The French have set up
purity for the standard of their language, and a masculine vigor is that
of ours. Like their tongue is the genius of their poets,--light and
trifling in comparison of the English."[58]
Dryden might have profited by an admirable saying of his own, that "they
who would combat general authority with particular opinion must first
establish themselves a reputation of understanding better than other
men." He understood the defects much better than the beauties of the
French theatre. Lessing was even more one-sided in his judgment upon
it.[59] Goethe, with his usual wisdom, studied it carefully without
losing his temper, and tried to profit by its structural merits. Dryden,
with his eyes wide open, copied its worst faults, especially its
declamatory sentiment. He should have known that certain things can never
be transplanted, and that among these is a style of poetry whose great
excellence was that it was in perfect sympathy with the genius of the
people among whom it came into being. But the truth is, that Dryden had
no aptitude whatever for the stage, and in writing for it he was
attempting to make a trade of his genius,--an arrangement from which the
genius always withdraws in disgust. It was easier to make loose thinking
and the bad writing which betrays it pass unobserved while the ear was
occupied with the sonorous music of the rhyme to which they marched.
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