I know not whether more will be required of me on this subject; very likely not: but I reserve much that I could say, until that time. I have now only to thank the Editor for inserting this long, but I will not say, wholly uninteresting proposal.
Kenneth R. H. Mackenzie.
February 18. 1851.
Footnote 1:[(return)]
I need not remind you how favourable an opportunity is presented by this year.
THE ESSAY ON SATIRE.
Dryden, as sir Walter Scott observes, left a name in literature "second only to those of Milton and Shakspere"; but, popular as his writings were, he gave no collective edition of his poetical or dramatic works. The current editions of his poems may therefore be open to censure, both on the score of deficiency and redundancy—and such I believe to be the fact.
An Essay on satire, itself a coarse satire, has been ascribed to him for more than a century on dubious authority, and the correctness of this ascription has been properly suggested as a question for examination.
We have to decide on the credibility of two opposite statements, as made in the publications about to be enumerated:—