In 1656 Cowley presented the public with a collection of Pindarique Odes-pompous lyrics in what the French call vers libres that is to say, lines of irregular length disposed on a whimsical system, which had lately received the approval of Corneille, and was, long after Cowley's death, to be raised by Racine into momentary dignity in the choral portions of Esther and Athalie. At that day the elaborate plan on which the odes of Pindar were built up was not understood, and Cowley's idea was that they were formed irregularly and spontaneously, more on a musical than a metrical system. As an example of the vicious Pindaric manner invented by Cowley, of his strange passion for conceit, and of his occasional felicity, the opening strophes of "The Muse" may here be given. It contains what is perhaps the most beautiful line Cowley has left behind him :

"Go, the rich chariot instantly prepare ;

The Queen, my Muse, will take the air;
Unruly Fancy with strong Judgment trace,
Put in nimble-footed Wit,

Smooth-pac'd Eloquence join with it,
Sound Memory with young Invention place,
Harness all the winged race.

Let the postilion Nature, mount, and let
The coachman Art be set.

And let the airy footmen running all beside,
Make a long row of goodly Pride.

Figures, Conceits, Raptures, and Sentences,

In a well-worded Dress.

And innocent Loves, and pleasant Truths, and useful Lies,
In all their gaudy liveries.

Mount, glorious Queen, thy travelling throne,

Where never yet did pry

The busy morning's curious eye,

The wheels of thy bold coach pass quick and free ;

And all's an open road to thee.

Whatever God did say,

Is all thy plain and smooth, uninterrupted way.
Nay, ev'n beyond His works thy voyages are known,
Thou hast thousand worlds too of thine own.

Thou speak'st, great Queen, in the same style as He,
And a new world leaps forth when Thou say'st, Let it be."

This uncouth and mistaken form of ode was unchallenged for some fifty years, when Congreve attempted a diversion in favour of regularity; no successful stand, however, was made against it until Gray began to write. This so-called "Pindarique ode" was for fifty or sixty years not only the universal medium for congratulatory lyrics and tumid occasional pieces, but it was for a long time almost the only variety allowed to the cultivators of the heroic couplet. Dryden succeeded in putting a noble organ music into it, but there can scarcely be mentioned one other ode than his second On Saint Cecilia's Day, which is a perfectly successful poem. The forgotten lyrists of the Restoration found it a particularly convenient instrument in their bound and inflexible fingers, and even the tuneless Shadwell could turn off Pindarique odes. But almost without exception those "majestic strains" are miserably flat. Concerning the value of Cowley's own verse criticism strangely differs. He had a very high ideal of the poetic vocation.. He is wonderfully felicitous sometimes in the structure of single lines, and those who are able to appreciate poetry of the class of which France has produced so much, the purely rhetorical and intellectual, will extend their approval to entire stanzas, and sometimes to entire poems. But it must be confessed that to the modern reader most of his "Song" is what, in another sense, he said that. Pindar's was-"unnavigable."

Another precursor of the classic school in poetry was Sir William Davenant (1606-1668), an uninspired but exceedingly active professional writer. He was mainly a writer of plays,

which will be mentioned in the next chapter, but he also pro ́duced an epic which attracted a great deal of notice. Davenant, whose parents were intimate friends of Shakespeare, was that poet's godson. His youth was spent in the house of Fulke Greville-Lord Brooke-the old Elizabethan worthy, until Brooke was murdered in 1628. Davenant succeeded Ben Jonson as poet laureate in 1637, and in 1638 collected his scattered verses into a volume called Madagascar. Up to this time he had been entirely identified with the old romantic school, but in 1650 we find him in Paris with Waller and Cowley, and converted to the new prosody of the former. He published in that year the first (and only) volume of an epic poem, called Gondibert, on a Lombard story. This poem is mainly interesting because of the extraordinary influence which it exercised over the early style of Dryden, who was slow in quite escaping from the fascination of it. Gondibert is Davenant's best production, but it is very obscure and ill-constructed. Its merit consists in the grace of some of the episodes, and in the sententious vigour of single lines. It is written in the four-line heroic stanza, with alternate rhymes, which Gray made so popular in the following century. Davenant's essays in

the heroic distich show that

with remarkable adroitness.

scarcely a poet.

fe he learned Waller's lesson

was a clever man of letters, but

The great writer of the period, the greatest poet in English literature between Milton and Wordsworth, was John Dryden (1631-1700). In comparison with this stately figure, those precursors of the classical school whom we have just mentioned pass into insignificance. Even Waller, though nothing can shake his importance as the founder of the school, is intellectually a dwarf by the side of Dryden. It should, however, be clearly perceived that the change from the romantic to the classical manner in English poetry, the rejection of the overflow in favour of the distich, had been carried out to the full before Dryden came to the front and stamped his own powerful character on the movement. Waller was writing excellent couplets before Dryden was born,

but it was part of Dryden's greatness not so much to introduce phases of thought as to adopt and illuminate them when they had once become national. For this reason, perhaps, he was not happy until all question of transition was over. He did not take up poetry in earnest till all intelligent Englishmen had decided what kind of poetry it was they wanted. And then Dryden, confident of his audience, made the distich of Waller an instrument on which to play his boldest music.

Dryden, the nephew of a local baronet, was born near Oundle, in Northamptonshire, and educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, where his famous portrait still adorns the hall. His early life is exceedingly obscure, and we possess very few contributions from it, either in prose or verse. In 1659, at the age of twenty-eight, he took part in the publication of a thin volume of three elegies on Oliver Cromwell. There are two simultaneous editions of this, one by itself, which is excessively rare, and the other in combination with Waller, with whom it is very interesting to find Dryden thus early identified, and Thomas Sprat (1636-1713), an imitator of Cowley, and afterwards Bishop of Rochester. At this time Gondibert was in fashion, and Dryden's stanzas are closely modelled on those of Davenant. The next year brought the Restoration, when every bush was vocal, and Dryden presented his share of tribute in his Astræa Redux. Here Waller was his model more than Davenant, but still there was little promise of high attainment. Dryden, as was afterwards remarked, was but "faintly distinguished in his thirtieth year." In 1661, in his Coronation Panegyric, his heroics are, for the first time, on a level with those of Waller and Davenant; and the writer has removed from his style a turbid affectation of wit which stuck to it from the bad models of his childhood. This and other short exercises bring us down to the year 1666, when Dryden published his first long piece, the historical poem of Annus Mirabilis, closely modelled upon Gondibert. It will easily be seen, however, from such a stanza as the following, that Dryden already was a far greater master of metre than Davenant had ever been :

"The ghosts of traitors from the bridge descend,
With bold fanatic spectres to rejoice;

About the fire into a dance they bend,

And sing their sabbath notes with feeble voice."

II

There can be no sense, however, in which Annus Mirabilis can be called a good poem. It is confused, violent, and affected, full of crudities of style and thought, and its fine passages, brilliant as they are, are mere purple patches. The theme was twofold--the progress of our naval war with Holland, and that of the great fire of London.

The character of Dryden's work now changed completely, and the change was coincident with the close of the first period of the classic epoch in England. Within a few months Cowley, Denham, and Davenant died, Waller was silent, Dryden turned his attention exclusively to the drama, and the only non-dramatic poetry produced was that of Milton, a magnificent survival from the romantic age. Late in 1663 Dryden had married the eldest daughter of the Earl of Berkshire, a woman who proved to be silly and peevish; they were not destined to enjoy much happiness together. The personal life of Dryden, however, is very vague to us, and the trustworthy anecdotes preserved about him are singularly few. We know, however, that he stepped at once into the honours and into the consideration enjoyed by his lately deceased forerunners, that he was now in general parlance "Mr. Dryden the poet," and that in 1670 he was made laureate and historiographer-royal. He was gradually absorbed by the writing of plays, of which an account will be given in the next chapter, and about 1667 he entered into an agreement to supply the players of the king's theatre with three plays a year, on exceedingly favourable terms. Dryden was not able to keep his part of the contract, but he wrote enough to bring him in a large theatrical income, and this was a period of high prosperity with him. He was also intimate with the great literary nobles of the court, and sunned himself in their favour almost without an interval, until, in 1675, he had the misfortune to quarrel with the malignant Earl