Note 509 — Chapter IV · DRYDEN AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES.

They have deceived the very elect, e.g., M. Rigault, who in not altogether unnatural amazement at the dictum, “Spenser wanted only to have read the rules of Bossu,” classes (Q. des A. et des M., p. 311) Dryden as an ancien enragé. But M. Rigault is at a wrong angle in most of the English part of his book,—so much so as to strike a chill into any one who has to criticise a foreign literature, lest, lacking the grace of the Muses, he too go astray.