Of the various kinds of poetry which Dryden occasionally practised, the drama was that which, until the last six years of his life, he chiefly relied on for support.  His style of tragedy, we have seen, varied with his improved taste, perhaps with the change of manners.  Although the heroic drama, as we have described it at length in the preceding pages, presented the strongest temptation to the exercise of argumentative poetry in sounding rhyme, Dryden was at length contented to abandon it for the more pure and chaste style of tragedy, which professes rather the representation of human beings, than the creation of ideal perfection, or fantastic and anomalous characters.  The best of Dryden’s performances in this latter style, are unquestionably “Don Sebastian,” and “All for Love.”  Of these, the former is in the poet’s very best manner; exhibiting dramatic persons, consisting of such bold and impetuous characters as he delighted to draw, well contrasted, forcibly marked, and engaged in an interesting succession of events.  To many tempers, the scene between Sebastian and Dorax must appear one of the most moving that ever adorned the British stage.  Of “All for Love,” we may say, that it is successful in a softer style of painting; and that so far as sweet and beautiful versification, elegant language, and occasional tenderness, can make amends for Dryden’s deficiencies in describing the delicacies of sentimental passion, they are to be found in abundance in that piece.  But on these, and on the poet’s other tragedies, we have enlarged in our preliminary notices prefixed to each piece.

Dryden’s comedies, besides being stained with the licence of the age (a licence which he seems to use as much from necessity as choice), have, generally speaking, a certain heaviness of character.  There are many flashes of wit; but the author has beaten his flint hard ere he struck them out.  It is almost essential to the success of a jest, that it should at least seem to be extemporaneous.  If we espy the joke at a distance, nay, if without seeing it we have the least reason to suspect we are travelling towards one, it is astonishing how the perverse obstinacy of our nature delights to refuse it currency.  When, therefore, as is often the case in Dryden’s comedies, two persons remain on the stage for no obvious purpose but to say good things, it is no wonder they receive but little thanks from an ungrateful audience.  The incidents, therefore, and the characters, ought to be comic; but actual jests, or bon mots, should be rarely introduced, and then naturally, easily, without an appearance of premeditation, and bearing a strict conformity to the character of the person who utters them.  Comic situation Dryden did not greatly study; indeed I hardly recollect any, unless in the closing scene of “The Spanish Friar,” which indicates any peculiar felicity of invention.  For comic character, he is usually contented to paint a generic representative of a certain class of men or women; a Father Dominic, for example, or a Melantha, with all the attributes of their calling and manners, strongly and divertingly portrayed, but without any individuality of character.  It is probable that, with these deficiencies, he felt the truth of his own acknowledgment, and that he was forced upon composing comedies to gratify the taste of the age, while the bent of his genius was otherwise directed.