"Was there no milder way but the small-pox, The very filthiness of Pandora's box? So many spots, like naeves, our Venus soil? One jewel set off with so many a foil? Blisters with pride swelled, which through his flesh did sprout Like rosebuds, stuck in the lily-skin about. Each little pimple had a tear in it, To wail the fault its rising did commit; Which, rebel-like, with its own lord at strife, Thus made an insurrection 'gainst his life. Or were these gems sent to adorn his skin, The cabinet of a richer soul within? No comet need foretell his change drew on, Whose corps might seem a constellation." Criticism cannot be rendered sufficiently vituperative to characterize properly such a passage. It is fuller of conceits than ever Cowley crowded into the same space; and lines more crabbed and inharmonious Donne never succeeded in perpetrating. Its production upsets all principles of prophecy. The wretchedest of poetasters can take courage, when he contemplates the profundity of the depth out of which uprose the greatest poet of his time. [Illustration: John Dryden.] Dryden is, in fact, an example of that somewhat rare class of writers who steadily improve with advancing years. Most poets write their best verse before middle life. Many of them after that time go through a period of decline, and sometimes of rapid decline; and if they live to reach old age, they add to the quantity of their production without sensibly increasing its value. This general truth is conspicuously untrue of Dryden. His first work gave no promise of his future excellence, and it was by very slow degrees that he attained to the mastery of his art. But the older he grew, the better he wrote; and the volume published a few months before his death, and largely composed almost under its shadow, so far from showing the slightest sign of failing power, contains a great deal of the best poetry he ever produced.