Note 484 — Chapter IV · DRYDEN AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES.

The chief critical loci in Milton are all among the best known passages of his work. They are the peremptory anathema on rhyme in the prose note added to Paradise Lost, in what Professor Masson has settled to be the “Fifth Form of the First Edition”; the short Defence of Tragedy, wholly on Italian principles but adapted to Puritan understandings, prefixed to Samson Agonistes; the first description of his own studies in The Reason of Church Government; the more elaborate return upon that subject—a singular mixture of exquisite phrasing and literary appreciation with insolent abuse—in the Apology for Smectymnuus (which is not, as some have thought, the same thing as The [Platonic] Apology) and divers clauses in the Tractate of Education, especially the reference to “Castelvetro, Tasso, and Mazzoni,” whom he credits with “sublime art,” and puts on a level with Aristotle and Horace. We might add a few casual girds, such as that at the supposed cacophony of Hall’s “Teach each” in the Apology for Smectymnuus, which has been compared to Malherbe’s vellications of Desportes (cf. sup., p. 245). A complete critical treatise from him (if only he could have been prevailed upon to write in a good temper) would have been of supreme interest: it is not so certain that it would have been of supreme value, even if he had been in that temper.