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Nor is it the least important or the
least attractive of Dryden's qualities, as a critic, that both the
positive and the negative elements of the prevailing tendency--both
the determination to understand and the wish to bring all things under
rule--should make themselves felt so strongly and, on the whole, so
harmoniously in his Essays. No man could have felt more keenly the
shortcomings of the Elizabethan writers. No man could have set greater
store by that "art of writing easily" which was the chief pride of the
Restoration poets. Yet no man has ever felt a juster admiration for
the great writers of the opposite school; and no man has expressed his
reverence for them in more glowing words. The highest eulogy that has
yet been passed on Milton, the most discriminating but at the same
time the most generous tribute that has ever been offered to
Shakespeare--both these are to be found in Dryden. And they are to be
found in company with a perception, at once reasoned and instinctive,
of what criticism means, that was altogether new to English literature.


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