It would be truer to say, indeed, even in the form of the unpersuasive paradox, that Dryden is distinguished principally by his poetic ability. We prize him, as we do Mallarmé, for what he made of his material. Our estimate is only in part the appreciation of ingenuity: in the end the result is poetry. Much of Dryden's unique merit consists in his ability to make the small into the great, the prosaic into the poetic, the trivial into the magnificent. In this he differs not only from Milton, who required a canvas of the largest size, but from Pope, who required one of the smallest. If you compare any satiric "character" of Pope with one of Dryden, you will see that the method and intention are widely divergent. When Pope alters, he diminishes; he is a master of miniature. The singular skill of his portrait of Addison, for example, in the "Epistle to Arbuthnot," depends upon the justice and reserve, the apparent determination not to exaggerate. The genius of Pope is not for caricature. But the effect of the portraits of Dryden is to transform the object into something greater, as were transformed the verses of Cowley quoted above. A fiery soul, which working out its way, Fretted the pigmy body to decay: And o'er informed the tenement of clay. These lines are not merely a magnificent tribute. They create the object which they contemplate; the poetry is purer than anything in Pope except the last lines of the "Dunciad." Dryden is in fact much nearer to the master of comic creation than to Pope. As in Jonson, the effect is far from laughter; the comic is the material, the result is poetry. The Civic Guards of Rhodes-- The country rings around with loud alarms, And raw in fields the rude militia swarms; Mouths without hands; maintained at vast expense, In peace a charge, in war a weak defence; Stout once a month they march, a blust'ring band, And ever, but in times of need, at hand; This was the morn, when issuing on the guard, Drawn up in rank and file they stood prepared Of seeming arms to make a short essay, Then hasten to be drunk, the business of the day. Sometimes the wit appears as a delicate flavour to the magnificence, as in "Alexander's Feast":-- 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. The great advantage of Dryden over Milton is that while the former is always in control of his ascent, and can rise or fall at will (and how masterfully, like his own Timotheus, he directs the transitions!), the latter has elected a perch from which he cannot afford to fall, and from which he is in danger of slipping. food alike those pure Intelligential substances require As doth your Rational; and both contain Within them every lower faculty Of sense, whereby they hear, see, smell, touch, taste, Tasting concoct, digest, assimilate, And corporeal to incorporeal turn.