John Dennis also replied to Rymer’s _Short View_, and was classed afterwards as one of Rymer’s disciples. In his _Impartial Critick_ (1693) he endeavoured to show that the methods of the ancient Greek tragedy were not all suitable to the modern English theatre. To introduce a chorus, as Rymer had recommended, or to expel love from the stage, would, he argued, only ruin the English drama. But his belief in the classical rules made him turn the _Merry Wives_ into the _Comical Gallant_. As he found in the original three actions, each independent of the other, he had set himself to make the whole “depend on one common centre.” In the Dedication to the letters _On the Genius and Writings of Shakespeare_ we read that Aristotle, “who may be call’d the Legislator of Parnassus, wrote the laws of tragedy so exactly and so truly in reason and nature that succeeding criticks have writ justly and reasonably upon that art no farther than they have adhered to their great master’s notions.” But at the very beginning of the letters themselves he says that “Shakespeare was one of the greatest geniuses that the world e’er saw.” Notwithstanding his pronounced classical taste, his sense of the greatness of Shakespeare is as strong as Rowe’s, and much stronger than Gildon’s. His writings prove him a man of competent scholarship, who had thought out his literary doctrines for himself, and could admire beauty in other than classical garb. The result is that at many points his opinions are at marked variance with those of Rymer, for whom, however, he had much respect. Rymer, for instance, had said that Shakespeare’s genius lay in comedy, but the main contention of Dennis’s letters is that he had an unequalled gift for tragedy. As a critic Dennis is greatly superior to Rymer and his disciples. The ancients guided his taste without blinding him to modern excellence.