Juvenal
and
Persius
, published in 1692,
"As for Mr. Milton, whom we all admire with so much Justice, his Subject, is not that of an Heroick Poem, properly so call'd: His Design is the Losing of our Happiness; his Event is not prosperous, like that of all other Epique Works" (Dryden's French spelling of the word Epic is suggestive. For this new critical Mode was one of the fashions that had been imported from Paris); "His Heavenly Machines are many, and his Human Persons are but two. But I will not take Mr. Rymer's work out of his Hands: He has promised the World a Critique on that Author; wherein, tho' he will not allow his Poem for Heroick, I hope he will grant us, that his Thoughts are elevated, his Words sounding, and that no Man has so happily copy'd the manner of Homer; or so copiously translated his Grecisms and the Latin Elegancies of Virgil. 'Tis true he runs into a Flat of Thought, sometimes for a Hundred Lines together, but 'tis when he is got into a Track of Scripture ... Neither will I justify Milton for his Blank Verse, tho' I may excuse him, by the Example of Hanabal Caro and other Italians who have used it: For whatever Causes he alledges for the abolishing of Rhime (which I have not now the leisure to examine), his own particular Reason is plainly this, that Rhime was not his Talent; he had neither the Ease of doing it, nor the Graces of it."
So Dryden, who appreciated Milton better than most of his critical neighbours, wrote of him in 1692. The promise of Rymer to discuss Milton was made in 1678, when, on the last page of his little book,
The Tragedies of the Last Age consider'd and examined by the Practice of the Ancients and by the Common Sense of all Ages, in a letter to Fleetwold Shepheard, Esq
. (father of two ladies who contribute an occasional letter to the
Spectator
), he said: