Palamon and Arcite | Page 9

the ear with monotonous recurrence. He employed for this
same purpose the hemistich or half-verse, the triplet or three
consecutive verses with the same rhyme, and the Alexandrine with its
six accents and its consequent well-rounded fullness.
So much for Palamon and Arcite. First put into English by the best
story-teller in our literature, it was retold at the close of the seventeenth
century by the greatest poet of his generation, one of whose chief
claims to greatness lies in his marvelous ability for adaptation and
paraphrase.

DRYDEN'S PLACE IN ENGLISH LITERATURE.
It remains to indicate briefly Dryden's position in English literature. To
the critics of his own time he was without question the greatest man of
letters in his generation, and so he undeniably was after the death of
Milton. We are not ready to say with Dr. Johnson that "he found
English of brick and left it of marble," for there was much marble
before Dryden was dreamed of, and his own work is not entirely devoid
of brick; but that Dryden rendered to English services of inestimable
value is not to be questioned. For forty years the great aim of his life
was, as he tells us himself, to improve the English language and
English poetry, and by constant and tireless effort in a mass of
production of antipodal types he accomplished his object. He enriched
and extended our vocabulary, he modulated our meters, he developed
new forms, and he purified and invigorated style.
There are a few poets in our literature who are better than Dryden; there

are a great many who are worse; but there has been none who worked
more constantly and more conscientiously for its improvement. Mr.
Saintsbury has admirably summarized the situation: "He is not our
greatest poet; far from it. But there is one point in which the superlative
may safely be applied to him. Considering what he started with, what
he accomplished, and what advantages he left to his successors, he
must be pronounced, without exception, the greatest craftsman in
English Letters."
REFERENCES FOR FURTHER STUDY
HISTORY: Green, History of the English People, vols. iii, iv; Knight,
Popular History of England, vols. iii, iv, v; Gardiner, The First Two
Stuarts, and the Puritan Revolution_; Hale, Fall of the Stuarts, and
Western Europe_; Green, _Short History of the English People_;
Ransome, A Short History of England; Montgomery, English History.
BIOGRAPHY: Lives of Dryden in the editions of his Works by Scott,
Malone, Christie; Johnson, _Dryden (Lives of the Poets)_;
Saintsbury,
_Dryden (English Men of Letters)_.
CRITICISM: Mitchell, _English Lands, Letters, and Kings
(Elizabeth
to Anne)_; Gosse, From Shakespeare to Pope;
Lowell, _Dryden
(Among my Books)_; Garnett, The Age of Dryden; Masson, _Dryden
and the Literature of the Restoration
(Three Devils)_; Hamilton, The
Poets Laureate of England; Hazlitt, On Dryden and Pope.
ROMANCE: Scott, Woodstock, Peveril of the Peak; Defoe,
The
Plague in London.
MYTHOLOGY: Bulfinch, Age of Fable; Gayley, Classic Myths
in
English Literature_; Smith, Classical Dictionary.
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE.
Dryden's Life. History. English Literature. 1631, Born Aug. 9th. 1631,
Herbert, Temple.

1632,
Milton, L'Allegro
and
II Penseroso.

1633. Birth of Prince
James.
1633,
Massinger, New Way
t o
Pay Old Debts.
Ford,
Broken Heart.