brought against the lines he had written to the Duchess of York in the previous year. "I know," he writes, "I addressed them to a lady, and accordingly I affected the softness of expression, and the smoothness of measure rather than the height of thought, and in what I did endeavour, it is no vanity to say I have succeeded. I detest arrogance; but there is some difference betwixt that and a just defence." The fault of the measure in which "The Annus Mirabilis" is written, is that it breaks the sense. Though well tuned to Elegy in the hands of Gray, it is ill suited for a continuous narrative poem. Dr. Johnson has made one or two quotations to praise. Mr. Macaulay has done so to criticise and condemn. There are only two stanzas to which we would invite attention. The first has a pathos and simplicity not to be found elsewhere in the poem, which is rather to be admired for its strength and fire, than its sweetness.
"The careful husband had been long away,
Whom his chaste wife and little children mourn,
Who on their fingers learn to tell the day
On which their father promised to return."
The other is in a higher strain.
"Till now, alone the mighty nations strove,
The rest at gaze, without the lists did stand,
And thundering France, placed like a painted Jove,
Kept idle thunder in his lifted hand."
In 1667, "The Maiden Queen," a tragi-comedy, was given by Dryden to the stage, and was a favourite with Charles II.
He next revived, with alterations, "The Wild Gallant," which was now more successful than at its first representation.
It was after this that he and his predecessor in the laurel, Sir W. Davenant, set about the alteration of "The Tempest." The addition which they made to the plot of
