The Age of Dryden. By Richard Garnett, LL.D. (G. Bell
and Sons.)—" The last forty years of the seventeenth century" is the period with which Dr. Garnett's volume deals. But he rightly keeps to these limits in the spirit rather than the letter. Milton's greatest works, for instance, belong in date to the Restoration epoch, but in no other respect. Dryden is of course the central figure, and Dr. Garnett's critical estimate of Dryden seems to us remarkably true. There are things in Dryden which make it difficult to be just to him. In his drama, for instance, there are some things so bad that it is too easy to forget what is good. Among the other literary figures of the time are Andrew Marvell, Otway, Locke, Congreve, Vanburgh, and Wycherley (to whom Dr. Garnett is more favourable than one would expect). But where is Edmund Waller ? If dates are to be put aside, Waller belongs to the Restoration epoch just as surely as Milton belongs to the Puritan. And if we are to judge by what is remembered, Waller has as good a title to a place of honour as any one else. Thousands of people who do not know a line of Dryden have something of Waller by heart. And sometimes he is very fine, as in
" The soul's dark cottage, battered and decayed, Lets in new Ight through chicks that Time has made."
Altogether Dr. Garnett's book is a mine of sound criticism and highly compressed information.
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