nicer and more delicate touches of satire, which consist in fine raillery.  But whatever was the opinion of his cooler moments, the poet’s practice was dictated by the furious party-spirit of the times, and the no less keen stimulative of personal resentment.  It is perhaps to be regretted, that so much energy of thought, and so much force of expression, should have been wasted in anatomising such criminals as Shadwell and Settle; yet we cannot account the amber less precious, because they are grubs and flies that are enclosed within it.

The “Fables” of Dryden are the best examples of his talents as a narrative poet; those powers of composition, description, and narration, which must have been called into exercise by the Epic Muse, had his fate allowed him to enlist among her votaries.  The “Knight’s Tale,” the longest and most laboured of Chaucer’s stories, possesses a degree of regularity which might satisfy the most severe critic.  It is true, that the honour arising from thence must be assigned to the more ancient bard, who had himself drawn his subject from an Italian model; but the high and decided preference which Dryden has given to this story, although somewhat censured by Trapp, enables us to judge how much the poet held an accurate combination of parts, and coherence of narrative, essentials of epic poetry.[10] That a classic scholar like Trapp should think the plan of the “Knight’s Tale” equal to that of the Iliad, is a degree of candour not to be hoped for; but surely to an unprejudiced reader, a story which exhausts in its conclusion all the interest which it has excited in its progress, which, when terminated, leaves no question to be asked, no personage undisposed of, and no curiosity unsatisfied, is, abstractedly considered, more gratifying than the history of a few weeks of a ten years’ war, commencing long after the siege had begun, and ending long before the city was taken.  Of the other tales, it can hardly be said that their texture is more ingenious or closely woven than that of ordinary novels or fables:  but in each of them Dryden has displayed the superiority of his genius, in selecting for amplification and ornament those passages most susceptible of poetical description.  The account of the procession of the Fairy Chivalry in the “Flower and the Leaf;” the splendid description of the champions who came to assist at the tournament in the “Knight’s Tale;” the account of the battle itself, its alternations and issue,—­if they cannot be called improvements on Chaucer, are nevertheless so spirited a transfusion of his ideas into modern verse, as almost to claim the merit of originality.  Many passages might be shown in which this praise may be carried still higher, and the merit of invention added to that of imitation.  Such is the description of the commencement of the tourney, which is almost entirely original, and most of the ornaments in the translations from Boccacio, whose prose fictions demanded more additions from the poet than the exuberant imagery of Chaucer.  To select instances would be endless; but every reader of poetry has by heart the description of Iphigenia asleep, nor are the lines in “Theodore and Honoria,"[11] which describe the approach of the apparition, and its effects upon animated and inanimated nature even before it becomes visible, less eminent for beauties of the terrific order: