Page:The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets, Volume 2.djvu/25

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DRYDEN.
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never any one that pretended to write sense had the impudence before to put such stuff as this into the mouths of those that were to speak it before an audience, whom he did not take to be all fools; and after that to print it too, and expose it to the examination of the world. But let us see what we can make of this stuff:

For when we're dead, and our freed souls enlarg'd——

Here he tells us what it is to be dead; it is to have our freed souls set free. Now if to have a soul set free, is to be dead; then to have a freed soul set free, is to have a dead man die.

Then gentle, as a happy lover's sigh—

They two like one sigh, and that ones sigh like two wandering meteors,

—Shall fly through the air—

That is, they shall mount above like falling stars, or else they shall skip like two jacks with lanthorns, or Will with a wisp, and Madge with a candle."

And in their airy walk steal into their cruel fathers' breasts, like subtle guests. So "that

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their