Dryden's Successors

Sad were the times in Dryden's latter day,
He saw all genius but his own decay ;
Poor Otway starved, and Lee in misery dead.
The laurel torn from his own hoary head,
Like a frail father, he was doom'd to trace
His vices only in his spurious race ;
For many a rhymer claim'd him for a sire,
With all his soot and less than half his fire.
Their boast to reconcile — a vain pretence —
The old antipathy of wit and sense.
To write in rhyme as men might talk in prose.
And win the frigid praise of critic beaux.
But though their general theme was worldly man,
Small was their skill the living heart to scan ;
Their fancy little and the wisdom less.
No inward truth their flippant lines express ;
No image to the inward eye convey,
Reveal no secret impulse to the day.
Action or passion there were seldom found.
Or the sweet magic of heart-stirring sound
Smooth was their verse indeed; their turns were nice,
Quick, neat, exact, as if they moved on ice ;
They skimm'd the surface of the chilly town,
And sought from courts and clubs a brief renown.