And therefore as we draw giants and anthropophagi in those vacancies of our maps, where we have not travelled to draw better, so these wretches paint lewdness, atheism, folly, ill-reasoning, and all manner of extravagancies amongst us, from want of understanding what we are.'

Other aspects of Dryden's criticism may be noted under the separate headings that follow.

DEDICATION OF THE RIVAL LADIES (1664).

AT the end of his answer to Sir Robert Howard (Defence of the Essay, p. 133) Dryden explains how the argument about dramatic verse began in the dedication of the Rival Ladies, and led to the Essay of Dramatic Poesy, and further. Lord Orrery had written rhyming plays before Dryden took up the fashion ('yet I must remember it is your Lordship to whom I speak, who have much better commended this way by your writing in it, than I can do by writing for it,' p. 9). The example followed by Lord Orrery is found by Dryden in D'Avenant's Siege of Rhodes. More important, however, than the dramatic criticism in this preface is the acknowledgement of the authority of Waller as the founder of the new school of English verse, and the coupling of his name with that of Sir John Denham. That 'the excellence and dignity of rhyme were never fully known till Mr. Waller taught it,' and that Waller in this reform was seconded by Denham, became a dogma in the schools of criticism. Though opinions have changed about the value of Waller's verse, his influence as the master of Dryden and Pope is still recognized in the history of English poetry. Dryden's early reference to him here is the expression of an opinion from which

he never altered, and he repeats his homage at the end of his life, in the Preface to the Fables (vol. ii. p. 259).

None of Lord Orrery's plays seem as yet to have been published in 1664. Dryden perhaps had seen Henry the Fifth, which was acted in this year. His praise of Lord Orrery's dramatic genius may be compared with Pepys's estimate (Dec. 8, 1668): 'and so went home to dinner, where my wife tells me of my Lord Orrery's new play Tryphon at the Duke of York's house, which, however, I would see, and therefore put a bit of meat in our mouths, and went thither, where with much ado, at half-past one, we got into a blind hole in the 18d. place, above stairs, where we could not hear well, but the house infinite full, but the prologue most silly, and the play, though admirable, yet no pleasure almost in it, because just the very same design, and words, and sense, and plot, as every one of his plays have, any one of which alone would be held admirable, whereas so many of the same design and fancy do but dull one another; and this, I perceive, is the sense of everybody else, as well as myself, who therefore showed but little pleasure in it.'

PREFACE TO ANNUS MIRABILIS (1667).

The 'Account of the ensuing Poem' breaks the sequence of dramatic criticism, but more in form than in substance. Dryden's interest in the theatre was always connected with a stronger interest in nondramatic forms of poetry: his 'Heroic Drama' is professedly founded on the 'Heroic Poem.' Here, for once, he has an opportunity of speaking about the Heroic Poem apart from the distractions of the stage. If this essay is compared with the Dedication of the Eneis it will be found to display the same literary

tastes, with some differences of judgment. In Annus Mirabilis Dryden had not yet fully appropriated the lessons of Waller. The poem is a series of fragments, with no more than an accidental unity: it is not organic, it is not, like the poems of 1681 and 1682, an argument secure of itself and directing its own progress from beginning to end; it has to keep to the events of the year, under a constraint which Dryden, later, would have refused to submit to. In another respect Annus Mirabilis shows clearly its comparatively old-fashioned character, namely in the use of technical details. The Preface states the principle without hesitation: 'We hear indeed among our poets of the thundering of guns, the smoke, the disorder, and the slaughter, but all these are common notions. And certainly, as those who, in a logical dispute, keep in general terms, would hide a fallacy, so those who do it in any poetical description would veil their ignorance' (p. 13). The Dedication of the Eneis contradicts this-'I will not give the reasons why I writ not always in the proper terms of navigation, land-service, as in the cant of any profession. I will only say that Virgil has avoided those proprieties, because he writ not to mariners, soldiers, astronomers, gardeners, peasants, &c., but to all in general, and in particular to men and ladies of the first quality, who have been better bred than to be too nicely knowing in the terms' (vol. ii. p. 236). In Annus Mirabilis Dryden agrees with Ronsard :-' Tu practiqueras bien souvent les artisans de tous mestiers, comme de Marine, Venerie, Fauconnerie, et principalement les artisans de feu, Orfévres, Fondeurs, Marechaux, Minerailliers; et de là tireras maintes belles et vives comparaisons avecques les noms propres des mestiers, pour enrichir ton œuvre et le rendre plus agreable et parfait' (Abrégé de l'Art Poëtique François). In 1697 Dryden has given up the technical

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dictionary and gone over to the school of general terms, whose principles were formulated by Buffon in his Discourse on Style1; he has become more 'classical.' Nevertheless the preface to Annus Mirabilis takes up a position which, with all its concessions to the older fashions, is definitely opposed to the vanities, the 'trimmings slight,' of the poetical art: "Tis not the jerk or sting of an epigram, nor the seeming contradiction of a poor antithesis': it is 'lively and apt description' with one's eye upon the object, in which the 'proper wit' of an Heroic Poem consists. Dryden never wrote anything so definite, in his critical works, as the account of the three functions of the poetical imagination in this preface. He never again committed himself to anything so nearly resembling philosophical analysis as his distinction between Invention, Fancy, and Elocution, the three modes of Imagination. 'Fancy,' which might be thought to have more than its due share in the 'ensuing poem,' is in this critical preface duly restrained, by the authority of Nature and Virgil. It is true that Virgil here is chiefly admired for separate passages of description, and that not enough consideration is given to the unities of the Heroic Poem. This is characteristic of Dryden's earlier point of view, and of the older fashion of richly figurative details which he was following in the Annus Mirabilis. At the same time the preface, as criticism, goes beyond the poem in recognizing more kinds of poetical work than the poem itself contains. The praise of the dramatic imagination of Ovid leads naturally on to the essays immediately following, in which the Drama is the principal theme,

1 'A cette première règle, dictée par le génie, si l'on joint de la délicatesse et du goût, du scrupule sur le choix des expressions, de l'attention à ne nommer les choses que par les termes les plus généraux, le style aura de la noblesse' (Buffon, Discours sur le Style, 1753).

and the Historical and Heroic Poem is brought in only for purposes of illustration.

AN ESSAY OF DRAMATIC POESY (1668).

The argument for rhyme in the Dedication of the Rival Ladies (1664) was answered by Sir Robert Howard in the preface to his Plays (1665); 'that,' says Dryden, 'occasioned my reply in my Essay' (see p. 133, below). The Essay is, however, much more than an argument on behalf of rhyming plays: the four friends in their dialogue are led to discuss the question of Ancients against Moderns, of French against English, the Three Unities, the liaison des scènes, the plots of Terence, the art of Ben Jonson, and many other things besides the original problem of rhyme. It is Dryden's most elaborate piece of criticism, and the most careful of his prose works, while at the same time it is the liveliest and freshest till the incomparable Preface to the Fables, in the last year of his life.

The Dialogue was a favourite form of composition in all the languages after the revival of learning, through the examples of Plato and Cicero. It was common in French among authors whom Dryden had probably read. Sometimes the persons appeared under their own names, like Ménage, Chapelain, and Sarrasin in Sarrasin's Dialogue, S'il faut qu'un jeune homme soit amoureux (Euvres, ed. G. Ménage, Paris, 1656)'. Sometimes the names were allegorical, like Eusèbe and Philédon in Desmarests' Délices de l'Esprit (1658). It is not impossible that Dryden may have known, though he does not mention, the Cigarrales de Toledo

1 The same persons take part in Chapelain's remarkable Dialogue, De la Lecture des Vieux Romans, which, however, seems to have remained in manuscript till 1870 (ed. A. Feillet).