John Dryden as a Critic

Dryden was the first practitioner of comparison and analysis in the history of criticism. And therefore, it is not an exaggeration to say that English criticism evolved from Dryden.

2. John Dryden was one of the few people in his age who had
the courage to go against the slavish devotion to the
classical school advocated by the French critics.
He firmly believed that true artists cannot be made by a
blind following of rules.
He favored and defended the genre tragicomedy, rejected
the addiction to the unities.

3. Dr. Samuel Johnson called him ‘the father of English criticism’.
T.S. Eliot considered him as ‘positively the first master of
English criticism’.
He was the first practitioner of comparison and analysis in the
history of criticism.
And therefore, it is not an exaggeration to say that English
criticism evolved from Dryden.

4. Dryden’s basic faith in the mimetic form of art, and the
Horatian function of literature is unshakable.
He upholds the traditional view regarding the ultimate end of
literature, and the force of the traditional literatures of the
past as criteria for standards of judgment.

5. Dryden’s idea of mimesis is found in other places also, such
as in the use of the terms, imaging, representing, imitation of
nature, following nature.
According to him, the life that is observed by the poet had to
be shaped by imagination that is controlled by judgment.
For him, mere copying insults art which is supposed to
beautify with the help of imagination.

6. Dryden exhibited his classical background when he insisted
on the use of a “fit subject” as the theme and that the
characters be great and noble and the plot not weigh down
by the commonness of his material.
Despite being a neo-classical, he rejected the authority of
any rigid theory or person because he believed art to be an
organic, living force operating under the influence of
different ages, nations and tastes.

7. It is said that Dryden brought criticism from the church to the
coffee house.
For the first time, literary works are examined with literary
problems in mind.
He made the classical tradition available to his age, and
thus, was a civilizing factor to his people.
He confessed that his chief endeavor was to delight the age
in which he lived.

8. Dryden had also a sound knowledge of the ancient classics
and to cap it all he had argumentative faculty, best suited to
the art of criticism.