The works of John Dryden; in verse and prose, with a life Volume 1 - Softcover

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1837 edition. Excerpt: ...and I join with Mr. Evelyn in the confession of it, with this additional advantage to him, that his reputation is already established in this Poet, mine is to make its fortune in the world. If I have been any where obscure, in following our common author, or if Lucretius himself is to be condemned, I refer myself to his excellent annotations, which I have often read, and always with some new pleasure. My preface begins already to swell upon me, and looks as if I were afraid of my reader, by so tedious a bespeaking of him: and yet I have Horace and Theocritus upon my hands; but the Greek gentleman shall quickly be disVOL. I.--12 patched, becuase I have more business with tho Roman. That which distingushes Theocritus from all other Poets, both Greek and Latin, and which raises him even abovo Virgil in his Eclogues, is tho inimitable tenderness of his passions, and the natural expression of them in words so becoming of a pastoral. A simplicity shines through all he writes: he shows his art and learning by disguising both. His shepherds never rise above their country education in their complaints of love. There is the same difc ference betwixt him and Virgil, as there is betwixt Tasso's Aminta and the Pastor Fido of Guarini. Virgil's shepherds are too well read in the philosophy of Epicurus and of Plato f and Guarini's seem to have been bred in courts J but Theocritus and Tasso have taken theirs from cottages and plains. It was said of TssSo, in relation to his similitudes, mai esce del bosco; that he never departed from the woods, that is, all his comparisons were taken from the country. The same may be said of our Theocritus. He is softer than Ovid; he touches the passions more delicately, and performs all this out of his own fund, without diving...