Those weights took off that on his planet hung,

Will gloriously the new-laid works fuc

ceed.

He has elsewhere fhewn his attention to the planetary powers; and in the preface to his Fables has endeavoured obliquely to justify 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 may be properly confidered as the father of English criticism, as the writer who first taught us to determine upon principles the merit of compofition. Of our former poets, the greatest dramatift wrote without rules, conducted through life and nature by a genius that rarely misled, and rarely deserted him. Of the reft, 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 Jonson and Cowley; but Dryden's Essay on Dramatick Poetry was the firft regular treatise on the art of writing.

He who, having formed his opinions in the prefent age of English literature, turns back

to

to perufe 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 partly from the Ancients, and partly from the Italians and French. The ftructure of dramatick poems was not then generally understood. Audiences applauded by inftinct, and poets perhaps often pleafed by chance.

A writer who obtains his full purpose lofes himself in his own luftre. Of an opinion which is no longer doubted, the evidence ceases to be examined. Of an art univerfally practised, the 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 cotemporaries, 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 dialogue on the Drama was one of his firft effays of criticifm, written when he was yet a timorous candidate for reputation, and therefore laboured with that diligence which he might allow himself fomewhat to remit, when his name gave fanction to his pofitions, and his awe of the public was abated, partly

by custom, and partly by fuccefs. It will not be easy to find, in all the opulence of our language, a treatife fo artfully variegated with fucceffive representations of oppofite probabilities, fo enlivened with imagery, fo brightened with illuftrations. His portraits of the English dramatists are wrought with great spirit and diligence. The account of Shakespeare may stand as a perpetual model of encomiaftick criticism; exact without minutenefs, and lofty without exaggeration. The praise lavished by Longinus, on the atteftation of the heroes of Marathon, by Demofthenes, fades away before it. In a few lines is exhibited a character, fo extensive in its comprehenfion, and so curious in its limitations, that nothing can be added, diminished, or reformed; nor can the editors and admirers of Shakespeare, in all their emulation of reverence, boast of much more than of having diffufed 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 essays 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 inftruction, 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

said 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. With Dryden we are wandering in queft of Truth; whom we find, if we find her at all, dreft in the graces of elegance; and if we mifs her, the labour of the purfuit rewards itself; we are led only through fragrance and flowers: Rymer, without taking a nearer, takes a rougher way; every step is to be made through thorns and brambles; and Truth, if we meet her, appears repulfive by her mien, and ungraceful by her habit. Dryden's criticifm has the majefty of a queen; Rymer's has the ferocity of a tyrant.

As he had ftudied with great diligence the art of poetry, and enlarged or rectified his notions, by experience perpetually increasing, he had his mind stored with principles and obfervations; he poured out his knowledge with great liberality, and feldom published any work without a critical differtation, by which he encreased the book and the price, with little labour to himfelf; for of labour, notwithftanding the multiplicity of his productions, there is fufficient reafon to fufpect that he was not a lover. To write con amore, with fondnefs for the employment, with perpetual touches and retouches, with unwillingness to take leave of his own idea, and an unwearied purfuit of unattainable perfection, was, I think, no part of his character.

His Criticism may be confidered as general or occafional. In his general precepts, which depend upon the nature of things and the ftructure of the human mind, he may doubtlefs be fafely recommended to the confidence of the reader; but his occafional and particular pofitions were fometimes interested, fometimes negligent, and fometimes capricious. It is not without reason that Trapp, fpeaking of the praifes which he bestows on Palamon and Arcite, fays, “ Novimus judicium Drydeni de

poemate quodam Chauceri, pulchro fane il"Îo, et admodum laudando, nimirum quod "non modo vere epicum fit, fed Iliada etiam

atque Æneada æquet, imo fuperet. Sed "novimus eodem tempore viri illius maximi non femper accuratiffimas effe cenfuras, nec "ad feveriffimam critices normam exactas "illo judice id plerumque optimum eft, nunc præ manibus habet, & in qu occupatur."

He is therefore by no means himfelf. His defence and defer

tick rhyme is generally know remarks on Pope's Odyffe thinks an unconquerable den's preface to the Ene lating an epick poem in forgets that when his Iliad, fome years after his own decifion, an rhyme.

When he has any any licenie to defer pulous about what

r