Prescribed her heights and pruned her tender wing."

But what was correct? In the drama, _e.g._, the observance of the
unities was almost universally recommended, but by no means universally
practiced. Johnson, himself a sturdy disciple of Dryden and Pope,
exposed the fallacy of that stage illusion, on the supposed necessity of
which the unities of time and place were defended. Yet Johnson, in his
own tragedy "Irene," conformed to the rules of Aristotle. He pronounced
"Cato" "unquestionably the noblest production of Addison's genius," but
acknowledge that its success had "introduced, or confirmed among us, the
use of dialogue too declamatory, of unaffecting elegance and chill
philosophy." On the other hand Addison had small regard for poetic
justice, which Johnson thought ought to be observed. Addison praised old
English ballads, which Johnson thought mean and foolish; and he guardedly
commends[23] "the fairy way of writing," a romantic foppery that Johnson
despised.[24]

Critical opinion was pronounced in favor of separating tragedy and
comedy, and Addison wrote one sentence which condemns half the plays of
Shakspere and Fletcher: "The tragi-comedy, which is the product of the
English theater, is one the most monstrous inventions that ever entered
into a poet's thought."[25] Dryden made some experiments in
tragi-comedy, but, in general, classical comedy was pure comedy--the
prose comedy of manners--and classical tragedy admitted no comic
intermixture. Whether tragedy should be in rhyme, after the French
manner, or in blank verse, after the precedent of the old English stage,
was a moot point. Dryden at first argued for rhyme and used it in his
"heroic plays"; and it is significant that he defended its use on the
ground that it would act as a check upon the poet's fancy. But afterward
he grew "weary of his much-loved mistress, rhyme," and went back to blank