ABSTRACT
In France, the Ancients and Moderns controversy had been fought out over the issue whether authors of classical antiquity or those of modern times were better writers, but both sides in dispute agreed that ‘rules’ were to be taken for granted and assumed that the issue left their authority untouched. There is no doubt that in the Ancients and Moderns dispute Dryden was on the side of the Moderns. The decline of Aristotle’s reputation was all the swifter because many English critics were also men of science. For Dryden was a Modern, a liberal critic who placed a higher value upon personal judgment and the practical test of whether a work of art succeeded in its intention, than upon formal correctness. His writings carried on the tradition of which Pierre Corneille had been an architect, a tradition which was broadened and enlivened by the school of taste.
