his fuperftition, by attributing the fame to fome of the Ancients.

So flight and fo fcanty is the knowledge which I have been able to collect concerning the private life and domestick manners of a man, whom every English generation must mention with reverence as a critick and a poet.

DRYDEN

DRYDEN may be properly confidered as the father of English criticism, as the writer who firft taught us to determine upon principles the merit of compofition. Of our former poets, the greatest dramatist wrote without rules, conducted through life and nature by a genius that rarely misled, and rarely deferted him. Of the rest, those who knew the laws of propriety had neglected to teach them.

Two Arts of English Poetry were written in the days of Elizabeth by Webb and Puttenham, from which fomething might be learned, and a few hints had been given by Jonfon and Cowley; but Dryden's Effay on Dramatick Poetry was the first regular treatife on the art of writing.

He who, having formed his opinions in the prefent age of English literature, turns back to peruse this dialogue, will not perhaps find much increase of knowledge, or much novelty of inftruction; but he is to remember that critical principles were then in the hands of a few, who had gathered them

them partly from the Ancients, and partly from the Italians and French. The ftructure of dramatick poems was not then generally understood. Audiences applauded by instinct, and poets perhaps often pleased by chance.

A writer who obtains his full purpose loses himself in his own luftre. Of an opinion which is no longer doubted, the evidence ceases to be examined. Of an art univerfally practifed, the first teacher is forgotten. Learning once made popular is no longer learning; it has the appearance of fomething which we have bestowed upon ourselves, as the dew appears to rife from the field which it refreshes.

To judge rightly of an author, we must tranfport ourselves to his time, and examine what were the wants of his contemporaries, and what were his means of fupplying them. That which is easy at one time was difficult at another. Dryden at least imported his science, and gave his country what it wanted before; or rather, he imported only the materials, and manufactured them by his own skill.

The

The dialogue on the Drama was one of his first effays of criticism, written when he was yet a timorous candidate for reputation, and therefore laboured with that diligence which he might allow himself fsomewhat to remit, when his name gave fanction to his pofitions, and his awe of the publick was abated, partly by cuftom, and partly by fuccess. It will not be easy to find, in all the opulence of our language, a treatise fo artfully variegated with fucceffive reprefentations of oppofite probabilities, fo enlivened with imagery, fo brightned with illuftrations. His portraits of the English dramatifts are wrought with great spirit and diligence. The account of Shakspeare may ftand as a perpetual model of encomiaftick criticism; exact without minutenefs, and lofty without exaggeration. The praise lavished by Longinus, on the attestation of the heroes of Maranthon, by Demofthenes, fades away before it. In a few lines is exhibited a character, fo extenfive in its comprehenfion, and fo curious in its limitations, that nothing can be added, diminished, or reformed; nor can the editors and admirers of Shakspeare, in all their emulation of re

verence,

verence, boast of much more than of having diffused and paraphrased this epitome of excellence, of having changed Dryden's gold for bafer metal, of lower value though of greater bulk.

In this, and in all his other effays on the fame fubject, the criticism of Dryden is the criticism of a poet; not a dull collection of theorems, nor a rude detection of faults, which perhaps the cenfor was not able to have committed; but a gay and vigorous differtation, where delight is mingled with instruction, and where the author proves his right of judgement, by his power of performance.

The different manner and effect with which critical knowledge may be conveyed, was perhaps never more clearly exemplified than in the performances of Rymer and Dryden. It was faid of a dispute between two mathematicians, "malim cum Scaligero errare, quam cum Clavio recte fapere;" that it was more eligible to go wrong with one than right with the other. A tendency of the fame kind every mind must feel at the perufal of Dryden's prefaces and Rymer's difcourfes: