...first systematic critic in France, and Samuel Johnson pronounced in his life of Dryden that that writer "may be properly considered as the father of English...composition. Of our former poets, the greatest dramatist [Shakespeare] wrote without rules, conducted through life and nature by a genius that rarely misled,...

...progress from modest beginnings before the Restoration to a respected place in English literature. 'Dryden may be properly considered as the father of...determine upon principles the merit of composition', Samuel Johnson wrote in his Prefaces, Biographical and Critical, to the Works of the English Poets...

...explanations of how Dryden shaped criticism in England. For example, Johnson argues that Dryden was "the writer who first taught us to determine upon principles the merit of composition" (ibid.). As Johnson sees it, Dryden begins the process of systematizing what we would now call literature....

...mainly in the form of prefaces to poems, in style clear, easy, and characteristic. Dr. Johnson said that Dryden " may be properly considered as the father...who first taught us to determine upon principles the merits of composition." Dr. Johnson says : " From his prose, however, Dryden derives only his accidental...

...of a man whom every English* generation must mention with reverence as a critic and a poet. Dry den may be properly considered as the father of English...as the writer who first taught us to determine upon 1 principles the merit of composition. Of our former poets, the ' greatest dramatist wrote without...

...author's price a shilling."15 Dr. Johnson, on the other hand, believed "Dryden may be properly considered the father of English criticism, as the writer who...taught us to determine upon principles the merit of criticism. — His compositions are the effects of a vigorous genius operating upon large materials....