even when it touched a point so fundamental as the unities. Nothing
is more remarkable in the _Essay_, as indeed in all his critical work,
than the wide range which he gives to the discussion. And never has
the case against--we can hardly add, for--the French drama been stated
more pointedly than by him. His main charge, as was to be expected,
is against its monotony, and, in close connection with that, against
its neglect of action and its preference for declamation.

Having defined the drama as "a just and lively image of human nature,
in its actions, passions and traverses of fortune", [Footnote: _English
Garner_, iii 513, ib. 567] he proceeds to test the claims of the French
stage by that standard. Its characters, he finds, are wanting in variety
and nature. Its range of passion and humour is lamentably narrow.
[Footnote: Ib. 542-4.] Its declamations "tire us with their length;
so that, instead of grieving for their imaginary heroes, we are
concerned for our own trouble, as we are in the tedious visits of bad
company; we are in pain till they are gone". [Footnote: English Garner,
iil 542.] The best tragedies of the French--_Cinna and Pompey_--"are
not so properly to be called Plays as long discourses of Reason of
State". [Footnote: Ib. 543.] Upon their avoidance of action he is
hardly less severe. "If we are to be blamed for showing too much of
the action"--one is involuntarily reminded of the closing scene of
_Tyrannic Love_ and of the gibes in _The Rehearsal_--"the French are
as faulty for discovering too little of it ". [Footnote: Ib. 545.]
Finally, on a comparison between the French dramatists and the
Elizabethans, Dryden concludes that "in most of the irregular Plays
of Shakespeare or Fletcher ... there is a more masculine fancy, and
greater spirit in all the writing, than there is in any of the French".
[Footnote: Ib. 548.]