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The _Ode on St. Cecilia's Day_, also entitled "_Alexander's Feast_," in
which he portrays the power of music in inspiring that famous monarch to
love, pity, and war, has to the scholar the perfect excellence of the best
Greek lyric. It ends with a tribute to St. Cecilia.
At last divine Cecilia came,
Inventress of the vocal frame:
Now let Timotheus yield the prize,
Or both divide the crown.
He raised a mortal to the skies;
She drew an angel down,
Dryden's prose, principally in the form of prefaces and dedications, has
been admired by all critics; and one of the greatest has said, that if he
had turned his attention entirely in that direction, he would have been
_facile princeps_ among the prose writers of his day. He has, in general
terms, the merit of being the greatest refiner of the English language,
and of having given system and strength to English poetry above any writer
up to his day; but more than all, his works are a transcript of English
history--political, religious, and social--as valuable as those of any
professed historian.


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