DRYDEN'S HEXASTICH.
It is a remarkable fact, that the very finest epigram in the English
language happens also to be the worst. _Epigram_ I call it in the
austere Greek sense; which thus far resembled our modern idea of an
epigram, that something pointed and allied to wit was demanded in the
management of the leading thought at its close, but otherwise nothing
tending towards the comic or the ludicrous. The epigram I speak of is the
well-known one of Dryden dedicated to the glorification of Milton. It is
irreproachable as regards its severe brevity. Not one word is there that
could be spared; nor could the wit of man have cast the movement of the
thought into a better mould. There are three couplets. In the first
couplet we are reminded of the fact that this earth had, in three
different stages of its development, given birth to a trinity of
transcendent poets; meaning narrative poets, or, even more narrowly, epic
poets. The duty thrown upon the second couplet is to characterize these
three poets, and to value them against each other, but in such terms as
that, whilst nothing less than the very highest praise should be assigned
to the two elder poets in this trinity--the Greek and the Roman--
nevertheless, by some dexterous artifice, a higher praise than the highest
should suddenly unmask itself, and drop, as it were, like a diadem from
the clouds upon the brows of their English competitor.
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