Under the influence of Cowley's odes, the new form speedily became popular. According to Dr. Johnson, "this lax and lawless versification so much concealed the deficiencies of the barren, and flattered the laziness of the idle, that it immediately over-spread our books of poetry; all the boys and girls caught the pleasing fashion, and they who could do nothing else could write like Pindar." (_Life of Cowley_.) Compare also the remarks of Mr. Gosse: "Until the days of Collins and Gray, the ode modelled upon Cowley was not only the universal medium for congratulatory lyrics and pompous occasional pieces, but it was almost the only variety permitted to the melancholy generations over whom the heroic couplet reigned supreme." (_Seventeenth Century Studies_, p. 216.) It has been the habit of modern critics to treat the irregularities of the Cowleyan ode with no little contempt, and it is undoubtedly true that in the hands of small poets its liberties are dangerous; but it is also true that some of the greatest modern poets have adopted the form for some of their best work, and that they have generally preferred it to that of the regular Pindaric ode. When in mid-air the golden trump shall sound, To raise the nations under ground; When in the valley of Jehoshaphat The judging God shall close the book of Fate, And there the last assizes keep For those who wake and those who sleep; When rattling bones together fly From the four corners of the sky; When sinews o'er the skeletons are spread, Those cloth'd with flesh, and life inspires the dead; The sacred poets first shall hear the sound, And foremost from the tomb shall bound, For they are covered with the lightest ground; And straight, with inborn vigor, on the wing, Like mounting larks, to the new morning sing. There thou, sweet saint, before the choir shalt go, As harbinger of heaven, the way to show, The way which thou so well hast learn'd below. (DRYDEN: _To the Pious Memory of Mistress Anne Killigrew_, strophe x. 1686.) See also specimen from the _Ode for St. Cecilia's Day_, quoted above, p. 52. Dryden's odes for St. Cecilia's Day (especially the _Alexander's Feast_) are among the most highly esteemed of his poems; but parts, at least, of the ode on Mistress Killigrew are no less fine, and in this case we have a purely literary ode, whose irregularities are not designed--as in the case of the others--to fit choral rendering. The conclusion of the ode, here quoted, seems to owe something of both substance and form to the conclusion of Cowley's Resurrection Ode (see preceding specimen). Dr. Johnson called Dryden's Killigrew Ode "undoubtedly the noblest ode that our language ever has produced."