"
[16]
"How finely would the sparks be caught to-day,
Should a Whig poet write a Tory play,
And you, possessed with rage before, should send
Your random shot abroad and maul a friend?
For you, we find, too often hiss and clap,
Just as you live, speak, think, and fight--by hap.
And poets, we all know, can change, like you,
And are alone to their own interest true;
Can write against all sense, nay even their own:
The vehicle called _pension_ makes it down.
_No fear of cudgels_, where there's hope of bread;
A well-filled paunch forgets a _broken head_."
[17] I quote the passage at length, as evincing the difference between
Dryden's taste in comedy and that of Shadwell:--
"I have endeavoured to represent variety of humours (most of the persons
of the play differing in their characters from one another), which was
the practice of Ben Jonson, whom I think all drammatick poets ought to
imitate, though none are like to come near; he being the onely person
that appears to me to have made perfect representation of human life:
most other authors that I ever read, either have wilde romantick tales,
wherein they strein love and honour to that ridiculous height, that it
becomes burlesque; or in their lower comedies content themselves with
one or two humours at most, and those not near so perfect characters as
the admirable Jonson; always made, who never wrote comedy without seven
or eight considerable humours.
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