Dryden was the first practitioner of comparison and analysis in the history of criticism. And therefore, it is not an exaggeration to say that English criticism evolved from Dryden.

2.  John Dryden was one of the few people in his age who had
the courage to go against the slavish devotion to the
classical school advocated by the French critics.
 He firmly believed that true artists cannot be made by a
blind following of rules.
 He favored and defended the genre tragicomedy, rejected
the addiction to the unities.

3.  Dr. Samuel Johnson called him ‘the father of English criticism’.
 T.S. Eliot considered him as ‘positively the first master of
English criticism’.
 He was the first practitioner of comparison and analysis in the
history of criticism.
 And therefore, it is not an exaggeration to say that English
criticism evolved from Dryden.

4.  Dryden’s basic faith in the mimetic form of art, and the
Horatian function of literature is unshakable.
 He upholds the traditional view regarding the ultimate end of
literature, and the force of the traditional literatures of the
past as criteria for standards of judgment.

5.  Dryden’s idea of mimesis is found in other places also, such
as in the use of the terms, imaging, representing, imitation of
nature, following nature.
 According to him, the life that is observed by the poet had to
be shaped by imagination that is controlled by judgment.
 For him, mere copying insults art which is supposed to
beautify with the help of imagination.

6.  Dryden exhibited his classical background when he insisted
on the use of a “fit subject” as the theme and that the
characters be great and noble and the plot not weigh down
by the commonness of his material.
 Despite being a neo-classical, he rejected the authority of
any rigid theory or person because he believed art to be an
organic, living force operating under the influence of
different ages, nations and tastes.

7.  It is said that Dryden brought criticism from the church to the
coffee house.
 For the first time, literary works are examined with literary
problems in mind.
 He made the classical tradition available to his age, and
thus, was a civilizing factor to his people.
 He confessed that his chief endeavor was to delight the age
in which he lived.

8.  Dryden had also a sound knowledge of the ancient classics
and to cap it all he had argumentative faculty, best suited to
the art of criticism.