Here are five lines from Jonson, with which he closes a play directed against plagiarists and libellers generally. He sums up thus:-- "Blush, folly, blush! here's none that fears The wagging of an ass's ears, Although a wolfish case he wears. Detraction is but baseness' varlet, And apes are apes, though clothed in scarlet." It is said that Jonson was a "sombre" man. We have seen that it is by no means always sunshine with those who brighten others' spirits by their pen. The great luminary is not always above the horizon. A friend remarked to the wife of one of our wittiest poets, "What an atmosphere of mirth you must live in, to share a home with one who writes always so sportively and wittily!" The answer was a most significant shake of the head. We spoke of Dryden as a satirist; perhaps no writer ever went further in the line of bitterness and personality. His portrait of the Duke of Buckingham will occur to the reader in this connection:-- "A man so various that he seemed to be Not one, but all mankind's epitome; Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong, Was everything by starts, and nothing long; But, in the course of one revolving moon, Was chymist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon." When a boy at school in Westminster, Dryden more than once showed the budding promise of the genius that was in him. When put with other classmates to write a composition on the miracle of the conversion of water into wine, he remained idle and truant, as usual, up to the last moment, when he had only time to produce one line in Latin and two in English; but they were of such excellence as to presage his future greatness as a poet, and elicit hearty praise from his tutor. They were as follows:-- _Videt et erubit lympha pudica Deum!_ "The modest water, awed by power divine, Beheld its God, and blushed itself to wine." Dryden's complete works form the largest amount of poetical composition from the pen of one writer, in the English language; and yet he published scarcely anything until he was nearly thirty years of age. From that period he was actively engaged in authorship for forty years, and gave us some of the finest touches of his genius in his second spring of life. Addison wrote of Dryden at this period the following lines:-- "But see where artful Dryden next appears, Grown old in rhyme, but charming e'en in years; Great Dryden next, whose tuneful Muse affords The sweetest numbers and the fittest words. Whether in comic sounds or tragic airs She forms her voice, she moves our smiles or tears; If satire or heroic strains she writes, Her hero pleases and her satire bites; From her no harsh, unartful numbers fall, She wears all dresses, and she charms in all."