It is this vigour and the impression which he gives of intellectual strength and of a logical grasp of his subject, that beyond question has kept alive work which, if ever poetry was, was ephemeral in its origin.

The careers of the unscrupulous Caroline peers would have been closed for us were they not visible in the reflected light of his denunciation of them.

Though Buckingham is forgotten and Shaftesbury's name swallowed up in that of his more philanthropic descendant, we can read of Achitophel and Zimri still, and feel something of the strength and heat which he caught from a fiercely fought conflict and transmitted with his own gravity and purposefulness into verse.

The Thirty-nine Articles are not a proper subject for poetry, but the sustained and serious allegory which Dryden weaves round theological discussion preserves his treatment of them from the fate of the controversialists who opposed him.

His work has wit and vitality enough to keep it sweet.
Strength and wit enter in different proportions into the work of his successor, Alexander Pope--a poet whom admirers in his own age held to be the greatest in our language.