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Their place is taken by qualities
less stirring in themselves, but more akin to those that modern times
have been apt to associate with criticism. In fact, whatever qualities
we now demand from a critic may be found at least foreshadowed, and
commonly much more than foreshadowed, in Dryden. Dryden is master of
comparative criticism: he has something of the historical method; he
is unrivalled in the art of seizing the distinctive qualities of his
author and of setting them before us with the lightest touch. His very
style, so pointed yet so easy, is enough in itself to mark the gulf
that lies between the age of Elizabeth and the age of the Restoration.
All the Elizabethan critics, Sidney himself hardly excepted, bore some
trace of the schoolmaster. Dryden was the first to meet his readers
entirely as an equal, and talk to them as a friend with friends. It
is Dryden, and not Sainte-Beuve, who is the true father of the literary
_causerie_; and he still remains its unequalled master. There may be
other methods of striking the right note in literary criticism.


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