A crown of ruddy gold inclosed her brow, Plain without pomp, and rich without a show: A branch of Agnus castus in her hand She bore aloft (her sceptre of command;) Admired, adored by all the circling crowd, For wheresoe'er she turn'd her face, they bow'd. And as she danced, a roundelay she sung, In honour of the laurel, ever young. She raised her voice on high, and sung so clear, } The fawns came scudding from the groves to hear, } And all the bending forest lent an ear. } At every close she made, the attending throng Replied, and bore the burden of the song: So just, so small, yet in so sweet a note, It seem'd the music melted in the throat.' One remarkable feature of the principal poets of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is the infrequency of the casual visitations of the Muse. They seem to have hardly ever experienced an unsought lyrical inspiration, or to have sung merely for singing's sake. Hence Dryden is permitted to appear only twice in the _Golden Treasury_. His songs, to be treated of more fully when we consider the lyrical poetry of the period, though often instinct with true lyrical spirit, seem to have been deliberately composed for insertion in his plays, and the same is the case with almost the whole of what he would have called his occasional poetry. His two chief odes, _Alexander's Feast_ and the memorial verses to Anne Killigrew, were indubitably commissions; and it is probable that few of the epistles, elegies, dedications, and prologues which form so considerable a portion of his poetical works were composed without some similar inducement. As a whole, this collection is creditable to his powers of intellect, quickness of wit, and command of nervous masculine diction. It is frequently the work of a master, though conceived in the spirit of a journeyman. The adulation of the patron or the defunct is generally fulsome enough; yet some compliments are so graceful that it is difficult not to believe them sincere, as when he apostrophizes the Duchess of Ormond: 'O daughter of the Rose, whose cheeks unite The differing titles of the Red and White! Who heaven's alternate beauty well display, The blush of morning and the milky way.' Or the conclusion of his epistle to Kneller: 'More cannot be by mortal art exprest, But venerable age shall add the rest. For Time shall with his ready pencil stand, Retouch your figures with his ripening hand, Mellow your colours, and imbrown the teint, Add every grace which Time alone can grant; To future ages shall your fame convey, And give more beauties than he takes away.' Or these from the epistle to his kinsman, John Driden, more likely than any of the others to have been the unbought manifestation of genuine regard: