"
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 Chiffinch to the palled appetite of the public. "For I confess my
chief endeavours are to delight the age in which I live. If the humour
of this be for low comedy, small accidents, and raillery, I will force my
genius to obey it, though with more reputation I could write in verse. I
know I am not so fitted by nature to write comedy; I want that gayety of
humour which is requisite to it. My conversation is slow and dull, my
humour saturnine and reserved: In short, I am none of those who endeavour
to break jests in company or make repartees. So that those who decry
my comedies do me no injury, except it be in point of profit: Reputation
in them is the last thing to which I shall pretend."[49] For my own part,
though I have been forced to hold my nose in picking my way through these
ordures of Dryden, I am free to say that I think them far less morally
mischievous than that _corps-de-ballet_ literature in which the most
animal of the passions is made more temptingly naked by a veil of French
gauze.
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