As if it would thy worthless worth enhance, From breaths of fools thy commendation spreads, 'Thus I have daubed him with his own puddle: and now we are come from aboard his dancing, masking, rebounding, breathing fleet; and as if we had landed at Gotham, we meet nothing but fools and nonsense.' ΤΟ Such was the criticism to which the genius of Dryden could be reduced, between rage and terror; rage with little provocation, and terror with little danger. To see the highest minds thus levelled with the meanest may produce some solace to the consciousness of weakness, and some mortification to the pride of wisdom. But let it be remembered, that 20 minds are not levelled in their powers but when they are first levelled in their desires. Dryden and Settle had both placed their happiness in the claps of multitudes. The Mock Astrologer,' a comedy, is dedicated to the illustrious Duke of Newcastle, whom he courts by adding to his praises those of his lady, not only as a lover but a partner of his studies. It is unpleasing to think how many names, once celebrated, are since forgotten. Of Newcastle's works nothing is now known but his treatise on horsemanship. The preface seems very elaborately written, and contains 30 many just remarks on the fathers of the English drama. Shakspeare's plots, he says, are in the hundred novels of Cinthio; those of Beaumont and Fletcher in Spanish stories; Jonson only made them for himself. His criticisms upon ragedy, comedy, and farce are judicious and profound. He endeavours to defend the immorality of some of his comedies by the example of former writers; which is only to say, that he was not the first nor perhaps the greatest offender. Against those that accused him of plagiarism, he alleges a favourable expression of the King: 'He only desired that they, who accuse me of thefts, would steal him plays like mine;' and then relates how much labour he spends in fitting for the English stage what he borrows from others. 'Tyrannic Love, or the Virgin Martyr,' was another tragedy in rhyme, conspicuous for many passages of strength and elegance, and many of empty noise and ridiculous turbulence. The rants of Maximin have been always the sport of criticism; and were at length, if his own confession may be trusted, the shame of the writer. Of this play he takes care to let the reader know that it was contrived and written in seven weeks. Want of time was often his excuse, or perhaps shortness of time was his private boast in the form of an apology. It was written before the 'Conquest of Granada,' but published after it. The design is to recommend piety. 'I considered that pleasure was not the only end of poesy, and that even the instructions of morality were not so wholly the business of a poet, as that precepts and examples of piety were to be omitted; for to leave that employment altogether to the clergy, were to forget that religion was first taught in verse, which the laziness or dulness of succeeding priesthood turned afterwards into prose.' Thus foolishly could Dryden write, rather than not shew his malice to the parsons. The two parts of the 'Conquest of Granada' are written with a seeming determination to glut the public with dramatic wonders; to exhibit in its highest elevation a theatrical meteor of incredible love and impossible valour, and to leave no room for a wilder flight to the extravagance of posterity. All the rays of romantic heat, whether amorous or warlike, glow in Almanzor by a kind of concentration. He is above all laws; he is exempt from all restraints; he ranges the world at will, and governs wherever he appears. He fights without enquiring the cause, and loves in spite of the obligations of justice, of rejection by his mistress, and of prohibition from the dead. Yet the scenes are, for the most part, delightful; they exhibit a kind of illustrious depravity and majestic madness such as, if it is sometimes despised, is often reverenced, and in which the ridiculous is mingled with the astonishing. 10 In the Epilogue to the second part of the 'Conquest of Granada,' Dryden indulges his favourite pleasure of discrediting his predecessors; and this Epilogue he has defended by a long postscript. He had promised a second dialogue, in which he should more fully treat of the virtues and faults of the English poets who have written in the dramatic, epic, or lyric way. This promise was never formally performed; but, with respect to the dramatic writers, he has given us in his prefaces, and in this postscript, something equivalent; but his purpose being to exalt himself by the comparison, he 20 shews faults distinctly, and only praises excellence in general terms. A play thus written, in professed defiance of probability, naturally drew down upon itself the vultures of the theatre. One of the critics that attacked it was Martin Clifford, to whom Sprat addressed the Life of Cowley, with such veneration of his critical powers as might naturally excite great expectations of instruction from his remarks. But let honest credulity beware of receiving characters from contemporary riters. ་ Clifford's remarks, by the favour of Dr. Percy, were 30 last obtained; and, that no man may ever want them bre, I will extract enough to satisfy all reasonable desire. In the first letter his observation is only general: 'You do says he, 'in as much ignorance and darkness in the womb: your writings are like a Jack-of-all-trades shop; they have a variety, but nothing of value; and if thou art not the dullest plant-animal that ever the earth produced, all that I have conversed with are strangely mistaken in thee.' In the second, he tells him that Almanzor is not more copied from Achilles than from Ancient Pistol. 'But I am,' says he, 'strangely mistaken if I have not seen this very Almanzor of yours in some disguise about this town, and 10 passing under another name. Pr'ythee tell me true, was not this Huffcap once the Indian Emperor, and at another time did he not call himself Maximin? Was not Lyndaraxa once called Almera? I mean under Montezuma the Indian Emperor. I protest and vow they are either the same, or so alike that I cannot, for my heart, distinguish one from the other. You are therefore a strange unconscionable thief; thou art not content to steal from others, but dost rob thy poor wretched self too." Now was Settle's time to take his revenge. He wrote a 20 vindication of his own lines; and, if he is forced to yield anything, makes reprisals upon his enemy. To say that his answer is equal to the censure is no high commendation. To expose Dryden's method of analyzing his expressions, he tries the same experiment upon the description of the ships in the Indian Emperor,' of which however he does not deny the excellence; but intends to shew that by studied misconstruction everything may be equally represented as ridiculous. After so much of Dryden's elegant animadversions, justice requires that something of Settle's should be exhibited. The 30 following observations are therefore extracted from a quarto pamphlet of ninety-five pages :— Fate after him below with pain did move, And victory could scarce keep pace above.' 10 'These two lines, if he can shew me any sense or tho in, or anything but bombast and noise, he shall make me believe every word in his observations on Morocco sense.' In the 'Empress of Morocco' were these lines : 'I'll travel then to some remoter sphere, Till I find out new worlds, and crown you there.' On which Dryden made this remark :— 'I believe our learned author takes a sphere for a country: the sphere of Morocco, as if Morocco were the globe of earth and water; but a globe is no sphere neither, by his leave,' &c. 'So sphere must not be sense, unless it relate to a circular motion about a globe, in which sense the astronomers use it. I would desire him to expound those lines in " Granada :”"I'll to the turrets of the palace go, And add new fire to those that fight below. With open arms, loose vail and flowing hair, 'I wonder, if he be so strict, how he dares make so bold with sphere himself, and be so critical in other men's writings. Fortune is fancied standing on a globe, not on a sphere, as he told us in the first act. 'Because Elkanah's similes are the most unlike things to what they are compared in the world, I'll venture to start a simile in his "Annus Mirabilis:" he gives this poetical description of the ship called the "London :" "The goodly London in her gallant trim, re imGoes on to sea, and knows not to retire. |