by chance, in some one labour'd scene,
Which must atone for an ill-written play.
They rose, but at their height could seldom stay:
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."

Dryden was called over the coals for this sacrilegious Epilogue by
persons ill qualified for censors--among others, by my Lord
Rochester--and was instantly ready with his defence--an "Essay on the
Dramatic Poetry of the Last Age." In it he repeats the senseless
assertion, "that the language, wit, and conversation of our age are
improved and refined above the last;" and he takes care to include among
the writers of the last age, _Shakspeare_, Fletcher, and Jonson. "In
what," he asks "does the refinement of a language principally consist?"

"Either in rejecting such old words or phrases which are ill
sounding or improper, or in admitting new, which are more proper,
more sounding, and more luxuriant. * * * Malice and partiality set
apart, let any man who understands English, read diligently the
works of _Shakspeare_ and Fletcher, and I dare undertake that he
will find in every page either some solecism of speech, or some
notorious flaw in sense; yet these men are reverenced, when we are
not forgiven. That their wit is great, and many times their
expressions noble, envy itself cannot deny. But the times were
ignorant in which they