Page:The Lives and Characters of the English Dramatick Poets.djvu/14



''Do not trouble the Reader with this Preface because 'tis the Mode to say something before ev'ry Book; but because there is a Necessity of premising a Word or two as to the following Treatises, and the other Essays of this Nature, that have already been seen. I shall take no notice of Mr. Winstanleys or Mr. Phillipss, for one I never saw, and the other I could not read, and Mr. Langbain has discovered their Defects sufficient to justify his undertaking a more perfect Work; and which he indeed in the last Edition he has pretty near accomplish'd. I must own that his Undertaking has sav'd me a great deal of Trouble, but then he is every where so partial, that he destroys the Character of a Critick and Historian at once, whose Object ought always to be Truth; whereas Mr. Langbain seems every where to gratify some private Pique, and seldom to regard the Merit of the Person he reflects upon. This I have every where avoided, and distinguish'd betwixt the Desert and Defect of the Author. Mr. Langbain is farther generally mistaken in his Censures as a Critick, he seems to have known nothing of the Matter, to have had little or no Taste of Dramatick Poetry: and a Stranger to our Stage wou'd from his Recommendation make a very odd and ridiculous Collection of our English Plays. He often commends'', Shirley, Heywood, &c. and will scarce allow Mr. Dryden a Poet; whereas the former have left us no Piece that bears any Proportion to the latter; the All for Love of Mr. Dryden, were it not for the false Moral, wou'd be a Masterpiece that few of the Ancients or Moderns ever equal'd; and Mr. Shirley, and Mr. Heywood have not left enough in all their Writings to compose one tolerable Play, according to the true Model and Design of a Play.

Mr. Langbain has in many of the Lives, swell'd them out with interlarding them with tedious Copies of Verses little to the purpose in Hand, which I was obliged to avoid for Two Reasons; First I design'd to give the Reader as compendious an Account of our Dramatick Writers as I cou'd, and so to bring my Book to an easier Price than Mr. Langbain's. And therefore I was, Secondly, forc'd to leave out