312 DRYDEM 



ce peu de vers.&quot; After Dryden had broken away from the 

 heroic style, he speaks out more plainly. In the Preface 

 to his &quot;All for Love,&quot; in reply to some cavils upon &quot;little, 

 and not essential decencies,&quot; the decision about which he 

 refers to a master of ceremonies, he goes on to say : &quot; The 

 French poets, I confess, are strict observers of these punc 

 tilios ; ... in this nicety of manners does the excellency 

 of French poetry consist. Their heroes are the most civil 

 people breathing, but their good breeding seldom extends to 

 a word of sense. All their wit is in their ceremony ; they 

 want the genius which animates our stage, and therefore 

 t is but necessary, when they cannot please, that they should 

 take care not to offend. . . . They arc so careful not to 

 exasperate a critic that they never leave hiin any \vork, . . . 

 for no part of a poem is worth our discommending where 

 the whole is insipid, as when we have once tasted palled 

 wine we stay not to examine it glass by glass But \vhil 

 they affect to shine in trifles, they are often careless in 

 essentials. . . . For my part, I desire to be tried by the 

 laws of my own country.&quot; This is said in heat, but it is 

 plain enough that his mind was wholly changed. In his 

 discourse on epic poetry he is as decided, but more temper 

 ate. He says that the French heroic verse &quot;runs with 

 more activity than strength.* Their language is not strung 

 with sinews like our English ; it has the nimbi eness of a 

 greyhound, but not the bulk and body of a mastiff. Our 

 men and our verses overbear them by their weight, and 

 pondere, non numero, is the British motto. The French 

 have set up purity for the standard of their language, and 

 a masculine vigour is that of ours = Like their tongue is the 



* A French hen decasyllabic verse runs exactly like our ballad 

 measure ; 



A cobbler there was and he lived in a stall, . . . 

 La raison, pour marcher, ria souvent qu une voye. 



(Dryden s note.) 



The verse is not a hendecasyllable. &quot;Attended watchfully to her 

 re itative (Mile. Duchesnois), and find that, in nine lines out of ten, 

 A cobbler there was, etc., is the tune of the French heroics,&quot; 

 Moore s Diary, 24th April 1821. 



