The works of John Dryden, now first collected in eighteen volumes. Volume 13

In Saturn's reign, at Nature's early birth, There was that thing called Chastity on earth; When in a narrow cave, their common shade, The sheep, the shepherds, and their gods we...

Look round the habitable world, how few Know their own good, or, knowing it, pursue. How void of reason are our hopes and fears! What in the conduct of our life appears So well...

I said only from Ennius; but I may safely carry it higher, as far as Livius Andronicus, who, as I have said formerly, taught the first play at Rome, in the year _ab urbe condita...

But, to return to my purpose. When there is any thing deficient in numbers and sound, the reader is uneasy and unsatisfied; he wants something of his complement, desires somewha...

Though he was of as deep reach, and easy dispatch of business, as any in his time, yet he designedly lived beneath his true character. Men had oftentimes meddled in public affai...

Thus, my lord, I have, as briefly as I could, given your lordship, and by you the world, a rude draught of what I have been long labouring in my imagination, and what I had inte...

They who will not grant me, that pleasure is one of the ends of poetry, but that it is only a means of compassing the only end, which is instruction, must yet allow, that, witho...

Nor is it old Donatus only who relates this; we have the same account from another very credible and ancient author; so that here we have the judgment of Cicero, and the people...

But to proceed:--Dacier justly taxes Casaubon, saying, that the Satires of Lucilius were wholly different in specie, from those of Ennius and Pacuvius. Casaubon was led into tha...

Grieved though I am an ancient friend to lose, } I like the solitary seat he chose, } In quiet Cumæ[78] fixing his repose: } Where, far from noisy Rome, secure he lives, And one...

Free! what, and fettered with so many chains? Canst thou no other master understand Than him that freed thee by the prætor's wand?[248] Should he, who was thy lord, command thee...

The wishes and desires of all good men, which have attended your lordship from your first appearance in the world, are at length accomplished, from your obtaining those honours...

A man who is resolved to praise an author, with any appearance of justice, must be sure to take him on the strongest side, and where he is least liable to exceptions. He is ther...

The story of this Cyclops, whose name was Polyphemus, so famous in the Grecian fables, was, that Ulysses, who, with his company, was driven on the coast of Sicily, where those C...

Ours and the French can at best but fall into blank verse, which is a fault in prose. The misfortune indeed is common to us both; but we deserve more compassion, because we are...

All the studious, and particularly the poets, about the end of August, began to set themselves on work, refraining from writing during the heats of the summer. They wrote by nig...

It was the opinion both of Grecians and Romans, that the gods, in visions and dreams, often revealed to their favourites a cure for their diseases, and sometimes those of others...

I have found it not more difficult to translate Virgil, than to find such patrons as I desire for my translation. For, though England is not wanting in a learned nobility, yet s...

Thus I might safely confine myself to my native country; but if I would only cross the seas, I might find in France a living Horace and a Juvenal, in the person of the admirable...

Hourly we see some raw pin-feathered thing Attempt to mount, and fights and heroes sing; Who for false quantities was whipt at school But t'other day, and breaking grammar-rule;...

[142] Milo, of Crotona; who, for a trial of his strength, going to rend an oak, perished in the attempt; for his arms were caught in the trunk of it, and he was devoured by wild...

I first transferred to Rome Sicilian strains; Nor blushed the Doric Muse to dwell on Mantuan plains. But when I tried her tender voice, too young, And fighting kings and bloody...

But hold, my Muse! thy needless flight restrain, Unless, like him, thou could'st a verse indite: To think his fancy to describe, is vain, Since nothing can discover light, but l...

Whoe'er thou art, whose forward years are bent On state affairs, to guide the government; Hear first what Socrates[220] of old has said To the loved youth, whom he at Athens bre...

He was of a very swarthy complexion, which might proceed from the southern extraction of his father; tall and wide-shouldered, so that he may be thought to have described himsel...

To the dear mistress of my love-sick mind, Her swain a pretty present has designed: I saw two stock-doves billing, and ere long Will take the nest, and hers shall be the young.

Still shall I hear, and never quit the score, Stunned with hoarse Codrus'[51] Theseid, o'er and o'er? Shall this man's elegies and t'other's play Unpunished murder a long summer...

[22] The original runs thus: "_Et tamen in illis veteribus nostris quæ Menippum imitati, non interpretati, quadam hilaritate conspersimus, multa admis admista ex intima philosop...

[86] Lachesis is one of the three destinies, whose office was to spin the life of every man; as it was of Clotho to hold the distaff, and Atropos to cut the thread.

'Tis what I have been conning in my mind; Nor are they verses of a vulgar kind. "Come, Galatea! come! the seas forsake! What pleasures can the tides with their hoarse murmurs ma...

[115] He alludes to the known fable of Niobe, in Ovid. Amphion was her husband. Pæan was Apollo; who with his arrows killed her children, because she boasted that she was more f...