Notes to the Introduction
[1] Willard H. Durham, ed., Critical Essays of the Eighteenth Century, New Haven, 1915, pp. 62-72.
[2] Tatler 165.
[3] Spectator 592.
[4] For Dacier in England see A.F.B. Clark, Boileau and the French Classical Critics in England (1660-1830) , Paris, 1925, pp. 286-288. As late as 1895, S. H. Butcher, in Aristotle's Theory of Poetry and Fine Art, mentioned Dacier frequently, if only to disagree with him as often as he mentioned him.
[5] Thomas Rymer, Critical Works (ed. C.A. Zimansky), New Haven, 1956, p. 83.
[6] This view, announced in the Preface, was elaborately argued by Dacier in Remarque 27, Ch. XIX.
[7] Rymer, op. cit., p. 84. Zimansky, in his introduction and notes, discusses the influence of Dacier on Rymer and other English critics.
[8] Ibid. p. 84 and pp. 80-93.
[9] John Dennis, Critical Works (ed. Edward N. Hooker), Baltimore (1939-43), I, 30-35. For a succinct account of the English controversy about the chorus see ibid., I, 437-438. Though Dennis did not agree with Dacier on this point, he admired him. As late as 1726, in the preface to The Stage Defended, he quoted Dacier's preface and spoke of him as "that most judicious Critick." Ibid., II, 309.
[10] John Dryden, Letters (ed. C.E. Ward), Duke University Press, 1942, pp. 71-72. Hooker has noticed the similarity of two of Dennis's opinions to views expressed by Dryden in his then unpublished "Heads of an Answer" to Rymer's Tragedies of the Last Age, 1678.
[11] W.P. Ker, Essays of John Dryden, Oxford, 1926, II, 136.
[12] Ker, II, 144. Cf. Dennis's similar remark in The Impartial Critick, Hooker, I, 31. Racine, in his preface to Esther, said nothing doctrinaire about the use of the chorus. He merely mentioned that it had occurred to him to introduce the chorus in order to imitate the ancients and to sing the praises of the true God.
[13] J.E. Spingarn, Critical Essays of the Seventeenth Century, Oxford, 1908-09, III, 227 and 240.
[14] Treatise of the Epick Poem, London, 1695, sig. [A 3] verso- A 4, recto.
[15] Jeremy Collier, "A Defence of the Short View.... Being a Reply to Mr. Congreve's Amendments," A Short View of the Profaneness and Immorality of the English Stage, etc., London, 1738, p. 251.
[16] Traité du Poëme Epique, I, ch. vi and vii.