From the Elizabethans to Milton, from Milton to
Johnson, English criticism was dominated by constant reference to
classical models. In the latter half of this period the influence of
these models, on the whole, was harmful. It acted as a curb rather
than as a spur to the imagination of poets; it tended to cripple rather
than give energy to the judgment of critics. But in earlier days it
was not so. For nearly a century the influence of classical masterpieces
was altogether for good. It was not the regularity but the richness,
not the self-restraint but the freedom, of the ancients that came home
to poets such as Marlowe, or even to critics such as Meres. And if
adventurous spirits, like Spenser and Sidney, were for a time misled
into the vain attempt to graft exotic forms upon the homely growths
of native poetry, they soon saw their mistake and revolted in silence
against the ridiculous pedant who preferred the limping hexameters of
the _Arcadia_ to Sidney's sonnets, and the spavined iambics of Spenser
to the _Faerie Queene_.
In the main, the worship of the classics seems to have counted at this
time rather for freedom than restraint.
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