William Hogg, writing in 1690, says of _Paradise Lost_ that "the fame
of the poem is spread through the whole of England, but being written
in English, it is as yet unknown in foreign lands." This is obvious
exaggeration. Lauder, about 1748, gives the date exactly, when he
speaks of "that infinite tribute of veneration that has been paid to
him _these sixty years past_." One distinguished exception there was.
Dryden, royalist and Catholic though he was, was loyal to his art.
Nothing which Dryden ever wrote is so creditable to his taste, as his
being able to see, and daring to confess, in the day of disesteem,
that the regicide poet alone deserved the honour which his
cotemporaries were for rendering to himself. Dryden's saying; "This
man cuts us all out, and the ancients too," is not perfectly well
vouched, but it would hardly have been invented, if it had not been
known to express his sentiments. And Dryden's sense of Milton's
greatness grew with his taste. When, in the preface to his _State of
Innocence_ (1674), Dryden praised _Paradise Lost_, he "knew not half
the extent of its excellence," John Dennis says, "as more than twenty
years afterwards he confessed to me.
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