1631-1700
[Sidenote: Anderson’s _Poets of Great Britain_.]
“Of the person, private life, and domestic manners of Dryden, very few
particulars are known. His picture by Kneller would lead us to suppose
that he was graceful in his person; but Kneller was a great mender of
nature. From the _State Poems_ we learn that he was a short, thick man.
The nickname given him by his enemies was _Poet Squab_. ‘I remember
plain John Dryden’ (says a writer in the _Gentleman’s Magazine_ for
February 1745, who was then eighty-seven years of age) ‘before he paid
his court to the great, in one uniform clothing of Norwich drugget.
I have eat tarts with him and Madam Reeve (the actress) at the
Mulberry Garden, when our author advanced to a sword and _Chedreux_
wig (probably the wig that Swift has ridiculed in _The Battle of the
Books_). Posterity is absolutely mistaken as to that great man. Though
forced to be a satirist, he was the mildest creature breathing, and
the readiest to help the young and deserving. Though his comedies
are horribly full of _double entendre_, yet ’twas owing to a false
compliance for a dissolute age; he was in company the modestest man
that ever conversed.’... From those notices which he has very liberally
given us of himself, it appears, that ‘his conversation was slow and
dull, his humour saturnine and reserved, and that he was none of those
who endeavour to break jests in company, and make repartees.’”
[Sidenote: Gilfillan’s _Life of Dryden_. *]
“As to his habits and manners little is known, and that little is worn
threadbare by his many biographers. In appearance he became in his
maturer years fat and florid, and obtained the name of ‘Poet Squab.’
His portraits show a shrewd but rather sluggish face, with long gray
hair floating down his cheeks, not unlike Coleridge, but without his
dreamy eye like a nebulous star. His conversation was less sprightly
than solid. Sometimes men suspected that he had ‘sold all his thoughts
to his booksellers.’ His manners are by his friends pronounced
‘modest,’ and the word modest has since been amiably confounded by his
biographers with ‘pure.’ Bashful he seems to have been to awkwardness;
but he was by no means a model of the virtues. He loved to sit at
Will’s coffee-house and be the arbiter of criticism. His favourite
stimulus was snuff, and his favourite amusement angling. He had a bad
address, a down look, and little of the air of a gentleman.”
[Sidenote: Christie’s _Memoir of Dryden_. *]
“Some notion of Dryden’s personal appearance may be gathered from
contemporary notices. He was of short stature, stout, and ruddy in the
face. Rochester christened him ‘Poet Squab,’ and Tom Brown always calls
him ‘Little Bayes.’ Shadwell, in his _Medal of John Bayes_, sneers at
him as a cherry-cheeked dunce; another lampooner calls him ‘learned and
florid.’ Pope remembered him as plump and of fresh colour, with a down
look. Lady de Longueville, who died in 1763 at the age of a hundred,
told Oldys that she remembered Dryden dining with her husband, and that
the most remarkable part of his appearance was an uncommon distance
between his eyes. He had a large mole on his right cheek. The friendly
writer of some lines on his portrait by Closterman says:
‘A sleepy eye he shows, and no sweet feature.’
He appears to have become gray comparatively early, and he let his
gray hair grow long. We see him with his long gray locks in the
portrait by which, through engravings, his face is best known to us,
painted by Kneller in 1698. The face, as we know it by that picture
and the engravings, is handsome, it indicates intellect, and sensual
characteristics are not wanting.”