Books, as Dryden has aptly termed them, are spectacles to read nature. Aeschylus and Aristotle, Shakespeare and Bacon, are priests who preach and expound the mysteries of man and the universe. They teach us to understand and feel what we see, to decipher and syllable the hieroglyphics of the senses.
The glorious Dryden, refiner and purifier of English verse, did less for rhyme than he did for metre.
Dryden 's genius was of that sort which catches fire by its own motion; his chariot wheels get hot by driving fast.