Critical and Miscellaneous Essays
Format: Paperback
ISBN13: 9780217815451
Paperback|9780217815451
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: DRYDEN. Edinburgh Review, 1828.] The public voice has assigned to Dryden the first place in the second rank of our poets?no mean station in a table of intellectual precedency so rich in illustrious names. It is allowed that, even of the few who were his superiors in genius, none has exercised a more extensive or permanent influence on the national habits of thought and expression. His life was commensurate with the period during which a great revolution in the public taste was effected; and in that revolution he played the part of Cromwell. By unscrupulously taking the lead in its wildest excesses, he obtained the absolute guidance of it. By trampling on laws, he acquired the authority of a legislator. By signalising himself as the most daring and irreverent of rebels, he raised himself to the dignity of a recognised prince. He commenced his career by the most frantic outrages. He terminated it in the repose of established sovereignty?the author of a new code, the root of a new dynasty. Of Dryden, however, as of almost every man who has been distinguished either in the literary or in the political world, it may be said that the course which he pursued, and the effect which he produced, depended less on his personal qualities than on the circumstances in which he was placed. Those who have read history with discrimination know the fallacy of those panegyrics and invectives, which represent individuals as effecting great moral and intellectual revolutions, subverting established systems, and imprinting a new character on their age. The difference between one The Poetical Works of John Dryden. In two volumes. University Edition. London, 1826. man and another is by no means so great as the superstitious crowd supposes. But the same feelings which, in ancient Rome, pro...
| ISBN-13 | 9780217815451 |
|---|---|
| ISBN-10 | 0217815456 |
| Weight | 0.77 Pounds |
| Dimensions | 9.00 x 6.00 x 0.53 In |
| List Price | $22.54 |
| Format | Paperback |
|---|---|
| Pages | 232 pages |
| Publisher | |
| Published On | 2009-08-01 |
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