The works of the ancients, says a great writer, are the mines from which alone the treasures of true criticism are to be dug up--the pure sources of that penetration which enables us to distinguish legitimate excellence from spurious pretensions to it. He, therefore, who would get at the true principles of dramatic criticism ought to read the poetry and criticism of the two great ancient languages, and to have formed some acquaintance with those authors, whether ancient or modern, who have furnished the world with the great leading principles upon which dramatic poetry is constructed. Doctor Johnson has informed us that before the time of Dryden, the structure of dramatic poetry was not generally understood; and what was the consequence? "AUDIENCES," continues the doctor, "APPLAUDED BY INSTINCT, AND POETS OFTEN PLEASED BY CHANCE."[7] [Footnote 7: See Johnson's Life of Dryden.] Without calling in the aid of such high authority, no risk of contradiction can be incurred by asserting that he must be radically deficient in the requisites of a dramatic critic, who is not sufficiently versed in philological literature to discriminate between the various qualities of diction--to distinguish the language of the schools from that of the multitude--the polished diction of refinement from the coarse style of household colloquy--the splendid, figurative, and impressive combination of terms adapted to poetry, from those plain and familiar expressions suited to the sobriety of prose; and finally, to form a just estimate of a poet's pretensions to that delicacy in the selection of words which constitutes what is called beauty in style. Nor is this all, he should be perfectly competent to form a judgment of the fable and its contrivance, to determine according to the canons of criticism laid down by the greatest professors of the art, whether the scheme of a piece be obscured by unnatural complexity or rendered jejune and uninteresting by extreme simplicity, and familiarity of design--whether description be bloated, or overcharged, or imagery misplaced or extravagant; and lastly, whether the performance be on the whole deficient in, or replete with moral institution.