floating verse and prose there is absolutely no hint of order whatever, save that, at one end of the MS., some
While from the ashes of their fire
Springs up a new and soft desire.
Like charmers, thrice they did invoke
"I was so well pleased with her luck that I thought I would try my own, and opened the following:—
'As when the winds their airy quarrel try,
Jostling from every quarter of the sky,
This way and that the mountain oak they bear,
His boughs they scatter and his branches tear;
With leaves and falling mast they spread the ground;
The hollow valleys echo to the sound;
Unmoved, the royal plant their fury mocks,
Or, shaken, clings more closely to the rocks:
For as he shoots his towering head on high,
So deep in earth his fixed foundations lie.'—Dryden's Virgil."
Nothing is ever so cynical as innocence, whether it be a child's or a mystic's. As a poet, Blake had some reason to be "well pleased" with his wife's curious windfall; for those verses of the illustrious Aphra's have some real energy and beauty of form, visible to those who care to make allowance, first for the conventional English of the time, and secondly for the naked violence of manner natural to that she-satyr, whose really great lyrical gifts are hopelessly overlaid and encrusted by the rough repulsive husk of her incredible style of speech. Even "Astræa" must however have fair play and fair praise; and the simple truth is that, when writing her best, this "unmentionable" poetess has a vigorous grace and a noble sense of metre to be found in no other song-writer of her time. One song, fished up by Mr. Dyce out of the weltering sewerage of Aphra's unreadable and unutterable plays, has a splendid quality of verse, and even some degree of sentiment not wholly porcine. Take four lines as a sample, and Blake's implied approval will hardly seem unjustifiable:—
From thy bright eyes he took those fires
Which round about in sport he hurled;
But 'twas from mine he took desires
Enough to undo the amorous world."
The strong and subtle cadence of that magnificent fourth verse gives evidence of so delicate an ear and such dexterous power of hand as no other poet between the Restoration date and Blake's own time has left proof of in serious or tragic song. Great as is Dryden's lyrical work in more ways than one, its main quality is mere strength of intellect and solidity of handling—the forcible and imperial manner of his satires; and in pure literal song- writing, which (rather than any 'ode' or
