lived. Poetry was then, if not in its
infancy among us, at least not arrived to its vigour and maturity.
Witness the lameness of their plots, many of which, especially
those they writ first, (for even that age refined itself in some
measure,) were made up of some ridiculous, incoherent story, which
in one play many times took up the business of an age. I suppose I
need not name 'Pericles, Prince of Tyre,' _nor the historical plays
of Shakspeare_, besides many of the rest, as the 'Winter's Tale,'
'Love's Labour Lost,' 'Measure for Measure,' which were either
founded on impossibilities, or at least so meanly written, that the
comedy neither caused your mirth, nor the serious part your
concernment."

In all this this rash and wretched folly, Dryden shows his ignorance of
the order in which Shakspeare wrote his plays; and Sir Walter kindly
says, that there will be charity in believing that he was not intimately
acquainted with those he so summarily and unjustly condemns. But
unluckily this nonsense was written during the very time he was said by
Sir Walter to have been "engaged in a closer and more critical
examination of the ancient English poets than he had before bestowed
upon them;" and, from the perusal of Shakspeare, learning that the sole
staple of the drama was "human characters acting from the direct and
energetic influence of human passions." Yet Sir Walter was right; only
Dryden's opinions and judgments kept fluctuating all his life long, too
much obedient to the gusts of whim and caprice, or oftener still to the
irregular influences of an impatient spirit, that could not brook any
opposition from any quarter to its domineering self-will. For in not
many months after, in the Prologue to "Aurengzebe," are these noble
lines--

"But spite of all his pride, a secret shame
Invades his heart at Shakspeare's sacred name;
Awed when he hears his godlike Romans rage,
He, in a just despair, would quit the stage,
And to an age less polish'd, more unskill'd,
Does, with disdain, the foremost honours yield."

Less polished--more unskilled! Here, too, he is possessed with the same
foolish fancy as when he said, in the "Defence of the Epilogue,"--"But
these absurdities which those poets committed, may more properly be
called the age's fault than theirs. For besides the want of education
and learning, (which was their particular unhappiness,) they wanted the