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prose and poetry, he at length came to possess so high a posi tion amongst writers that his assistance was eagerly sought in all important literary enterprises.
But it is as a translator of the classics that Dryden s fame stands highest. He seized the true idea of the work of a translator, and had genius enough to carry out his own correct estimate of his chosen work. In his capacity as a translator he wrote lives of Polybius, Lucian, and Plutarch, to he prefixed to versions of their works, and he supplied a treatise on translation in a preface to the Epistles of Ovid. He also wrote poetical translations of Persius, and of part of Juvenal and Tacitus, and he was the author of a complete translation of the poems of Virgil, his most laborious work.
Other poems of Dryden s were his " Religio Laici," his " Ode for Cecilia s Day," and his " Poem on the Death of Mrs. Kil- ligrew, "the noblest ode," says Dr. Johnson, "that our lan guage ever has produced." He also reproduced part of Chaucer, but not with perfect success ; better success attended his render ing of Boccacio. His last work was his " Fables," including the first " Iliad" of Homer in English, intended as a specimen of the whole.
Dryden was not a learned poet, yet in the rich and varied imagery employed in his poems we trace an acquaintance with almost every branch of knowledge. In this he resembled his great predecessor, Shakspere, whom he was one of the first to hail as the prince of poets and to welcome to the high place that men have since learned by common consent to assign to him.
Of Dryden s works Pope said " he could select from them better specimens of every mode of poetry than any other English writer could supply." And Johnson adds, " What was said of Rome, adorned by Augustus, may be applied by an easy metaphor to English poetry embellished by Dryden ; latcritiam inrcnit, marmoream reliquit. He found it brick, and he left it marble."
But Dr. Johnson must have forgotten Milton, Shakspere, and others, and their prior poetical achievements, when he spoke of
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