[385]"An Essay of Dramatic Poesy," XV. 337-341.
[386]"An Essay of Dramatic Poesy," XV. 343.
[387]In the preface of "All for Love," V. 308, Dryden says: "In this nicety of manners does the excellency of French poetry consist. Their heroes are the most civil people breathing, but their good breeding seldom extends to a word of sense; all their wit is in their ceremony; they want the genius which animates our stage.... Thus, their Hippolytus is so scrupulous in point of decency, that he will rather expose himself to death than accuse his stepmother to his father; and my critics, I am sure, will commend him for it: But we of grosser apprehensions are apt to think that this excess of generosity is not practicable but with fools and madmen."
"... But take Hippolytus out of his poetic fit, and I suppose he would think it a wiser part to set the saddle on the right horse, and chuse rather to live with the reputation of a plain-spoken honest man, than to die with the infamy of an incestuous villain.... (The poet) has chosen to give him the turn of gallantry, sent him to travel from Athens to Paris, taught him to make love, and transformed the Hippolytus of Euripides into Monsieur Hippolite." This criticism shows in a small compass all the common sense and freedom of thought of Dryden; but, at the same time, all the coarseness of his education and of his age.
[388]Epistle XIV. to Mr. Motteux, XI. 70.
[389]"Tyrannic Love," III. 2, I.
[390]Ibid.
[391]Ibid.
[392]"Tyrannic Love," III. 3, I. This Maximin has a turn for jokes. Porphyrius, to whom he offers his daughter in marriage, says that "the distance was so vast"; whereupon Maximin replies: "Yet heaven and earth, which so remote appear, are by the air, which flows betwixt them, near" (2, 1).
[393]Lulli (1633-1687), a renowned Italian composer. "Armide" is one of his chief works.—Tr.