Mr. Dryden has many excellencies which far out-weigh his Faults; he is an excellent Critick, and a good Poet, his stile is smooth and fluent, and he has written well, both in Verse and Prose. I own that I admire him, as much as any man ... ([a2v], italics reversed).
But, in the case of Dryden, the fairness is much a matter of strategy and the balance is partly stylistic. Langbaine's praise has the perfunctory quality of "Well, now that's out of the way," and, characteristically, the praise is followed closely by an intensely felt "but" clause which excoriates Dryden for his immodesty in debate and his misuses of literature. Langbaine's language is often that of theology, the "right Path to solid Glory" ([a2v-a3r]), and he intends to show that many authors (and especially Dryden) "have fallen into very great Errours" ([A3r]).
Langbaine's animadversions on "crafty Booksellers" ([A4r]) as well as his attacks on Dryden may have caused an embarrassing bibliographical trick to be played on him. Wood reports that Momus was published in November, 1687, and five hundred copies sold before Langbaine "caused another title to be put to the rest of the copies (with an advertisement against the first)."[25] This new titlepage, added early in December, reads as follows:
A New Catalogue of English Plays, Containing All The Comedies, Tragedies, Tragi-Comedies, Operas, Masques, Pastorals, Interludes, Farces, &c. Both Ancient and Modern, that have ever yet been Printed, to this present Year, 1688. To which, are Added, The Volumes, and best Editions; with divers Remarks, of the Originals of most Plays; and the Plagiaries of several Authors. By Gerard Langbaine, Gent.... London, Printed for Nicholas Cox, and are to be Sold by him in Oxford MDCLXXXVIII.
Langbaine's reaction to the trick is contained in the Advertisement in which he compares this incident to one played on Oldham and decries "the Heathenish Name of Momus Triumphans."
I wish I knew my obliging Gossips who nam'd it, that I might thank them, as they deserv'd, for their signal Kindness. I have endeavour'd to be inform'd, who these Friends were, from my Bookseller; but he pleads Ignoramus.... Thus not being able to trace it further, and which is worse, Five Hundred Copies being got into Hucksters Hands, past my recovery, I am forc'd to sit down with Patience, and must depend upon this Apology, that my Friends may not think me Lunatic (as they might with reason, were this Title my own) and my Enemies have occasion to say, this just Revenge was inflicted on me by Apollo, for abusing his Sons, the Poets. But whoever the Author was, I dare swear, he thought, he had infinitely obliged me, in dubbing me a Squire: a Title, no more my due, than that of Doctor, is to a Mountebank; and which, I receive with the same Kindness, as a Crooked man would that of My Lord.[26]
Macdonald believes this account is fictive and that Langbaine invented the story to cover an initial immodesty,[27] but Langbaine's style has nothing of the biting playfulness of tone of the spurious title. He is often righteous and sarcastic, but he is not given to direct immodesty or to the burlesque, and he does not consider plagiarism his principal subject. Further, there is evidence in the Preface ([A3r]) that "New Catalogue" was at least his working title.
Nevertheless, the false title page is a clever and perceptive joke on Langbaine's classical bias and on his fixation with plagiary. His predecessor Kirkman has given an apt contemporary definition of a momus:
As for such, as either rashly condemn without judgment, or lavishly dislike without advice: I esteem them like feathers, soone disperst with every blast, accounting their discontent my content, not caring to please every Momus.[28]