text:  Sir Walter Scott's admirable Life of Dryden concludes with this passage:--"I have thus detailed the life and offered some remarks on the literary character of JOHN DRYDEN; who educated in a pedantic taste and a fanatical religion was destined if not to give laws to the stage of England at least to defend its liberties; to improve burlesque into satire; to free translation from the fetters of verbal metaphrase and exclude from it the license of paraphrase; to teach posterity the powerful and varied poetical harmony of which their language was capable; to give an example of the lyric ode of unapproached excellence; and to leave a name SECOND ONLY TO THOSE OF MILTON AND OF SHAKSPEARE