THE ESSAY ON SATIRE

Dryden, as sir Walter Scott observes, left a name in literature "second only to those of Milton and Shakspere"; but, popular as his writings were, he gave no collective edition of his poetical or dramatic works. The current editions of his poems may therefore be open to censure, both on the score of deficiency and redundancy—and such I believe to be the fact. An *Essay on satire*, itself a coarse satire, has been ascribed to him for more than a century on dubious authority, and the correctness of this ascription has been properly suggested as a question for examination. We have to decide on th…