant nature, when his spacious hand
Had rounded this huge ball of earth and seas,
To give it the first push and see it roll
Along the vast abyss."[70]
I should say that Dryden is more apt to dilate our fancy than our
thought, as great poets have the gift of doing. But if he have not the
potent alchemy that transmutes the lead of our commonplace associations
into gold, as Shakespeare knows how to do so easily, yet his sense is
always up to the sterling standard; and though he has not added so much
as some have done to the stock of bullion which others afterwards coin
and put in circulation, there are few who have minted so many phrases
that are still a part of our daily currency.
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