The Riverside Literature Series PALAMON AND ARCITE BY JOHN DRYDEN EDITED, WITH INTRODUCTION AND NOTES BY ARTHUR GILMAN, M. A. EDITOR OF THE POETICAL WORKS OF GEOFFREY CHAUCER HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY The Riverside Press, Cambridge The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A. Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton and Company. INTRODUCTION. AN object of poetry is to please, and of all the great poets of England there has been no one more desirous to attain this object than John Dryden. In fact, he declared in so many words that he wrote only to please; but he seems to have forgotten that he pleases most who most completely forgets his desire in his interest in the story that he has to tell. Poetry is the highest expression of the literature of power, the function of which is to move the reader rather than to give him information. In a poem like Old Ironsides, by Holmes, or The Bard, by Gray, or How they brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix, by Browning, one makes little account of the writer. The reader is thrilled by the spirit of patriotism in the first; his sympathy for an order devoted to destruction is roused by the second; and an indefinite and powerful desire to be assured that success has crowned the entirely imaginary enterprise painted in vivid words in the third, so far carries him away that he does not even ask who bore the news, what the news was, or what the emergency; so completely has he been mastered by the power of the subtle poet. It is evident at once that a proper appreciation of a poem does not depend upon an acquaintance with the poet. His life may be as hidden as that of Shakespeare, and yet his words may please and move generations of readers. In spite of this fact, it is true that human interest eventually causes us to seek the man behind the words, and the more we know, the more we are apt to seek. The modern methods of investigation lay great stress upon the influences that have surrounded |