It was in
his hands, as in theirs, a dead mechanical framework of rules about the
unities. Dryden, we can see in his critical writing, was constantly
chafed by it. He behaves like a fine horse with a bearing rein: he is
continually tossing his head after a minute or two of 'good manners and
action,' and saying, 'Shakespeare was the best of them, anyhow';
'Chaucer beats Ovid to a standstill.' It is a gesture with which all
decent people sympathise and when it is made in language so supple as
Dryden's prose it has a lasting charm. Dryden's heart was in the right
place, and he was not afraid of showing it; but that does not make him a
critic, much less a critic to be set as a superior in the company of
Aristotle and Coleridge.
Our search for the pure literary critic is likely to be arduous. We have
seen that there is a sense in which Dryden is a purer literary critic
than either Coleridge or Aristotle; but we have also seen that it is
precisely by reason of the 'pureness' in him that he is to be relegated
into a rank inferior to theirs.
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