Discourses on Satire Epic Poetry | Page 3

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from the 1888 Cassell & Company edition.
DISCOURSES ON SATIRE AND ON EPIC POETRY
by John Dryden
INTRODUCTION.
Dryden's discourses upon Satire and Epic Poetry belong to the latter
years of his life, and represent maturer thought than is to be found in
his "Essay of Dramatic Poesie." That essay, published in 1667, draws
its chief interest from the time when it was written. A Dutch fleet was
at the mouth of the Thames. Dryden represents himself taking a boat
down the river with three friends, one of them his brother-in-law Sir
Robert Howard, another Sir Charles Sedley, and another Charles
Sackville Lord Buckhurst to whom, as Earl of Dorset, the "Discourse of
Satire" is inscribed. They go down the river to hear the guns at sea, and
judge by the sound whether the Dutch fleet be advancing or retreating.
On the way they talk of the plague of Odes that will follow an English
victory; their talk of verse proceeds to plays, with particular attention to
a question that had been specially argued before the public between
Dryden and his brother-in-law Sir Robert Howard. The question
touched the use of blank verse in the drama. Dryden had decided
against it as a worthless measure, and the chief feature of the Essay,
which was written in dialogue, was its support of Dryden's argument.
But in that year (1667) "Paradise Lost" was published, and Milton's
blank verse was the death of Dryden's theories. After a few years
Dryden recanted his error. The "Essay of Dramatic Poesie" is
interesting as a setting forth in 1667 of mistaken critical opinions which
were at that time in the ascendant, but had not very long to live. Dryden
always wrote good masculine prose, and all his critical essays are good
reading as pieces of English. His "Essay of Dramatic Poesie" is good
reading as illustrative of the weakness of our literature in the days of
the influence of France after the Restoration. The essays on Satire and

on Epic Poetry represent also the influence of the French critical school,
but represent it in a larger way, with indications of its strength as well
as of its weakness. They represent also Dryden himself with a riper
mind covering a larger field of thought, and showing abundantly the
strength and independence of his own critical judgment, while he cites
familiarly and frequently the critics, little remembered and less cared
for now, who then passed for the arbiters of taste.
If English literature were really taught in schools, and the eldest boys
had received training that brought them in their last schoolyear to a
knowledge of the changes of intellectual fashion that set their outward
mark upon successive periods, there is no prose writing of Dryden that
could be used by a teacher more instructively than these Discourses on
Satire and on Epic Poetry. They illustrate abundantly both Dryden and
his time, and give continuous occasion