For his person and parts, I honour
them as much as any man living, and have had so many particular
obligations to him, that I should be very ungrateful, if I did not
acknowledge them to the world. But I gave not the first occasion
of this difference in opinions. In my epistle dedicatory, before my
"Rival Ladies," I had said somewhat in behalf of verse, which he was
pleased to answer in his preface to his plays. That occasioned my
reply in my essay; and that reply begot this rejoinder of his, in
his preface to the "Duke of Lenna." But as I was the last who took
up arms, I will be the first to lay them down. For what I have here
written, I submit it wholly to him; and if I do not hereafter answer
what may be objected against this paper, I hope the world will not
impute it to any other reason, than only the due respect which I have
for so noble an opponent.
THE INDIAN EMPEROR.
The Indian Emperor is the first of Dryden's plays which exhibited, in
a marked degree, the peculiarity of his stile, and drew upon him the
attention of the world. Without equalling the extravagancies of the
Conquest of Granada, and the Royal Martyr, works produced when our
author was emboldened, by public applause, to give full scope to
his daring genius, the following may be considered as a model of the
heroic drama, A few words, therefore, will not be here misplaced, on
the nature of the kind of tragedies, in which, during the earlier part
of his literary career, our author delighted and excelled.
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