The careers of the unscrupulous Caroline peers would have
been closed for us were they not visible in the reflected light of his
denunciation of them. Though Buckingham is forgotten and Shaftesbury's
name swallowed up in that of his more philanthropic descendant, we can
read of Achitophel and Zimri still, and feel something of the strength
and heat which he caught from a fiercely fought conflict and transmitted
with his own gravity and purposefulness into verse. The Thirty-nine
Articles are not a proper subject for poetry, but the sustained and
serious allegory which Dryden weaves round theological discussion
preserves his treatment of them from the fate of the controversialists
who opposed him. His work has wit and vitality enough to keep it sweet.
Strength and wit enter in different proportions into the work of his
successor, Alexander Pope--a poet whom admirers in his own age held to
be the greatest in our language. No one would think of making such a
claim now, but the detraction which he suffered at the hands of
Wordsworth and the Romantics, ought not to make us forget that Pope,
though not our greatest, not even perhaps a great, poet is incomparably
our most brilliant versifier. Dryden's strength turns in his work into
something more fragile and delicate, polished with infinite care like
lacquer, and wrought like filigree work to the last point of conscious
and perfected art.
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