Background
John Dennis was born on 16 September in 1658 in the parish of St Andrew Holborn, London. He was the son of a saddler.
John Dennis was born on 16 September in 1658 in the parish of St Andrew Holborn, London. He was the son of a saddler.
John Dennis was educated at Harrow School and Caius College, Cambridge, where he took his B. A. degree in 1679.
In the next year, he was fined and dismissed from his college for having wounded a fellow-student with a sword.
He was, however, received at Trinity Hall, where he took his M. A. degree in 1683.
After travelling in France and Italy, he settled in London, where he became acquainted with Dryden, Wycherley and others; and being made temporarily independent by inheriting a small fortune, he devoted himself to literature.
One of his tragedies, a violent attack on the French in harmony with popular prejudice, entitled Liberty Asserted, was produced with great success at Lincoln's Inn Fields in 1704. For Appius and Virginia (1709), he invented a new kind of thunder. The play was not a success and the management of the Drury Lane Theatre withdrew it.
Marlborough pointed out that although he had been a still greater enemy of the French nation, he had no fear for his own security.
When the latter play was ridiculed by Alexander Pope in his Essay on Criticism, Dennis replied with a pamphlet and the quarrel was pursued for several years, Pope satirizing Dennis along with other contemporaries in his Dunciad (1728).
This tale and others of a similar nature may well be exaggerations prompted by his enemies, but the infirmities of character and temper indicated in them were real.
However, Dennis's day as a leading figure on the London literary scene was over. He gained the nickname of "Furius", while his enthusiasm for the terrible sublime was mocked.
As a dramatist he had little success, though he brought out seven Neoclassical plays, including Rinaldo and Armida (1699) and Appius and Virginia (produced at Drury Lane, 1709).
As a Neoclassic critic, however, Dennis is highly regarded, especially for such works as Advancement and Reformation of Modern Poetry (1701) and Grounds of Criticism in Poetry (1704).
(This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)
(Excerpt from Appius and Virginia: A Tragedy U L( h v i17...)
