praised Shakespeare more generously. For Dryden Shakespeare was the
greatest of original geniuses, who, "taught by none," laid the
foundations of English drama; he was a poet of bold imagination,
especially gifted in "magick" or the supernatural, the poet of nature,
who could dispense with "art," the poet of the passions, of varied
characters and moods, the poet of large and comprehensive soul. To him,
as to most of his contemporaries, the contrast between Jonson and
Shakespeare was important: the one showed what poets ought to do; the
other what untutored genius can do. When Dryden praised Shakespeare, his
tone became warmer than when he judicially appraised Jonson.

Like most of his contemporaries Dryden did not heed Jonson's caveat
that, despite his lack of learning, Shakespeare did have art. He was too
obsessed with the idea that Shakespeare, ignorant of the health-giving
art of the ancients, was infected with the faults of his age, faults
that even Jonson did not always escape. Shakespeare was often incorrect
in grammar; he frequently sank to flatness or soared into bombast; his
wit could be coarse and low and too dependent on puns; his plot
structure was at times faulty, and he lacked the sense for order and
arrangement that the new taste valued. All this he could and did admit,
and he was impressed by the learning and critical standards of Rymer's
attack. But like Samuel Johnson he was not often prone to substitute
theory for experience, and like most of his contemporaries he felt
Shakespeare's power to move and to convince. Perhaps the most trenchant
expression of his final stand in regard to Shakespeare and to the whole
art of poetry is to be found in his letter to Dennis, dated 3 March,
1693/4. Shakespeare, he said, had genius, which is "alone a greater
Virtue ... than all the other Qualifications put together." He admitted
that all the faults pointed out by Rymer are real enough, but he added a
question that removed the discussion from theory to immediate