Produced by Mike Alder and Sue Asscher THE MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS AND SPEECHES OF LORD MACAULAY. Contributions To The Edinburgh Review By Thomas Babington Macaulay VOLUME II. CONTENTS. CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE EDINBURGH REVIEW. John Dryden. (January 1828.) History. (May 1828.) Mill on Government. (March 1829.) Westminster Reviewer's Defence of Mill. (June 1829.) Utilitarian Theory of Government. (October 1829.) Sadler's Law of Population. (July 1830.) Sadler's Refutation Refuted. (January 1831.) Mirabeau. (July 1832.) Barere. (April 1844.) MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS OF LORD MACAULAY. CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE EDINBURGH REVIEW. JOHN DRYDEN. (January 1828.) "The Poetical Works of John Dryden". In 2 volumes. University Edition. London, 1826. The public voice has assigned to Dryden the first place in the second rank of our poets,--no mean station in a table of intellectual precedency so rich in illustrious names. It is allowed that, even of the few who were his superiors in genius, none has exercised a more extensive or permanent influence on the national habits of thought and expression. His life was commensurate with the period during which a great revolution in the public taste was effected; and in that revolution he played the part of Cromwell. By unscrupulously taking the lead in its wildest excesses, he obtained the absolute guidance of it. By trampling on laws, he acquired the authority of a legislator. By signalising himself as the most daring and irreverent of rebels, he raised himself to the dignity of a recognised prince. He commenced his career by the most frantic outrages. He terminated it in the repose of established sovereignty,--the author of a new code, the root of a new dynasty.