In lyrical poetry, Dryden must be allowed to have no equal.  “Alexander’s Feast” is sufficient to show his supremacy in that brilliant department.  In this exquisite production, he flung from him all the trappings with which his contemporaries had embarrassed the ode.  The language, lofty and striking as the ideas are, is equally simple and harmonious; without far-fetched allusions, or epithets, or metaphors, the story is told as intelligibly as if it had been in the most humble prose.  The change of tone in the harp of Timotheus, regulates the measure and the melody, and the language of every stanza.  The hearer, while he is led on by the successive changes, experiences almost the feelings of the Macedonian and his peers; nor is the splendid poem disgraced by one word or line unworthy of it, unless we join in the severe criticism of Dr. Johnson, on the concluding stanzas.  It is true, that the praise of St. Cecilia is rather abruptly introduced as a conclusion to the account of the Feast of Alexander; and it is also true, that the comparison,

  “He raised a mortal to the sky,
  She drew an angel down,”

is inaccurate, since the feat of Timotheus was metaphorical, and that of Cecilia literal.  But, while we stoop to such criticism, we seek for blots in the sun.

Of Dryden’s other pindarics, some, as the celebrated “Ode to the Memory of Mrs. Killigrew,” are mixed with the leaven of Cowley; others, like the “Threnodia Augustalis,” are occasionally flat and heavy.  All contain passages of brilliancy, and all are thrown into a versification, melodious amidst its irregularity.  We listen for the completion of Dryden’s stanza, as for the explication of a difficult passage in music; and wild and lost as the sound appears, the ear is proportionally gratified by the unexpected ease with which harmony is extracted from discord and confusion.

The satirical powers of Dryden were of the highest order.  He draws his arrow to the head, and dismisses it straight upon his object of aim.  In this walk he wrought almost as great a reformation as upon versification in general; as will plainly appear, if we consider, that the satire, before Dryden’s time, bore the same reference to “Absalom and Achitophel,” which an ode of Cowley bears to “Alexander’s Feast.”  Butler and his imitators had adopted a metaphysical satire, as the poets in the earlier part of the century had created a metaphysical vein of serious poetry.[9] Both required store of learning to supply the perpetual expenditure of extraordinary and far-fetched illustration; the object of both was to combine and hunt down the strangest and most fanciful analogies; and both held the attention of the reader perpetually on the stretch, to keep up with the meaning of the author.  There can be no doubt, that this metaphysical vein was much better fitted for the burlesque than the sublime.  Yet the perpetual scintillation of Butler’s wit is too dazzling to be delightful;