meditating a translation of the whole of Homer-- both the Iliad and the Odyssey. He died at his house in London, on May-day of 1700, and was buried with great pomp and splendour in Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey. 13. His best satire is the +Absalom and Achitophel+; his best specimen of reasoning in verse is +The Hind and the Panther+. His best ode is his +Ode to the Memory of Mrs Anne Killigrew+. Dryden’s style is distinguished by its power, sweep, vigour, and “long majestic march.” No one has handled the heroic couplet-- and it was this form of verse that he chiefly used-- with more vigour than Dryden; Pope was more correct, more sparkling, more finished, but he had not Dryden’s magnificent march or sweeping impulsiveness. “The fire and spirit of the ‘Annus Mirabilis,’” says his latest critic, “are nothing short of amazing, when the difficulties which beset the author are remembered. The glorious dash of the performance is his own.” His prose, though full of faults, is also very vigorous. It has “something of the lightning zigzag vigour and splendour of his verse.” He always writes clear, homely, and pure English,-- full of force and point. Many of his most pithy lines are often quoted:-- “Men are but children of a larger growth.” “Errors, like straws, upon the surface flow; He that would search for pearls must dive below.” “The greatest argument for love is love.” “The secret pleasure of the generous act, Is the great mind’s great bribe.” The great American critic and poet, Mr Lowell, compares him to “an ostrich, to be classed with flying things, and capable, what with leap and flap together, of leaving the earth for a longer or a shorter space, but loving the open plain, where wing and foot help each other to something that is both flight and run at once.” 14. JEREMY TAYLOR (+1613-1667+), the greatest master of ornate and musical English prose in his own day, was born at Cambridge in the year 1613-- just three years before Shakespeare died. His father was a barber. After attending the free grammar-school of Cambridge, he proceeded to the University. He took holy orders and removed to London. When he was lecturing one day at St Paul’s, Archbishop Laud was so taken by his “youthful beauty, pleasant air,” fresh eloquence, and exuberant style, that he had him created a Fellow of All Souls’ College, Oxford. When the Civil War broke out, he was taken prisoner by the Parliamentary forces; and, indeed, suffered imprisonment more than once. After the Restoration, he was presented with a bishopric in Ireland, where he died in 1667.