The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author | Page 2

agreeable to some of my friends.
Capital letters, apostrophes, and the like, will be looked for in vain. It
would, I need hardly say, have been much less trouble to put copies of
the original editions into the hands of the printers, to bid them "follow
copy," and to content myself with seeing that the reprint was faithful.
The result would have been, to a very small number of professed
students of English literature, an interesting example of the changes
which printers' spelling underwent in the last forty years of the
seventeenth century. But it would have been a nuisance and a
stumbling-block to the ordinary reader, in whose way it is certainly not
the business of the editor of a great English classic to throw stones of
offence. Where a writer has written in a distinctly archaic form of
language, as in the case of all English writers before the Renaissance,
adherence to the original orthography is necessary and right. Even in
the so-called Elizabethan age, where a certain archaism of phrase
survives, the appreciation of temporal and local colour may be helped
by such an adherence. But Dryden is in every sense a modern. His list
of obsolete words is insignificant, of archaic phrases more insignificant

still, of obsolete constructions almost a blank. If any journalist or
reviewer were to write his to-morrow's leader or his next week's article
in a style absolutely modelled on Dryden, no one would notice
anything strange in it, except perhaps that the English was a good deal
better than usual There can therefore be no possible reason for erecting
an artificial barrier between him and his readers of to-day, especially as
that barrier would be not only artificial but entirely arbitrary. I shall
however return to this point in some prefatory remarks to the dramas.
Another problem which presented itself was the question of retaining
the irregular stichometric division in some plays and passages which
are not in verse. Scott has in such case generally printed them in prose,
and with some hesitation I have, though not uniformly, followed him.
I have already received much help from divers persons, and I trust, dis
faventibus, to acknowledge this and more at the end of my journey, in
(to use a word for which a great writer of French fought hard) a
"postface." In a work of magnitude such as the present, which can only
be proceeded with pedetentim, the proverb about the relations of
beginner and finisher is peculiarly applicable. For the present I shall
confine myself to mentioning with the utmost thankfulness the
kindness of Mr. E.W. Gosse, who has placed at my disposal an almost
complete set of first editions of the plays and poems. One word must be
said as to the Life which fills this first volume. Except in minor details,
there is little to add to it. Any biographer of Dryden who is not carried
away by the desire to magnify his office, must admit that Johnson's
opening sentence as to the paucity of materials is still applicable.
In conclusion, I have but to repeat that in this edition it is not my
ambition to put myself or my own writing forward, even to the extent
ordinarily possible to an editor. In particular, my plan excludes
indulgence in critical disquisitions, however tempting they may be. For
such I must refer my readers to the monograph already mentioned.
Occasionally where critical opinions of Scott's are advanced which
seem demonstrably erroneous or imperfect, something of this nature
will be found, but on the whole my object is to give the reader my
author, and not what I have to say about him. The office of [Greek:

neokoros] is a comparatively humble one in itself, but it is honourable
enough when the shrine is at once the work and the monument of two
such masters of English as Scott and Dryden.
GEORGE SAINTSBURY.
LONDON, July 8, 1882.

ADVERTISEMENT.
[Prefaced to Edition issued in 1808, _edited by Sir Walter Scott_.]
After the lapse of more than a century since the author's death, the
Works of Dryden are now, for the first time, presented to the public in a
complete and uniform edition. In collecting the pieces of one of our
most eminent English classics,--one who may claim at least the third
place in that honoured list, and who has given proofs of greater
versatility of talent than either Shakespeare or Milton, though justly
placed inferior to them in their peculiar provinces,--the Editor did not
feel himself entitled to reject any part of his writings; even of those
which reflect little honour on the age, by whose taste they were dictated.
Had a selection been permitted, he would have excluded several of the
Comedies, and some part of the Translations: but this is a