that it cost him more days to correct, than it did hours to compose. There is every reason to believe that Dryden, especially at this period, wrote with marvellous rapidity. It is the more likely, inasmuch as he was certainly "one of those writers in whom the period of imagination does not precede, but follow the period of observation and reflection."[1] Mr. Hallam, so cold and severe a critic on the ode we are speaking of, admits that Dryden had "rapidity of conception and readiness of expression. He never loiters about a single thought or image, never labours about the turn of a phrase. The impression upon our minds that he wrote with exceeding ease is irresistible, and I do not know that we have any evidence to repel it."
No wonder if his long practice in the heroic couplet had now made it his most natural utterance. In it he had written numerous tragedies, prologues, epilogues, satires, and didactic poems. No wonder that he translated Virgil in a far shorter time than Pope paraphrased Homer. It is to be regretted that Dryden did not seize on the Greek, and leave the Latin epic to his more refined and polished follower. In a letter he says of this very point: "My thoughts at present are fixed on Homer, and by my translation of the first 'Iliad,' I find him a poet more according to my genius than Virgil, and consequently hope I may do more justice to his more fiery way of writing, which as it is liable to some faults, so is it capable of more beauties, than the exactness and sobriety of Virgil."
But however vigorous were his mental powers, his bodily frame was now too much shattered for him to continue so vast an undertaking as an English version of Homer. He was also now busy with the "Fables," and was waging war with Blackmore, Milbourne and Collier. If ever
- ↑ Macaulay
