DRYDEN. 305 



our age will join with me to acknowledge that they have 

 copied the gallantries of courts, the delicacy of expression, 

 and the decencies of behaviour from your Lordship.&quot; In 

 judging Dryden, it should be borne in mind that for some 

 years he was under contract to deliver three plays a-year, a 

 kind of bond to which no man should subject his brain 

 who has a decent respect for the quality of its products. 

 We should remember, too, that in his day manners meant 

 what we call morals^ that custom always makes a larger 

 part of virtue among average men than they are quite 

 aware, and that the reaction from an outward conformity 

 which had no root in inward faith may for a time have 

 given to the frank expression of laxity an air of honesty 

 that made it seem almost refreshing. There is no such 

 hotbed for excess of license as excess of restraint, and the 

 arrogant fanaticism of a single virtue is apt to make men 

 suspicious of tyranny in all the rest. But the riot of 

 emancipation could not last long, for the more tolerant 

 society is of private vice, the more exacting will it be of 

 public decorum, that excellent thing, so often the plausible 

 substitute for things more excellent. By 1678 the public 

 mind had so far recovered its tone that Dryden s comedy of 

 &quot; Limberham &quot; was barely tolerated for three nights. I 

 will let the man who looked at human nature from more 

 sides, and therefore judged it more gently than any other, 

 give the only excuse possible for Dryden : 



&quot;Men s judgments are 



A parcel of their fortunes, and things outward 

 Do draw the inward quality after them 

 To suffer all alike.&quot; 



Dryden s own apology only makes matters worse for 

 him by showing that he committed his offences with his 

 eyes wide open, and that he wrote comedies so wholly 

 in despite of nature as never to deviate into the comic. 

 Failing as clown, he did not scruple to take on himself 

 the office of Ohiffinch to the palled appetite of the pub 

 lic. &quot;For I confess my chief endeavours are to delight 

 the age in which I live. If the humour of this be for low 



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