Shakespeare's contemporaries. We cannot look back on him with the mingled exultation and sorrow which moves our hearts when we think of the blind prophet who uttered thoughts too pure and holy for a generation which knew him not, and in the midst of which he moved a stranger and a pilgrim.
On the page of the annals of letters the name of Dryden will stand as one of our greatest literary men—bold, brilliant, versatile, comprehensive—as one who aided our language in its development, and has given dignity, grace, and harmony to our versification. He was not one of those master spirits who enrich by their genius the thought of the world, and are "the unacknowledged legislators of mankind." Still less to the satirist and dramatist of the Restoration, was
"That sublimer inspiration given,
Which glows in Shakespeare's or in Milton's page,
The pomp and prodigality of Heaven."
