[39] The Doctor was a capital judge of the substantial value of the
goods he handled, but his judgment always seems that of the thumb and
forefinger. For the shades, the disposition of colors, the beauty of
the figures, he has as good as no sense whatever. The critical parts
of his Life of Dryden seem to me the best of his writing in this
kind. There is little to be gleaned after him. He had studied his
author, which he seldom did, and his criticism is sympathetic, a
thing still rarer with him. As illustrative of his own habits, his
remarks on Dryden's reading are curious.
[40] Perhaps the hint was given by a phrase of Corneille, _monarque
en peinture_. Dryden seldom borrows, unless from Shakespeare, without
improving, and he borrowed a great deal. Thus in "Don Sebastian" of
suicide:--
"Brutus and Cato might discharge their souls,
And give them furloughs for the other world;
But we, like sentries, are obliged to stand
In starless nights and wait the appointed hour."
The thought is Cicero's, but how it is intensified by the "starless
nights"! Dryden, I suspect, got it from his favorite, Montaigne, who
says, "Que nous ne pouvons abandonner cette garnison du monde, sans
le commandement exprez de celuy qui nous y a mis.
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