It must not be forgotten that Dryden presented Chaucer to England anew, after centuries of neglect, almost oblivion; for which the world owes him a debt of gratitude.  This he did by modernizing several of the Canterbury Tales, and thus leading English scholars to seek the beauties and instructions of the original.  The versions themselves are by no means well executed, it must be said.  He has lost the musical words and fresh diction of the original, as a single comparison between the two will clearly show.  Perhaps there is no finer description of morning than is contained in these lines of Chaucer: 

    The besy lark, the messager of day,
    Saleweth in hir song the morwe gray;
    And firy Phebus riseth up so bright
    That all the orient laugheth of the sight.

How expressive the words:  the busy lark; the sun rising like a strong man; all the orient laughing.  The following version by Dryden, loses at once the freshness of idea and the felicity of phrase: 

    The morning lark, the messenger of day,
    Saluted in her song the morning gray;
    And soon the sun arose with beams so bright
    That all the horizon laughed to see the joyous sight.

The student will find this only one of many illustrations of the manner in which Dryden has belittled Chaucer in his versions.

ODES.—­Dryden has been regarded as the first who used the heroic couplet with entire mastery.  In his hands it is bold and sometimes rugged, but always powerful and handled with great ease:  he fashioned it for Pope to polish.  Of this, his larger poems are full of proof.  But there is another verse, of irregular rhythm, in which he was even more successful,—­lyric poetry as found in the irregular ode, varying from the short line to the “Alexandrine dragging its slow length along;” the staccato of a harp ending in a lengthened flow of melody.

    Thus long ago,
    Ere heaving billows learned to blow,
    While organs yet were mute;
    Timotheus to his breathing flute
    And sounding lyre
    Could swell the soul to rage, or kindle soft desire.

When he became a Roman Catholic, St. Cecilia, “inventress of the vocal frame,” became his chief devotion; and the Song on St. Cecilia’s Day and An Ode to St. Cecilia, are the principal illustrations of this new power.

Gray, who was remarkable for his own lyric power, told Dr. Beattie that if there were any excellence in his own numbers, he had learned it wholly from Dryden.

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,