No man, or body of men, can dam the stream of language.
Dryden is rather fond of _'em_ for _them_, but uses it rarely in his
prose. Swift himself prefers _'tis_ to _it is_, as does Emerson
still. In what Swift says of the poets, he may be fairly suspected of
glancing at Dryden, who was his kinsman, and whose prefaces and
translation of Virgil he ridicules in the "Tale of a Tub." Dryden is
reported to have said of him, "Cousin Swift is no poet." The Dean
began his literary career by Pindaric odes to Athenian Societies and
the like,--perhaps the greatest mistake as to his own powers of which
an author was ever guilty. It was very likely that he would send
these to his relative, already distinguished, for his opinion upon
them. If this was so, the justice of Dryden's judgment must have
added to the smart. Swift never forgot or forgave: Dryden was
careless enough to do the one, and large enough to do the other.
[30] Both Malone and Scott accept this gentleman's evidence without
question, but I confess suspicion of a memory that runs back more
than eighty-one years, and recollects a man before he had any claim
to remembrance. Dryden was never poor, and there is at Oxford a
portrait of him painted in 1664, which represents him in a superb
periwig and laced band.
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