There would have been no doubt, even had the author himself been silent, that he followed D'Avenant in the choice of the elegiac stanza, in which the _Annus Mirabilis_ is composed. It is sounding and harmonious to the ear; and perhaps Dryden still annexed to the couplet the idea of that harshness, which was so long its characteristick in the hands of our early English writers. But the four-lined stanza has also its peculiar disadvantages; and they are admirably stated by the judicious critic, who first turned the Editor's eyes, and probably those of many others, on the neglected poem of "Gondibert."--"The necessity of comprising a sentence within the limits of the measure, is the tyranny of Procrustes to thought. For the sake of a disagreeable uniformity, expression must constantly be cramped or extenuated. In general, the latter expedient will be practised as the easiest; and thus both sentiment and language will be enfeebled by unmeaning expletives."[83] It is nevertheless true, that Dryden has very seldom suffered his poem to languish. Every stanza presents us either with vivid description, or with some strong thought, which is seldom suffered to glide into tenuity. But this structure of verse has often laid him under an odd and rather unpleasing necessity, of filling up his stanza, by coupling a simile, or a moral, expressed in the two last lines, along with the fact, which had been announced in the two first. When these comments, or illustrations, however good in themselves, appear to be intruded upon the narrative or description, and not naturally to flow out of either, they must be considered as defects in composition; and a kind of versification, which compels frequent recurrence to such expedients for filling up the measure, has a disadvantage, for which mere harmony can hardly compensate. In the passages which follow, there is produced a stiff and awkward kind of balance between the story and the poet's reflections and illustrations. Lawson among the foremost met his fate, Whom sea-green Sirens from the rocks lament: Thus as an offering for the Grecian state, He first was killed, who first to battle went. * * * * * To nearest ports their shattered ships repair, Where by our dreadful cannon they lay awed So reverently men quit the open air, Where thunder speaks the angry gods abroad. * * * * * Like hunted castors, conscious of their store, Their way-laid wealth to Norway's coasts they bring; There first the North's cold bosom spices bore, And winter brooded on the eastern spring.