[65] Conquest of Grenada.
[66] This recalls a striking verse of Alfred de Musset:--
"La muse est toujours belle.
Meme pour l'insense, meme pour l'impuissant,
_Car sa beaute pour nous, c'est notre amour pour elle._"
[67] Rival Ladies.
[68] Don Sebastian.
[69] Don Sebastian.
[70] Cleomenes.
[71] All for Love.
[72] Dryden, with his wonted perspicacity, follows Ben Jonson in
calling Donne "the greatest wit, though not the best poet, of our
nation." (Dedication of Eleonora.) Even as a poet Donne
"Had in him those brave translunary things
That our first poets had."
To open vistas for the imagination through the blind wall of the
senses as he could sometimes do, is the supreme function of poetry.
[73] My own judgment is my sole warrant for attributing these
extracts from Oedipus to Dryden rather than Lee.
[74] Recollections of Rogers, p. 165.
[75] Nicholls's Reminiscences of Gray. Pickering's edition of Gray's
Works, Vol. V. p. 35.
[76] Let one suffice for all. In the "Royal Martyr," Porphyrius.
awaiting his execution, says to Maximin, who had wished him for a
son-in-law:--
"Where'er thou stand'st, I'll level at that place
My gushing blood, and spout it at thy face;
Thus not by marriage we our blood will join;
Nay, more, my arms shall throw my head at thine.
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