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152 argument which turn on the superiority of the ancients to the moderns, the question of the unities, and the propriety of rhyme in dramatic composition. Such topics criticism has long exhausted. The speakers represented under the classical names are Lord Dorset, Sir Charles Sedley, Sir Robert Howard, and Dryden himself. Sir Robert is represented under the name of Crites, and described as "a person of a sharp judgment, and somewhat too delicate in his taste, which the world hath mistaken in him for ill nature." He is put up in the dialogue to be knocked down. He first debates with Eugenius and Lisideius, and afterwards with Neander. The latter part of the dialogue turns on the propriety of rhyme in tragedy. Neander defends it, and Crites states certain objections which many years after Dryden would have approved. Indeed, on this point he is said to have so changed his opinion, that he stated that were he to begin his Virgil again he would write it in blank verse.

In his dedication of "The Rival Ladies" to the Earl of Orrery, Dryden enters into an elaborate defence of rhyme in tragedy. Either this Essay, or as it is by some asserted, Dryden's connection with him by a marriage which he had been the means of bringing about, gave Sir Robert offence; and in his preface to the Duke of Lerma, while bidding farewell to the stage, he makes an opportunity for assailing Dryden's sentiments on the question of rhyme. Dryden replied rather angrily in a defence of the Essay on Dramatic Poetry, and assailed his brother-in-law with great irony. In speaking of Sir Robert's writings, he says: "I cannot but give this testimony of his style, that it is extremely poetical, even in oratory, his thoughts elevated sometimes above common apprehension." Alluding to Sir Robert's abandoning dramatic poetry for state craft, he remarks: "The Muses have lost him, but the Commonwealth gains