John Dryden (1631 – 1700)
Influential English poet, literary critic, and playwright.
A man is to be cheated into passion,but reasoned into truth.
Thus having said, she turn'd, and made appear
Her neck refulgent, and dishevell'd hair,
Which, flowing from her shoulders, reached the ground,
And widely spread ambrosial scents around.
In length of train descends her sweeping gown;
And, by her graceful walk, the Queen of Love is known.
Whatever is, is in its causes just.
Give, you gods,
Give to your boy, your Caesar,
The rattle of a globe to play withal,
This gewgaw world, and put him cheaply off;
I'll not be pleased with less than Cleopatra.
Of ancient race by birth, but nobler yet
In his own worth.
Pains of love be sweeter far
Than all other pleasures are.
Railing and praising were his usual themes;
And both, to show his judgment, in extremes;
So over violent, or over civil,
That every man with him was God or devil.
Sooth'd with the sound, the king grew vain;
Fought all his battles o'er again;
And thrice he routed all his foes, and thrice he slew the slain.
'Twas now the month in which the world began
(If March beheld the first created man):
And since the vernal equinox, the Sun,
In Aries, twelve degrees, or more, had run;
When casting up his eyes against the light,
Both month, and day, and hour, he measur'd right;
And told more truly than th' Ephemeris:
For Art may err, but Nature cannot miss.
Thus numbering times and seasons in his breast,
His second crowing the third hour confess'd.
To begin then with Shakespeare; he was the man who of all Modern, and perhaps Ancient Poets, had the largest and most comprehensive soul. All the Images of Nature were still present to him, and he drew them not laboriously, but luckily: when he describes any thing, you more than see it, you feel it too. Those who accuse him to have wanted learning, give him the greater commendation: he was naturally learn'd; he needed not the spectacles of Books to read Nature; he look'd inwards, and found her there. I cannot say he is every where alike; were he so, I should do him injury to compare him with the greatest of Mankind. He is many times flat, insipid; his Comick wit degenerating into clenches; his serious swelling into Bombast. But he is alwayes great, when some great occasion is presented to him: no man can say he ever had a fit subject for his wit, and did not then raise himself as high above the rest of the Poets,
There is a pleasure sure
In being mad which none but madmen know.
Look round the habitable world: how few
Know their own good, or knowing it, pursue.
Her wit was more than man, her innocence a child.
Never was patriot yet, but was a fool.
When I consider life, 'tis all a cheat;
Yet, fooled with hope, men favor the deceit;
Trust on, and think tomorrow will repay.
Tomorrow's falser than the former day.
None would live past years again,
Yet all hope pleasure in what yet remain;
And from the dregs of life think to receive
What the first sprightly running could not give.
The gods, (if gods to goodness are inclined—
If acts of mercy touch their heavenly mind),
And, more than all the gods, your generous heart,
Conscious of worth, requite its own desert!
Men are but children of a larger growth;
Our appetites as apt to change as theirs,
And full as craving, too, and full as vain.
Mankind is ever the same, and nothing lost out of nature, though everything is altered.
All empire is no more than power in trust.