[490]. Lest the last note should lead any one to think that I wish to make inept and ignoble game of Davenant, let me observe that he can write admirable things, worthy a son, in double sense, of Oxford. Could anything be happier than this of Spenser: “His noble and most artful hands”? The mere selection of the epithets is good, the combination of them famously so.
[491]. This attempt to get Epic as close as possible to Drama—to work all the kinds of Imitation back into one arch-kind—appears more or less fitfully in the whole Neo-Classic school. And we shall never quite understand the much discussed “Heroic Play,” till we take it in conjunction with the “Heroic Poem.”
[492]. There is, of course, critical matter in Howell’s Letters, and in a score or scores of other places; but it is of the kind that we must now neglect, or select from with the most jealous hand.
[493]. Of the great critical men of letters of 1800-1850 only Leigh Hunt—the least of them—was just to Dryden; even Hazlitt is inadequate on him. Among our preceptistas of the same or a little later date, Keble (Præl. v.) mildly perstringes Dryden’s inconsistency (“male sibi constat D.”), but rather as poet than as critic. Garbett, his successor and opponent, a great admirer of Dryden’s style, and one who expresses just regret at the want of common knowledge of it, is very severe (Præl. x.) on his want of philosophical profundity and sincerity. But the reverend Professor had found nearly as much fault on this score with Longinus.
[494]. Dryden made no mistake about Longinus. He calls him, in the Apology prefixed to The State of Innocence, “the greatest critic among the Greeks after Aristotle,” cites him often, and parades and uses a long passage of the Περὶ Ὕψους in the Preface to Troilus and Cressida. The references are conveniently collected in Mr Ker’s index (v. inf.)
[495]. Dryden’s critical work, which until recently was accessible with ease only in Scott’s elaborate edition of his works, or in Malone’s less bulky, but still bulky and not excessively common, edition of the Prose, has recently been given, with quite admirable editorial matter, by Professor Ker (2 vols., Oxford, 1900). I wish he had included one or two more things, especially the Heads of an answer to Rymer; but it must be admitted that the authenticity of these, though I think not doubtful, is not absolutely certain, and the correct text still less so. See note on Rymer infra, and my edition of Scott, xv. 378 sq., for text and history.
[496]. Defence of an Essay of Dramatic Poesy. Scott, ed. cit., xi. 295: Ker, i. 113.
[497]. Preface to Miscellanies, ii.; Scott, ed. cit., xii. 295; Ker, i. 263. I wish that Dryden were alive for many reasons: not least because he would certainly pay the debt that he owes to my friend Mr Ker magnificentissime. No one has vindicated him better against the half-witted blunderers. But I am not quite so much inclined as even Mr Ker is to father his critical style on Chapelain and La Mesnardière, Sarrasin and Scudéry, or on Corneille himself. It is not till Saint-Evremond, perhaps even till Fénelon, that I can find in French the indescribable omne tulit punctum as in him. And both, are his inferiors.
[498]. I have not thought it necessary to encumber the page with references in the case of the shorter Essays, where any one can discover the passages cited, whether he uses Scott, Malone, the originals, or Mr Ker’s special collection, with no more labour than is good for him and deserved by them. In the case of the longer pieces the references will be given at least sufficiently often to make the locating of the others easy, without turning the lower part of the page into a kind of arithmetical table.
[499]. As including Invention, Fancy, and Elocution, but in itself merely considered as synonymous with “Wit.” It was probably from this that Addison (see below) started that Imagination theory of his which has been so much overrated.