suicide is a clumsy, as well as a hackneyed expedient; and there is too much drum and trumpet in the grand finale, where “Troilus and Diomede fight, and both parties engage at the same time.  The Trojans make the Greeks retire, and Troilus makes Diomede give ground, and hurts him.  Trumpets sound.  Achilles enters with his Myrmidons, on the backs of the Trojans, who fight in a ring, encompassed round.  Troilus, singling Diomede, gets him down, and kills him; and Achilles kills Troilus upon him.  All the Trojans die upon the place, Troilus last.”  Such a bellum internecinum can never be waged to advantage upon the stage.  One extravagant passage in this play serves strongly to evince Dryden’s rooted dislike to the clergy.  Troilus exclaims,—­

  “That I should trust the daughter of a priest! 
  Priesthood, that makes a merchandise of heaven! 
  Priesthood, that sells even to their prayers and blessings,
  And forces us to pay for our own cozenage!

  Thersites.  Nay, cheats heaven too with entrails and with offals;
  Gives it the garbage of a sacrifice,
  And keeps the best for private luxury.

  Troilus_.  Thou hast deserved thy life for cursing priests. 
  Let me embrace thee; thou art beautiful: 
  That back, that nose, those eyes are beautiful: 
  Live; thou art honest, for thou hat’st a priest.”

Dryden prefixed to “Troilus and Cressida” his excellent remarks on the Grounds of Criticism in Tragedy, giving up, with dignified indifference the faults even of his own pieces, when they contradict the rules his later judgment had adopted.  How much his taste had altered since his “Essay of Dramatic Poesy,” or at least since his “Remarks on Heroic Plays,” will appear from the following abridgment of his new maxims.  The plot, according to these remarks, ought to be simply and naturally detailed from its commencement to its conclusion,—­a rule which excluded the crowded incidents of the Spanish drama; and the personages ought to be dignified and virtuous, that their misfortunes might at once excite pity and terror.  The plots of Shakespeare and Fletcher are meted by this rule, and pronounced inferior in mechanic regularity to those of Ben Jonson.  The character of the agents, or persons, are next to be considered; and it is required that their manner shall be at once marked, dramatic, consistent, and natural.  And here the supereminent power of Shakespeare, in displaying the manners, bent, and inclination of his characters, is pointed out to the reader’s admiration.  The copiousness of his invention, and his judgment in sustaining the ideas which he started, are illustrated by referring to Caliban, a creature of the fancy, begot by an incubus upon a witch, and furnished with a person, language, and character befitting his pedigree on both sides.  The passions are then considered as included in the manners; and Dryden, at once and peremptorily, condemns both the extravagance of language, which substitutes