We are, perhaps, nearly right when we call Dryden the most _eloquent_ and _rhetorical_ of English poets. He bears in this respect an analogy to Lucretius among the Romans, who, inferior in polish to Virgil, was incomparably more animated and energetic in style; who exhibited, besides, traits of lofty imagination rarely met with in Virgil, and never in Dryden; and who equalled the English poet in the power of reasoning in verse, and setting the severe abstractions of metaphysical thought to music. With the Shakspeares, Chaucers, Spensers, Miltons, Byrons, Wordsworths, and Coleridges, the _Dii majorum gentium_ of the Poetic Pantheon of Britain, Dryden ranks not, although towering far above the Moores, Goldsmiths, Gays, and Priors. He may be classed with a middle, but still high order, in which we find the names of Scott, as a _poet_, Johnson, Pope, Cowper, Southey, Crabbe, and two or three others, who, while all excelling Dryden in some qualities, are all excelled by him in others, and bulk on the whole about as largely as he on the public eye. We come to make a few remarks, in addition to some we have already incidentally made, on Dryden's separate works. And first of his Lyrics. His songs, properly so called, are lively, buoyant, and elastic; yet, compared to those of Shakspeare, they are of "the earth, earthy." They are the down of the thistle, carried on a light breeze upwards. Shakspeare's resemble aerial notes--snatches of superhuman melody--descending from above. Compared to the warm-gushing songs of Burns, Dryden's are cold. Better than his songs are his Odes. That on the death of Mrs Killigrew has much divided the opinion of critics--Dr Johnson calling it magnificent, and Warton denying it any merit. We incline to a mediate view. It has bold passages; the first and the last stanzas are very powerful, and the whole is full of that rushing torrent-movement characteristic of the poet. But the sinkings are as deep as the swellings, and the inequality disturbs the general effect. This is still more true of "Threnodia Augustalis," the ode on the death of Charles II. Not only is its spirit fulsome, and its statement of facts grossly partial, but many of its lines are feeble, and the whole is wire-spun. Yet what can be nobler in thought and language than the following, descriptive of the joy at the king's partial recovery!-- "Men met each other with erected look, The steps were higher that they took; Each to congratulate his friend made haste, And long inveterate foes saluted as they pass'd." How admirably this last line describes that sudden solution of the hostile elements in human nature-that swift sense of unity in society, produced by some glad tidings or great public enthusiasm, when for an hour the Millennium is anticipated, and the poet's wish, that "Man wi' man, the warld o'er, Shall brithers be, for a' that," is fulfilled!