welcomed it with the same delight; or had his leisure and situation permitted him to dedicate his time to investigating moral problems, he might himself have led the way to deliverance from error and uncertainty.  But the dawn of reformation must ever be gradual, and the acquisitions even of those calculated to advance it must therefore frequently appear desultory and imperfect.  The author of the Novum Organum believed in charms and occult sympathy; and Dryden in the chimeras of judicial astrology, and probably in the jargon of alchemy.  When these subjects occur in his poetry, he dwells on them with a pleasure which shows the command they maintained over his mind.  Much of the astrological knowledge displayed in the Knight’s Tale is introduced, or at least amplified, by Dryden; and while, in the fable of the Cock and the Fox, he ridicules the doctrine of prediction from dreams, the inherent qualities of the four complexions,[17] and other abstruse doctrines of Paracelsus and his followers, we have good reason to suspect that, like many other scoffers, he believed in the efficacy and truth of the subject of his ridicule.  However this shade of credulity may injure Dryden’s character as a philosopher, we cannot regret its influence on his poetry.  Collins has thus celebrated Fairfax:—­

  “Prevailing poet, whose undoubting mind,
  Believed the magic wonders which he sung.”

Nor can there be a doubt that, as every work of imagination is tinged with the author’s passions and prejudices, it must be deep and energetic in proportion to the character of these impressions.  Those superstitious sciences and pursuits, which would, by mystic rites, doctrines, and inferences, connect us with the invisible world of spirits, or guide our daring researches to a knowledge of future events, are indeed usually found to cow, crush, and utterly stupefy, understandings of a lower rank; but if the mind of a man of acute powers, and of warm fancy, becomes slightly imbued with the visionary feelings excited by such studies, their obscure and undefined influence is ever found to aid the sublimity of his ideas, and to give that sombre and serious effect, which he can never produce, who does not himself feel the awe which it is his object to excite.  The influence of such a mystic creed is often felt where the cause is concealed; for the habits thus acquired are not confined to their own sphere of belief, but gradually extend themselves over every adjacent province:  and perhaps we may not go too far in believing, that he who has felt their impression, though only in one branch of faith, becomes fitted to describe, with an air of reality and interest, not only kindred subjects, but superstitions altogether opposite to his own.  The religion, which Dryden finally adopted, lent its occasional aid to the solemn colouring of some of his later productions, Tipon which subject we have elsewhere enlarged at some length.[18]