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John Marshall did ample justice to his father's labors, and when only fourteen years old was thoroughly familiar with the writings of Shakespeare, Dryden, Milton, and Pope, and could repeat by heart nearly the whole of the "Essay on Man." These poets were always his favorites, and in mature life he would quote them with readiness and the keenest relish.
All the skill of that writer could never make that poetical, or a fine panegyric, which is in its own nature removed from the very appearance of poetry; but friendship, good nature, or a coincidence of party, will sometimes engage the greatest men to combat in defence of trifles, and even against their own judgment, as Dryden finely expresses it in his Address to Congreve, "Vindicate a friend."
Cooper, author of the Muses Library, is of opinion that he preceded Chaucer, and observes that in more places than one that great poet seems to copy Langland; but I am rather inclined to believe that he was cotemporary with him, which accounts for her observation, and my conjecture is strengthened by the consideration of his stile, which is equally unmusical and obsolete with Chaucer's; and tho' Dryden has told us that Chaucer exceeded those who followed him at 50 or 60 years distance, in point of smoothness, yet with great submission to his judgment, I think there is some alteration even in Skelton and Harding, which will appear to the reader to the best advantage by a quotation.
"Intensive rather than expansive, fanciful rather than imaginative, and increasingly restrictive in its range and appeal": that is Professor Schelling's expert summary of the poetic tendencies of the age. And then the lyric impulse died away in England. Dryden could be magnificently sonorous in declamation and satire, but he lacked the singing voice.
Accordingly we find that Dryden had no other way of satisfying himself of the pretensions of Milton in the epic style but by translating his anomalous work into rhyme and dramatic dialogue. So there are connoisseurs who give you the subject, the grouping, the perspective, and all the mechanical circumstances of a picture; but they never say a word about the expression.
No man can say, he ever had a fit subject for his wit, and did not then raise himself as high above the rest of poets, The same keenness of appreciation is found in Dryden's estimate of other writers who might have seemed to lie beyond the field of his immediate vision. Dryden, Poetic Works, p. 161. Comp.
The oldest inhabitant now at Ratcliff remembers that there was a cross here the name survived until the other day, attached to a little street, but that is now gone. It is mentioned in Dryden. And on the Queen's Accession, in 1837, she was proclaimed, among other places, at Ratcliff Cross but why, no one knows.
But I have read Dryden, not indeed without pleasure in his masterly exquisite ease and sureness of statement and his occasional touches of admirable good sense, yet with no slightest liberation of spirit, with no degree, greater or less, of that magical and marvellous evocation, of inward resource, whose blessed surprise now and then in life makes for us angelic moments, and feelingly persuades us that our earth also is a star and in the sky.
A gentleman should know those which I call classical works, in every language; such as Boileau, Corneille, Racine, Moliere, etc., in French; Milton, Dryden, Pope, Swift, etc., in English; and the three authors above mentioned in Italian; whether you have any such in German I am not quite sure, nor, indeed, am I inquisitive.
He that speaks only what he has learned speaks what the world will not long or greatly desire to learn from him. "Shakspeare," said Dryden, not having the fear of Locke before his eyes, "was naturally learned"; but whoever is quite destitute of natural learning will never achieve winged words by dint and travail of other erudition.
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