of classic writers for rule and guidance. Hence there was another problem which arose from time to time, and which presently filled the French world of letters with excitement and indirectly inspired Swift's famous satire, "The Battle of Books," the problem of the comparative merits of the ancients and the moderns, and of the right of the moderns to break away from classic leading-strings, assert the freedom of individual genius, and work out the principles of a new literature for themselves.

These were some of the subjects most prominent in the literary discussions of the time when Dryden wrote his essays in dramatic criticism, and it was perfectly natural, therefore, that his own mind should be full of them. What are the relative values of the ancient and modern dramas? How does the French drama (based in theory on the ancient) compare with the romantic drama of the older English stage? What in turn may be said for and against this romantic drama itself when it is set beside the drama of Dryden's own time? What is the real significance of the unities? Has tragi-comedy any justification? What is the proper place and what the proper treatment of love in the modern drama? What are the advantages and drawbacks of action and narrative? of rhyme and blank verse? Such are the topics which recur in Dryden's pages; and if for most of us to-day they are scarcely living issues, the historical importance, and even the critical value, of what Dryden says about them are not the less on that account.

The foundations of his dramatic criticisms are laid in the earliest and at the same time the most masterly of all his writings on the subject-the Essay of Dramatic Poesy." That this essay was largely based upon three treatises by the great French playwright Corneille, and that Dryden also draws freely for it from other authors, is a fact that must be mentioned in passing. His indebtedness to those who had been before him in the field makes little difference, however, to the individuality of his own work, for he had a rare faculty for making borrowed material entirely his own and for leaving his personal impress upon it. In the present essay, it will be noted, the discussion is thrown into the form of a dialogue— a favourite device since the revival of learning, when all over Europe men had begun to imitate Plato and Cicero. The critical value of this form is of course to be found in the opportunity it affords for the consideration of any given

subject from different points of view; and it doubtless commended itself to Dryden both for this reason and because it fell in with the curious flexibility of his own judgment. You see it is a dialogue," he afterwards explained, "sustained by persons of several opinions, all of them left doubtful, to be determined by readers in general.' "1 Hence the employment of the controversial method may very probably have been suggested in the first instance by the writer's characteristically sceptical spirit. But however that may be, it is important to observe that as literary principles are thus treated, not as fixed and final, but as open to varying interpretations, the older critical dogmatism is abandoned, and the comparative line of investigation adopted instead. The fact adds much to the historical significance of the essay.

There are four interlocutors-Crites, Eugenius, Lisideius, and Neander, representing respectively, it is now generally admitted, Sir Robert Howard, Lord Buckhurst, Sir Charles Sedley, and Dryden himself.2 Crites asserts the superiority of the ancients to the moderns, in virtue of their closer imitation of nature, and upholds the unities. Eugenius defends the French drama against the classicists; maintains that with the ancient playwrights poetic justice was imperfectly realised, and points out the deficiency of the classic drama in one important respect-its neglect of love. Lisideius in turn undertakes the advocacy of the French drama against the English, on the ground of its adherence to the unities, great structural regularity, and use of rhyme. Neander protests against this: the English, he declares, excel in "lively imitation of nature,' richness of invention, variety. He further insists that the French drama has lost more than it has gained by undue regard for decorum and obedience to the rules, and argues that in English plays-even when most "irregular "-there is more masculine fancy" and a greater spirit in the writing " than are ever to be found on the French stage.

"

Other matters are drawn into the argument, but these are the main points discussed. The result, as we have seen Dryden acknowledge, is left in some uncertainty; for while superstitious veneration for classical antiquity and the current admiration of the French drama are boldly challenged, and

1" Defence," prefixed to second edition of The Indian Emperor. It is probable that he assumed this name (which means novus homo "-véos ȧvýp-or " parvenu ") to mark the difference between himself and the other speakers, all of whom belonged to a higher social rank.

while too the older English dramatists are defended, yet the ancients and the French are alike treated with the greatest respect; the value of rhyme (one of the salient features of French tragedy) is emphasised; and the unities are practically admitted as essential principles of a good play. On the conservative side the argument is, that while dramatic rules may be derived immediately from the ancients, the ancients in turn derived them directly from nature; so that to imitate the ancients and to follow nature turn out to be one and the same thing. On the other hand, a strong case is made out for the irregular English drama, and therefore for the right of the individual playwright to go straight to nature for himself. The general purpose of the Essay," however, may be said to be two-fold - to defend rhyme in the drama against Sir Robert Howard,2 and to "vindicate the honour of our English writers, from the censure of those who unjustly prefer the French before them."3 It should be observed that these two aims are, strictly speaking, incompatible.

While the "Essay of Dramatic Poesy" holds the place of pre-eminence among Dryden's writings on the drama, it does not record his final or unswerving judgment upon the questions raised in it. It has therefore to be supplemented by his prefaces and dedications to various plays, in studying which we have an ample opportunity of following the always interesting and sometimes rather puzzling evolutions of his thought. Thus in the "Defence" of the essay he traverses again much of the ground which he had already covered in the essay itself, re-stating his views about rhyme and the “rules,” without however adding anything of much importance on either point. In his preface to "All for Love" (" Antony and Cleopatra and the Art of Tragedy ") he seems to be seeking some kind of compromise between the classic and the romantic dramas, advocating adherence to ancient tragedy, yet admitting that something of larger compass is required on the English stage, and under the influence of divine Shakespeare repudiating rhyme, which hitherto has had his ardent support. In considering "The Grounds of Criticism in Tragedy" in the preface to Troilus and Cressida, he takes

"

1 Compare Pope's well-known couplet:

Learn hence for ancient rules a just esteem;

To copy nature is to copy them.-Essay on Criticism. "Defence of an Essay of Dramatic Poesy."

3.16

To the Reader," prefixed to Essay of Dramatic Poesy."

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his stand even more firmly on Aristotle, Longinus, and Horace; sets out at length the commonplaces of the classic school of criticism; upholds the "rules," which are now treated (in a phrase of Rapin's afterwards adopted by Pope) as made only to reduce Nature into method;" and finds fault with Shakespeare and Fletcher for defects in technique. This decisive utterance in favour of the classic doctrine dates from the year after "All for Love" had marked the swing of the critic's mind towards the Shakespearean type of play. Two years later, in the preface to "The Spanish Friar" ("Nature and Dramatic Art"), he so far abandons the classic ideal as to defend double-plots and the "mixed" drama, or tragi-comedy, of the romantic stage. Then, in an Examen Poeticum prefixed to the third part of a Miscellany published in 1693, he enters the lists as the champion of the English drama against all comers; repeats some of Neander's arguments regarding the poverty of the French playwrights and their too servile dependence on "mechanic rules"; and yet at the same time enters a protest against those who pay lip-service to the Manes of Shakespeare, Fletcher, and Jonson" in order only that they may "throw dirt on the writers of this age." This last particular suggests an interesting point in connection with Dryden's critical position. In the Battle of the Books he is so far a modern that, however much he may himself find to blame in the older English drama, he is in general solicitous to protect it against its detractors. But he is equally solicitous to defend the achievements of his own day against those who regarded the efforts of the greater preRestoration playwrights as the high-water mark of English dramatic genius. This opinion he boldly challenged in the Epilogue to the second part of his "Conquest of Granada." The rather reckless language which he there used exposed him to severe attack; he found himself compelled in cold blood to make good assertions which he had flung out in hot blood; and the "Defence of the Epilogue, or an Essay on the Dramatic Poetry of the Last age was the result. On the whole, this essay is disappointing; too much space is wasted upon verbal criticisms of a singularly petty and profitless kind. Yet a larger purpose is apparent in the argument; the writer is anxious to show that if the modern dramatist cannot compare with the great pre-Restoration men in mere quality of genius, he gains greatly from the superior culture and taste of his time, and that therefore he has a right to work independently.

This contention is closely associated with Dryden's belief (already incidentally set forth in his preface to "An Evening Love"), that there was at least one special achievement in which the modern dramatists might justly claim precedence of those of the foregoing period the Heroic Play. Hence the signi

ficance of Dryden's concern with this extraordinary form of over-blown tragedy or melodrama which, arising from the combined influences of the older English theatre, the epic poem, French heroic romance, and French rhyming tragedy, enjoyed for a time immense popularity on the London boards. For his own exposition of the theory and principles of this curious type of drama we may turn to his essays "Of Heroic Plays" prefixed to the first part of "The Conquest of Granada,' and "On Heroic Poetry and Heroic Licence," published with his operatic version (or perversion) of “Paradise Lost, "The State of Innocence." Of course we cannot now accept Dryden's estimate of the Heroic Drama. As a matter of detail, therefore, it should be remembered that he himself finally grew tired of it. In his preface to "The Spanish Friar" he repents, among his other sins, the monstrous extravagances into which it had temporarily scduced him.

Between Dryden's essays on dramatic and those on nondramatic subjects, the connection is very close. In particular, the problems of what constitutes the heroic whether in tragedy or epic, of how the 'heroic should be treated, and of the relations of Art and Nature, are common to both; while more broadly, the questions which otherwise come up for consideration, being products of the same literary interests and conditions, belong to the same general class and are regarded from the same point of view. Dryden's pre-occupation with the elements of heroic poetry in the preface to Annus Mirabilis; " with the principles of translation in the prefaces to "Ovid's Epistles" and "Sylvæ;" with the characteristics of leading classic writers in the last-named essay and elsewhere; with the moral functions of epic and tragedy in the discourse on "Virgil and the Æneid; " and other similar topics, is thus explained. It is rarely that in these nondramatic writings Dryden reaches his highest level as a critic. His treatment of the epic, for example, is on the whole rather tame and conventional; the learning which he parades is for the most part second-hand learning; and, except in his analysis of the character of Æneas, which may still be read with profit, there is little that is fresh or striking in the opinions expressed.