friend,

A short account of all the Muse-possest,
That, down from Chaucer's days to Dryden's times
Have spent their noble rage in British rhymes,

was so far under the influence of French critical authority, as accepted
by most cultivators of polite literature at Oxford and wherever
authority was much respected, that from 'An Account of the Greatest
English Poets' he omitted Shakespeare. Of Chaucer he then knew no better
than to say, what might have been said in France, that

... age has rusted what the Poet writ,
Worn out his language, and obscured his wit:
In vain he jests in his unpolish'd strain,
And tries to make his readers laugh in vain.
Old Spenser next, warm'd with poetic rage,
In ancient tales amused a barb'rous age;
But now the mystic tale, that pleased of yore,
Can charm an understanding age no more.

It cost Addison some trouble to break loose from the critical cobweb of
an age of periwigs and patches, that accounted itself 'understanding,'
and the grand epoch of our Elizabethan literature, 'barbarous.' Rymer,
one of his critics, had said, that

'in the neighing of an horse, or in the growling of a mastiff, there
is a meaning, there is as lively expression, and, may I say, more
humanity than many times in the tragical flights of Shakespeare.'