937A 
 T>(p7 
 
 UC-NRLF 
 
 III INI 
 
 B 3 S4b S3fl 
 
THE DEYELOEMENT QF I01IN DRYC 
 
 THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE DEPARTMENT OF 
 LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND THE ARTS OF THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF MICHIGAN, FOR THE DEGREE OF 
 DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY 
 
 inted from the I of the Mod i 
 
 ..-/., XXII, 1] 
 
 The Modern Language Association of 
 J 90 7 
 
THE DEVELOPMENT OF JOHN DRYDEN S 
 
 LITERARY CRITICISM 
 
 BY 
 
 WM. E. KOJ1N 
 
 ■ of the Mo- 1 
 XXJI, 1] 
 
 l 
 
 190 7 
 
>PMENT OF JOHN DRYgEN'S 
 LITER A It V CRITICISM. 
 
 RODUCTION. 
 
 I. 
 
 Fr< mi 1 1 ■ ' 
 
 forth widely divergent opinions. Written, as many of tl 
 
 , in the heat of literary conflict, they served during 
 their author's life, on the one hand, as a statement of faith 
 t<> l>e expounded and defended, on the other, as a series 
 
 inerable points of attack. And even since they h 
 held .<iong English critical works — at 
 
 first ns authoritative judgments and later as historical 
 documents of the very first importance — there I 
 no orthodox view as to their nature or value. Some histo- 
 rians have always been led by Dryden's popular, rambling 
 
 to deny them solid worth ; others have found in them a 
 vitality, a genuine insight, worth more than logic. Accord- 
 ing to Dean Swift they were "merely writ at first 
 filling, to raise the author's .price a shilling;" 1 Doctor 
 ., on the contrary, speaks of them as "the criticism 
 of a poet ; not a dull collection of theorems, nor a rude 
 detection of faults, which perhaps the censor was not able 
 to have committed; but a gay and vigorous dissert? it ion, 
 where delight is mingled with instruction." 2 
 
 difference of opinion has perpetuated itself among 
 mod- On the one hand we have Proti 
 
 lembered that the relations between Dryden and Swift 
 sincerity of this criticism under suspicion. 
 s of the Poets, ed. Arthur Waugh, London, 1896 ; II, 207, 
 56 
 
JOHN dryden's literary .critics 57 
 
 I Saintsbury, in his History of Criticism, 1 taking his stand 
 I squarely with Doctor Johnson. After giving Dryden an 
 amount c I ion which makes him stand out as a giant 
 
 among his con temporaries, this historian concludes his 
 analysis by placing Dryden' 'on that shelf — 
 
 no capacious one — reserved for the best criticism of 
 world." And the virtue upon which ; ate is I 
 
 is superiority to rules, to conventions. Here, at last, thinks 
 Saintsbury, came a critic who could take a book in hand 
 and ask, not, Ought I to like this? but, Do I like it? 
 And if a book had nature, variety, individi it gave 
 
 delight, he would not be " connoisseured " out of hu opinion 
 of it by all the scholars in Christendom. Here wa 
 genuine, unspoiled Englishman hardy enough to establish 
 " the English fashion of criticizing, as Shakespeare did the 
 English fashion of dramatizing — the fashion of aiming 
 delight, at truth, at justice, at nature, at poetry, and letting 
 the rules take care of themselves." 
 
 The opinion which seeks to belittle Dryden's critical 
 power is represented by Delius in his dissertation, Dryden 
 und Shakespeare. 2 Here Dryden is represented as caught in 
 the meshes of contemporary doctrine. The dictum that his 
 appreciation of Shakespeare was merely phrasenhajt is 
 softened only by the statement that an adequate recoguition 
 of the great Elizabethan was contrary to his very nature 
 and would have interfered seriously with the development 
 of his genius. 
 
 Such a diversity of conclusions suggests that- we are here 
 dealing with extremely complex material. A first reading 
 of Dryden's criticism is liable to leave one in utter con- 
 fusion. On one page he seems to rise almost to the level of 
 
 1 Edinburgh and London, 1902 ; ir, 371-89 
 
 ''Jahrbvch der deutsehen Shakespeare- Gesellschafi. vol. IV. 
 
r 
 
 
 n v. I 
 
JOHN DRYDEN'S LITERARY CRITICISM. 59 
 
 problems presented themselves to Dryden for solution. But 
 retaining throughout his judicial character of editor, he does 
 not propose any general theory as to the course of our 
 author's critical development. 
 
 In the two works which remain to be mentioned, de- 
 termined attempts have been made to trace some order in 
 the apparent confusion of Dryden's opinions and to explain 
 historically the outlines under which the heterogeneous mass 
 of his theory seems to arrange itself. The first of these is 
 Drydens Theorie des Dramas l by Felix Bobertag. This 
 author takes Dryden's criticism in the lump and analyses 
 it under the impression that it is, for practical purposes, a 
 well defined system. This system, it seems to him, was 
 roughly sketched in the Essay of Dramatic Poesy and filled 
 out in the other essays. In one passage Bobertag does 
 suggest that Dryden's critical development falls into two 
 periods, one represented by the Essay, and the other by the 
 preface to Troilus and Cressida : but this notion is left unde- 
 veloped. The great underlying principle of all Dryden's 
 criticism Bobertag finds in a passage of the preface to 
 Troilus and Cressida, in which the poet is compared with a 
 wrestler : Dryden here maintains that, as is the case with 
 the wrestler, the poet's " inborn vehemence and force of 
 spirit will only run him out of breath the sooner, if it be 
 not supported by the help of art." And, according to 
 Robertag, this balance of importance between " force of 
 spirit" and "help of art" is established by the clash of 
 English dramatic tradition and the Gallicized form of Aris- 
 totelian criticism. But this twofold division of the influences 
 under which Dryden wrote breaks down in its author's own 
 hands. Forced to add a new element to his scheme, he 
 proceeds to explain that when Dryden cast his first ambitious 
 
 1 Kolbing's Englische Studien, IV, 373. 
 
60 WM. E. BOHN. 
 
 critical work in the form of a dialogue he did so, not only 
 because he could not harmonize English tradition and French 
 rules, but also because he could find in neither of them 
 justification for the literary tastes of the court of Charles II. 
 Our historian analyses with some care the Essay of Dramatic 
 Poesy and the preface to Troilus and Cressida, and comes to 
 the conclusion that Dryden's critical scheme of things lacks 
 coherence. This result seems to him to have been inevit- 
 able : even a greater genius, in Dryden's position, might 
 have failed to combine satisfactorily the three elements which 
 would necessarily have entered into his work. Bobertag's 
 analysis of the forces which went to the making of Dryden's 
 criticism is of inestimable suggestive value ; but what one 
 wants, and seeks here in vain, is a definite tracing of the 
 elements of Dryden's criticism to their sources and an 
 attempt to arrange them in some meaningful order. So far 
 as Bobertag's work is concerned, one is at liberty to regard 
 Dryden's critical theory from beginning to end either as a 
 tangled mass of mutually repellent elements or as a number 
 of elements continuously and evenly intertwined like the 
 strands of a rope. 1 
 
 The analysis of our author's critical thinking into its 
 constituents is further developed by Paul Hamelius in his 
 work, Die Kritik in der englischen Literatur des 17. und 18. 
 Jahrhunderts. 2 Bobertag discussed two literary traditions, 
 
 1 Parenthetically it should be remarked that Bobertag fails to show in 
 just what feature of Dryden's criticism the influence of the court is dis- 
 coverable ; thus his threefold division of influences remains incomplete. 
 Two of the forces mentioned are purely literary, the other is social, and no 
 attempt is made to shown what was the literary, or theoretic, form taken 
 on by the latter, or social, moment. 
 
 In the same category with Bobertag's treatise should be placed Laura 
 Johnson Wy lie's chapter on Dryden in her volume, Studies in the Evohdion 
 of English Criticism (1894). Miss Wylie's analysis of Dryden's work is less 
 schematic than Bobertag' s, but far more searching and accurate. 
 
 a Leipzig, 1897. 
 
JOHN DRYDEN'S LITERARY CRITICISM. 61 
 
 the classical and the English, and introduced the court of 
 Charles II as a literary force without attempting to define 
 the nature of its influence. Hamelius, with a much wider 
 reading in English literature and much keener powers of 
 analysis, divides the English critics of Dryden's time into 
 four schools : the neoclassic, the rationalistic, the romantic, 
 and the moralistic. 1 And among the representatives of these 
 four schools he represents Dryden as the great compromiser. 
 It was not until the eighteenth century that English criti- 
 cism became crystallized ; the seventeenth century was a 
 time of preparation. Amidst the confused moving and 
 shaping of things it is but natural that Dryden, a man of 
 marvellously versatile and comprehensive mind, should have 
 embodied in his work all the elements that went to make up 
 the national criticism of his period. This is sufficient to 
 account for all his evident inconsistencies. In the words 
 of Hamelius, " Der ausserordentliche Wechsel in seinen 
 Ansichten muss teilweise daraus erklart werden, dass er 
 weder in seiner eigenen Geistesanlage, noch im Geschmacke 
 seiner Zeit eine feste Kichtschnur hatte, so dass er sich von 
 persohnlichen und parteiischen Neigungen, sowie von dem 
 Wunsche, das Wohlwollen adeliger Herren zu erwerben, 
 oder einen verhassten Gegner zu verspotten, leiten liess." 2 
 
 This examination of Dryden's critical theory is the most 
 satisfactory that I have come upon. Three of the critical 
 systems described, — all except that designated as moral- 
 istic, — contributed important elements to his work. And it 
 is to be noticed especially that Hamelius connected the 
 influence of the court very definitely with the theory of 
 the heroic drama and its accompanying lack of appreciation 
 for Shakespeare. Here we have, it must be confessed, the 
 
 1 We owe to Hamelius a careful distinction between neoclassicism and 
 English rationalism. 
 
 2 P. 63. 
 
 V 
 
62 WM. E. BOHN. 
 
 main features of Dryden's criticism clearly defined. But 
 when we come to search for a principle of order among these 
 antagonistic elements, the result is negative. Bobertag, 
 apparently, never conceived the possibility of such a princi- 
 ple : Hamelius did conceive the notion of its possibility, 
 but, having searched for, and failed to find, the principle, he 
 denies its existence. After stating that Dryden belongs to 
 no critical school, he continues : " Er gehort vielmehr nach 
 einander zu alien, da er alle der Reihe nach bekampft und 
 verteidigt. Umsonst haben wir versucht einen regelmassigen 
 Uebergang von einer zur anderen wahrzunehmen : es gibt 
 weder einen historischen, noch einen logischen Zusammen- 
 hang zwischen seinen Ansichten." l 
 
 The results achieved by the authors whose works we have 
 reviewed may be summed up as follows : certain of them, 
 each paying almost exclusive attention to some one feature 
 of Dryden's critical work, have arrived at radically variant 
 conclusions as to the value and significance of his contribu- 
 tion to critical literature ; others, working more fundamentally, 
 have analysed his theory into its several elements, and have 
 connected these with the general tendencies of the life and 
 thought of the seventeenth century. It is the purpose of 
 the present study to take up the discussion of Dryden's 
 criticism where these latter have laid it down. 
 
 II. 
 
 The natural point of departure for the following discus- 
 sion is furnished by the statement of Hamelius that there 
 is to be found neither a historical nor a logical connection 
 between Dryden's various contradictory views on questions 
 of literary theory. It is true, as I have already had occasion 
 
 1 P. 63. 
 
JOHN DEYDEN'S LITERARY CRITICISM. 63 
 
 to remark, that Dryden's criticism, taken in the mass, is so 
 heterogeneous that it is easy to understand how one might 
 come to conclude that there is no connecting thread running 
 through it. The reasons for this apparent illogicality are not 
 far to seek : one has merely to consider Dryden's character, 
 the nature of the period in which he lived, and his relations 
 with the controling spirits of this period. Dry den was a , 
 man of the world, preeminently endowed with a genius 
 for being "all things to all men." In the scientific and 
 philosophical circles of the Royal Society, among the wits 
 of the coffee-house, with the lords and ladies of the court, 
 in correspondence with the most learned and highest placed 
 in the land, everywhere and in all manners of discourse, 
 his fine intellectual urbanity won its way. In politicsA 
 philosophy, and art, as well as in religion, he seemed pre-| 
 destined by nature to become a supreme conformist. 
 
 For a man of this type the second half of the seventeenth 
 century was, from one point of view, peculiarly dangerous : 
 its entire atmosphere seemed calculated to jeopardize his 
 intellectual integrity. Of one feature of his situation Dryden 
 was himself painfully conscious ; in the prologue to Aureng- 
 zebe he wrote : 
 
 " Let him retire, between two ages cast, 
 The first of this, the hindmost of the last." 
 
 He was drawn one way by the age of romanticism, another, 
 by the age of reason. His early associations and natural 
 inclinations assimilated him to the Elizabethans ; the asso- 
 ciations of his later life drew him toward the classicists. 
 But his intellectual life was complicated even more by the 
 fact that in his day, in literature as well as in politics and 
 religion, numerous factions were battling for the supremacy. 
 Controversialist tho he was, Dryden was exactly the sort 
 of man to see things from all angles, to detect, and syinpa- 
 
64 WM. E. BOHN. 
 
 thizc with, a certain amount of truth in the contentions of 
 each of the contending parties. 
 
 Under certain conceivable circumstances, it is true, we 
 might imagine even a man like Dryden, wide-minded and 
 readily moulded, living, even in times of greatest unrest, an 
 even and regular intellectual life. Bobertag ventures the 
 opinion that if Lessing had achieved a literary and social 
 success comparable with Dryden's, he would not have re- 
 mained the implacable reformer that we know him. On the 
 other hand, we can figure to ourselves what would have 
 been the result had Dryden been born into a world which 
 could have given him a single, simple ideal, and then, 
 laboring always in one direction, had never had occasion 
 to change his allegiance; no doubt he would, under these 
 circumstances, have escaped the chief part of the blame 
 heaped upon him by some of his biographers. 1 Even sup- 
 posing him successful and popular, had success been per- 
 manent, one can imagine his development quite different 
 from what it actually was. Imagine him, for example, like 
 Congreve, above the necessity of writing for a living, or, 
 like Addison, always the poet of a strong and popular 
 party ; under such circumstances, again, his evolution would 
 have been evenly logical, and the inconsistencies of his 
 theory would not have become puzzles for modern histo- 
 rians. 
 
 But the course of Dryden's life was diametrically opposed 
 to all that we have been imagining. Not only did this 
 versatile poet live at a time when the intellectual, religious, 
 and political worlds were divided by sharply contesting 
 factions, but within the forty years of his activity he past 
 thro three crises, from each of which a new faction 
 
 1 Suppose, for example, that he had been a young man at the beginning, 
 instead of at the end, of the Puritan revolution : might not his career have 
 resembled that of Milton ? 
 
JOHN DRYDEN'S LITERARY CRITICISM. 
 
 16 
 
 emerged victorious with new policies and new creeds. The 
 expression "past thro".. I use deliberately. Dryden was 
 not in a position to stand aloof and watch untroubled 
 the conflict of parties and opinions. Except during the last i 
 ten years of his life and for a short period between 1675 \ 
 and 1680, he felt obliged to place himself in the service of 
 whatever party happened to be in power. And he rendered 
 no half-hearted service. With his urbanity, his genius for 
 quick sympathy and ready conformity, when once he had 
 adopted the cause of a party or sect, that party or sect 
 became a part of himself; he let by-gones be by-gones, 
 loved those he had formerly hated and hated those he had 
 formerly loved. It is easy to understand how a man like 
 this, writing under his particular circumstances, came to 
 produce criticism too diverse in character to exhibit any 
 easily discovered principle of development. 
 
 But even if Dryden's environment was too unstable, and 
 his adjustment to that environment too immediate, to permit 
 a simple and logical development of his critical theory, the 
 statement of Hamelius that his critical works exhibit no 
 principle of growth, still appears, a priori, extremely im- 
 probable. The honestly expressed opinions of a really great 
 man would naturally be organically connected. We are to 
 infer, then, from the statement of Hamelius, either that 
 Dryden's views were falsified, so tampered with in their 
 expression that they were torn from their natural relations, 
 or that his intellectual life was so weak as not to be able to 
 organize and vitalize them in the first place. The truth 
 of this statement would, therefore, imply either dishonesty 
 or utter shallowness in Dryden's critical works. Both of 
 these implications are inconsistent with a true reading 
 of Dryden's character. It would be impossible to over- 
 emphasize the fact that Dryden was no mere turn-coat. 
 Biographers who have written him down as such have not 
 
66 WM. E. BOHN. 
 
 taken the trouble to follow the subtle workings of his mind. 
 With him changes are never sudden, or schematic and 
 doctrinaire, as they would have been if deliberately entered 
 upon. This is especially noticeable in the development of 
 his critical theory : a new tendency appears first, perhaps, in 
 a chance phrase; in the next essay it may have grown into a 
 paragraph, and later it may become the inspiring theory of 
 r~an entire work or series of works. His environment, we 
 have seen, was constantly changing : if he changed with it, 
 it was not because he was dishonest, but because his urbanity 
 was merely the social expression of a versatile intellect 
 which made it easy, even natural, for him to adapt himself 
 to any belief or policy. This he did, inwardly, with a 
 thoro, largely unconscious, assimilation of the new view, 
 and outwardly, with a naive frankness which, wit 1 ! a 
 sympathetic student, will go far to atone for lack of con- 
 sistency. Because his changes were genuine it never occurred 
 to him to resort to the subterfuges employed by the dishonest 
 and insincere. It would be difficult indeed to suppose that 
 there is discernible no law of development connecting the 
 various utterances of a man of this sort. 
 
 The following study is an attempt to prove that belief in 
 such a law of development has a solid basis in fact. I shall 
 try to show, first, that Dryden's literary criticism, far from 
 being an inchoate mass of unrelated opinions, divides itself 
 into five clearly marked periods ; and, second, that in each 
 of these periods Dryden wrote just the sort of criticism one 
 would expect from a man of his type in his particular 
 environment. I shall try to characterize the criticism of 
 each period and indicate its relations, on the one hand, to 
 our author's general literary output, and, on the other, to the 
 main factors which conditioned .his external life. The dis- 
 cussion, therefore, divides itself into five parts corresponding 
 to the five periods of Dryden's critical activity. 
 
JOHN DRYDEN'S LITERARY CRITICISM. 67 
 
 The First Period. 
 
 The first period of Dryden's critical development includes 
 the essays written before the close of the year 1665. Up 
 to this time Dryden is still young ; he has not achieved any 
 notable success, has not become the literary representative of 
 any party. Hence he has not settled upon any theoretic 
 scheme of things. Naturally, then, the criticism of this 
 period is not dominated by one idea; its general spirit is » 
 tentative. Dryden is still free to develop and express all 
 the feelings of a young poet's mind. Among these the most 
 characteristic is enthusiasm for great literature, especially 
 for the drama of the Elizabethans. Hence tho this 
 period presents no system, it is, in a sense, characterized by 
 a fr6e utterance of the romantic spirit. 
 
 Dryden's first important piece of criticism was the epistle 
 dedicatory to The Rival Ladies (1664). In this essay 
 Dryden appears, first of all, as the sturdy Englishman. 
 The English is a noble language, and in his play he has 
 endeavored to distinguish it from " the tongue of pedants 
 and that of affected travelers." Occasionally he takes a 
 fling at the French ; what the English admit of theirs is but 
 "the basest of their men, the extravagances of their fashions, 
 and the frippery of their merchandise." It is here that we 
 find, in its first form, the celebrated eulogy of Shakespeare : 
 in the very act of blaming him for the introduction of blank 
 verse Dryden speaks of his great predecessor as the one 
 "who, with some errors not to be avoided in that age, had 
 undoubtedly a larger soul of poesy than ever any other of 
 our nation." On the other hand Dryden exhibits some 
 traits of the rationalist. He would like a " more certain 
 measure " of the English tongue, " as they have in France, 
 where they have an academy erected for that purpose." 1 
 
 • 
 
 l i, 5. All references without titles are to Ker's edition of the essays. 
 
68 WM. E. BOHN. 
 
 One of the great advantages of rime is that it " bounds and 
 circumscribes the fancy. For imagination in a poet is a 
 faculty so wild and lawless, that like an high-ranging spaniel, 
 it must have clogs tied to it, lest it outrun the judgment," l 
 There is also to be found in this essay an incipient tendency 
 in the direction of the heroic drama, which, with its rimed 
 verse, its artificial standards of morality, and its glorification 
 of the noblesse, is to become the characteristic literary enter- 
 tainment of the court of Charles II. 2 First Dryden defends 
 rime, taking the ground that it is not really a new form 
 among the English. And then he puts the question : "But 
 supposing our countrymen had not received this writing till 
 of late; shall we oppose ourselves to the most polisht and 
 civilized nations of Europe ? " 3 But it is when he takes up 
 the consideration of the more essential features of the drama 
 that Dryden sounds the real note of the heroic theory: 
 " But as the best medicines may lose their virtues by being 
 ill applied, so is it with verse, if a fit subject be not chosen 
 for it. Neither must the argument alone, but the characters 
 aud persons be great and noble." 4 This epistle, then, is a 
 notable collection of apparently contrary opinions : love of 
 the native English, respect for the most polisht nations of 
 Europe, praise of the romantic plays of Shakespeare, and 
 defense of neoclassic rime all go hand in hand. 
 - But the characteristic piece of criticism of this period is 
 the Essay of Dramatic Poesy (1665). In his dedication, 
 written in 1668 when the Essay was published, Dryden 
 makes the following apology : "I confess I find many things 
 
 *i,8. 
 
 2 Though the comedy of manners flourished at this period, it did not 
 reach its height until later. 
 
 3 1, 6. 
 
 * I, 8. The significance of this passage was pointed out by George Stuart 
 Collins ; cf. his dissertation, John Dryden, His Dramatic Theory and Praxis, 
 Leipzig, 1892, p. 8. * 
 
JOHN DRYDEN's LITERARY CRITICISM. 69 
 
 in this discourse which I do not now approve; my judgment 
 being a little altered since the writing of it ; but whether 
 for the better or worse, I know not : neither indeed is it 
 much material in an essay where all I have said is prob- 
 lematical." l But he begins his note to the reader : " The 
 drift of the ensuing discourse was chiefly to vindicate the 
 honor of our English writers, from the censure of those who 
 unjustly prefer the French before them." 2 I think any 
 reader will agree that Eugenius and Neander, the champions 
 of the English drama in this battle of critics, are the 
 favorites of the master of ceremonies : they seem to wield 
 their weapons with an air of triumph. Therefore the Essay 
 indicates with more certainty than its form would seem to 
 promise the theories and purposes of its author. 
 
 The Essay of Dramatic Poesy is, as has been indicated 
 above, in dialog form. Eugenius, Crites, Lisideius, and 
 Neander, seeking in an excursion on the Thames to calm 
 the feelings induced by a naval battle between the English 
 and the Dutch, fall to talk of literature, and especially of \_/-j 
 the relative merits of ancient and modern drama. Since 
 neither Aristotle nor Horace has given a definition of a play, 
 Lisideius, being importuned, suggests one which is to serve 
 as a basis for the discussion : a play " ought to be a just and 
 lively image of human nature, representing its passions 
 and humors, and the changes of fortune to which it is 
 subject, for the delight and instruction of mankind." 3 
 
 Eugenius, responding on behalf of the moderns to an 
 attack by Crites, vigorously defends the unorthodox English 
 manner of plotting : the plots of the ancients, he maintains, 
 " are built after the Italian mode of houses ; you see through 
 them all at once : the characters are indeed imitations of 
 nature, but so narrow, as if they imitated only an eye or an 
 
 l i, 23. *i, 27. »i, 36. 
 
70 WM. E. BOHN. 
 
 hand, and did not dare to venture on the lines of a face, or 
 the proportion of a body." 1 That is, measured by the 
 standard of our definition — A play " ought to be a just and 
 lively image of nature " — the plays of the Greeks fall short. 
 The hardihood of Eugenius advances even to an attack 
 on the unities : the rule as to the unity of place is not to be 
 found in Aristotle or Horace; the unity of time is not 
 always preserved by Terence ; the ancients sometimes com- 
 mitted absurdities in attempting to observe these rules. 
 Two of the unities, then, lack the support both of the 
 highest authority and of esthetic judgment. 
 
 Neander, defending the English as against the French, 
 begins by granting that the French contrive plots more 
 regularly than his countrymen, and observe the laws of 
 comedy and the decorum of the stage with more exactitude. 
 And yet he is of the opinion that neither English faults 
 nor French virtues are sufficient to give his opponent any 
 advantage : " For the lively imitation of nature being in the 
 definition of a play, those which best fulfil that law ought 
 to be superior to others. 'Tis true, those beauties of the 
 French poesy are such as will raise perfection higher where 
 it is, but are not sufficient to give it where it is not ; they 
 are indeed the beauties of a statue, but not of a man, because 
 not animated with the soul of poesy, which is the imitation 
 of humor and passions." 2 Thus the word "lively" in the 
 definition is made to furnish the legal defence of romanticism. 
 Continuing in his heterodoxy, Neander next takes up the 
 cause of English tragi-comedy : "A scene of mirth, mixed 
 with tragedy, has the same effect upon us which our music 
 has betwixt the acts ; and that we find a relief to us from 
 the best plots and language of the stage, if the discourses 
 have been long. I . . . . cannot but conclude, to the honor 
 
 1 1, 47. 2 1, 68. 
 
JOHN DKYDEN'S LITERARY CRITICISM. 71 
 
 of our nation, that we have invented, increased, and perfected 
 a more pleasant way of writing for the stage, than was ever 
 known to the ancients or moderns of any nation, which is 
 tragi-comedy." 1 Continuing in the same strain Neander 
 finds the rich variety of English plots superior to the 
 barrenness of the French. The evident foundation of the 
 argument is the revolutionary doctrine that plays are good 
 according to the amount of pleasure they give ; and the 
 various types are judged by the actual experience of 
 the spectator. The mirror of nature, rather than conven- 
 tional standards, contends Neander, should give law to the 
 drama : " It is unnatural for anyone in a gust of passion to 
 speak long together," 2 therefore the French way of putting 
 long speeches into the mouths of the actors is not to be 
 defended. 
 
 In the following passage Neander makes a determined 
 attack on the problem of romanticism: "I dare boldly affirm 
 these two things of the English drama: — First, that we have 
 many plays of ours as regular as any of theirs (referring to 
 the French), and which, besides, have more variety of plot 
 and characters ; and Secondly, that in the most irregular 
 plays of Shakespeare or Fletcher . . . there is a more mascu- 
 line fancy and greater spirit in the writing, than there is in 
 any of the French." 3 Dryden's esthetic is not deep enough 
 to justify the form of the English drama, but in the "mascu- 
 line fancy and greater spirit in the writing" he is attempting 
 to discover a new critical principle which will account for 
 the charm which he feels. It is in this same passage that 
 Neander speaks that famous eulogy of Shakespeare : " He 
 was the man who of all modern, and perhaps ancient poets, 
 had the largest and most comprehensive soul. All the images 
 of nature were still present to him, and he drew them, not 
 
 '1,70. *i, 72. »i, 78. 
 
72 WM. E. BOHN. 
 
 laboriously, but luckily; when he describes anything, you 
 more than see it, you feel it too." 1 A little farther on, 
 speaking of Ben Jonson, he continues : " If I would compare 
 him with Shakespeare, I must acknowledge him the more 
 correct poet, but Shakespeare the greater wit. Shakespeare 
 was the Homer, or father of our dramatic poets ; Jonson was 
 the Virgil, the pattern of elaborate writing ; I admire him, 
 but I love Shakespeare." 2 Here we have in 1665 the main 
 idea of the great parallel between Homer and Virgil which 
 is to be found in the preface to the Fables, written in 1700 ; 
 here it is abundance of wit, luxuriance of the creative faculty, 
 that is brought in to justify a feeling that runs directly 
 counter to the conclusions of formal criticism. The Essay 
 closes with an elaborate defense of riming plays ; which, 
 like the dedication of The Rival Ladies, goes to show that 
 Dryden is feeling his way toward the heroic ideal. 
 
 But as a whole this work, in its method and spirit, in the 
 underlying feeling of its every part, shows our author in the 
 character of an investigator of the materials of literary 
 criticism. It is to the period of its composition that he re- 
 ferred in his Discourse Concerning the Original and Progress 
 of Satire (1692), addrest to Charles, Earl of Dorset and 
 Middlesex : " When I was myself in the rudiments of my 
 poetry, without name or reputation in the world, having 
 rather the ambition of a writer than the skill ; when I was 
 drawing the outline of an art, without any living master to 
 instruct me in it; an art which had been better praised than 
 studied in England, . . . when thus, as I may say, before the 
 use of the loadstone, or knowledge of the compass, I was 
 sailing in a vast ocean, without any other help than the pole- 
 star of the ancients, and the rules of the French stage among 
 the moderns ; . . . yet even then, I had the presumption to 
 
 1 i, 79. »i, 82. 
 
JOHN DRYDEN's LITERARY CRITICISM. 73 
 
 dedicate to your lordship: a very unfinished piece, I must 
 confess, and which can only be excused by the little experience 
 of the author, and the modesty of the title An Essay." 1 To 
 a young author of unsettled opinions and inquiring mind the 
 intellectual atmosphere of the moment was not unfavorable. 
 In 1660 Dryden wrote an epistle to an archeological work 
 by Walter Charlton in which he spoke of the subjection to 
 ^.ristotle as " the longest tyranny that ever swayed." This 
 was decidedly a period of scepticism, a time when old creeds 
 would have to undergo renewed examination. The whole 
 spirit, scientific and philosophical, of the period which coin- 
 cided with Dryden's young manhood tended to reinforce the 
 conditions implied in his own description of the circumstances 
 which conditioned his early critical work. 
 
 The first of these conditions was the lack in England of a 
 definite critical standard. Ben Jonson had given vogue to 
 the English neoclassic movement, but the Restoration men 
 of letters looked to France for their theory. And in France, 
 duriug the great discussions of the early part of the period 
 of Louis XIV, all that the most daring moderns had been 
 able to do was to adapt the dicta of the schools to the 
 demands of the French stage. French classicism, merely 
 a thoro-going rationalism of the French type fathered 
 upon Aristotle, had decreed that the three unities, with their 
 accompanying conventions, constituted a code from which 
 there was no appeal. Plays written according to the law 
 were symmetrical, restrained, intelligible, and therefore 
 beautiful ; those fashioned without due regard for the law, 
 even though they gave pleasure, were unintelligible, and 
 therefore monstrous. Now this theory, best formulated in 
 France by Boileau, was already beginning to dominate Eng- 
 land when Dryden began his critical labors. Modified by the 
 
 1 2, 16. 
 
74 WM. E. BOHN. 
 
 English genius, especially by English rationalistic philoso- 
 phy, 1 it was destined to obtain, in the eighteenth century, 
 almost complete control of English thinking on the subject 
 of art. Naturally this philosophy could make nothing of the 
 great Elizabethans ; during Dryden's youth and early man- 
 hood Shakespeare was falling more and more under the ban 
 of the intellectuals. 
 
 Into the arena where the English literary tradition was 
 giving way before the advance of this neoclassicism came, 
 then, the young poet, Dryden. In the essays which we 
 have just examined we have him, still in the first flush of 
 youth, boldly taking his stand upon his literary instincts. 
 In spite of the dicta of the schools he feels the spell of great 
 literature and is suspicious of the critical theory which 
 cannot make room for it. Without the support of precedent 
 or the aid of adequate method, but with a superb enthusiasm, 
 he is attempting to give theoretic justification to what his 
 feelings recognize as beautiful. The formal results of his 
 attempt are a partial clearing away of the rubbish heaped 
 upon Aristotle, a resort to the historical method, 2 a widening 
 of the theory of imitation, and a determined attempt to 
 judge literature with reference to its social function. 
 
 In 1667 when our author revived The Wild Gallant he 
 introduced it with a prolog in which he compared his own 
 
 1 This expression 1 use rather loosely to designate English sensationalism. 
 This kind of materialistic rationalism is represented by the tendency to hold 
 art down to the common-sense standards of ordinary life. 
 
 2 Of course I do not mean to imply that Dryden had a deep, modern 
 sense of historical development of the arts. Now and then, when it suited 
 his occasions, he explained the difference between Greek and Roman art, 
 between French and English, or between ancient and modern, by means 
 of references to the social conditions, or peculiarities of taste, of the nations 
 or periods in question. But any systematic application of the historical 
 method of criticism was out of the question. 
 
JOHN DRYDEN's LITERARY CRITICISM. 75 
 
 evolution with that of " some raw squire, by tender mother 
 bred." The innocent squire comes at length to town : 
 
 " Where entered by some school-fellow or friend, 
 He grows to break glass windows in the end ; 
 His valor, too, which with the watch began, 
 Proceeds to duels, and he kills his man." 
 
 Though Dryden intended this as an account of his education 
 in obscenity, it is capable of a much wider application. He 
 came to London with his fortune aud reputation to make ; a 
 Puritan by birth and early associations, he naturally did all 
 in his power to win esteem in Puritan circles ; after the 
 Restoration he continued his efforts more and more success- 
 fully with the new court. But in 1665 there was still 
 something of the raw squire about him ; he was endeavor- 
 ing to strike in with the fancy of town and court, but had 
 as yet not mastered the trick. In 1667, speaking of The 
 Indian Emperor, he said : " It is an irregular piece, if 
 compared with many of Corneille's, and, if I may make a 
 judgment of it, written with more flame than art." 1 That 
 is, in 1665, the time of the. writing of the Essay of Dramatic 
 Poesy, Dryden had not settled upon his literary aims ; he 
 had not yet brought himself to defend, and work within the 
 limits of, a definite literary form. And on this account his 
 critical genius was left free to give us during this period 
 judgments and appreciations which alone would mark him 
 as the greatest innovator who has thus far appeared among 
 modern critics. 2 
 
 1 Works, ed. Scott and Saintsbury, n, 288. 
 
 2 Perhaps it is unnecessary to say that I do not attempt to account satis- 
 factorily for the nature of the criticism which Dryden produced during 
 any particular period. The motives which work themselves out in the 
 mind of any great man are naturally complex, and the influences to which 
 Dryden was subject were particularly numerous and varied. I merely 
 attempt to point out the relations of his criticism to certain other features 
 of his life and works. 
 
V 
 
 76 WM. E. BOHN. 
 
 The Second Period. 
 
 The second period of Dryden's critical activity includes the 
 ten years from 1666 to 1675. Gradually, during the middle 
 of the decade between 1661 and 1670, our author improved 
 his situation; beginning as a struggling unknown, he soon 
 became the most popular poet in England, the favorite of 
 court and play-house. The court was given its intellectual 
 tone by sensual noblemen who could find little pleasure in 
 the genuine tragedy which bases itself upon human life and 
 emotions. Adapting his works, half unconsciously, to the 
 taste of these men, under whose influence he lived and upon 
 whose favor he was dependent, Dryden came naturally to de- 
 vote himself to the heroic play. Aud his talent for criticism 
 was turned to good account in the exposition and defense of 
 the heroic literary ideal. 1 This led naturally to a rather 
 mechanical conception of poetry, a fervid defense of rime, 
 apologies for extravagance in character-development, and an 
 undervaluing of the work of the Elizabethans. 
 
 From the beginning of his life in London Dryden showed 
 his tendency to swim with the current. Miserably poor, 2 
 he depended for success on the notice which the efforts of his 
 pen might attract in high places. His career began auspi- 
 ciously enough. In 1657, when Dryden came up to London, 
 Cromwell was still at the height of his power, and Sir Gil- 
 
 x Like most critics, Dryden paid little attention to the problems of 
 comedy. In addition to the difficulties presented by the subject his neglect 
 was no doubt prompted by his natural dislike of comedy writing : more 
 than once he lamented the fact that he was forced to this distasteful labor. 
 At any rate it is certain that his comedy is related to his critical theory 
 only so far as it exhibits his general state of mind or throws light on his 
 relations with his public. 
 
 2 Saintsbury, Life of Dryden, English Men of Letters Series, p. 10 ; 
 Christy, Memoir of Dryden, Globe edition of works, p. xx. 
 
JOHN DRYDEN's LITERARY CRITICISM. 77 
 
 bert Pickering, Dryden' s cousin, stood high in the Protector's 
 favor. Thus our author got near enough to Cromwell to feel 
 something of the magnetism of his personality. Already 
 a Puritan by birth and training, he naturally threw himself 
 into the glorification of the Puritan hero and his cause. There 
 is no reason to doubt that Dryden's eulogy of Cromwell was 
 a sincere outpouring of the young poet's enthusiasm. But at 
 the very time when this poem was written the political tide 
 began to set in a new direction. Weary of constant unrest, ' 
 practically all England began to look toward the restoration 
 of the house of Stuart for relief. And it is but natural that 
 our versatile young poet, when his powerful friends began to 
 turn royalists, should be thrilled with the common feeling 
 of exultation at the prospect of a settled government and the*^^ 
 glories of a new court. So one is not at all surprised at the 
 tone of the extravagant panegyrics with which he hailed the 
 Restoration. 
 
 Dryden's facility in adapting himself to changed circum- 
 stances is shown also by the rapidity with w T hich he gained 
 friends among the royalists. Chief among his new intimates 
 was Sir Robert Howard. Immediately after the Restoration q 
 Sir Robert had prefixed to a volume of verse an epistle by 
 Dryden, " To my Honored Friend, Sir Robert Howard." 
 In the epistle which served as a dedication of Annus Mira- 
 bilis (1666) Dryden wrote to Howard: "You have not only 
 been careful of my fortune, which was the effect of your 
 nobleness, but you have been solicitous of my reputation, 
 which is that of your kindness." 1 In 1663 our author 
 married Howard's sister, Lady Elizabeth Howard, and in 
 1664 the brothers-in-law produced together The Indian 
 Queen. All of this goes to show that even at this early 
 period Dryden was, not entirely without success, bending 
 
 1 1, 10. 
 
78 WM. E. BOHN. 
 
 every effort toward the attainment of recognition among the 
 satellites of the court. 
 
 But the evidence of Dryden's easy adaptation to a changed 
 environment would not be complete without some mention 
 of his earlier plays. Almost from the beginning his dramatic 
 as well as his lyric muse was brought into subjection to his 
 conformist tendency. Tho The Wild Gallant (1663) was 
 a dismal failure on the stage, the patronage of Lady Castle- 
 main, mistress to the king, infused new life into our author's 
 " condemned and dying muse." * Referring to this play 
 Dryden wrote : " Yet it was received at court ; and was 
 more than once the divertisement of his majesty, by his 
 own command ; but I have more modesty than to ascribe 
 that to my merit, which was his particular act of grace." 2 
 In The Rival Ladies (1664) and The Indian Emperor (1665) 
 Dryden made his first attempts in the direction of the heroic. 
 And that these attempts were conscious efforts to please the 
 king appears from a number of Dryden's own statements. 
 In the dedication of The Indian Emperor he wrote : " The 
 favor which heroic plays have lately found upon our 
 theaters has been wholly derived to them from the counte- 
 nance and approbation they received at court. The most 
 eminent persons for wit and honor in the royal circle having 
 so owned them, that they have judged no way so fit as verse 
 to entertain a noble audience, or express a noble passion." 3 
 In his epistle dedicatory to An Essay of Dramatic Poesy, 
 written in 1668 when the Essay was published, he thus 
 supported his argument in favor of rime : " The court, 
 which is the best and surest judge of writing, has generally 
 allowed of verse ; and in the town it has found favorers of 
 
 1 Cf. Dryden's poem, To the Lady Castlemain. 
 
 2 Preface to The Wild Gallant, Scott-Saintsbury, vol. II, 27. 
 
 3 Scott-Saintsbury, II, 285. 
 
JOHN DRYDEN's LITERARY CRITICISM. 79 
 
 wit and quality." ' Dryden was poor, dependent upon his 
 pen for a livelihood ; it is but natural that he should have 
 fallen in with the mode favored by those whose approbation 
 meant success. 
 
 Even during his first period, then, Dryden was doing his 
 utmost to gain his way among the great ones of the court. 
 But the court was not yet sure of its own tastes ; the norm 
 of the heroic play had not yet been worked out. Dryden 
 was, as yet, unable to command his talents to the best 
 advantage, to cast them into the required mold, to make 
 them respond quickly and faultlessly to the demands made 
 upon them ; hence his work was not, during this early 
 period, especially distinguished. It was on account of these 
 facts that he worked for full five years without a settled 
 literary system, and thus was left free to give us at the 
 beginning of his career criticism so remarkable for fresh 
 enthusiasm and unconventionally. But early in the second 
 period our author's efforts to attain distinction began to tell 
 in the most decisive manner. Already allied by marriage to 
 a noble family, he was soon established as a successful 
 playwright. About the year 1667 he entered upon a con- 
 tract with the King's Theater : in return for three plays a 
 year he was to receive a share and a quarter of the profits 
 of the theater. For some years, it appears, his profits 
 from this source amounted to two or three hundred pounds 
 annually. In 1670 he was appointed by the king to the 
 posts of Poet-laureate and Historiographer Royal with a 
 salary of two hundred pounds a year and arrears amounting 
 to four hundred pounds. 
 
 Besides this official recognition evidences of favor with the 
 court are abundant. Secret Love, or the Maiden Queen (1667) 
 Charles graced with the title of " his play." 2 From numerous 
 
 1 1, 24. 2 Scott-Saintsbury, II, 417. 
 
 & 
 
80 WM. E. BOIJN. 
 
 suggestions in the prefaces, dedications, etc., one gathers that 
 the king took a strong interest in Dryden's work, discussed 
 plans with him, and honored hini with advice. As to our 
 author's social position in general, Scott's statement seems to 
 be quite within the limits of fact: "Whether we judge of 
 the rank which Dryden held in society by the splendor of his 
 titled and powerful friends, or by his connections among men 
 of genius, we must consider him as occupying at this time, 
 as high a station in the foremost circle as literary reputation 
 could gain for its owner. Independent of the notice with 
 which he was honored by Charles himself, the poet num- 
 bered among his friends most of the distinguished nobility." * 
 Evidence of Dryden's subservience to the court is abundant. 
 Tyrannic Love was written at the request of " some persons of 
 honor ; " 2 Amhoyna was merely a piece of political service. 
 In The Indian Emperor there occur numerous discussions of 
 royal authority, all of which turn in favor of absolutism ; in 
 The Conquest of Granada, after Almanzor has been repre- 
 sented as a being quite apart from ordinary flesh and blood 
 he becomes immediately comprehensible when it is explained 
 that he is of royal lineage. That the heroic drama was de- 
 veloped in response to the expressed taste of Charles II has 
 already been made evident. In the Defense of the Epilog 
 (1672) Dryden referred not only the heroic drama but the 
 entire atmosphere of the period, all its tastes and enthusiasms, 
 to the courtly influence. 3 And in The Defense of an Essay 
 
 1 lb id., i, 96. Ubid., m, 376. 
 
 3 "Now, if they ask me whence it is that our conversation is so much 
 refined ? I must freely, and without flattery, ascribe it to the court ; and, 
 in it, particularly to the King, whose example gives a law to it. His own 
 misfortunes, and the nation's, afforded an opportunity, which is rarely 
 allowed to sovereign princes, I mean of traveling, and being conversant in 
 the most polisht courts of Europe ; and, thereby, of cultivating a spirit 
 which was formed by nature to receive the impressions of a gallant and 
 generous education. At his return, he found a nation lost as much in 
 
JOHN DRYDEN's LITERARY CRITICISM. 81 
 
 of Dramatic Poesy he makes a frank confession of personal 
 servitude : " For I confess my chief endeavors are to delight 
 the age in which I live." 1 
 
 barbarism as in rebellion ; and, as the excellency of his nature forgave the 
 one, so the excellency of his manners reformed the other. The desire of 
 imitating so great a pattern first awakened the dull and heavy spirits of the 
 English from their natural reservedness ; loosened them from their stiff 
 forms of conversation, and made them easy and pliant to each other in 
 discourse. Thus, insensibly, our way of living became more free ; and the 
 fire of English wit, which was before stifled under a constrained, melancholy 
 way of breeding, began first to display its force, by mixing the solidity of 
 our nation with the air and gaity of our neighbors. This being granted to 
 be true, it would be a wonder if the poets, whose work is imitation, should 
 be the only persons in three kingdoms who should not receive the advantage 
 of it ; or, if they should not more easily imitate the wit and conversation of 
 the present age than of the past." i, 176. 
 
 In order to appreciate the full significance of this passage one should 
 place in contrast to it the epilog written by Dryden just before his death 
 for a presentation of Beaumont and Fletcher's Pilgrim for his benefit. 
 Attempting to defend the stage against Jeremy Collier's attack Dryden 
 wrote on this occasion : 
 
 " But sure a banished court, with lewdness fraught, 
 The seeds of open vice returning brought. 
 
 The poets, who must live by courts or starve, 
 Were proud, so good a government to serve ; 
 And, mixing with buffons and pimps profane, 
 Tainted the stage for some small snip of gain." 
 
 1 1, 116. Of course the important point is, not that Dryden was connected 
 with a court, but that he was connected with a court which was, in large 
 measure, cut off from the national life. Compare his situation, for example, 
 with that of Shakespeare or Racine. The case of the first of these, it is 
 true, differs from that of Dryden in that his effort was partially directed 
 toward entertaining the promiscuous crowd of Londoners wlio flocked to 
 his theater. But there is abundant evidence to show that he took account 
 of the aristocratic part of his audience, and his ardent royalism crops out 
 in nearly everyone of his plays. In Queen Elizabeth's time, however, the 
 best elements in the nation were rallying about the throne ; consequently 
 Shakespeare's devotion to the court and things courtly did not lead him 
 outside the main interests of English national life. Tho the relations 
 of Racine with the court of Louis XIV were very different from those of 
 
 6 
 
82 WM. E. BOHN. 
 
 Fortunately enough Dryden himself noticed the relation 
 between his criticism and the society he kept. Having been 
 attacked, just when or how, is not clear, by the old-fashioned 
 Elizabethans and by the more new-fashioned, but not less 
 straight-laced, classicists he answered by placing himself 
 among the court wits and saying, in substance, These dull 
 fellows never could understand us. 1 So far as this period 
 is concerned, then, it is merely necessary to follow up this 
 clue which Dryden himself has given us. What was the 
 
 Shakespeare with the court of Elizabeth, still, thro them, Racine was, 
 like his great English predecessor, kept in vital touch with the life and 
 ideals of his nation. The continuing popularity of his plays proves that 
 they really represent French thought and feeling. 
 
 Dryden' s position differed from that of Shakespeare and Racine in that 
 for him devotion to the court meant separation from the best traditions and 
 life of his nation. During the time when he was writing his heroic plays 
 the court of Charles II was rapidly alienating, not only the citizen class, 
 but even many among those of noble blood who had at first hailed it with 
 enthusiasm. Its ideals were so largely exotic that plays written to suit its 
 taste could hardly represent the life of England. Hence when one says 
 that the heroic play grew up as a result of the influence of the court of 
 Charles II, his position is not invalidated by the remark that plays of a 
 very different type have been produced under the influence of other courts. 
 
 1 The passage referred to occurs in the dedication of The Assignation 
 (1673), addressed to Sir Charles Sedley, the most brilliant and dissolute 
 among the wits of the court: "For this reason, I have often laughed at 
 the ignorant and ridiculous descriptions which some pedants have given 
 of the wits, as they are pleased to call them ; which are a generation of 
 men unknown to them, as the people of Tartary, or the Terra Australis, 
 are to us. And therefore, as we draw giants and anthropophagi in those 
 vacancies of our maps, where we have not traveled to discover better ; so 
 those wretches paint lewdness, atheism, folly, ill-reasoning, and all manner 
 of extravagances amongst us, for want of understanding what we are . . . 
 I am ridiculously enough, accused of being a contemner of universities ; 
 that is, in other words, an enemy of learning ; without the foundation of 
 which, I am sure, no man can pretend to be a poet. And if this be not 
 enough, I am made a detractor of my predecessors, whom I confess to have 
 been my masters in the art. ' ' Scott-Saintsbury, iv, 373. 
 
 For the real characters of Sedley and his associates see Scott-Saintsbury, 
 IV, 373 ; and Beljame, Le Public et les Hommes de Leilres, pp. 5, 6. 
 
JOHN DRYDEN's LITERARY CRITICISM. 83 
 
 nature of the poems, plays and literary criticism produced 
 by this chief purveyor of literature to a witty court? The 
 first poem of Dryden's second peried was Annus Mirabilis 
 (1666), an epic narrative of the two great events of the 
 year 1666, the war against the Dutch and the burning of 
 London. Like the more important of Dryden's earlier 
 poems this epic is a tribute to royalty ; the Dutch war and 
 the great fire worked together for the glory of Charles II 
 and the Duke of York. But perhaps the work is most 
 interesting from the point of view of technical execution. It 
 is evident that there could be in it little of genuine poetic 
 inspiration ; Dryden has selected the subjects which are of 
 public interest and which offer opportunity to serve his 
 master ; all his talent is bent to the task of making a beauti- 
 ful poem out of this unpromising material. In the preface 
 he explains the nature of wit and describes all the processes 
 of poetry-making : and in the poem he exemplifies his 
 theories — he decorates his thoughts with appropriate orna- 
 ments, clothes them in sounding terms. And, it must be 
 confessed, especially in the description of the fire, he succeeds 
 to a remarkable degree. 
 
 The letter which serves as a preface to Annus Mirabilis, 
 evidently an exposition of the methods employed in the 
 writing of the poem, exemplifies, in its main features, 
 the neoclassic manner of thought which is coming into 
 vogue. There is to be found here nothing of the revolu- 
 tionist. Dryden confesses specifically that in this poem 
 Virgil has been his master ; and when one remembers all 
 that Virgil was made to stand for among the neoclassicists 
 this profession prepares him to expect a cut-and-dried poetic 
 theory. The following sentences on the nature 'of poetry 
 and wit are typical ; " The composition of all poems is, or 
 ought to be, of wit ; and wit in the poet, or wit writing, . . . 
 is no other than the faculty of imagination in the writer, 
 
84 WM. E. BOHN. 
 
 which, like a nimble spaniel, beats over and ranges through 
 the field of memory, till it springs the quarry it hunted 
 after. . . . Wit written is that which is well defined, the 
 "happy result of thought, or product of imagination." ! This 
 is evidently the beginuing of the common-sense, mechanical 
 notion of poetry the development of which we shall have to 
 describe when we reach the discussion of Dryden's work 
 during the decade between 1680 and 1689. Could anything 
 more resemble a passage from a treatise on The Complete 
 Art of Poetry than does the following ? " So then the first 
 happiness of the poet's imagination is properly invention, or 
 finding of the thought; the second is fancy, or the variation, 
 deriving, or molding of that thought, as the judgment repre- 
 sents it proper to the subject ; the third is elocution, or the 
 act of clothing and adorning that thought, so found and 
 varied, in apt, significant, and sounding words." 2 
 
 It is to be taken into account that this is but a short 
 epistle, making few pretensions. But it seems to me that if, 
 at the time of its writing, Dryden had been in the state of 
 mind which inspired the Essay of Dramatic Poesy, or even 
 the little preface to The Rival Ladies, he would have written 
 something far different. Ker notices that in this letter 
 Dryden admires in the works of Ovid aud Virgil chiefly 
 their separate pieces of description. Throughout the entire 
 discussion, one might add, he seems to be thinking of orna- 
 ments spread over a work of literature rather than of organic 
 beauties that shine out from within ; there is no reference 
 here, as there was in the Essay of Dramatic Poesy, to the 
 difference between a man and a statue. The blessed uncer- 
 tainty and spontaneity of the earlier period have given way 
 to a cold scholasticism. 
 
 The first drama of this period, Secret Love, or the Maiden 
 Queen (1667), was introduced with the following prolog : 
 
 'i, 14. *i, 15. 
 
JOHN DRYDEN'S LITERARY CRITICISM. 85 
 
 "He who writ this, not without pains and thought, 
 
 From French and English theaters has brought 
 
 The exactest rules by which a play is wrought. 
 
 II. 
 
 "The Unities of Action, Place, and Time; 
 The scenes unbroken ; and the mingled chime 
 Of Jonson's humor with Corneille's rime. 
 
 III. 
 
 " But while dead colors he with care did lay, 
 He fears his wit, or plot, he did not weigh, 
 Which are the living beauties of a play." 
 
 This remarkable prolog is in the nature of a confession 
 of scepticism. Dryden is saying to his masters : Here is 
 your play ; I have fixed it up to suit your taste, but as for 
 me, I am far from being satisfied with it ; I demand some- 
 thing more than regularity and ornamentation. As we shall 
 see, the last stanza of this prolog, with a corresponding 
 passage in the preface to Secret Love, stands quite alone 
 among the critical works of Dryden's second period. As 
 the anxiety expressed in the prolog might lead one to 
 expect, there is to be found iu Secret Love more of living 
 beauty than in any other play of this period. In the serious 
 parts there is even less of the heroic than in The Indian 
 Emperor, and some of the comic parts are superb. That is 
 to say, we have here in Dryden's actual literary work as 
 well as in his theory, a slight reaction, a deviation from his 
 general tendency. 
 
 In 1668, with the second edition of The Indian Emperor, 
 Dryden published A Defense of an Essay of Dramatic Poesy, 
 " being an Answer to the Preface of The Great Favorite, or 
 the Duke of Lerma." This essay divides itself into two 
 parts, the first, a defense of rime, the second, a defense of 
 
 O 
 
86 WM. E. BOHN. 
 
 the unities. Id his masterly introduction Dryden throws the 
 burden of proof on his opponent, Sir Robert Howard, by 
 representing himself as the humble champion of Aristotle, 
 Horace, and "all poets both ancient and modern." Howard 
 has based his argument on the Aristotelian doctrine of imita- 
 tion. Dryden admits the principle — " 'Tis true that to 
 imitate w T ell is the poet's work" — but to support rime, 
 which cannot be defended on that basis, he attempts to 
 define the purpose of poetry : " To affect the soul, and excite 
 the passions, and, above all, to move admiration (which 
 is the delight of serious plays) a bare imitation will not 
 serve." * But later he has to meet Howard's statement that, 
 " In the difference of tragedy, comedy, and farce itself there 
 can be no determination but by taste," and he answers : 
 " Were there neither judge, taste, nor opinion in the world, 
 yet they would differ in their natures." 2 And taking up 
 the real problem of taste, he adds : " To please the people 
 ought to be the poet's aim, because plays are made for their 
 delight ; but it does not follow that they are always pleased 
 with good plays, or that the plays which please them are 
 always good." In defending rime Dryden insisted upon 
 a literary evaluation which bases itself upon, and expresses 
 in terms of, the social purpose of literature : but now, when 
 it better serves his turn, he insists upon principles like 
 Aristotle's. In passing from one of Howard's points to 
 another he has changed his creed. It would be safe 
 to challenge anyone to gather from this essay Dryden's real 
 opinions as to the moot points of seventeenth century 
 criticism : at one moment the principle of imitation is all- 
 sufficient, at another, it is cast aside ; at one moment a play 
 is to be judged by the pleasure it gives, at another, it is to 
 be ranked according to some eternal law. Dryden is here 
 
 >i, 113J 2 i, 120. 
 
JOHN DRYDEN'S LITERARY CRITICISM. 87 
 
 defending, not a doctrine, but a thing — the rimed play : 
 this courtly form of amusement has been attacked, and in 
 its defence all doctrines are alike to him ; his critical creed 
 changes with the exigencies of controversy. As to the 
 unities, Dryden has merely laid down " some opinions of 
 the ancients and moderns," together with some of his own. 
 The argument is rather conventional, based, with frequent 
 invocations of the goddess of Reason, on the law of imitation. 
 
 The chief significance of this essay lies in the fact that it 
 places Dryden definitely before us as the defender of the 
 reigning modes. Sir Robert Howard, a champion of the old 
 English dramatic traditions, has defended blank verse and 
 utmost liberty in the structure of plots ; Dryden exerts all 
 his skill in the defense of rime and the unities. His 
 authorities are Virgil (mentioned as the only perfect poet), 
 Jonson (" in judgment above all other poets "), the ancients, 
 especially Aristotle and Horace (whom he " will still think 
 as wise as those who so confidently correct them "), and 
 Corneille. This array of authorities alone, taken in connec- 
 tion with the apparent humility with which Dryden is 
 willing to submit to them, would be sufficient to show how 
 complete has been his change of heart since the writing of 
 the Essay itself. It is especially noticeable that the thoro- 
 going good-sense which gave tone to the dedication of Annus 
 3Iirabilis has already been perverted. Dryden is here using 
 the logical methods of the rationalist to defend a sort of 
 play as irrational as can be imagined. 
 
 The preface to An Evening's Love, or the Mock Astrologer Q 
 (1668) shows how Dryden's conformity and his resulting 
 popularity even thus early began to color his opinion of the 
 Elizabethans. According to his opening statement he origi- 
 nally intended to discuss in this preface the difference between 
 the plays of his age and those of his predecessors on the 
 English stage, and also the improvement of the language 
 
05 WM. E. BOHN. 
 
 since Fletcher's and Jonson's day : intentions which he is to 
 carry out in The Defense of the Epilog. But even tho 
 he has given over for the present the idea of treating syste- 
 matically the superiority of his own time, the feeling of this 
 superiority is so strong upon him that it will not be 
 smothered. Ben Jonson comes off pretty well : " But Ben 
 Jonson is to be admired for his mauy excellencies ; and can 
 be taxed with fewer failings than any English poet. I know 
 I have been accused as an enemy of his writings ; but 
 without any other reason than that I do not admire him 
 blindly, and without looking into his imperfections. For 
 why should he alone be exempted from those frailties, from 
 which Homer and Virgil are not free? Or why should 
 there be any Ipse dixit in our poetry, any more than in our 
 philosophy ? I admire and applaud him where I ought : 
 those who do more, do but value themselves in their admira- 
 tion of him ; and, by telling you they extol Ben Jonson's 
 way, will insinuate to you that they can practise it. For 
 my part, I declare that I want judgment to imitate him ; 
 and should think it a great impudence in myself to attempt 
 it. To make men appear pleasantly ridiculous on the stage, 
 was, as I have said, his talent ; and in this he needed not 
 the acumen of wit but that of judgment. For the characters 
 and representations of folly are only the effects of observa- 
 tion ; and observation is an effect of judgment." l This is 
 merely patronizing, but when he comes to Shakespeare and 
 Fletcher our author assumes quite a different tone : " I 
 think there is no folly so great in any poet of our age, 
 as the superfluity and waste of wit was in some of our 
 predecessors : particularly we may say of Fletcher and of 
 Shakespeare, what was said of Ovid, in omni ejus ingenio 
 facilius quod rejici, quam quod adjioi potest, invenies. The 
 
 •i, 138. 
 
JOHN DRYDEN'S LITERARY CRITICISM. 89 
 
 contrary of which was true in Virgil and our incomparable 
 Jonson." 1 
 
 In answer to the charge of plagiarism Dryden modestly 
 refers to King Charles, who has lately remarked that he 
 wishes others would steal him such plays as Dryden's : but 
 his real defense is an analysis of the poet's work, in which 
 he proves that the mere outline which an author can steal is 
 but a small part of a play. This analysis is very like the 
 one which we examined in the preface to Annus Mirabilis, 
 but its conclusion seems worth quoting : " But in general, 
 the employment of a poet is like that of a curious gunsmith, 
 or watchmaker ; the iron or silver is not his own ; but they 
 are the least part of that which gives the value : the price 
 lies wholly in the workmanship." 2 It would hardly be fair 
 to hold Dryden responsible for all the implications of this 
 mechanical figure ; but it is surely significant of his general 
 state of mind. 
 
 This preface distinctly foreshadows the Defense of the 
 Epilog (1672), with its sharp arraignment of the faults 
 of Shakespeare. That is a significant sentence in which 
 Dryden connects philosophy and poetry : " Or why should 
 there be any Ipse dixit in our poetry, any more than in our 
 philosophy ? " He has lost faith in the traditions which 
 called forth the enthusiasm of his youth, but, like the 
 English philosophers of his time, he has abundant confi- 
 dence in the principles and methods of the present. 
 
 In the critical works just examined Dryden shows that 
 he has been for some time revolving in his mind the various 
 aspects of the heroic drama, and, as one is thus led to 
 expect, it is in plays of the heroic type that the dramatic 
 activity of the period finally culminates. The first of these \j 
 is Tyrannic Love, or the Royal Martyr (1669). Dryden 
 
 1 i, 139. *i, 147. 
 
 o 
 
90 WM. E. BOHN. 
 
 begins his preface to this drama : " I was moved to write 
 this play by many reasons : amongst the others, the com- 
 mands of some persons of honor, for whom I have a most 
 particular respect, were daily sounding in my ears, that it 
 would be of good example to undertake a poem of this 
 nature. Neither was my own inclination wanting to second 
 their desires." 1 The drama which was thus written at the 
 suggestion of " some persons of honor " presents most of 
 the features of a typical heroic play : a rather colorless 
 heroine of irreproachable character, a fine code of honor, 
 and a warrior who storms against gods and men. In 
 accordance with Dryden's theories it exhibits, also, miracles, 
 guardian angels, aud spirits of divers descriptions. But 
 Maximin, the fearless warrior, is villain rather than hero, 
 and in the end the play is an apotheosis of Christian faith 
 rather than of romantic courage. 
 
 It is in the two parts of The Conquest of Granada (1670) 
 that the English heroic type reaches its culmination. Here 
 we have the all-conquering hero who whistles fortune after 
 him, makes and unmakes kings, single-handed disperses 
 armies, and, quite contrary to Restoration standards, loves 
 with a nice regard for an extremely conventional code of 
 honor. The other chief characters, the villains, merely 
 male and female devils, and the heroine, spotlessly insipid, 
 are mere abstractions. There are no lights or shades; all 
 the actions are either miraculously heroic or unspeakably 
 heinous. It is really a complete order of things that we 
 have before us here ; no one acts or talks like a person in 
 the real world, but, under the conditions of this artificial 
 universe, all is consistent. Every character does what is 
 expected of him, and the whole scheme of things makes it 
 possible to carry out a plot which any relation to reality 
 
 1 Scott-Saintsbury, in, 376. 
 
JOHN DRYDEN's LITERARY CRITICISM. 91 
 
 would render impossible. The polisht versification merely 
 gives a fitting exterior to this material. But what I wish to 
 emphasize is the fact that this whole make-believe universe 
 is a glorification of royalty and nobility. At this time the 
 king and his court are attempting to maintain their position, 
 especially to assert their supremacy over "the town." Thus 
 it may readily be understood how a stage world in which 
 their superiority over the common herd is a fundamental 
 principle, and throughout which is maintained the elevation 
 of thought and conduct to which they lay claim, is as 
 incense in their nostrils. Nothing else could have been so 
 suitable for the entertaining of " a noble audience." 
 
 This period reached its dramatic and critical climaxes in 
 the same volume : with the two parts of The Conquest of 
 Granada were published in 1672 an essay Of Heroic Plays 
 and the Defense of the Epilog. The first of these, Dry den's 
 chief apology for a type of literature to which he devoted 
 some of his most ambitious efforts and for which he was the 
 accepted sponsor, begins in a tone of triumph : " Whether 
 heroic verse ought to be admitted into serious plays, is not 
 now to be disputed : it is already in possession of the stage ; 
 and I dare confidently affirm that very few tragedies, in this 
 age, shall be received without it." x Then, after repeating 
 an argument for rime which we have already heard in the 
 Defense of an Essay of Dramatic Poesy, he goes on to relate 
 the history of the heroic play : during the time when plays 
 were prohibited in England Sir William Davenant intro- 
 duced from Italy " examples of moral virtue, writ in verse 
 and performed in recitative music ; " 2 after the Restoration 
 these entertainments developed into heroic plays. But, 
 according to Dry den, Davenant' s plays lacked fulness of 
 plot and variety of characters, and something might have 
 
 'i, 148. 2 i,149. 
 
92 WM. E. BOHN. 
 
 been added to the beauty of the style. Here Dry den begins 
 with becoming modesty, to give an account of what he 
 himself has performed. Whereas Davenant took his image 
 of a heroic poem from the drama, Dryden derived his ideal of 
 a heroic drama from the heroic poem. Therefore, it seemed 
 to our author, he was the first to give epic dignity to the 
 heroic play. The inspiration of our author's innovations, he 
 tells us, came from a passage of Ariosto's : 
 
 "Le donne, i cavalier, l'arme, gli amori, 
 Le cortesie, l'audaci imprese io canto." l 
 
 The ministry of gods as well as of disembodied spirits and 
 the performance of deeds of valor by heroes has always been 
 allowed in heroic poetry, and is, therefore, essential to the 
 heroic play. 
 
 A detailed account of this essay is unnecessary : it exhibits 
 an exceptional unity of principle. The heroic play in all 
 its attributes is defended on the basis of the theory of ideali- 
 zation : everything is to be heightened ; or, to use Dryden's 
 own figure, we are to fly rather than walk. 
 
 At first thought this essay may seem to stand in direct 
 contradiction to the preface of An Evening's Love. In the 
 preface of 1671 we saw Dryden the cool champion of 
 moderation; and now, in 1672, he is defending excesses 
 which seemed ridiculous even to many of his contempo- 
 raries. The apparent anomaly becomes intelligible if we 
 remember that in both, as also in the Defense of an Essay 
 of Dramatic Poesy, Dryden is defending at once himself and 
 the literary fashions of the day. There is a tone almost 
 domineering in the concluding sentence of the essay Of 
 Heroic Plays : " But I have already swept the stakes ; and, 
 with the good fortune of prosperous gamesters, can be, content 
 
 1 1, 150. 
 
 \ 
 
JOHN dryden 's literary criticism. 93 
 
 to sit quietly ; to hear my fortune cursed by some, and my 
 faults arraigned by others, and to suffer both without 
 reply." 1 
 
 In the Defense of the Epilog 2 Dryden avowedly sets out 
 to examine the works of his predecessors on the English 
 stage. A passage from the opening paragraph will serve to 
 show the temper of the entire essay. After explaining that 
 he feels obliged to defend the epilog in which he has 
 taxed " the former writing " Dryden fortifies himself against 
 misinterpretation : " Yet I would so maintain my opinion 
 of the present age, as not to be wanting in my veneration 
 for the past : I would ascribe to dead authors their just 
 praises in those things wherein they have excelled us ; and 
 in those wherein we contend with them for the preeminence, 
 I would acknowledge our advantage to the age, and claim 
 
 1 1, 159. 
 
 2 Epilog 
 
 To the Second Part of the Conquest of Granada (1672). 
 
 Following are the essential parts of this epilog : 
 
 ' ' They, who have best succeeded on the stage, 
 Have still conformed their genius to the age. 
 Thus Jonson did mechanic humor show, 
 When men were dull, and conversation low. 
 Then, Comedy was faultless, but 'twas coarse : 
 Cobb's tankard was a jest, and Otter's horse. 
 And, as their Comedy, their love was mean ; 
 Except, by chance, in some one labored scene, 
 Which must atone for an ill-written play : 
 They rose, but at their height could seldom stay. 
 Fame then was cheap, and the first comer sped ; 
 And they have kept it since by being dead. 
 
 If Love and Honor now are higher rais'd 
 'Tis not the poet but the age is prais'd. 
 Wit's now arrived to a more high degree ; 
 Our native language more refined and free. 
 Our ladies and our men now speak more wit 
 In conversation, than those poets writ." 
 
94 WM. E. BOHN. 
 
 no victory from our wit. This being what I have proposed 
 to myself, I hope I shall not be thought arrogant when I 
 inquire into their errors. For we live in an age so sceptical, 
 that as it determines little, so it takes nothing from antiquity 
 on trust ; and I confess to have no other ambition in this 
 essay, than that poetry may not go backward, when all other 
 arts and sciences are advancing." 1 And a little later Dryden 
 adds, on the authority of Horace, " that antiquity alone is 
 no plea for the excellency of a poem." Here again our 
 author brings together philosophy aud poetry ; the literature 
 of the former age is to be examined sceptically, coldly, in 
 the manner of contemporaneous English philosophy; there 
 are to be no fond enthusiasms here. 
 
 Very methodically Dryden goes about his exposition : 
 first he will show that since the age of Shakespeare and 
 Fletcher there has been " an improvement of our wit, lan- 
 guage and conversation; or an alteration in them for the 
 better." Improper words and phrases have been dropped. 
 There is to be found some solecism of speech or notorious 
 flaw in sense in every page of Shakespeare or Fletcher. 
 The times were ignorant wherein they wrote ; witness the 
 lameness of their plots ; Fletcher understood not correct 
 plotting or the decorum of the stage. " But these absur- 
 dities, which those poets committed, may more properly be 
 called the age's faults than theirs ; for, besides the want of 
 education and learning (which was their particular unhappi- 
 ness), they wanted the benefit of converse." 2 Poor Ben 
 Jonson's linguistic sins are dragged to light till our author 
 grows weary of his task : "And what correctness, after this, 
 can be expected from Shakespeare or from Fletcher, who 
 wanted that learning and care which Jonson had?" 
 
 Besides rejecting improper words and phrases, continues 
 
 'i, 162. 2 i, 166. 
 
JOHN DRYDEN's LITERARY CRITICISM. 95 
 
 Dryden, it is obvious that we have admitted many good 
 ones, some of which we wanted, others of which are rather 
 ornamental than necessary. Our tongue has been beautified 
 by Shakespeare, Fletcher, Jonson, Suckling, and Waller. 
 In addition to refinement of speech there has been a refine- 
 ment of wit : "The wit of the last age was yet more incor- 
 rect than their language. Shakespeare, who many times has 
 written better than any poet, in any language, is yet so far 
 from writing wit always, or expressing that wit according 
 to the dignity of the subject, that he writes, in many places, 
 below the dullest writer of ours, or any precedent age. 
 Never did any author precipitate himself from such a height 
 of thought to so low expressions, as he often does. He is 
 the very Janus of poets ; he wears almost everywhere two 
 faces ; you have scarce begun to admire the one, ere you 
 despise the other." l After stating that even Ben Jonson 
 descended to the "most grovelling kind of wit, which we 
 call clenches," Dryden goes on to say : " But, to conclude 
 with what brevity I can, I will only add this, in defence of 
 our present writers, that, if they reach not the excellencies 
 of Ben Jonson (which no age, I am confident, ever shall), 
 yet, at least, they are above that meanness of thought which 
 I have taxed, and which is frequent in him. 
 
 "That the wit of this age is more courtly, may easily be 
 proved, by viewing the characters of gentlemen which were 
 written in the last." 2 And then, after some remarks on 
 Truewit, Mercutio, and Don John : "I have always acknowl- 
 edged the wit of our predecessors, with all the veneration 
 which becomes me ; but, I am sure, their wit was not that 
 of gentlemen ; there was ever something that was ill-bred 
 and clownish in it, and which confessed the conversation of 
 the authors." 3 And this leads Dryden to the last and 
 
 1 1,172. 2 i, 174. »i, 174. 
 
\ 
 
 96 WM. E. BOH]*. 
 
 greatest advantage of the Restoration literature, which pro- 
 ceeds from conversation : through the influence of the court 
 there has been added to the drama a touch of gallantry 
 which was quit4_impossible to the plain-bred Elizabethans. 1 
 
 The essay closes as it began : "To conclude all, let us 
 render to our predecessors what was their due, without 
 confining ourselves to servile imitation of all they writ ; 
 and, without assuming to ourselves the title of better poets, 
 let us ascribe to the gallantry and civility of our age the 
 advantage which we have above them, and to our knowledge 
 of the customs and manner of it the happiness we have to 
 please beyond them." 2 
 
 As Professor Hamelius has said, 3 this essay marks Dry den 
 as class-conscious. He has married into a noble family and 
 is on familiar terms with the great ; and therefore he repre- 
 sents the tastes of the governing classes. The stage has 
 learned its fine manners from the court, and must be 
 defended against the lower strata of society : " Gentlemen 
 will now be entertained with the follies of each other ; and 
 though they allow Cobb and Tib to speak properly, yet they 
 are not much pleased with their tankard or with their rags. 
 
 1 " In the age wherein those poets lived, there was less of gallantry than 
 in ours ; neither did they keep the best company of theirs. Their fortune 
 has been much like that of Epicurus, in the retirement of his gardens ; to 
 live almost unknown, and to be celebrated after their decease. I cannot 
 find that any of them had been conversant in courts, except Ben Jonson ; 
 and his genius lay not so much that way, as to make an improvement by it. 
 Greatness was not then so easy of access, nor conversation so free as it now 
 is. I cannot, therefore, conceive it any insolence to affirm, that, by the 
 knowledge and pattern of their wit who writ before us, and by the advantage 
 of our own conversation, the discourse and raillery of our comedies excel 
 what has been written by them. And this will be denied by none, but some 
 few old fellows who value themselves on their acquaintance with the Black 
 Friars ; who, because they saw their plays, would pretend to the right to 
 judge ours." I, 175. 
 
 2 1, 177. 
 
 3 Die Kritik in der Englischen Literatur, p. 37. 
 
JOHN DRYDEN's LITERARY CRITICISM. 97 
 
 And surely their conversation can be no jest to them on the 
 theater, when they could avoid it in the streets." l 
 
 And just as this courtly literature is to be defended " 
 against the lower classes of the present, so it is to be 
 defended against the sturdy, human, romantic English litera- 
 ture of the past. It is noticeable that the Ipse dixit that 
 Dryden opposes is not that of the ancients : the theories of 
 Aristotle and Horace crop out on nearly every page. " Some 
 few old fellows who value themselves on their acquaintance 
 with the Black Friars" — that is, the champions of the 
 Elizabethans — are his real opponents. He has the spirit 
 of English science and philosophy, he delights in breaking 
 from the past ; but it is from the past of Shakespeare and 
 Fletcher that he is taking leave. The magisterial tone of 
 the introduction is in itself extremely significant : in the 
 Essay of Dramatic Poesy Dryden loved Shakespeare : here 
 there is no talk of love ; instead we are to have a scientific 
 impartiality. But even this profession is hardly justified by 
 what follows. With the exception of a patronizing apology 
 here and there, the entire essay is a piece of fault-finding. 
 Taking for granted, even, that the criticism is just, for us 
 the important thing is that in 1672 Dryden is disposed to 
 pass the virtues of the great Elizabethans without more 
 than a perfunctory acknowledgment. His praise is for 
 Virgil, Jonson, and, above all, for the playwrights of the 
 Restoration. The present is to Dryden a golden age : The 
 heroic play, the polisht versification, the gay and courtly 
 manners mark for him the height of culture and of art. 
 
 The Defense of the Epilog marks the end of the critical 
 activity of Dryden's second period. 2 It remains only to 
 
 l i, 177. 
 
 2 The fact that the Defense of the Epilog was omitted from some copies 
 of the second edition of The Conquest of Granada (1673) and from all later 
 editions seems to indicate that Dryden soon became ashamed of it. 
 
 7 
 
98 WM. E. BOHN. 
 
 make brief mention of two non-critical works which show 
 the transition to the third period. The State of Innocence 
 and the Fall of Man (1674) gives evidence of a decided 
 change in our author's artistic purposes. Scott is no doubt 
 correct in supposing that this piece, an opera, could never 
 have been seriously intended for the stage; there could, 
 then, have been very little financial motive for the writing 
 of it. Here we have, it thus appears, an author who has 
 been adapting his work to the taste of king and court fol- 
 lowing for once the promptings of his own judgment. In 
 taking his material from the still obscure Paradise Lost 
 Dryden gives incontrovertible evidence of literary judgment 
 far above contemporary modes. The result of his effort is 
 what we should expect : tho tinged with courtly smartness 
 and adorned with turns of thought and polisht riming 
 verse, The State of Innocence contains passages of rare dignity 
 and beauty. 
 
 Aureng-Zebe, a Tragedy (1675) is the last and best of 
 Dryden's heroic plays — best because it is least heroic. It 
 is in the prolog to this play that our author makes the 
 profession of a change of taste which marks the beginning 
 of the third critical period. " Agreeably to what might be 
 expected from this declaration," says Scott, "the verse used 
 in Aureng-Zebe is of that kind which may be most easily 
 applied to the purposes of ordinary dialog. There is much 
 less of ornate structure and emphatic swell, than occurs in the 
 speeches of Almanzor and Maximin ; and Dryden, though 
 late, seems to have at length discovered, that the language of 
 true passion is inconsistent with that regular modulation, to 
 maintain which the actor must mouth each couplet in a sort 
 of recitative." 1 It may be added that in the more vital 
 features of the play, in the characters and action, Aureng- 
 
 1 Scott-Saintsbury, v, 182. 
 
JOHN DKYDEN'S LITERARY CRITICISM. 99 
 
 Zebe comes nearer to life than any of our author's preceding 
 tragedies. This play, then, like the State of Innocence, fore- 
 shadows a change in the direction of romanticism. 
 
 This period as a whole is best described as one of perfect 
 conformity. We have found in it, especially at first, some of 
 the doctrine and a good deal of the pose of neoclassicism ; 
 and in a sense these persist throughout. Nevertheless neo- ^ 
 classicism does not give the key-note to this period. When 
 Dryden had carefully worked up an epic poem in praise 
 of the king he was under the necessity of explaining and 
 defending his method, and, since the poem had been wrought 
 with infinite pains, it was truly represented as a work of the 
 judgment. But once started on the really characteristic 
 work of the period, our author threw his judgment to the 
 winds. It was all to the glory of the king, as had been the 
 poem referred to above, but now the king required extrava- 
 gance rather than reason, and extravagance was supplied. 
 To be sure it was put into a highly polisht and conven- 
 tional form, but this only served the more to cut it oif from 
 life and from the ideals of Dryden's earlier period. And in 
 his criticism our author set himself to justify the form and 
 content of this literature, and to denounce the older English 
 drama, which, of course, stood in direct contrast to it. 
 
 Considered from a purely formal point of view, it is true, 
 his critical methods remained those of a neoclassicist, but 
 the plays which he wrote and defended were such as would 
 have put to the blush any French classicist or any good- 
 sense author of eighteenth century England. The English 
 heroic play was, to be sure, related to the French classic 
 drama : its versification, its conventionality of plot and 
 character, etc., were neoclassic traits. In its general spirit, 
 moreover, it was no doubt related to the contemporary 
 baroque architecture and painting of the continent. But it >• 
 cannot be too strongly insisted upon that the form of play 
 
d 
 
 100 WM. E. BOHN. 
 
 of which we are talking was peculiar to England : the 
 exuberant complexity of many of its plots, the extravagance 
 of its characters, its negligence of the probabilities of the 
 real world were not in the least classical, but, on the con- 
 trary, thoroly, unmistakably English. So it is necessary 
 to insist upon the fact that altho the forms of Dry den's 
 theory were, at this time, the same, in large measure, as 
 those of the real neoclassicists, the inner, organizing force 
 of his activity was not the classicist creed — in fact was not 
 -^ a creed at all. His use of the classicist doctrines merely 
 resulted in a sort of pseudo-neoclassicism. So when I say 
 that this critical period was one of conformity I mean to 
 imply that during this time Dryden' s work — poems, plays, 
 and criticism alike — was but a phase of the life of the court. 
 The court, not rigidly classical in its life or tastes, demanded 
 a characteristic literature ; and Dryden, perfectly adapted to 
 his surroundings, quick to respond to every demand made 
 upon him, was the one best fitted to produce that literature, 
 and to explain and defend it. If the criticism which grew 
 out of these circumstances, while preserving much of the 
 outward form of neoclassicism, is not true to its inner 
 spirit, this fact hardly gives occasion for surprise. 
 
 The Third Period. 
 
 One cannot read far into the criticism which Dryden 
 produced between 1G75 aud 1679 without discovering that 
 both in substance and spirit it divides itself sharply from 
 that of the period which immediately preceded it. There is 
 here a return to the feeling which inspired the best passages 
 • of the Essay of Dramatic Poesy. The love for Shakespeare 
 and his contemporaries which was so strong upon our author 
 during his first period, has returned with redoubled force. 
 And with this change there is noticeable a remarkable 
 
JOHN DRYDEN'S LITERARY CRITICISM. 101 
 
 increase in sincerity. Here, as never before, we feel that 
 we are getting at Dryden's inmost convictions. 
 
 I shall attempt to show that the new spirit which has ¥ 
 come over onr author's criticism connects itself with a 
 change in his literary and financial relations — especially his 
 relations with the court. In his second period we have 
 seen Dryden loaded with such favors as had fallen to the 
 lot of no English poet before him. But sooner than one 
 might expect thorns began to appear among his laurels. As 
 early as 1671 was produced upon the stage The Rehearsal, 
 by the Duke of Buckingham and others, in which our 
 author's plays were made a public laughing stock. In 1672 
 Dryden was violently attacked, again on the score of his 
 plays, by Mathew Clifford in his Four Letters. In 1673 
 came the famous controversy with Elkanah Settle, which 
 showed Dryden's hold upon the public to be astonishingly 
 precarious. This quarrel was connected with our author's 
 much more important relations with John Wilmot, Earl of 
 Rochester. This brilliant young nobleman, an active, 
 though capricious, patron of letters, had bestowed his favor 
 very liberally upon Dryden. 1 But unfortunately the latter 
 formed a connection with the Earl of Mulgrave, an enemy 
 of Rochester's. Rochester, without any better reason than 
 this, introduced Elkanah Settle to the royal favor. Settle's 
 Empress of Morocco (1673) was first acted at Whitehall by 
 the Lords and Ladies of the court, an honor which had 
 never been paid to any of Dryden's compositions. On the 
 stage it had an exceptionally long run, and, according to 
 Dennis, it was the first play to be published with cuts and 
 sold for two shillings. After Settle Rochester took up first 
 Crowne and then Otway, each of whom seems to have occu- 
 
 1 In his dedication of Marriage a la Mode (1673) Dryden gave Rochester 
 profuse thanks for favors procured at court. Cf. Scott-Saintsbury, iv, 255. 
 
102 WM. E. BOHN. 
 
 pied for a time the position at court which rightfully 
 belonged to the laureate. Not content with these slights put 
 upon Dryden, Rochester attacked him in an anonymous 
 imitation of Horace, An Allusion to the Tenth Satire. Of 
 more importance was Mulgrave's Essay on Satire, a piece 
 of sarcasm, frank to the point of brutality, directed against 
 both Rochester and the King. Scott supposes that this was 
 merely revised by Dryden, perhaps about 1675. But when 
 it was anonymously made public in 1(379, it was Dryden 
 who was held responsible for it. In consequence, upon the 
 night of the eighteenth of December, 1679, he was waylaid 
 and beaten by ruffians in the hire of Rochester. 
 
 The fact that in 1679 Dryden was readily believed to be 
 the author of a satire on the King suggests a decline of royal 
 favor. In the dedication of Aureng-Zebe, addressing Lord 
 Mulgrave, Dryden wrote : "As I am no successor to Homer 
 in his wit, so neither do I desire to be in his poverty. I 
 can make no rhapsodies, nor go abegging at the Grecian 
 doors, while I sing the praises of their ancestors. The times 
 of Virgil please me better, because he had an Augustus for 
 his patron ; and, to draw the allegory nearer you, I am sure 
 I shall not want a Maecenas with him. It is for your lord- 
 ship to stir up that remembrance in his Majesty, which his 
 many avocations of business have caused him, I fear, to lay 
 aside." l 
 
 About the time of the appearance of the Essay on Satire, 
 says Scott, " Mulgrave seems .... to have fallen into dis- 
 grace, and was considered as in opposition to the court. 
 Dryden was deprived of his intercession and appears in 
 some degree to have shared his disgrace. 2 As to the results 
 
 1 Scott-Saintsbury, v. 196. 
 
 2 As a proof of Dryden' s opposition to the court Christie mentions that in 
 a satire against Shaftesbury published very shortly before the appearance of 
 Absalom and Achitophel "he is made to figure in Shaftesbury's train, as 
 
JOHN DRYDEN'S LITERARY CRITICISM. 103 
 
 of this loss of favor he adds : " It is said distinctly by one 
 libeller, that his pension was for a time interrupted. This 
 does not seem likely : it is more probable, that Dry den 
 sliared the general fate of the household of Charles II, 
 whose appointments were but irregularly paid ; but perhaps 
 his supposed delinquency made it more difficult for him than 
 others to obtain redress." l 
 
 It remains only to add to this recital the evidence from 
 Dryden's works. In his dedication of Aureng-Zebe (1679) 
 he complained bitterly against the court. In the preface 
 to All for Love 2 (1678), and the dedication of The Kind 
 Keeper 3 (1678) he returned to the attack with even greater 
 
 poet laureate to Shaftesbury, imagined to have been elected king of Poland." 
 The satire referred to is given in a note as " A modest Vindication of the 
 Earl of Shaftesbury, in a Letter to a Friend, concerning his being elected 
 King of Poland." Poetical Worts, xlvi. 
 
 1 Scott-Saintsbury, i, 195-6. 
 
 2 "Men of pleasant conversation (at least esteemed so), and endued with 
 a trifling kind of fancy, perhaps helped out with some smattering of Latin, 
 are ambitious to distinguish themselves from the herd of gentlemen, by 
 their poetry. . . . 
 
 " And is not this a wretched affectation, not to be contented with what for- 
 tune has done for them, and sit down quietly with their estates, but they 
 must call their wits in question, and needlessly expose their nakedness to 
 public view ? Not considering that they are not to expect the same approba- 
 tion from sober men, which they found from their flatterers after the third 
 bottle. If a little glittering in discourse has passed them on us for witty 
 men, where was the necessity of undeceiving the world ? Would a man 
 who has an ill title to an estate, but yet is in possession of it ; would he 
 bring it of his own accord, to be tried at Westminster ? We, who write, if *> 
 we want the talent, yet have the excuse that we do it for a poor subsistence ; 
 but what can be urged in their defense, who, not having the vocation of 
 poverty to scribble, out of mere wantonness take pains to make themselves 
 ridiculous ? Horace was certainly in the right when he said that no man is 
 satisfied with his own condition. A poet is not pleased, because he is not 
 rich ; and the rich are discontented, because the poets will not admit them 
 of their number." 1,196-7. 
 
 3 "Some few of our nobility are learned, and therefore 1 will not con- 
 clude an absolute contradiction between the terms of nobleman and scholar ; 
 
104 WM. E. BOHN. 
 
 " violence. Practically all of the essays of this time breathe 
 a hatred against those in high places which is absolutely out 
 of keeping with the position which Dryden occupied during 
 his earlier period. In accordance with what one is led to 
 expect from our author's changed position is the discovery 
 that the two plays of the period now under discussion were 
 not written with a view to supplying the demands of the 
 market. In 1695 Dryden wrote with regard to the first 
 of these: "I never writ anything for myself but Antony 
 and Cleopatra " \ (All for Love). The Kind Keeper, or Mr. 
 Limberham (1678), a comedy, he professed to have written 
 as "an honest satire against our crying sin of keeping." 
 It was a complete failure — being acted but three nights. 
 "The crime," says Dryden in his dedication, "for which it 
 suffered, was that which is objected against the satires of 
 Juvenal, that it expressed too much of the vice which it 
 decried." But he will not remonstrate, "for," he con- 
 tinues, "their authority is, and shall be, ever sacred to me, 
 as much absent as present, and in all alterations of their 
 fortunes, who for these reasons have stopt its further 
 appearance on the theater." 2 Christy, in his memoir of 
 Dryden, suggests : " It is to be inferred from Dryden's lan- 
 guage that strong remonstrances from powerful friends of 
 his own, probably from the highest placed in the land, led 
 him to withdraw this piece. 3 Since keeping was the vice 
 made popular by the court, this play is first-rate evidence 
 
 but as the world goes now, 'tis very hard to predicate one upon the other ; 
 and 'tis yet more difficult to prove, that a nobleman can be a friend to 
 poetry. Were it not for two or three instances in "Whitehall and in the 
 town, the poets of this age would find so little encouragement of their 
 labors, and so few understanders, that they might have leisure to turn 
 pamphleteers, and augment the number of those abominable scribblers, 
 who, in this time of license, abuse the press, almost every day, with non- 
 sense, and railing against the government." Scott-Saintsbury, vi, 8. 
 ^i, 152. 2 Scott-Saintsbury, vi, 9. 3 P. xi. 
 
JOHN DRYDEN'S LITERARY CRITICISM. 105 
 
 that Dryden was, at the time of its writing, in a state of 
 rebellion against his royal patron. It is significant that it 
 was acted at the Duke's theater, which was patronized chiefly 
 by the citizen class. 
 
 During our author's second period his plays and criticism " 
 were given over to the exemplification and defense of the 
 tastes to which the court had given popularity. Now that "' 
 his relations with the court had altered he returned both in 
 his plays and in his criticism, to greater sanity, genuineness, 
 and real poetic spirit. 
 
 It was in the prolog to Aureng-Zebe, or the Great Mogul 
 (1675) that Dryden first proclaimed his new faith ; the 
 theory of the heroic play, the admiration for rime had 
 gone, and love of Shakespeare had returned. Two years ^ 
 later, in the Apology for Heroic Poetry, came an elaborate 
 prose statement of the new doctrines, which, after all, turn 
 out to be but those of the first period clarified and reinforced. 
 One who comes to this Apology fresh from the Defense of the 
 Epilog may be pardoned for wondering if the two works 
 are from the same hand. In the Defense Dryden taxed all 
 his ingenuity to pick flaws in the works of the Elizabethan 
 masters ; now, bolstering himself up with numerous quota- 
 tions from Longinus, he remonstrates with all his force 
 against carping criticism. The critic, so he maintains, 
 should pass his judgment in favor of the sublime genius 
 that sometimes errs rather than prefer the indifferent author 
 who "makes few faults, but seldom or never rises to any 
 excellence." And then follows the beautiful passage, loosely 
 quoted from Longinus, in which the great genius is likened 
 to a man of large possessions who "will not debase himself 
 to the management of every trifle," and the correct author, 
 to a person of mean fortune, " who manages his store with 
 extreme frugality, or rather parsimony." The description 
 of the "correct" author is the classic denunciation of the 
 
 O 
 
106 WM. E. BOHN. 
 
 entire tribe: "This kind of genius writes indeed correctly. 
 A wary man he is in grammar, very nice as to solecism or 
 barbarism, judges to a hair of little decencies, knows better 
 than any man what is not to be written, and never hazards 
 himself so far as to fall, but plods on deliberately, and, as a 
 grave man ought, is sure to put his staff before him ; in 
 short, he sets his heart upon it, and with wonderful care 
 makes his business sure ; that is, in plain English, neither to 
 be blamed or praised." ' 
 
 Having, in the first paragraph of the essay, paid a 
 generous tribute to Paradise Lost, "undoubtedly one of the 
 greatest, most noble, and most sublime poems which either 
 this age or nation has produced," Dryden goes on to make a 
 * general plea for the freedom of the poetic imagination. His 
 opponents, interpreting the Aristotelian doctrine of imitation 
 to suit their taste, would keep poetry near to the actualities 
 of life. Dryden holds that poetry which has pleased all 
 ages must be an imitation of nature, and therefore we are 
 \^ justified in giving the principle the most liberal interpreta- 
 tion. That is, he is practically throwing the principle of 
 imitation overboard, and working out new rules on the basis 
 of art history. Relying on these he defends bold figures of 
 speech and the use of fairies and other supernatural agencies ; 
 in particular he'defends Milton, Cowley, and himself against 
 their detractors. And with full assurance of victory he con- 
 cludes : " but all reasonable men will conclude it necessary, 
 that sublime subjects ought to be adorned with the sublimest, 
 and consequently with the most figurative expressions." 2 
 This essay reminds one strongly of the Essay of Heroic 
 
 1 1, 180. In reading this passage one should remember that in 1671, in 
 the preface to An Evening' s Love, Dryden wrote : " I think there is no folly 
 so great in any poet of our age, as the superfluity and waste of wit was in 
 some of our predecessors." 
 
 2 1, 190. 
 
JOHN DRYDEN's LITERARY CRITICISM. 107 
 
 Plays (1672), but in reality it is very different. In the 
 essay of 1672 Dry den defended the heroic play with all its 
 extravagances; but now, in 1677, he is defending the great 
 epic poets, Homer, Virgil, and Milton. Ker describes the 
 situation exactly : " Drydeu, like Tasso before him, is com- 
 pelled to stand up against the scholars who have learned 
 their lesson too well; it is as if he foresaw the sterilizing 
 influence of the prose-understanding, and the harm that 
 might be done by correctness if the principles of correctness 
 were vulgarized." l The fact that here for the first time ¥ 
 Dryden draws upon Longinus is sufficient to show that a 
 new spirit has come over him. 
 
 The Heads of an Answer to Rymer, a rough outline of an 
 intended answer to Thomas Rymer's Tragedies of the Last 
 Age, was not designed for publication. Written) like the 
 Essay of Dramaiie Poesy, without any possible selfish motive, 
 we are justified in supposing that in it we have an especially 
 sincere expression of opinion. From the point of view of ^ 
 the similarity of the circumstances under which the two 
 works were composed, it is interesting to notice that in the 
 Heads of an Answer Dryden returns very definitely to 
 the doctrines of the earlier essay. Rymer, a rigid scholastic, 
 has ruthlessly examined the plays of Shakespeare and 
 Fletcher in the light furnished by the strictest pseudo-classic 
 rules. And Dryden, who, in 1672, was himself inclined to 
 carp at these two, now takes up the cudgels in their defense. 
 
 His argument as a whole is based on the theory of the 
 historical development of the drama : Aristotle's experience 
 was necessarily limited to the Greek theater, hence his defi- 
 nition of a play is too narrow ; if English plays have not 
 the beauties of those of Greece, they have others — perhaps 
 greater. Referring to the success of the English drama, 
 
 1 1, lviii. 
 
108 WM. E. BOHN. 
 
 Dryden says : "And one reason for that success is, in my 
 opinion, this, that Shakespeare and Fletcher have written 
 to the genius of the age and nation in which they lived ; for 
 tho nature, as he objects, is the same in all places, and 
 reason too the same, yet the climate, the age, the disposition 
 of the people, to whom a poet writes, may be so different, 
 that what pleased the Greeks would not satisfy an English 
 audience." 1 
 
 In the Essay of Dramatic Poesy, it will be remembered, 
 in attempting to define the quality which distinguished 
 English poetry from French, Dryden hit upon the terms, 
 "masculine fancy " and "spirit in the writing." Here in 
 the Heads of an Answer, he is laboring to make clear the 
 nature of the same quality; and the terms which now serve 
 his purpose, e. g. " the genius of poetry in the writing," 
 carry back over the intervening thirteen years to the earlier 
 work. Notice, in this connection, the spirit and terminology 
 of the following passage : "Rapin attributes more to the 
 dictio, that is, to the words and discourse of a tragedy, than 
 Aristotle has done, who places them in the last rank of 
 beauties ; perhaps only last in order, because they are the 
 last product of the design. . . . Rapin's words are remark- 
 able : It is not the admirable intrigue, the surprising events, 
 and the extraordinary incidents, that make the beauty of a 
 tragedy ; it is the discourses, when they are natural and pas- 
 sionate." 2 
 
 Within the year of the writing of the Heads of an Answer 
 to Rymer came also the production of All for Love, or the 
 World Well Lost, a tragedy on the subject of Antony and 
 Cleopatra, avowedly written in imitation of Shakespeare. 
 Dryden's characters and plot are not up to the Shakes- 
 pearean standard ; neither can his blank verse, as a whole, 
 
 1 Scott-Saintsbury, xv, 385. 2 Scott-Saintsbury, xv, 392. 
 
JOHN DRYDEN'S LITER A-RY CRITICISM. 109 
 
 be pronounced equal to that of his great original. But it 
 must be acknowledged that this is the best of all his plays ; 
 it is full of noble scenes and of poetical passages which do 
 not suffer by comparison with the best in English literature. 
 Here, in the play which Dry den professedly wrote for him- 
 self, the genuinely romantic spirit has replaced the mock 
 heroic. The preface which introduced this play is chiefly 
 remarkable for a spirited attack on the conventionality of 
 French literature ; all the feeliug which in the two preceding 
 essays was directed against pedants in general is here turned 
 against the poets of France and their English imitators. 
 
 In this period, then, during which Dryden is not writing 
 as the favorite of town and court, during which, it appears, 
 he is even cut off from many of his old associations and put 
 under suspicion, his literary productions show him in a 
 state of revolt. The life of the court nauseates him ; the 
 degenerate heroic drama, as it is carried on in the hands 
 of succeeding favorites, he can not endure ; and no more can 
 he tolerate the clean-cut and heartless neoclassic criticism 
 as he sees it in the works of Rymer. The three pieces of 
 criticism which mark the culmination of the period exhibit 
 a singular unity of feeling. In all of them Dryden strikes 
 out squarely counter to the current of contemporary opinion. 
 In all of them he warmly upbraids merely rational criti- 
 cism ; he maintains that literary types should be left free to 
 develop, that the critic should draw his rules from literature 
 rather than prescribe laws to literature ; he contends most 
 of all for the spirit of poetry, for genius in literary material 
 as against all the conventions of form. These three essays 
 are, perhaps, the most remarkable of all Dryden's prose 
 works. Lacking, often, the refined spirit and elegant form 
 of the Essay of Dramatic Poesy, for courage, for refreshing 
 sincerity, for unconventional originality, they can hardly be 
 matched from Dryden's other critical works, or from the 
 works of any other critic of Dryden's time. 
 
110 WM. E. BOHN. 
 
 The Fourth Peeiod. 
 
 The criticism produced by Dryden during the decade 
 between 1680 and 1689 is best characterized as rationalistic. 
 Here we find well formulated, probably for the first time in 
 England, that common-sense system of literary production 
 and evaluation which had been so well organized by Boileau 
 and was to be further developed by Pope. A reading of 
 this criticism in connection with Dry den's biography imme- 
 diately suggests the thought that his theory was, during this 
 period, very definitely related to the literary occupations to 
 which, thro the pressure of economic circumstances, he 
 was forced to surrender himself. 
 
 During Dryden' s second period we have seen him the 
 servant of a court which demanded amusement ; during his 
 third period we have seen him cast upon his own resources ; 
 but during the period under consideration we find him in a 
 new role ; as during the second period, he is the servant of a 
 court, but of a court which demands — not amusement — but 
 defense against its enemies. Dryden entered upon his fourth 
 period rather poorer than usual. The King's Theater, in the 
 profits of which he had had a share, had burnt down in 1672, 
 and his income had suffered in consequence. After the pro- 
 duction of All for Love (1677—8) he quarreled with the King's 
 Company and the contract in accordance with which he had 
 shared in its profits was abrogated. The complaint in the 
 dedication of Aureng-Zebe and the belief that his pension 
 had been cut off, show at least that it was irreguk *y paid. 
 One is somewhat surprised, therefore, to learn that as early 
 as 1679 our author was granted by the king a special annual 
 pension of one hundred pounds, and that in 1683 he was 
 appointed collector of customs for the p ort of L ondon. The 
 Whigs, representing Protestantism, were/becoming more and 
 
 
 V"T£ w*^ *"^ 
 
JOHN DEYDEN'S LITERARY CRITICISM. Ill 
 
 more of a menace to the royal faction ; and in his hour of 
 need Charles did not disdain to assure himself of Dryden's 
 support. And Dryden, as we have seen, was in no position 
 to refuse to give his services. In 1681 our author produced 
 upon the stage The Spanish Friar, his "Protestant play" — 
 surely no evidence of loyalty. But later in the same year 
 he published Absalom and Aehitophel • and from that time to 
 the death of Charles II, in 1G85, there was no interruption in 
 Dryden's devoted service ; the king was defended against all 
 his enemies, the church of England against all the sectaries. 
 But during this time important changes were taking 
 place in the life of the court. The Catholic Duke of 
 York was the heir apparent, and the Duchess of York 
 shared his religious faith. Charles himself was under 
 suspicion of a leaning in the direction of Catholicism. The 
 tide was unmistakably setting in the direction of the church of 
 Rome, and the author of the "Protestant Play" could hardly 
 be expected to remain independent of its influence. The 
 fact that Dryden turned Catholic about the time of the 
 succession of James II, when a change in religion was 
 patently advantageous to him, has been interpreted by more 
 than one of his biographers as evidence of rank turn-coatism. 
 The answer to these has been found in the fact that as early 
 as 1682, in the Religio Laid, Dryden gave unmistakable 
 evidence of a genuine leaning in the direction of Catholi- 
 cism. 1 It seems to me that we have here merely another case 
 to show Dryden's sensitiveness to his environment. No one 
 who sympathetically reads the Religio Laid or Dryden's 
 later religious poems can doubt the sincerity of his eonver- 
 sion : neither can anyone who has taken into account the 
 changing atmosphere of the court imagine that this con- 
 version was quite independent of our author's milieu. 
 
 1 Cf . Saintsbury, Biography of Dryden, p. 101. 
 
112 WM. E. BOHN. 
 
 Dryden's world gradually changed, and he himself, with 
 perfect sincerity, gradually changed with it. 
 
 As one result of Dry den's religious conversion he was 
 continued in office as the chief literary representative of the 
 court, his pension of one hundred pounds being guaranteed 
 him by a royal patent. In 1686 he published his Defense 
 of Papers written by the late King and the Duchess of York — 
 which papers seemed to indicate (a fact now much to the 
 purpose) that Charles II had been at heart a Catholic. And 
 from this time down to the dethronement of James II in 
 1688-89 Dry den served his second master as faithfully as 
 he had served his first. 
 
 The mere labor demanded by Dryden's new position of 
 chief apologist for the crown, was tremendous. In Ker's 
 list of his publications there are to be found within the 
 limits of this period the titles of fourteen works which 
 formed part of his public service. Among these are regis- 
 tered, first of all, works like the translation of Maimburg's 
 History of the League and the Defense of Papers written by 
 the late King and the Duchess of York, long and dreary pieces 
 of prose which must have meant to their author weary 
 months of drudgery. But the chief works of the list are the 
 satirical and didactic masterpieces : Absalom and Achitophel 
 (1681), The Medal (1682), MacFlecknoe (1682), Absalom and 
 Achitophel, Part II (1682), Beligio Laid (1682), and The 
 Hind and the Panther (1687). For us it is merely necessary 
 to notice two things with regard to these supreme works. 
 In the first place not a single one of them was introduced 
 with a critical dissertation of great importance. The pro- 
 duction of this form of literature was not calculated to keep 
 alive in our author's mind his former interest in the vital 
 problems of esthetics. Even the mere quantity of his 
 criticism was cut down ; we have only four slender pieces 
 to represent what was Dryden's most productive literary 
 

 JOHN DRYDEN's LITERARY CRITICISM. 113 
 
 period. The other point which demands our attention is 
 the fact that satire belongs distinctly to the rationalistic, 
 rather than to the romantic, consciousness ; to the period of 
 Pope, rather than to the period of Shakespeare. Since, 
 then, the characteristic poetic production of this period links 
 Dryden to the eighteenth century, rather than to the six- 
 teenth, one is prepared to expect in the critical essays a 
 predominantly rationalistic tone. 
 
 Before entering upon a discussion of the characteristic 
 criticism of the fourth period it is necessary to notice an 
 essay which is clearly transitional. In 1679 Dryden pub- 
 lished Troilus and Cressida, rather an " improvement " of 
 Shakespeare's play of the same name than a noble imitation 
 like Ail for Love. And with this play, which in itself 
 seemed to indicate a dying down of poetical fervor, he 
 published his Preface containing the Grounds of Griticiwn in 
 Tragedy — a most interesting composite of the antagonistic 
 spirits of the third and fourth periods. In the introduction, 
 although a high regard for Shakespeare is expressed, the 
 chief emphasis is laid upon his petty faults ; his phrases are, 
 some of them, " scarce intelligible," others, " ungrammatical 
 and coarse ; " his style is " so pestered with figurative 
 expressions, that it is as affected as it is obscure." The 
 essay on The Grounds of Criticism in Tragedy is introduced 
 with a formal outline : our author thinks it would be neither 
 unprofitable nor unpleasant to inquire "(1) how far we 
 ought to imitate our poets, Shakespeare and Fletcher, in their 
 tragedies ; and this will occasion another inquiry, (2) how 
 those two writers differ among themselves." But in order to 
 prosecute these investigations he will first attempt " to dis- 
 cover the grounds and reasons of all criticism, applying 
 them in this place only to tragedy. 1 " Then there follows 
 
 1 1, 207. 
 
114 WM. E. BOHN. 
 
 one of the most carefully reasoned of all Dryden's essays. 
 Beginning with Aristotle's definition of a play our author 
 proceeds in an abstract, formal manner to discuss the action, 
 the manners, the characters, and the passions. After the 
 , regular discussion of each heading Shakespeare and Fletcher 
 "* are brought up for comparison, and one who has recently 
 read the Heads of an Answer may well be surprised to 
 discover that they are often measured by the classical 
 standard as ruthlessly as Rymer himself could have wished. 
 But, happily, this essay is one of those which are remark- 
 able for their " purple patches." It is evident from one of 
 these that tho Dryden's new formalism can make no 
 room for Shakespeare, the old love of him still survives. 
 
 In the preface to Dryden's translation of Ovid's epistles 
 (1680) we have the first piece of criticism perfectly repre- 
 sentative of the fourth period; it is representative both in its 
 brevity and in its thoroly prosaic tone. The only really 
 significant passage in it is one in which Ovid is guardedly 
 praised for the vivacity of his poetry, but roundly scored for 
 not having been a better master of his wit. " Nothing too 
 much," is our author's law, and it is applied especially to 
 wit, to eloquence, to the inward fire that may now and then 
 strain a conventionality. 
 
 In the dedication of The Spanish Friar (1681) we might 
 expect a different feeling. The play which it introduced 
 was written, not to support the king, but to catch the public 
 ear ; l and, despite its faults, one must confess that it has in 
 it some of the life of real comedy. Here, then, if anywhere, 
 we might expect a return to the standards of 1678. But 
 what do we find? First of all, a criticism, searching and just, 
 
 x It must be remembered tbat at this time, just after the "Popish Plots," 
 the Protestant party was so strong that Dryden was risking nothing ; and, 
 on the other hand, in case of a Protestant triumph his anti-catholic play 
 would have opened up to him a way into the new court. 
 
johx dryden's literary criticism. 115 
 
 of our author's own heroic plays : they cry vengeance upon 
 him for their extravagance, and he wishes them heartily in 
 the fire. His only excuse for them is that they were bad 
 enough to please (/. c. to please Charles II) ; but for the 
 future he is resolved to settle himself no reputation " by the 
 applause of fools." The effect of the "prose-understanding" 
 is not entirely evil; if it condemns the romantic by judicious 
 strictures and faint praise, it damns the heroic utterly. 
 
 Dryden was too philosophical to rest content with indivi- 
 dual literary judgments ; he must give his theory abstract 
 statement. It is significant that when he comes to do this Y 
 he takes his figure from architecture, of all the arts the one, 
 perhaps, in which a riotous fancy can have least place : 
 " But as in a room contrived for state, the height of the roof 
 should bear a proportion to the area ; so, in the heightenings 
 of poetry, the strength and vehemence of the figures should 
 be suited to the occasion, the subject, and the persons." x Pro- 
 priety of thoughts and words is the chief virtue of a play. 
 Here, it thus appears, even in the dedication of a popular 
 play, Dryden's new deity, good sense, is the supreme god. 
 
 In the preface to Sylvae (1685) we find that after a lapse 
 of four years our author's esthetic creed has remained 
 unchanged. With great show of erudition, but without 
 touching upon a single vital literary problem, he discusses 
 the four authors he has been translating. In the one passage 
 which has real significance he treats Cowley as he treated 
 Ovid in the preface of 1680. It is true that Cowley had the 
 soul of poetry, the " warmth and vigor of fancy," " but he 
 lacked somewhat of equal thoughts," and " somewhat of the 
 purity of English." And after he has applied his unvarying 
 measure, Dryden peevishly demands what rules of morality or 
 respect he has broken : "There are few poets who deserve to 
 be models in all they write." 2 Horace himself could hardly 
 
 1 i, 247. 2 i, 268. 
 
116 WM. E. BOHN. 
 
 have excelled this for classic coolness ; one is instantly re- 
 minded of nodding Homer. There is nothing here, except, 
 of course, the over-sensitive apology for irreverence, which, 
 so far as theory is concerned, might not have been written 
 by Pope. 
 
 But it is in the preface to Albion and Albanius (1685) that 
 Dryden undertakes the formal exposition of his doctrine. 
 The essay begins with a highly significant definition of wit. 
 It will be remembered that in the Essay of Dramatic Poesy 
 (1665) Dryden wrote, referring to Jonson: "I must acknowl- 
 edge him the more correct poet, but Shakespeare the greater 
 wit." l Wit, in this connection, was evidently used to signify 
 the possession of a prolific poetic genius, or an abundance of 
 poetic material. In the preface to Annus Mirabilis (1666) 
 this notion was decidedly modified: " wit-writing " was there 
 defined as a nimble spaniel, which "beats over and ranges 
 through the field of memory, till it springs the quarry it 
 hunted after;" 2 and "wit- written" was described as that 
 which is "well defined, the happy result of thought, or pro- 
 duct of imagination." This confusing division is evidently a 
 compromise ; wit is thought of as being at once the creative 
 quality of the imagination and the well-defined product of 
 the judgment. In 1677, in the Apology for Heroic Poetry, 
 Dryden formally defined wit as "a propriety of thoughts and 
 words," 3 but used this two-edged definition to show that in 
 the treatment of great subjects the poetic imagination should 
 be allowed free rein. But now, in the preface to Albion and 
 Albanius, he develops this definition and attempts to show 
 on the strength of it that all poetic beauty depends upon the 
 ** exercise of the judgment. Thus in the course of twenty 
 years one of the most important terms of seventeenth cen- 
 tury criticism, following the evolution of our author's mind, 
 
 1 Cf. ante, p. 72. ' Cf. ante, p. 83. 3 1, 190. 
 
JOHN DRYDEN's LITERARY CRITICISM. 117 
 
 has exactly reversed its meaning. With its new definition 
 it is made to cover a complete system of poetic theory. The 
 thoughts are to be proper to the subject, the words, to the 
 thoughts, " and from both of these, if they be judiciously 
 performed, the delight of poetry results." ' Pope, in the 
 Essay on Criticism, seems merely to return an echo : 
 
 "Expression is the dress of thought, and still 
 Appears more decent as more suitable." 
 
 The criticism of this period, it thus appears, is rational- v 
 istic. In its general spirit it bears some resemblance to 
 that of the second period, nevertheless the two should be 
 sharply distinguished. The critical theory of the second 
 period, it will be remembered, was characterized as pseudo- 
 neoclassic ; that of the period now under consideration is 
 best defined as English rationalistic. The English heroic 
 play which furnished the occasion for the characteristic 
 criticism of the second period was a natural outgrowth of 
 the life of the Restoration, and with the passing of that life, 
 it, too, past away with all its related theory. Even before 
 it had reached its zenith there had appeared in England the 
 beginnings of a school of critics, best represented by Hobbes, 
 who introduced into their thinking about literature the spirit 
 and doctrines of English sensationalistic philosophy. The 
 French neoclassicists, we have seen, made literature rational 
 and intelligible by working it out in accordance with an 
 a priori scheme attributed to the ancients. The English 
 rationalists, thorogoing sensationalists in philosophy, achieved 
 practically the same result by bringing art down to the 
 actualities of life. 2 To them prose furnished an ideal 
 
 l i, 270. 
 
 " 2 Cf. Preface to Ovid's Epistle, I, 233. Here, speaking of Ovid's descrip- 
 tions of the passions, Dryden says he needs no other judges of them than 
 the generality of his readers : ' ' for, all passions being inborn with us, we 
 
118 WM. E. BOHN. 
 
 form and, in the eighteenth century, the realistic novel, an 
 ideal content : even in Dryden's day they were dubbed 
 " prose-critics." Under the predominance of these prose- 
 critics the heroic play fell under constantly increasing 
 condemnation. Dryden's unequivocal denunciation of it in 
 the dedication of The Spanish Friar, furnishes a measure 
 of his evolution : during his fourth period he was, at least 
 in his general spirit, a rationalist. The worship of good 
 sense had become his controling motive. 
 
 This rationalism is precisely what an examination of 
 Dryden's life during this period would lead one to expect. 
 We have seen him constrained by circumstances to throw 
 the chief energy saved from uninspiring hack-work into a 
 " series of poetical satires. The first result of this new direc- 
 tion of his activity was naturally a diminution of his interest 
 in critical problems. But the second result was more 
 important. A man like Dryden, versatile, easily adapting 
 himself to new conditions, could hardly be imagined divid- 
 ing his mental life ; doing his daily stint of toil for the 
 royal cause and then taking up the consideration of literary 
 problems with his old romantic fervor. On the contrary, 
 he gave himself up wholly to the required labor. So 
 thoroly did he fuse his personality with the cause of his 
 party that in MacFlecknoe, passages of Absalom and Achi- 
 tophel, and in other poems, he paid at once his own scores 
 
 ^ and those of the king. Satire had become his natural mode 
 
 ... ... 
 
 of expression. But satire is itself but a sort of criticism ; 
 
 it has always been the form assumed by the highly trained, 
 
 versifying prose-understanding. If, then, while satire was 
 
 Dryden's natural mode of expression his critical essays 
 
 are almost equally judges when we are concerned in the representation of 
 them." And a little later he criticizes Ovid for leaving " the imitation of 
 nature, and the cooler dictates of his judgment, for the false applause of 
 fancy. ' ' 
 
JOHN DRYDEN'S LITERARY CRITICISM. 119 
 
 became eminently rationalistic, it is merely because they 
 were of a piece with his whole mental life. 1 
 
 The Fifth Period. 
 
 The fifth period of Dryden's critical development includes, 
 approximately, the last decade of his life. With the revolu- 
 tion of 1688-9 our author lost at once his offices and his 
 pension; but what was apparently a crushing reverse proved o 
 to be a boon — at once to Dryden and to English literature. 
 His position now became practically that of a free man of 
 letters. And in this character he was left at liberty to give 
 himself up to literary labors of his own choice. Under these 
 circumstances his critical faculty naturally regained free play. 
 The result is noticeable, first of all, in the imposing amount 
 of criticism written during this period. But the quality is 
 more remarkable than the quantity ; beginning the period as 
 a rationalist, Dryden gradually developed in the direction of 
 the theory and feeling of the first and third periods. The 
 old love for the spirit of great literature returned, and more 
 and more dominated the good-sense mood and method. The '«' 
 criticism is distinguished from that of the first and third 
 periods by a broader, steadier grasp of. esthetic problems and 
 by a beautiful evenness of feeling. It is, to be sure, a sort 
 
 1 Perhaps the reader does not need to be again reminded that I do not 
 pretend to have accounted completely for all the differences between the 
 various periods of Dryden's critical development. The causes for the 
 transition from the third to the fourth period seem to have been especially 
 complex. I have my attention drawn to the fact that during the third 
 period Dryden leaned pretty heavily on Rapin and that, although he was 
 using his contemporary French critic in the support of romanticism, Rapin 
 may have influenced him in the direction of rationalism. Rapin had after 
 all more affinity to Rymer than to Dryden. It is not impossible that our 
 author's very attacks on Rymer may have reacted in favor of Rymer' s own 
 doctrines. 
 
120 WM. E. BOHN. 
 
 of classicism which we have here, but a deep and humanized 
 classicism. ' 
 
 After the downfall of James II our author, now nearly 
 sixty years old, was cast out to write for a living. During 
 the first years of the period he was still partially dependent, 
 but his dependence was of a kind which did not entail actual 
 servitude. Don Sebastian (1690) he dedicated to the Earl 
 of Leicester, a supporter of the new government. In the 
 dedication of Amphitrion (1690) to Sir William Leveson 
 Gower, also a revolutionist, he wrote : " And as, since this 
 wonderful revolution, I have begun with the best pattern of 
 humanity, the Earl of Leicester, I shall continue to follow 
 the same method, in all to whom I shall address ; and 
 endeavor to pitch on such only as have been pleased to own 
 me in this ruin of my small fortune ; who, though they are 
 of a contrary opinion themselves, yet blame not me for 
 adhering to a lost cause, and judging for myself, what I 
 cannot choose but judge, so long as I am a patient sufferer, 
 and no disturber of the government." l One of Dryden's 
 most generous friends was Charles, Earl of Dorset and 
 Middlesex, after the revolution appointed to the post of 
 Lord Chamberlain. Addressing to this nobleman his Dis- 
 course concerning the Original and Progress of Satire (1693), 
 Dryden wrote : " I must ever acknowledge, to the honor of 
 your lordship, and the eternal memory of your charity, that, 
 since this revolution, wherein I have patiently suffered the ruin 
 of my small fortune, and the loss of that poor subsistence 
 which I had from two kings, whom I had served more faith- 
 fully than profitably to myself; then your Lordship was 
 pleased, out of no other motive than your nobleness, without 
 any desert of mine, or the least solicitation from me, to 
 make me a most bountiful present, which at that time, when 
 
 1 Scott-Saintsbury, vin, 7. 
 
JOHN DRYDEN'S LITERARY CRITICISM. 121 
 
 I was most in want of it, came most seasonably and unex- 
 pectedly to my relief. ... I must not presume to defend 
 the cause for which I suffer, because your Lordship is 
 engaged against it ; but the more you are so, the greater 
 is my obligation to you, for your laying aside all the con- 
 siderations of factions and parties, to do an action of pure 
 disinterested charity." 1 Dryden's patrons were, it thus 
 appears, persons who were drawn to him either out of 
 personal regard or because of an interest in letters : being, 
 most of them, at least, opposed to our author in politics, 
 they could not ask political services. Dryden's relations 
 with them were always dignified and honorable. The same 
 can be said of his attitude toward the government. In his 
 dedication of the Aeneis (1697), about to discuss Virgil's 
 relations with Augustus, he remarked by way of introduc- 
 tion : " I shall continue to speak my thoughts like a free- 
 born subject, as I am ; though such things, perhaps, as no 
 Dutch commentator could, and I am sure no Frenchman 
 durst." 2 
 
 This honorable attitude toward patrons and government 
 is at least partially to be explained from the fact that 
 Dryden had now thrown himself chiefly upon the support 
 of the rapidly increasing readiug public. It is true that in 
 1691 he w r rote a panegyric, Eleanora, on the deceased 
 Countess of Abdingdon, a person whom he acknowledges 
 never to have seen, and that he received for the performance 
 of this task a fee of five hundred pounds. But the transla- 
 tions w T ere the characteristic works of this period, and it is 
 evident that they became more and more remunerative. The 
 translation of Virgil (1697), as appears from a letter to 
 William Walsh, 3 was published by subscription : a hundred 
 and two copies, "having an hundred and two brass cuts, 
 
 '11,38. 2 ii, 174. 3 Scott-Saintsbury, xvm, 191. 
 
 v 
 
122 WM. E. BOHN. 
 
 with the coat of arms of the subscriber to each cut," were 
 subscribed for at five guineas apiece ; another lot were taken 
 at two guineas the copy. In a letter to Jacob Tonson ' 
 Dryden stated that he had just finished the seventh Aeneid 
 and expected soon to start the eighth, and continued : 
 "when that is finished, I expect fifty pounds in good 
 silver." The number of books for which this sum was to 
 be received is not clear. A little later in the same letter 
 Dryden added : " but the thirty shillings upon every book 
 remains with me." Pope had heard that the Virgil transla- 
 tion as a whole brought Dryden the sum of 1,200 pounds. 
 For the Fables (1700), according to a signed agreement still 
 extaut, 2 Dryden was to receive from Tonson the sum of three 
 hundred pounds. 3 
 
 In connection with our author's changed position there is 
 noticeable a general elevation of his moral standards. This 
 is to be remarked, first of all, in his attitude toward his art. 
 In his dedication of the Examen Poeticum (1693), after a 
 discussion of the corruption of governments, he continued : 
 " These considerations have given me a kind of contempt for 
 those who have risen by unworthy ways. I am not ashamed 
 to be little, when I see them so infamously great ; neither do 
 I know why the name of poet should be dishonorable to me, 
 if I am truly one, as I hope I am ; for I will never do 
 anything that will dishonor it." 4 In Dryden's view of the 
 moral aspects of literature, also, there took place a notable 
 alteration. In the last paragraph of his last critical work, the 
 preface to the Fables, he replied to Jeremy Collier's attack on 
 him : " I shall say the less of Mr. Collier, because in many 
 things he has taxed me justly ; and I have pleaded guilty to 
 all thoughts and expressions of mine, which can be truly 
 
 'Ibid,, 123. * Ibid., 201. 3 Cf. Beljame, pp. 198 3. 
 
 4 ii, 2. 
 
JOHN DRYDEN's LITERARY CRITICISM. 123 
 
 argued of obscenity, profaneness, or immorality, and retract 
 them. If he be my enemy, let him triumph; if he be my 
 friend, as I have given him no personal reason to be other- 
 wise, he will be glad of my repentance." l 
 
 As to our author's literary activity under the new circum- 
 stances, the first thing to demand notice is a decline in his 
 dramatic production and a consequent falling off of interest 
 in the problems of the stage. The five plays which came 
 from his pen between 1690 and 1694 attained dramatic and 
 literary merit to a rapidly diminishing degree. At the begin- 
 ning of this, his last period of play writing, Dryden wrote : 
 " Having been longer acquainted with the stage than any 
 other poet now living, and having observed how difficult it 
 was to please; that the humors of comedy were almost spent; 
 that love and honor (the mistaken topics of tragedy) were 
 quite worn out ; that the theaters could not support their ' 
 charges ; that the audience forsook them ; that young men, 
 without learning, set up for judges, and that they talked 
 loudest who understood the least ; all these discouragements 
 had not only weaned me from the stage, but had also given 
 me a loathing for it. But enough of this : the difficulties 
 continue ; they increase ; and I am still condemned to dig 
 in those exhausted mines." 2 And in 1692 he protested; 
 " Nobody can imagine that, in my declining age, I write 
 willingly, or that I am desirous of exposing, at this time of 
 day, the small reputation which I have gotten on the theater. 
 The subsistence which I had from the former government is 
 lost; and the reward I have from the stage is so little, that 
 it is not worth my labor." 3 The story of Dryden' s dramatic^ 
 degeneration, then, may be summed up as follows. In 
 1690, having been cast upon the resources of his pen, he 
 turned to the public, especially to the citizen class, which, 
 
 1 n, 272. 2 Scott-Saintsbury, vn, 307. 5 Ibid., vra, 221. 
 
124 WM. E. BOHN. 
 
 with the coming of William and Mary, had gained a decided 
 ascendency. The public was most easily reached thro 
 the theater; hence Don Sebastian (1690), worked out with 
 extraordinary care. But Dryden soon discovered that times 
 were changed. Citizen morality was more and more making 
 itself felt, and plays were more and more subjected to 
 sharpest criticism. 1 In fact the theater seemed to be sinking 
 into a certain decline. Thus dramatic work, never to Dry- 
 den's taste, grew constantly more irksome ; and at last, 
 according to his own statement, the economic motive for 
 '"* continuing it well nigh disappeared. But for us the impor- 
 tant thing to notice is, that Dryden lost interest in dramatic 
 problems. Not one of the five plays of this period is pre- 
 ceded by a critical dissertation of any importance. The 
 chauge which began in 1684 with the publication of Miscel- 
 lany Poems is now complete, and it is chiefly in connection 
 with his translations that we must henceforth follow the 
 development of Dryden's critical theory. 
 
 The translations of this period include selections from 
 Juvenal, Persius, and Ovid, the works of Virgil, and the 
 so-called fables from Homer, Boccacio, and Chaucer. Four 
 of the five volumes in which these translations appeared 
 Dryden introduced with critical prefaces. Occasionally, 
 notably in the dedication of the Examen Poetieum (1693), 
 he wandered back into the discussion of the drama, but for 
 the most part his attention was given up to the poetic forms, 
 especially to the epic. A chronological list of the transla- 
 tions of the last seven years of Dryden's life shows that his 
 interest developed steadily in the direction of really poetic 
 appreciation. After his long period of satire writing Juvenal 
 
 T Cf. James Wright : Historia Histrionica (1699) ; An Apology for the life 
 of the Golly Cibber by himself, ed. byEobert W. Lowe, London, 1889, i, 187; 
 Beljame, Le Public et lesHommes de Lettres, 2nd ed., 1897, pp. 198-224, and 
 244-59. 
 
JOHN DRYDEN's LITERARY CRITICISM. 125 
 
 may naturally have interested him ; but, left free to follow 
 his literary impulse, he translated Virgil, whose formal vir- 
 tues few have been able to appreciate more sincerely, and 
 during his last years worked over with amazing freedom and 
 spirit selections from Homer, Boccacio, and Chaucer. 1 Thus 
 the development of his criticism during this period seems to 
 correspond to a development in his poetical activity. 
 
 The first important critical work of this period is, 
 naturally enough, on satire. A Discourse concerning the 
 Original and Progress of Satire, published in 1693 with a 
 translation of the satires of Juvenal, is a long and formal 
 treatise liberally padded with borrowed learning. Dryden 
 carefully announces his purpose to give, " from the best 
 authors, the origin, the antiquity, the growth, the change, 
 and the completement of satire among the Romans ; to 
 describe, if not define, the nature of that poem, with its 
 several qualifications and virtues, together with the several 
 sorts of it ; to compare the excellencies of Horace, Persius, 
 and Juvenal, and show the particular manner of their 
 satires ; and, lastly, to give an account of this new way of 
 version, which is attempted in our performance." 2 Forti- 
 fied with an imposing list of authorities, Dryden executes 
 his plan with more than customary method and care. Only 
 in the wanderings of his introduction does he express 
 
 1 It is to be regretted that studies of Dryden's translations do not furnish 
 sufficient material to warrant a generalization as to his tendency as trans- 
 lator. It seems extremely probable that he allowed himself constantly in- 
 creasing liberties with his originals. Francis H. Pughe, after an examina- 
 tion of a part of the material involved, comes to the following conclusion : 
 ' ' Wir sehen also, kurz gesagt, Dryden am Anfang seiner Uebersetzer- 
 thiitigkeit von dem Vorsatz ausgehen, wortliche Uebersetzung, ebenso wie 
 Nachahmung zu vermeiden, um spiiter einen zwischen Paraphrase und 
 Nachahmung schwankenden Weg einzuschlagen." John Dryden's Ueber- 
 setzungen aus Theokrii, Breslau, 1894, p. 5. 
 
 2 n, 42. 
 
126 WM. E. BOHN. 
 
 himself ou any vital literary problems. As to the war 
 between ancients aud moderns, he maintains that in drama 
 and satire the moderns have excelled ; Milton is searchingly 
 criticized, but admired for his elevated thoughts and sound- 
 ing words. It must be confessed, however, that this essay 
 as a whole exhibits more keen discrimination than real 
 literary enthusiasm. 
 
 In the epistle dedicatory of the Examen Poeticum (1693) 
 we recognize again the Dryden of the first and third periods. 
 It is significant that the immediate occasion for the greater 
 part of this essay is identical with that which we noticed in 
 connection with the Defense of the Epilog. In 1672, 
 being attacked by the old-fashioned devotees of the Eliza- 
 bethans, Dryden replied by belittling Shakespeare's virtues 
 and enlarging upon his faults: in 1693, under exactly the 
 same circumstances, our author gracefully acknowledges 
 the superiority of his great predecessors and challenges the 
 sincerity of his critics. 1 But, recalling in this the spirit 
 of the Essay of Dramatic Poesy, he will defend the Euglish 
 Drama against all comers : again the English genius comes 
 to its own ; again Dryden searches for words with which to 
 characterize that vital thing which is the heart of English 
 poetry. 2 The passages in question are distinguished from 
 
 1 ' " Tis not with an ultimate intention to pay reverence to the Manes of 
 Shakespeare, Fletcher, and Ben Jonson that they commend their writings, 
 hut to throw dirt on the writers of this age. . . . Peace be to the venerable 
 shades of Shakespeare and Ben Jonson ! none of the living will presume to 
 have any competition with them ; as they were our predecessors, so they 
 were our masters." n, 4-5. 
 
 2 "As little can I grant, that the French dramatic writers excel the Eng- 
 lish. Our authors as far surpass them in genius, as our soldiers excel theirs 
 in courage. 'Tis true, in conduct they surpass us either way ; yet that 
 proceeds not so much from their greater knowledge, as from the difference 
 in tastes in the two nations. They content themselves with a thin design, 
 without episodes, and managed by few persons. Our audience will not be 
 pleased, but with variety of accidents, an underplot, and many actors. 
 
JOHN DRYDEN's LITERARY CRITICISM. 127 
 
 our author's previous expressions ou the same subject only 
 by an evident desire to do justice both to the faults of the 
 English and the virtues of the French. A denunciation of 
 Homer's " ungodly man-killers " (heroes) and a tacit com- 
 mendation of a " more moderate heroism " seem to indicate 
 a temperate, Virgilian state of mind. But if this essay is 
 milder than the great documents of our author's third 
 period, it is filled with the same fine independence. 
 
 Dryden's next piece of criticism, the famous Parallel 
 between Poetry and Painting, prefixed to a translation of 
 Du Fresnoy, De Arte Graphica (1695), is unique among his 
 works in its purpose and scope. It resembles most the 
 preface to Troilus and Cressida (1679), but in the actual 
 nature of its material it is much more abstract. Here 
 Dryden starts out with the set purpose of laying down the 
 rules of art which belong to poetry and painting in common. 
 In no other work has he undertaken a task so entirely 
 formal; here, then, if anywhere, one might expect a cold 
 outline of the artist's activities approximating, perhaps, the 
 good-sense doctrine of the fourth period. And it must be 
 confessed that in its general tone this esssay is far more 
 rationalistic than the one which preceded it. But, neverthe^^ 
 less, a close reading reveals something like an attempt to 
 harmonize the formal conception of literature with the 
 intuitions of a genuinely poetic consciousness. Naturally 
 our author begins the systematic part of his treatise with a 
 statement of rules : this is in the very nature of the case ; 
 if there are no accepted laws applying to the artist's 
 methods, then no such treatise as this can be written at all. 
 
 They follow the ancients too servilely in the mechanic rules, and we assume 
 too much licence to ourselves, in keeping them only in view at too great 
 a distance. But if our audience had their tastes, our poets could more 
 easily comply with them, than the French writers could come up to the 
 sublimity of our thoughts, or to the difficult variety of our designs." EC, 7. 
 
128 WM. E. BOHN. 
 
 From the practise, then, of " the poets and painters in 
 ancient times and the best ages " rules have been drawn, 
 and these are to furnish the basis of our discussion. Treat- 
 ing the steps of a poet's or painter's work in order, Dryden 
 begins with a discussion of invention, and we are relieved 
 to read : " Invention is the first part, and absolutely neces- 
 sary to them both ; yet no rule ever was or ever can be 
 given, how to compass it." 1 But the disposition, or arrange- 
 ment, of the work is to be according to law. Coming to 
 the description of the passions, Dryden again admits the 
 inadequacy of rules : " This, says my author, is the gift 
 of Jupiter ; and to speak in the same heathen language, we 
 call it the gift of our Apollo — not to be obtained by pains 
 or study, if we are not born to it ; for the motions which are 
 studied are never so natural as those which break out in the 
 height of a real passion." 2 When he comes to the principles 
 of ornamentation Dryden finds the abstract rule too much 
 for him and, with evident compunction, admits the formal 
 indefensibility of the English tragi-comedy. One remark 
 on the cromatic, or coloring, the last step in the production 
 of an art work, shows again that Dryden is attempting to 
 maintain an esthetic balance : "A work may be overwrought 
 as well as underwrought ; too much labor often takes away 
 the spirit by adding to the polishing, so that there remains 
 nothing but a dull correctness, a piece without any consider- 
 able faults, but with few beauties ; for when the spirits are 
 drawn off, there is nothing but a caput mortuwm." 3 Taking 
 into account such passages as these it seems to me that 
 whereas we found in the preface to Troilus and Cressida a 
 formal treatment of the rules of the drama with here and 
 there an outbreak of romantic feeling, we are justified in 
 describing the Parallel as a studied attempt to harmonize 
 
 ya } 138. 2 n, 145. 3 n, 152. 
 
JOHN DRYDEN's LITERARY CRITICISM. 129 
 
 the formal, practical, working conception of an artist's labors 
 with the intuitions of a poetic appreciator of the finished 
 art-product. Dry den's theory, it is true, is inadequate to 
 his purpose ; he is still bound by the principle of imitation 
 and the allegorical conception of art. But the attempt is 
 none the less evident : an inexplicable genius produces the 
 material, and the judgment disposes it ; genius describes 
 the passions, while study and care polish the language. 
 
 The dedication with which Dryden introduced his trans- 
 lation of the Aeneid (1697) naturally concerns itself with 
 the old question of the relative advantages of drama and 
 epic and the defense and praise of the poetry of Virgil. So v 
 it happens, as has been the case with more than one of 
 Dryden' s essays, that the really significant passages of this 
 work are in the nature of digressions. In general these " 
 significant passages are pretty much of a piece with those 
 which we examined in the dedicatory epistle of the Examen 
 Poeticum. Their chief value lies iu the fact that, like the v 
 epistle of 1693, they exhibit Dryden expressing with his 
 old-time freedom the doctrines of his earliest period. The 
 figure once before used to define his feeling as to the nature 
 of the English poetic spirit is further developed : " For, 
 impartially speaking, the French are as much better critics 
 than the English, as they are worse poets. Thus we 
 generally allow that they better understand the management 
 of a war than our islanders ; but we know we are superior 
 to them in the day of battle. They value themselves on 
 their generals, we on our soldiers." 1 In another spirited 
 passage on the same subject he characterizes the informing 
 spirit of English poetry as "a masculine vigor," recalling 
 forcibly his earlier expressions, "masculine fancy" (1665), 
 and "genius of poetry in the writing" (1678). Our author 
 
 l n, 178. 
 9 
 
130 AVM. E. BOHN. 
 
 has consistently maintained, especially in the Parallel, that 
 the epic is farther from life than the drama, and thus better 
 adapted to ornamentation ; but now he demands, even in 
 the epic, something of genuine virility and passion. 1 
 
 It is in the preface to the Fables (1700), Dryden's last 
 essay, that the criticism of this period culminates. Here, 
 more than in any other work of the period, we get warm, 
 spontaneous appreciation unmixed with empty formulas. 
 Homer, Chaucer, Ovid, and Boccaccio are the natural 
 subjects of the essay ; but it is the first two that call forth 
 the best passages. Here concludes, so far as Dryden is 
 concerned, that long conflict between Homer and Virgil. 
 The result is, first of all, an attempt to estimate the virtues 
 of each without injustice to the other. But one cannot help 
 feeling that, as Homer was Dryden's favorite in youth, so 
 he is at the last. In fact our author states specifically that 
 he has found Homer more according to his genius than the 
 Latin poet. And in passages like the following the nature 
 of his feeling can hardly be mistaken : " The action of 
 Homer, being more full of vigor than that of Virgil, accord- 
 ing to the temper of the writer, is of a consequence more 
 pleasing to the reader. One warms you by degrees ; the 
 other sets you on fire all at once, and never intermits his 
 heat. 'Tis the same difference which Longinus makes 
 betwixt the effects of eloquence in Demosthenes or Tully ; 
 one persuades, the other commands." 2 Comparing Chaucer 
 
 1 "Let the French and Italians value themselves on their regularity; 
 strength and elevation are our standard. I said before, and I repeat it, that 
 the affected purity of the French has unsinewed their heroic verse. The 
 language of an epic poem is almost wholly figurative : yet they are so fear- 
 ful of a metaphor, that no example of Virgil can encourage them to be bold 
 with safety. Sure they might warm themselves by that sprightly blaze, 
 without approaching it so close as to singe their wings ; they may come as 
 near it as their master." n, 229. 
 
 2 II, 253. 
 
JOHN DRYDEN'S LITERARY CRITICISM. 131 
 
 with Ovid, Dryden conies upon the subject of the much 
 admired " turn of words ; " as the poet of Charles II he 
 had much admired this taking ornament, but in his present 
 mood he sees that in strong passions it is always to be 
 shunned. As to Chaucer he speaks praise which can only 
 be compared with his eulogy of Shakespeare : " He must 
 have been a man of most wonderful comprehensive nature, 
 because, as has been truly observed of him, he has taken 
 into the compass of his Canterbury Tales the various manners 
 and humors (as we now call them) of the whole English 
 nation, in his age." * " He is a perpetual fountain of good 
 sense ; learn'd in all sciences ; and, therefore, speaks properly 
 on all subjects." 2 Even the verse of Chaucer, the meter 
 of which, because of changes in pronunciation, Dryden was t ' 
 quite unable to appreciate, seemed to him to have the " rude 
 sweetness of a Scotch tune in it." Coming at a time when 
 Chaucer was considered " a dry old-fashioned wit," 3 the 
 exclusive property of " some old Saxon friends," this frank 
 and hearty appreciation has an astonishingly modern ring. 
 Here is a poet who seems to lack most of the qualities of 
 form which have sometimes appeared to Dryden as the 
 essentials of poetry : and yet he is praised and loved for the 
 truth of nature in him and for his abundance of wit. 
 
 This preface, written only a few months before Dryden' s 
 death, is, from nearly every point of view, one of his best 
 critical works. There is little theorizing here, to be sure, 
 but there is an abundance of original comparison and sincere 
 appreciation. And the favorites of our author's last days 
 are Homer and Chaucer. It is the inner spirit of poetry i 
 which seems now to attract him, rather than niceties of 
 versification. It is noteworthy that the material which he " 
 
 1 it, 262. 2 ii, 257. 3 ii, 264. 
 
132 WM. E. BOHN. 
 
 is treating here is all of the epic kind ; and it has been for 
 the epic that he has heretofore so steadily insisted on formal 
 virtues. 
 
 During his fifth period Dryden has, more than at any 
 other time of his life, been left free to develop his per- 
 sonality. Except for the pressure exerted by the necessity 
 of writing for the public, he has been at liberty to choose 
 his form of activity and to express with perfect sincerity 
 the literary tastes which, in a man of his type, naturally 
 developed under favorable influences. Besides being free 
 from any sort of restraint Dryden has been writing during 
 his last years as the recognized master of English poetry ; 
 this, joined perhaps, with the fact that he has dealt chiefly 
 with classical material, has given him a fine dignity of 
 manner and catholic breadth of feeling. This, then, is the 
 Dryden of the last phase ; and the criticism we have 
 examined is just what one would expect from such a man. 
 Of the five critical documents of the period, the first, we 
 have seen, was transitional : the other four, it seems to me, 
 are related in spirit and material to the essays of the first 
 and third periods. In one respect they indicate a distinct 
 advance over all their predecessors : Dryden has gained in 
 judicial poise, and logicality of thought ; he is trying to 
 bring together his instinctive feelings for literature and his 
 reasoned theory. This very effort, to be sure, savors of the 
 eighteenth century, but Dryden has not again struck the 
 dead-level of the " prose-critics." He has still, especially 
 during the latter part of the period, the fine, free spirit of 
 the Essay of Dramatic Poesy and the preface to All for Love. 
 It is mellowed a bit by age, and there is not now so much 
 of the fire of conflict in it, but it is still the same in its 
 nature. 
 
john dryden's literary criticism. 133 
 
 Conclusion. 
 
 T. 
 
 The results of this investigation may be summed up in 
 the statement that Dryden's critical activity was an orgauic 
 part of his life. And it follows as a corollary of this state- 
 ment that, since his life, because of its intimate connection 
 with the vicissitudes of the age, divides itself into periods, 
 his criticism, together with his entire literary activity, 1 falls 
 into approximately corresponding periods. During the first 
 
 1 John Stuart Collins, in his extremely valuahle work, Di-yden's Dramatic 
 Theory and Praxis (Leipzig, 1902), makes an elaborate comparison of Dry- 
 den's critical theory as set forth in the prefaces and his practise in the 
 plays. The prefaces, especially the passages dealing with rime, the 
 unities, the decorum of the stage, and the like, he examines in order, and 
 in connection with each tries to make out whether the theory enunciated 
 is developed in the accompanying play or in other plays of the same 
 period. His general conclusion is as follows : "On the whole, I fail to 
 discover any such intimate connection between theory and praxis in Dry- 
 den's dramatic authorship as might reasonably be expected. Nowhere 
 does he say : 'thus and thus shall be written' and then follow up these 
 exact lines." After recognizing a distinct connection between Dryden's 
 theory and practise during the heroic period, Mr. Collins proceeds. "A 
 comparison of such statements of individual opinion as are to be found in 
 Dryden's essays, prefaces, and dedications regarding points of dramatic 
 technic, with his practise in dramatic composition, leads to the discovery 
 of the lack of any exact organic connection in every particular between the 
 two : an attempt to show either a complete reconciliation between theory 
 and praxis or a complete divergence of each from the other leads to no 
 precise results." 
 
 The obvious comment on this is that the connection which was sought in 
 certain details of dramatic theory and practise might have been found in 
 the general spirit of the two. Dryden was far too careless a play-wright 
 to work out every detail according to theory : but the essays and plays of 
 any particular period were acted upon by the same general influences, were 
 expressions of the same personality at a particular stage of its develop- 
 ment, and one would expect to find in them substantial agreement as to 
 mood and purpose. 
 
134 WM. E. BOHN. 
 
 of these Dryden, with the fine enthusiasm of a young poet 
 still upon him, has not yet settled upon a literary ideal, has 
 not yet submitted himself to the dominance of a formal 
 scheme of theory ; and the criticism of this time is full of 
 genuine appreciations of literature and remarkably modern 
 discussions of literary problems. The second period exhibits 
 a striking unity of development : Dryden becomes the great 
 literary favorite of the court ; in his serious plays he furnishes 
 precisely the heroic literature which the court demands ; and 
 in his criticism, being obliged to defend this literature, he 
 stretches the doctrines of neoclassicism to include the theory 
 of it, and, in self-defense, attacks the rival drama of the 
 great Elizabethans. During the third period our author's 
 central motive is rebellion against all that he has lately 
 believed in and supported : attacked by numberless foes, he 
 is neglected, if not actually discountenanced by the king ; in 
 his serious plays he discontinues the heroic manner for 
 imitation of Shakespeare, while in his comedy he attacks a 
 notorious court vice ; in his criticism he returns to the 
 enthusiasms of his first period, making it his special concern 
 to defend real poetry, above all that of the Elizabethans, 
 
 /J against carping fault-finders. At the beginning of the fourth 
 period Dryden is called back, in time of need, to the service 
 of the court ; but now, instead of being expected to w T rite 
 plays for the royal amusement, he is set to produce in rapid 
 succession, pamphlets and satires in defense of his master's 
 cause : and the criticism produced during this period is, as 
 one might expect, meager in quantity, and as to its spirit, 
 coldly rationalistic, approximating the character of eighteenth 
 
 i. century English rationalism. During his fifth period our 
 author gains his livelihood chiefly by catering to the con- 
 stantly growing literary public, and thus gains moral and 
 intellectual independence ; after having failed at play- writing 
 he gives almost undivided attention to his translations : his 
 
JOHN DRYDEN'S LITERARY CRITICISM. 135 
 
 time and energy being now entirely taken np by purely 
 literary labors, his critical dissertations, some of them long 
 and carefully worked out, gradually increase in spirit and 
 originality till they resemble those of the first and third 
 periods ; they differentiate themselves from these by an 
 evenness of tone and a certainty of grasp, and, more 
 especially, by an evident attempt on Dry den's part to 
 harmonize his instinctive feelings toward literature with his 
 reasoned judgments. 
 
 II. 
 
 • 
 
 I have not been able to discover a clean-cut, logical 
 development either in Dryden's critical methods or in his 
 formal literary creed. In 1665, when he wrote the Essay v 
 of Dramatic Poesy, he seems to have been master of all the 
 critical tools which he was to use during his long and active 
 career. He never formally adopted and defended the 
 doctrines of any critical school. The periods in his critical 
 evolution which I have attempted to define are, at least in 
 chief part, the results of his adaptation to changing condi- 
 tions. But these changing conditions did not impose upon 
 him a profession of faith in abstract principles. Each new 
 environment called for defense of, or opposition to, certain 
 literary men or literary types ; and though the development 
 of critical theory is of the utmost importance to the student 
 of esthetics, it made little difference to Dryden, or to those 
 whom he tried to please, just how he went about his task. 
 Therefore 4t —is- his literary allegiances, rather than his '' 
 literary methods or theories, which divide our author's 
 criticism into periods. 
 
 In stating that abstract theories did not furnish the points 
 of departure for Dryden's critical development I do not 
 wish to imply that the periods of this development are 
 

 136 WM. E. BOHN. 
 
 formally indistinguishable. With our author's changiug 
 environment and the consequent variation in his literary 
 motives and purposes there naturally went alterations in 
 
 irit more or less clearly mirrored in his formal critical 
 theory. Before attempting formally to characterize Dryden's 
 
 itical periods it w.ill, be necessary to make a classification 
 of critical methods. The history of criticism may be roughly 
 represented as a long conflict between two parties : on the 
 \ one side are those who insist on understanding what they 
 enjoy, or, as it has often worked out in practice, enjoying 
 only what they understand; on the other are those who 
 allow full play to their instinctive feelings, either makiug no 
 inquiry for systematic explanations, or, when these are given, 
 attempting to bend them to the task of justifying the 
 pleasurable emotion already experienced. These parties 
 2 represent two opposite types of mind — the rationalistic and 
 the romantic. 
 
 In Dryden's time the rationalists were, as has been re- 
 marked above, of two sorts : on the one hand were those of 
 the French school, usually called neoclassicists, rationalizing 
 literature by creating it in accordance with logical princi- 
 i> ! es; on the other were the representatives of the English 
 school achieving much the same result by holding literature 
 v down to the good-sense standards of ordinary life. 1 The 
 
 il romanticist, of course, has no critical method ; absence 
 of method is the very essence of his way of looking at art. 
 When he begins to account for the charm of romantic litera- 
 ture, as did the critics of the nineteenth century, he develops 
 in the direction of a larger rationalism. A really romantic 
 critic, in the sense in which I am using the term, is not 
 merely one who defends romantic literature — the most cold- 
 blooded modern rationalist can do that — but one who defends 
 
 1 Cf. ante, p. 117, note. 
 
JOHN DRYDEN'S LITERARY CRITICISM. 137 
 
 it, as Matthew Arnold so often did, by an immediate appeal 
 to the emotions. 
 
 Looking back on the long struggle between romanticism 
 and rationalism, we usually give our sympathy to the 
 former, while we visit with something like scorn the dog- 
 matic blindness of the latter. And it must be confessed ¥ 
 that, judged by the standards of our taste, the rationalist of 
 the past has usually been in the wrong : he has habitually 
 supposed his analysis complete when, perhaps, the very 
 heart of the matter has escaped him. But although the 
 rationalist of outlived periods loses nearly all the cases 
 which he pleads before the jury of modern opinion, it is 
 true, nevertheless, that in one sense the history of criticism 
 exhibits him in the character of victor. His analyses have 
 never been complete; he has never been able, either to 
 justify the literature which instinct has recognized as great 
 or to outline a successful theory for the production of such 
 literature. But, from age to age, his critical scheme of 
 things has widened tremendously. The very attacks of the 
 romanticists have forced upon him doctrines which have 
 permitted the formal recognition of the romantic types of 
 literature. The majority of modern critics, pouring out the " 
 vials of their wrath upon seventeenth century rationalists, 
 are merely later rationalists with a widened scheme of 
 esthetic theory. 
 
 It is true that during the seventeenth century the 
 rationalistic creed seemed to be narrowing itself down, 
 crystalizing itself. Just at this time, nevertheless, men 
 like Dryden, largely romantic in their temperament, were 
 attempting to force upon it the historical manner of looking 
 at literature. 1 In one sense the historical method com- ' 
 bines, and mediates between, rationalism and romanticism: 
 
 1 Cf. p. 74, note 2. 
 
J 8 WM. E. BOHN. 
 
 attempts, by historical analysis, to explain all types and 
 view-points. But in another sense it is merely a rationalism 
 ioade broad enough to include everything else ; its attempt is 
 always to make intelligible the creation and character of 
 works of art. 
 
 In attempting to give formal characterization to the periods 
 
 f Dryden's critical development we should bear in mind 
 these four methods of criticism, with the definitions which 
 ive been given to them : the romantic, the French rational- 
 istic, or neoclassic, the English rationalistic, and the 
 / historical. One should also remember that Dryden's transi- 
 tions were not conscious and formal, that he was always bent 
 on vindicating his man, his poem, his type of literature, never 
 on exhibiting a method of criticism. With the reservations 
 which these statements imply the following generalizations 
 are approximately accurate. During his first period Dryden 
 used practically all four of the methods which have been 
 defined above ; but the period is given its prevailing character 
 by the fact that the English rationalistic way of looking at 
 literature played a decidedly subordinate part, and that the 
 romantic method stood out prominently above the others. The 
 cond period was characterized by a kind of pseudo-neo- 
 A issicism — a classicism stretched and perverted into a defense 
 of the English heroic play. It was in the third period that 
 the romantic method came to its own : this is the only stage 
 
 m the evolution of Dryden's theory at which the rationalistic 
 
 ;»irit approached the vanishing point. The fourth period 
 longed entirely to the rationalistic mood ; and, though the 
 
 ''.stiuction is sometimes difficult to make, it seems to me 
 that it was English rationalism, rather than French, which 
 dominated during this time. The fifth period resembles, in 
 •■> limited sense, the first : in both of them we have all of 
 ■ >ryden's methods and theories side by side. The difference 
 between the two lies in the fact that whereas in the first 
 
JOHN DRYDEN'S LITERARY CRITICISM. 139 
 
 period all of these methods and theories flourished simulta- 
 neously without any attempt, on Dryden's part, at a logical 
 coordination, during the last, our author, with the spirit of 
 the rationalist still strong upon him, toned them all down 
 and attempted to bring them into harmony. Nevertheless 
 the last period was marked, especially toward the end, by a 
 decided dominance of the romantic manner. The historical 
 method was not especially characteristic of any period : it 
 was conspicuous at all the stages of Dryden's development 
 except the fourth, the rationalistic stage. 
 
 Wm. E. Bohn. 
 UNIV1 
 
 OF 
 
• 
 
 14 DAY USE 
 
 RETURN TO DESK FROM WHICH BORROWED 
 
 LOAN DEPT. 
 
 RENEWALS ONLY — TEL. NO. 642-3405 
 
 This book is due on the last date stamped below, or 
 
 on the date to which renewed. 
 
 Renewed books are subject to immediate recall. 
 
 ja>ivfia-w^ 
 
 m 9 6 
 
 REC'D LD OCT 1 
 
 7 72 -Q AM 4 2 
 
 LD 21A-40m-2,'69 
 (J6057sl0)476 — A-32 
 
 General Library 
 
 University of California 
 
 Berkeley 
 
/'< 
 
 
 ••""V