His greedy appetite for applause; his testy
repulse of censure or criticism; his inordinate and overwhelming vanity,
not unmixed with a vein of flattery to those who he hopes will gratify
him by returning it in kind; finally, that extreme, anxious, and
fidgeting attention to the minute parts of what even in whole is scarce
worthy of any,--are, I fear, but too appropriate qualities of the
"_genus vatum_"
Almost all Dryden's plays, including those on which he set the highest
value, and which he had produced, with confidence, as models of their
kind, were parodied in the "Rehearsal."[9] He alone contributed more to
the farce than all the other poets together. His favourite style of
comic dialogue, which he had declared to consist rather in a quick
sharpness of dialogue than in delineations of humour,[10] is paraphrased
in the scene between Tom Thimble and Prince Prettyman; the lyrics of his
astral spirits are cruelly burlesqued in the song of the two lawful
Kings of Brentford, as they descend to repossess their throne; above
all, Almanzor, his favourite hero, is parodied in the magnanimous
Drawcansir; and, to conclude, the whole scope of heroic plays, with
their combats, feasts, processions, sudden changes of fortune,
embarrassments of chivalrous love and honour, splendid verse and
unnatural rants, are so held up to ridicule, as usually to fix the
resemblance upon some one of his own dramas.
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