n cancelled this tract.

The _Essay of Dramatic Poesy_ was written at Charleton Park in the latter
part of 1665, and published by Herringman in 1668. It was afterwards
carefully revised, and republished with a dedication to Lord Buckhurst in
1684. Dryden spent more pains than was usual with him on the composition
of this essay, though he speaks modestly of it as 'rude and indigested,'
and it is indeed the most elaborate of his critical disquisitions. It
was, he said, written 'chiefly to vindicate the honour of our English
writers from the censure of those who unjustly prefer the French before
them.' Its more immediate and particular object was to regulate dramatic
composition by reducing it to critical principles, and these principles
he discerned in a judicious compromise between the licence of romantic
drama as represented by Shakespeare and his School, and the austere
restraints imposed by the canons of the classical drama. Assuming that a
drama should be '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,' it is shown that
this end can only be attained in a drama founded on such a compromise;
that the ancient and modern classical drama fails in nature; that the
Shakespearian drama fails in art. At the conclusion of the essay he
vindicates the employment of rhyme, a contention which he afterwards
abandoned. The dramatic setting of the essay was no doubt suggested by
the Platonic _Dialogues_, or by Cicero, and the essay itself may have
been suggested by Flecknoe's short _Discourse of the English Stage_,
published in 1664.

The _Essay of Dramatic Poesy_ may be said to make an era in the history
of English criticism, and to mark an era in the history of English prose
composition. It was incomparably the best purely critical treatise which
had hitherto appeared in our language, both synthetically in its
definition and application of principles, and particularly in its lucid,
exact, and purely discriminating analysis. It was also the most striking
and successful illustration of what may be called the new prose style, or
that style which, initiated by Hobbes and developed by Sprat, Cowley, and
Denham[1] blended the ease and plasticity of colloquy with the solidity
and dignity of rhetoric, of that style in which Dryden was soon to become
a consummate master.

The _Advice to a Young Reviewer_ brings u