the form of a
dialogue between Neander (Dryden), Eugenius (Charles, Lord Buckhurst,
afterwards earl of Dorset), Crites (Sir R. Howard), and Lisideius (Sir
C. Sedley), who is made responsible for the famous definition of a play
as a "just and lively image of human nature, representing its passions
and humours, and the changes of fortune to which it is subject, for the
delight and instruction of mankind." Dryden's form is of course borrowed
from the ancients, and his main source is the critical work of Corneille
in the prefaces and discourses contained in the edition of 1660, but he
was well acquainted with the whole body of contemporary French and
Spanish criticism. Crites maintains the superiority of the classical
drama; Lisideius supports the exacting rules of French dramatic writing;
Neander defends the English drama of the preceding generations,
including, in a long speech, an examination of Ben Jonson's _Silent
Woman_. Neander argues, however, that English drama has much to gain by
the observance of exact methods of construction without abandoning
entirely the liberty which English writers had always claimed. He then
goes on to defend the use of rhyme in serious drama. Howard had argued
against the use of rhyme in a "preface" to _Four New Plays_ (1665),
which had furnished the excuse for Dryden's essay. Howard replied to
Dryden's essay in a preface to _The Duke of Lerma_ (1668). Dryden at
once replied in a masterpiece of sarcastic retort and vigorous
reasoning, _A Defence of an Essay of Dramatique Poesie_, prefixed to the
second edition (1668) of _The Indian Emperor_. It is the ablest and most
complete statement of his views about the employment of rhymed couplets
in tragedy.

Before his return to town at the end of 1666, when the theatres (which
had been closed during the disasters of 1665 and 1666) were reopened,
Dryden wrote a poem on the Dutch war and the Great Fire entitled _Annus
Mirabilis_. The poem is in quatrains, the metre of his _Heroic Stanzas_
in praise of Cromwell, which Dryden chose, he tells us, "because he had
ever judged it more noble and of greater dignity both for the sound and
number than any other verse in use amongst us." The preface to the poem
contains an interesting discussion of what he calls "wit-writing,"
introduced by the remark that "the composition of all poems is or ought
to be of wit." His description of the Great Fire is a famous specimen of
this wit-writing, much more careless an