horse. 
  And, as their comedy, their love was mean;
  Except, by chance, in some one laboured scene,
  Which must atone for an ill-written play,
  They rose, but at their height could seldom stay. 
  Fame then was cheap, and the first comer sped;
  And they have kept it since, by being dead. 
  But, were they now to write, when critics weigh
  Each line, and every word, throughout a play,
  None of them, no, not Jonson in his height,
  Could pass, without allowing grains for weight. 
  Think it not envy, that these truths are told;
  Our poet’s not malicious, though he’s bold. 
  ’Tis not to brand them that their faults are shown,
  But by their errors to excuse his own. 
  If love and honour now are higher raised,
  ’Tis not the poet, but the age is praised. 
  Wit’s now arrived to a more high degree;
  Our native language more refined and free;
  Our ladies and our men now speak more wit
  In conversation than those poets writ. 
  Then, one of these is, consequently, true;
  That what this poet writes comes short of you,
  And imitates you ill (which most he fears),
  Or else his writing is not worse than theirs. 
  Yet, though you judge (as sure the critics will),
  That some before him writ with greater skill,
  In this one praise he has their fame surpast,
  To please an age more gallant than the last.”

The daring doctrine laid down in these obnoxious lines, our author ventured to maintain in what he has termed a “Defence of the Epilogue, or an Essay on the Dramatic Poetry of the last age.”  It is subjoined to the “Conquest of Granada;” and, as that play was not printed till after the “Rehearsal,” it serves to show how little Dryden’s opinions were altered, or his tone lowered, by the success of that witty satire.  It was necessary, he says, either not to print the bold epilogue, which we have quoted, or to show that he could defend it.  He censures decidedly the antiquated language, irregular plots, and anachronisms of Shakespeare and Fletcher; but his main strength seems directed against Jonson.  From his works he selects several instances of harsh, inelegant, and even inaccurate diction.  In describing manners, he claims for the modern writers a decided superiority over the poets of the earlier age, when there was less gallantry, and when the authors were not admitted to the best society.  The manners of their low, or Dutch school of comedy, in which Jonson led the way, by his “Bartholomew Fair,” and similar pieces, are noticed, and censured, as unfit for a polished audience.  The characters in what may be termed genteel comedy are reviewed, and restricted to the Truewit of Jonson’s “Silent Woman,” the Mercutio of Shakespeare, and Fletcher’s Don John in the “Chances.”  Even this last celebrated character, he observes, is better carried on in the modern alteration of the play, than in Fletcher’s original; a singular instance