"The Fatal Marriage" of Southerne is an exception to this
false taste; for no one who has seen Mrs. Siddons in Isabella, can deny
Southerne the power of moving the passions, till amusement becomes
bitter and almost insupportable distress. But these observations are
here out of place. Addison paid an early tribute to Dryden's fame, by
the verses addressed to him on his translations. Among Dryden's less
distinguished intimates, we observe Sir Henry Shere, Dennis the critic,
Moyle, Motteux, Walsh, who lived to distinguish the youthful merit of
Pope, and other men of the second rank in literature. These, as his
works testify, he frequently assisted with prefaces, occasional verses,
or similar contributions. But among our author's followers and admirers,
we must not reckon Swift, although related to him,[3] and now coming
into notice. It is said, that Swift had subjected to his cousin's
perusal, some of those performances, entitled _Odes_, which appear in
the seventh volume of the last edition of his works. Even the eye of
Dryden was unable to discover the wit and the satirist in the clouds of
incomprehensible pindaric obscurity in which he was enveloped; and the
aged bard pronounced the hasty, and never to be pardoned sentence,--
"Cousin Swift, you will never be a poet."[4] A doom which he, on whom it
was passed, attempted to repay, by repeated, although impotent, attacks
upon the fame of Dryden, everywhere scattered through his works.
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