of Dryden’s liberality of criticism, since the alteration of the “Chances” was made by that very Duke of Buckingham, from whom he had just received a bitter and personal offence.  Dryden proceeds to contend, that the living poets, from the example of a gallant king and sprightly court, have learned, in their comedies, a tone of light discourse and raillery, in which the solidity of English sense is blended with the air and gaiety of their French neighbours; in short, that those who call Jonson’s the golden age of poetry, have only this reason, that the audience were then content with acorns, because they knew not the use of bread.  In all this criticism there was much undeniable truth; but sufficient weight was not given to the excellencies of the old school, while their faults were ostentatiously and invidiously enumerated.  It would seem that Dryden, perhaps from the rigour of a puritanical education, had not studied the ancient dramatic models in his youth, and had only begun to read them with attention when it was his object rather to depreciate than to emulate them.  But the time came when he did due homage to their genius.

Meanwhile, this avowed preference of his own period excited the resentment of the older critics, who had looked up to the era of Shakespeare as the golden age of poetry; and no less that of the playwrights of his own standing, who pretended to discover that Dryden designed to establish less the reputation of his age, than of himself individually upon the ruined fame of the ancient poets.  They complained that, as the wild bull in the Vivarambla of Granada,

  “monarch-like he ranged the listed field,
  And some he trampled down, and some he kill’d.”

Many, therefore, advancing, under pretence of vindicating the fame of the ancients, gratified their spleen by attacking that of Dryden, and strove less to combat his criticisms, than to criticise his productions.  We shall have too frequent occasion to observe, that there was, during the reign of Charles II., a semi-barbarous virulence of controversy, even upon abstract points of literature, which would be now thought injudicious and unfair, even by the newspaper advocates of contending factions.  A critic of that time never deemed he had so effectually refuted the reasoning of his adversary, as when he had said something disrespectful of his talents, person, or moral character.  Thus, literary contest was embittered by personal hatred, and truth was so far from being the object of the combatants that even victory was tasteless unless obtained by the disgrace and degradation of the antagonist.  This reflection may serve to introduce a short detail of the abusive controversies in which it was Dryden’s lot to be engaged.