GENIUS AND POETICAL WORKS OF JOHN DRYDEN.
IN our Life of Dryden we promised to say something about
the question, How far is a poet, particularly in the moral
tendency and taste of his writings, to be tried-and either
condemned or justified-by the character and spirit of his age?
To a rapid consideration of this question we now proceed,
before examining the constituent elements or the varied fruits
of the poet's genius.
And here, unquestionably, there are extremes, which every
critic should avoid. Some imagine that a writer of a former
century should be tried, either by the standard which prevails
in the cultured and civilised nineteenth, or by the exposition
of moral principles and practice which is to be found in the
Scriptures. Now, it is obviously, so far as taste is concerned,
as unjust to judge a book written in the style and manner
of one age by the merely arbitrary and conventional rules
established in another, as to judge the dress of our ances-
tors by the fashions of the present day. And in respect of
morality, it is as unfair to visit with the same measure of
condemnation offences against decorum or decency, committed
by writers living before or living after the promulgation of
the Christian code, as it would be to class the Satyrs, Priapi,
and Bacchantes of an antique sculptor, with their imita-