French exemplars, but he used it very little better than they. It was in
his hands, as in theirs, a dead mechanical framework of rules about the
unities. Dryden, we can see in his critical writing, was constantly
chafed by it. He behaves like a fine horse with a bearing rein: he is
continually tossing his head after a minute or two of 'good manners and
action,' and saying, 'Shakespeare was the best of them, anyhow';
'Chaucer beats Ovid to a standstill.' It is a gesture with which all
decent people sympathise and when it is made in language so supple as
Dryden's prose it has a lasting charm. Dryden's heart was in the right
place, and he was not afraid of showing it; but that does not make him a
critic, much less a critic to be set as a superior in the company of
Aristotle and Coleridge.

Our search for the pure literary critic is likely to be arduous. We have
seen that there is a sense in which Dryden is a purer literary critic
than either Coleridge or Aristotle; but we have also seen that it is
precisely by reason of the 'pureness' in him that he is to be relegated
into a rank inferior to theirs. It looks as though we might have to
pronounce that the true literary critic is the philosophic critic. Yet
the pronouncement must not be prematurely made; for there is a real and
vital difference between those for whom we have accepted the designation
of philosophic critics, Hegel or Croce, and Aristotle or Coleridge. Yet
three of these (and it might be wise to include Coleridge as a fourth)
were professional philosophers. It is evidently not the philosophy as
such that makes the difference.

The difference depends, we believe, upon the nature of the philosophy.
The secret lies in Aristotle. The true literary critic must have a
humanistic philosophy. His inquiries must be modulated, subject to an
intimate, organic governance, by an ideal of the good life. He is not