[500]. When the present writer began his revision of Scott’s Dryden in the year 1881 there were no separate editions of the Essay since the originals. There are now, of annotated issues of it, either by itself or with more or less of its author’s related work, no less than five known to me,—those of Mr Thomas Arnold (Oxford, 1886), Mr Strunk (New York, 1898), Mr Low (London, n. d.), Mr Nichol Smith (Glasgow, 1900), and Professor Ker’s. The study of English literature in schools and colleges has been much abused, very foolishly talked about by some of its advocates, and no doubt not always wisely directed. But it is at least something to be said for it that it has made such a masterpiece as this known to probably a hundred persons for every one who knew it twenty years ago.
[501]. One of the very earliest evidences of the interest in dramatic criticism felt in England, immediately after the Restoration, must be Pepys’ note that on September 1, 1660, when he was dining at the Bullhead, there “rose ... a dispute between Mr Moore and Dr Clerke—the former affirming that it was essential to a tragedy to have the argument of it true, which the Doctor denied.” The question, on the very English terms of another dinner and a bet, was to be settled by Pepys himself three days later. He does not tell us whether he read up for it; but on the 4th he decided for the Doctor (Diary, ed. Wheatley, i. 233).
[502]. Here, to glance at the matter of Dryden and the Spaniards (v. sup., p. 332, and inf., on Spence), is a possible reminiscence of Lope’s Arte Nuevo, 178-180—
Que aquesta variedad deleyta mucho:
Buen exemplo nos da naturaleza,
Que por tal variedad tiene belleza.
[503]. Scott, xv. 337; Ker, i. 75.
[504]. In the Discourse on Satire. Scott, xiii. 3; Ker, ii. 17.
[505]. “I have further to add that I seldom use the wit and language of any romance or play which I undertake to alter; because my own invention, as bad as it is, can furnish me with nothing so dull as what is there.” These invocations of Nemesis are seldom unheard by the acute ears of that satiric Goddess.
[506]. Lesser, but far from negligible; for the Character of Saint-Evremond is both personally and critically interesting, and the critical biographies of Lucian and Plutarch lead straight to Johnson.