What is finally remarkable about Langbaine's work, especially in the Preface to _Momus_ and throughout the _Account_, is his abiding determination to insert himself into virtually every one of Dryden's quarrels, no matter how passe. The quality which binds together Langbaine's heros is not their talent, their common beliefs or their rectitude in admitting sources, but their mutual fortunes in being Dryden's adversaries. The list of support he marshals is a long one and includes Sir Robert Howard and the debate over the rhymed heroic drama; the group led by Clifford and known as the Rota;[32] _The Empress of Morocco_ controversy with Settle;[33] Shadwell, Flecknoe and _Mac Flecknoe_; the Ancients versus the Moderns; Rymer; and Dryden's attitudes toward the classics, the French, and the English dramatists of the earlier part of the century. The reiterations of these attacks come from Langbaine at a time when Dryden was vulnerable to political and religious charges, and Langbaine does not fail to include those.[34] Langbaine's wholesale attacks seem, however, to have two centers. The principal one concerns the charge of plagiarism, which, as Osborn has shown, was an old one with Dryden, although Langbaine's strictures against borrowing do not represent the most characteristic attitude of his time.[35] More precisely, Langbaine focuses on Dryden's (seeming) _arrogance_ toward the use of source material, and he would "_desire our Laureat_ ... to shun this, Confidence and Self-love, as the worst of Plagues" ([a2v]).[36] The second focus, again one which is seemingly characterized by arrogance, is Dryden's criticism of the three major pre-interregnum dramatists, "these three Great Men" (_Account_, p. 136), Shakespeare,[37] Fletcher and Jonson. Of these the attacks on Jonson and the "thefts" from him are seen as the most disturbing. Well over a tenth of the Preface and of the _Account_ are devoted to Dryden, but the next mentioned playwright, at least in the _Account_, is Jonson. His "Excellencies ... are very Great, Noble, and Various" (_Account_, p. 281). Everywhere his modesty and his exemplary uses of the classics and of the English language are vaunted as a rebuke to Dryden. His opinions on other dramatists are quoted extensively and approvingly. Behind this admiration lie Langbaine's love of ancient learning and the continuing affinity of University men for Jonson. But there is a personal side, too (as there may be with Dryden). Langbaine's father was a friend of Jonson, who presented him with an inscribed copy of Vossius,[38] and Langbaine concludes his article on Jonson with an encomium by his father's friend Anthony Wood.