Fame then was cheap, and the first comer sped;
And they have kept it since, by being dead.
But, were they now to write, when critics weigh
Each line, and every word, throughout a play,
None of them, no, not Jonson in his height,
Could pass, without allowing grains for weight.
Think it not envy, that these truths are told;
Our poet's not malicious, though he's bold.
'Tis not to brand them that their faults are shown,
But by their errors to excuse his own.
If love and honour now are higher raised,
'Tis not the poet, but the age is praised.
Wit's now arrived to a more high degree;
Our native language more refined and free;
Our ladies and our men now speak more wit
In conversation than those poets writ.
Then, one of these is, consequently, true;
That what this poet writes comes short of you,
And imitates you ill (which most he fears),
Or else his writing is not worse than theirs.
Yet, though you judge (as sure the critics will),
That some before him writ with greater skill,
In this one praise he has their fame surpast,
To please an age more gallant than the last."
The daring doctrine laid down in these obnoxious lines, our author
ventured to maintain in what he has termed a "Defence of the Epilogue,
or an Essay on the Dramatic Poetry of the last age." It is subjoined to
the "Conquest of Granada;" and, as that play was not printed till after
the "Rehearsal," it serves to show how little Dryden's opinions were
altered, or his tone lowered, by the success of that witty satire.
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