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HANDBOOKS
OF
ENGLISH LITERATURE
EDITED BY PROFESSOR HALES
THE AGE OF DRYDEN
GEORGE BELL & SONS
LONDON: YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN
AND NEW YORK: 66, FIFTH AVENUE
CAMBRIDGE: DEIGHTON, BELL & CO.
THE
AGE OF DRYDEN
BY
R. GARNETT, LL.D.
[Illustration]
LONDON
GEORGE BELL AND SONS
1895
CHISWICK PRESS:--CHARLES WHITTINGHAM AND CO.
TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE, LONDON.
PREFACE.
The plan of a general history of English literature in a series of
introductory manuals, each dealing with a well-defined period and
individually complete, as set forth in the preface to Mr. Dennis's _Age
of Pope_, is advanced a stage further by the present volume.
The period described, from its chief literary figure, as _The Age of
Dryden_, and which might with equal propriety have been entitled _The
Age of the Restoration_, extends from 1660 to 1700. Some very important
writers, such as Milton and Clarendon, the composition or publication of
whose principal works falls within this epoch, have been passed over as
belonging in style and spirit to the preceding age; and in a few
instances this procedure has been reversed. In the main, however, the
last forty years of the seventeenth century constitute the period of
literary activity represented, and will be found to be demarcated with
unusual precision from both the preceding and the ensuing era.
The writer of a literary history embracing works on a great variety of
topics will soon discover that he is expected to impart more information
than he possesses. If in any measure endowed with the grace of modesty,
he will frequently feel compelled to acknowledge with Mr. Edward Gibbon
Wakefield, when, after having overcome every other difficulty in the
foundation of his colony, he came to provide it with a bishop: 'I fear I
do not very well understand this part of the subject myself.' Trusty
guides, however, fortunately are not wanting. The author's warmest
acknowledgments are due for the assistance he has derived from personal
communication with Professor Hales, and from the writings of Macaulay,
Matthew Arnold, Mr. Gosse, Professor Saintsbury, Mr. Churton Collins,
and Dr. Fowler. He is indebted for the Index to Mr. J. P. Anderson, of
the Reading Room of the British Museum.
R. G.
_October, 1895._
CONTENTS.
CHAP. PAGE
INTRODUCTION 1
I. JOHN DRYDEN AS A POET 7
II. POETS CONTEMPORARY WITH DRYDEN 42
III. LYRIC POETRY 67
IV. DRYDEN AND THE RESTORATION DRAMA 76
V. DRAMATIC POETS AND PLAYWRIGHTS 101
VI. THE LATER COMEDY OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 123
VII. CRITICISM 149
VIII. PHILOSOPHY 155
IX. WRITERS ON GOVERNMENT 168
X. HISTORIES AND MEMOIRS OF PUBLIC TRANSACTIONS 177
XI. AUTOBIOGRAPHY AND BIOGRAPHY 195
XII. DIVINITY 221
XIII. BUNYAN AND OTHER WRITERS OF FICTION 233
XIV. ESSAYISTS AND LETTER WRITERS, LITERARY HISTORIANS 248
XV. ANTIQUARIANS AND MEN OF SCIENCE 259
XVI. TRAVELLERS 272
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 281
INDEX 285
THE AGE OF DRYDEN.
INTRODUCTION.
The accession of Charles II. as king _de facto_, which in the political
history of England marks a Restoration, in her literary history marks a
Revolution. Not that the transition from one mode of writing and
thinking to another was instantaneous, or enjoined by legislative or
academical decree. It had long been slowly progressing, and its
unequivocal triumph would probably have come to pass sooner but for the
obstruction to the intellectual life of the nation occasioned by twenty
years of civil commotion. The magnitude of this impediment appears from
the fact that all the writings of even so great a scholar and poet as
Milton, produced during this interval, were of a polemical nature. When
at last society found sufficient stability to allow its members to write
for fame, emolument, or the extension of knowledge, it quickly became
manifest how wide a gulf yawned between the men of that day and the men
of twenty years ago. The new influence, indeed, had long been at work. A
comparison, for example, of the last of the old dramatists, Massinger
and Shirley, with their predecessors, evinces how much even in their day
the stage was losing in poetry, in imagination, and in the charm of
musical metre; how rapidly its personages were degenerating from vital
individualities into conventional types; how much, on the other hand,
always excepting Shakespeare's pieces from the comparison, it was
gaining in logic and construction. An examination of other forms of
literature would reveal a similar clarifying process, a steady
discouragement of the quaint affectation which was the bane of
Elizabethan literature, combined, unfortunately, with increasing
sterility of fancy, and growing insensibility to the noble harmonies of
which English prose is capable. An Elizabethan poet, indeed, Samuel
Daniel, had in some of his works almost anticipated the style of the
eighteenth century; in general, however, writers during the period of
the Civil War seem to our apprehension more or less encrusted with the
mellow patina of antiquity, conspicuously absent from nearly everyone
who wrote under Charles II. Hence the accession of this monarch, in
whose person the new taste might be said to be enthroned, is justly
regarded as the commencement of the new era. Charles's personal
influence on letters was not insignificant. 'The king,' says a
contemporary, Burnet, 'had little or no literature, but true and good
sense, and had got a right notion of style, for he was in France at a
time when they were much set on reforming their language. It soon
appeared that he had a true taste. So this helped to raise the value of
these men [Tillotson and others], when the king approved the style their
discourses generally ran in, which was clear, plain, and short.' Burnet,
therefore, had no doubt that correct principles of taste had been
established in England in Charles II.'s time, and partly by the king's
instrumentality--a dictum equivalent to the condemnation of all
preceding English literature as barbarous. Such was also the opinion of
one of the masters of English style in the succeeding century, David
Hume.
Charles II. was not a man who could under any circumstances have
sympathized greatly with the poetry of Spenser, or the prose of Raleigh
or Hooker. The native bent of his mind was, moreover, strengthened by
contingencies, among which Burnet justly gives a foremost place to his
residence in France. It must be added that this influence coincided with
a movement which, if for the time disadvantageous to English literature,
was, nevertheless, essential if it was to cease to be merely insular.
Until the time of Charles I. this literature, in so far as it owed
anything to external patterns of modern date, had been chiefly dependent
upon Italy. This might have long continued but for the decay of Italian
letters consequent upon the triumph of foreign oppression and spiritual
despotism throughout the peninsula. France stepped into the vacant
place, and developed a literature qualified to impress other nations no
less by its defects than by its virtues, by its want of elevation as
well as by its sprightliness and lucidity. Ere long French ideas of
style had pervaded Europe, and approximation to French modes was the
inevitable qualification for the great mission of human enlightenment
which was to devolve upon Britain in the succeeding century. Up to this
time the literature of England had resembled that of Spain, original and
racy of the soil, grander and more noble than the less dignified
literature whose statutes it was to keep and whose laws it was to
observe for a season, but on this very account comparatively out of
touch with the common needs of men. Had British writers continued to
indite the prose of Hooker and Milton, their ideas would have found no
entrance into the Continent; and grievous as was the declension from the
poetry and music of these great writers to the _sermo pedestris_ of
their successors, this was more than counterbalanced by the acquisition
of lucidity, logic, and cogency. The loss was but temporary, the gain
was everlasting; for the nineteenth century has found it possible to
restore much of the solemn pomp and musical and pictorial charm of
Elizabethan English, without parting with the clearness and coherence
which are indispensable for a literature that would deeply affect the
world. In becoming for a moment French, English literature first became
European--happy that the new influence did not, as elsewhere, penetrate
too far, and that when all of good that the foreigner could proffer had
been assimilated, speech and style regained their nationality. They did
not, however, thus revert to their old channel. 'The Restoration,' says
Matthew Arnold with justice, 'marks the real moment of birth of our
modern English prose.' This prose, indeed, has since been vastly
enriched by recurrence to antique models, but gains from this source
have always been felt to partake of the nature of importation. The vital
point of Restoration practice is accepted by all who do not deliberately
aim at the composition of poems in prose. 'It is,' says Arnold, 'by its
organism--an organism opposed to length and involvement, and enabling us
to be clear, plain, and short--that English style after the Restoration
breaks with the style of the times preceding it, finds the true law of
prose, and becomes modern; becomes, in spite of superficial differences,
the style of our own day.'
This age of metamorphosis, therefore, is one of the most important in
the history of English literature, and if the men of the Restoration
could have beheld themselves in their relation, not only to their
predecessors, but also to their successors, their complacency would not
have been unjustifiable. Their inability to apprehend their true
relation to either was a failing by no means peculiar to them, but it
has exposed them to a double measure of the ridicule of posterity, who
roar with laughter over Pepys's dictum that _A Midsummer Night's Dream_
'seems but a mean thing' after Sir Samuel Tuke's _Adventures of Five
Hours_, and are hardly more merciful to Dryden's conversion of _Paradise
Lost_ into an opera. It must be owned that the conception of poetry as
something awful, spiritual, and divine, became for a time extinct.
Shelley's Defence of Poetry, could such a work have existed, would have
seemed even more absurd to that age than Mr. Pepys's critical
deliverances do to ours. The excuse is that the particular work assigned
to the period was incompatible with a very high standard of poetry. This
work, as we have seen, was the regeneration of English prose by the
elimination of those elements which unfitted it for clear precise
reasoning and practical business, and the making English a tongue in
which Bunyan and Cobbett might be classics equally with Bacon and Sir
Thomas Browne. Such an achievement implies a prosaic age. If the latter
part of the seventeenth century could have produced Miltons, these would
have continued to write as Milton did: it was therefore fortunate for
the language in the long run that supreme genius should have for the
time died out, and have been replaced by a vigorous, terrestrial,
unideal genius that, having no oracle, required no tripod. For a time,
no doubt, the contrast must have seemed very dismal to any who yet
retained a perception of the richness and glory of the Elizabethan
epoch. But we, if we compare, not to say the letters of Cromwell, but
those of Charles I., with the despatches of Wellington, cannot but be
sensible of an enormous advance, not merely in the effectiveness of
speech, but in its dignity and simplicity, and of a great enrichment of
the language by the newly acquired power to deal with common things. For
this the men of the Restoration are to be thanked: and it must be added
that their work could not have been done if they had not thoroughly
believed in it; and that this belief necessitated, except in such
superior minds as Dryden's, contempt for their predecessors and a
genuine preference of their sorry foreign models to Shakespeare. The
revolution which they effected in matters of taste may be compared to
the contemporary revolution in politics. The Restoration government was
a sad decline from the enthusiastic visions of Milton and Vane, or even
from the wise and sturdy sway of Cromwell. Nevertheless the English
nation accepted and maintained it as the best arrangement which the
circumstances of the time admitted. So the new style in literature was
universally accepted because the old style was for a time effete;
because tasks had been imposed and needs had arisen to which it was
unable to respond; because, in short, a prosaic age craved a prosaic
literature. We look, therefore, on the Restoration period as anything
but an ideal epoch, but at the same time as a most momentous one; as one
to which we are indebted for much of our present command over the
resources of our language; and to which Britain owes very much of her
present power over the world. Acquaintance with its leading
representatives also proves that, if less picturesque figures than their
predecessors, they were not inferior in mental power. And, although the
age is justly regarded as in the main an age of prose; yet, as poets
respond most readily to the influences of their time, and are usually in
the van of intellectual revolutions, so the leading figure in the
literary history even of this epoch of prose is a poet--Dryden,
doubtless the most prosaic of all our great poets, but inferior to none
in intellectual force; and one whose poverty and pliability made him the
mirror of the less worthy tendencies of his time on the one hand, while
his higher aspirations and the force of his genius rendered him no less
the representative of its better qualities on the other. With Dryden,
therefore, we commence our survey.
CHAPTER I.
JOHN DRYDEN AS A POET.
John Dryden was born August 9, 1631, at Aldwinkle All Saints, between
Thrapston and Oundle, in Northamptonshire. He was the grandson of Sir
Erasmus Dryden, baronet, of Canons Ashby, in the same county; and his
father possessed a small landed property, which he transmitted to the
poet. Dryden maintained a connection with his native county all his
life, but it was never close; of the rest of the world, outside London
and Cambridge, he only occasionally saw anything. Few of our great
writers have been so thoroughly identified with the metropolis, of which
he became an inhabitant at an early age by his entry at Westminster
School, the precise date of which is unknown. Locke and South were among
his schoolfellows. He must have distinguished himself, having been
elected to Cambridge in 1650. Before leaving Westminster he had made his
first appearance as an author by the publication of a copy of verses on
the death from smallpox of his schoolfellow Lord Hastings, an
unintentional _reductio ad absurdum_ of the reigning fashion of
extravagant conceits in the style of Marino and Gongora. This
composition, otherwise worthless, foreshadows in a manner the whole of
Dryden's career. He was not one of the writers who themselves form the
taste by which they are ultimately judged, but rather one of those who
achieve fame by doing best what all desire to be done; the
representatives of their age, not its reformers. Little is known of his
career at Cambridge except that he was on one occasion 'discommoned and
gated' for some irregularity, that he took his degree in 1654, and,
though obtaining no fellowship, continued to reside until about 1657,
when he removed to London, with what precise plans or expectations is
uncertain.[1] The general knowledge displayed in his critical writings
(he scarcely ever, says Johnson, appears to want book-learning but when
he mentions books) justifies the conclusion that his time had been
employed in study: how greatly his mind had matured was attested by his
verses on the death of Cromwell (1658), which, if disfigured by some
conceits, exhibit a more sustained elevation than any contemporary
except Milton or Marvell could have attained. They were rivalled by his
congratulatory verses on the Restoration (1660), which naturally exposed
him to the reproach of inconsistency, but, as Johnson remarks, 'If he
changed, he changed with the nation.' There can, indeed, be no doubt
that the establishment of a settled government was approved by the good
sense as well as by the loyalty of the country, and although
circumstances were to make Dryden the most formidable of political
controversialists upon paper, his temperament was not that of a polemic,
and, save when he had committed himself too far to retreat, he was
always ready to acquiesce in what commended itself to the general
sentiment of his countrymen. The Restoration was also a joyful event to
men of letters, if for no other reason than that it re-opened the stage,
which, while as yet the periodical press was not, afforded the best
market and the readiest opportunity for literary talent. Dryden is said
to have had a play ready soon after the Restoration, and it is difficult
to understand, except from a certain inertness in his constitution, ever
most readily responsive to the spur of necessity, why he should have so
long delayed his appearance as a dramatist. The determining motive may
ultimately have been his marriage (not, apparently, a very fortunate
one) to Lady Elizabeth Howard, eldest daughter of the Earl of Berkshire,
in December, 1663; for in that year he produced his first play, _The
Wild Gallant_, and from that time we find him, for many years,
sedulously at work to earn money by a description of literary activity
notoriously uncongenial to him. Only one of his numerous plays, he tells
us, was written to please himself. The long list includes, _The Indian
Emperor_ (1665), in which, instead of reforming the weak blank verse of
his day, which would have been a most important service, he fell in with
the prevalent fashion of rhymed tragedy; _Tyrannic Love_ (1669), and
_The Conquest of Granada_ (1672), in which he carries rhymed bombast as
far as it would go, but at the same time displays surprising energy and
vigour; _Aurengzebe_ (1675), also a rhyming play, but a great
improvement; _All for Love_ (1678), and _Don Sebastian_ (1690), examples
of a purer taste; and _The Spanish Friar_ (1683), and _Amphitryon_
(1690), his best comedies. These pieces, the chief landmarks of his
dramatic career, will be subsequently considered.
Returning to the incidents of Dryden's life, we find little to chronicle
for several years except the births of three children, his elevation to
the laureateship in 1670, and various literary controversies of no
interest at this day except as they served to call forth the admirable
critical prefaces by which he did more for English prose style than his
poetry was at that time effecting for English verse. It is remarkable
how late his genius flowered, and how long he was in discovering his
proper path. He might never have found it at all but for the accidental
coincidence of the political controversies of his time with his official
position as poet laureate. This seemed to impose on Dryden the duty of
coming to the assistance of the Court, and his recognition of the
obligation produced (1681) _Absalom and Achitophel_, which at once gave
him the distinction of the greatest satirist our literature had yet
produced, the most consummate artist in the heroic couplet, and the most
cogent reasoner in rhyme. _The Medal_, occasioned by a medal struck by
the City in honour of the failure of the indictment of Shaftesbury, was
suggested as the subject of a poem by Charles II. The fact has been
doubted, and does not rest upon very strong external authority, but is
confirmed by a letter from Dryden to the Treasurer, Hyde, now in the
British Museum, shown by internal evidence to have been written after
the publication of _Absalom and Achitophel_, and consequently after the
striking of the medal on occasion of Shaftesbury's acquittal. In this,
after speaking of his expense in the education of his children,
complaining of the irregular receipt of his pension, and remarking that
even a quarter in advance 'is but the Jesuits' powder to my disease, the
fit will return a fortnight hence,' he adds, 'I am going to write
somewhat by his Majesty's command, and cannot stir into the country for
my health and studies till I secure my family from want.' This can
hardly have been anything but _The Medal_.[2] The appeal, after some
delay, brought Dryden an addition to his pension and a sinecure office
in the Customs.
This was the most active period of Dryden's life as a poet. A personal
altercation occasioned by an attack on _The Medal_ by Thomas Shadwell
produced _MacFlecknoe_, the bitterest of his satires, and in the same
year of 1682 appeared the second part of _Absalom and Achitophel_,
chiefly by Nahum Tate, but containing upwards of two hundred lines from
Dryden's own pen, dealing with his literary antagonists in a style of
sovereign mastery. Almost simultaneously appeared _Religio Laici_, 'a
serious argument in verse on the credibility of the Christian religion
and the merits of the Anglican form of doctrine and church government.'
Dryden's mastery over metrical ratiocination made the subject
attractive; but the Church of England had hardly done rejoicing in her
champion when she was scandalized by his exodus to the Church of Rome.
It is not likely that he was altogether insincere; but it can hardly be
doubted that the death of a monarch of taste and parts, who valued him
for his genius, and the accession of a successor who valued men only for
their theology, and gently hinted the fact by docking his salary of a
hundred pounds, had more to do with his resolution than he quite
acknowledged to himself. The position of the Protestant laureate of a
Popish sovereign called upon to bid Protestants rejoice over the birth
of a Popish Prince of Wales, generally in that age believed to have been
smuggled into the palace in a warming-pan, would assuredly have
presented difficulties even to those who found none in extolling George
II.'s patronage of the arts. Dryden was too deeply committed to expect
anything from the other side. The apology for his conversion was given
to the world in his _Hind and Panther_ (1687), a poem displaying even
augmented power of reasoning in rhyme, and which might have ranked with
his best but for the absurdity of the machinery. Soon afterwards the
unsoundness of the foundation on which he had built his fortunes was
demonstrated by the Revolution, which deprived him of the laureateship
and swept away all official sources of income. But for his change of
religion he might have taken the oaths to the new government without
censure, but he had broken down the bridges behind him, and seemed for a
moment to have left himself no alternative between want and infamy. A
third nevertheless remained, hard labour for the booksellers. To his
great honour, Dryden grappled with the situation with all the sturdy
tenacity of his lymphatic temperament, and in the same spirit which
Scott afterwards displayed under similar circumstances. He may probably
have reformed his system of living, which can hardly have been other
than extravagant; certain it is that if he could not keep entirely out
of debt, he at least kept out of disgrace, and that the years which
followed his apparent ruin, if not the most brilliant part of his life,
were the most honourable and honoured. It should be added that he
appears to have been largely assisted by the generosity of friends,
especially Dorset.
The work which Dryden now found to do, for which he possessed
extraordinary qualifications, and for which there was a genuine demand
in the age, was that of translation from the Latin classics. The
derivative character of Latin literature was not then recognized, and
Roman authors received the veneration due of right only to the greatest
of the Greeks. No one doubted that they gave unsurpassable models of
style in their respective branches, and not many among Dryden's
contemporaries questioned that he had given a definite and durable form
to English poetry. In 1667, a few days before the publication of
_Paradise Lost_, Pepys had overheard men saying that there would never
be such another English poet as Cowley, and Dryden now stood in Cowley's
place. It seemed then a highly desirable thing to bring these two
classics together, and Dryden was perfectly competent to do whatever was
expected of him. He would hardly have succeeded so well with the Greek
writers, even had his knowledge of the language been more extensive; but
he was well qualified to reproduce the more distinctive qualities of
Roman poetry, its dignity, sometimes rising into majesty, its manly
sense, its vehemence, pregnancy, and terseness. By 1693 he had rendered
all Persius, much of Juvenal (the remainder was supplied by his sons),
considerable portions of Ovid, the first book of Homer, and something
from Theocritus, Horace, and Lucretius. In this year he commenced a more
ambitious work, a complete version of Virgil. Of the merits of these
works we shall speak hereafter; it is sufficient to observe here that
they for a long time prescribed the laws of metrical translation in
English. It is pleasant to notice how many of them were executed at the
country seats of friends, where the old man, discharged from the strife
of faction and the noise and glare of theatres, relieved his
intellectual toil by the simple amusements of a country life. Virgil was
published in 1697, and remained, in the judgment of the age, at the head
of all English translations until Pope's _Homer_ came to dethrone it. It
was immediately succeeded by a greater work still, his _Fables_ from
Chaucer and Boccaccio. Though the representative of the literary taste
of his time, Dryden was by no means the representative of its
prejudices. He saw much more in Chaucer than his contemporaries were
capable of seeing, and, rightly judging that the antiquated style of the
old poet (who, however, appeared to him much more uncouth than he really
was) would effectually keep him out of readers' hands, he determined to
modernize and adapt some of his stories, to which narrative poems
founded on Boccaccio were afterwards added. The undertaking precisely
suited the genius of Dryden, which lay more in expressing and adorning
what he found ready to hand than in original invention, and his
_Fables_, published in 1699, are deservedly placed at the head of his
works. It is of course impossible that they should exhibit the same
intellectual strength as his argumentative and satirical poems, but this
is more than compensated by their superior attractiveness, the
additional scope offered for the display of art, and their comparative
freedom from everything that can repel. The same volume contained his
greatest lyrical effort, the universally known _Alexander's Feast_. He
received forty pounds for it; the Virgil is said to have brought him
twelve hundred; for the _Fables_ he got only three hundred. From a
private letter of about this date it appears that there was some idea of
his receiving assistance from the government, which he seems not
unwilling to accept, provided that it proves to require no sacrifice of
principle. It is not likely that he would have been allowed to die in
want; and indeed, early in 1700, a dramatic performance was got up for
his benefit. He died shortly afterwards (May 1st, 1700) in narrow
pecuniary circumstances, but in the enjoyment of a more unquestioned
literary supremacy among his contemporaries than any Englishman had held
before him. The cause of his death was the mortification of a toe
inflamed by gout. He was buried in Westminster Abbey. The funeral, for
the splendour of which Farquhar vouches in a contemporary letter, is
said to have been accompanied by tumultuary scenes, but the absence of
any reference to these in a malevolent contemporary libel, ascribed to
Thomas Brown, is sufficient evidence that they did not occur.
There are few English writers of eminence whom it is so difficult to
realize satisfactorily to the mind's eye as Dryden. Personal enough in
one respect, his writings are singularly impersonal in another; he never
paints, and seldom reveals himself, and the aid which letters or
reminiscences might have afforded is almost entirely wanting. No one
noted his conversation; his enemies' attacks and his friends' panegyrics
are equally devoid of those traits of character which might have
invested a shadowy outline with life and substance. The nearest approach
to a portrait is Congreve's, which leaves most of the character in the
shade, and even this is somewhat suspicious, for Congreve was Dryden's
debtor for noble praise, and the vindication of Dryden's repute had been
imposed upon him by the poet himself. The qualities, however, which he
commends are such as seem entirely reconcilable with the lymphatic
temperament which, partly on his own authority ('my conversation,' he
says, 'is slow and dull, my humour saturnine and reserved'), we have
seen reason to attribute to Dryden. We are told of his humanity and
compassion, of his readiness to forgive injuries, of a friendship that
exceeded his professions, of his diffidence in general society and
horror of intrusiveness, of his patience in accepting corrections of his
own errors, of which he must be allowed to have given a remarkable
instance in his submission to Jeremy Collier. All these traits give the
impression of one who, though by no means pedantic, was only a wit when
he had the pen in his hand, and entirely correspond with his apparent
aversion to intellectual labour, except under the pressure of want or
the stimulus of Court favour. When at length he did warm to his work, we
know from himself that thoughts crowded so rapidly upon him that his
only difficulty was to decide what to reject. Such a man may well have
appeared a negative character to his contemporaries, and the events of
his life were not of a nature to force his virtues or his failings into
notice. We can only say that there is no proof of his having been a bad
husband; that there is clear evidence of his having been a good father;
and that, although he took the wrong side in the political and religious
controversies of his day, this is no reason why he may not, according to
his light, have been a good citizen. His references to illustrious
predecessors like Shakespeare and Milton, and promising young men like
Congreve, indicate a real generosity of character. The moral defects of
his writings, coarse licentiousness, unmeasured invective, and equally
unmeasured adulation, belong to the age rather than to the man. On the
whole, we may say that he was one whom we should probably have esteemed
if we could have known him; but in whom, apart from his writings, we
should not have discovered the first literary figure of his generation.
Dryden's early poems, the _Heroic Stanzas_ on the death of Cromwell, the
_Astraea Redux_ on the Restoration, the panegyric of Clarendon, and the
verses on the Coronation, are greatly marred for modern readers by
extravagant conceits, but are sobriety itself compared to the exploits
of contemporary poets, especially the Pindaric. In a more important
particular, Dryden, as Scott remarks, has observed a singular and happy
delicacy. The topic of the Civil War is but slightly dwelt on; and,
although Cromwell is extolled, his eulogist abstains from any
reflections against those through whom he cut his way to greatness.
Isolated couplets in the other poems occasionally display that
perfection of condensed and pointed expression which Dryden habitually
attained in his later poems:
'Spain to your gift alone her Indies owes;
For what the powerful takes not, he bestows:
And France, that did an exile's presence fear,
May justly apprehend you still too near.'--_Astraea Redux._
These early attempts, however, were completely thrown into the shade by
the _Annus Mirabilis_, a poem on the memorable events of 1666, written
at Charlton, near Malmesbury, the seat of Lord Berkeley, where Dryden
and his family had resorted in 1665 to escape the plague, and published
in February, 1667. The author was then thirty-five, and, judged in the
light of his subsequent celebrity, had as yet achieved surprisingly
little either in quantity or quality. Youth is generally the most
affluent season of poetical activity; and those poets whose claim to
inspiration is the most unimpeachable--Spenser, Milton, Wordsworth,
Shelley--have irradiated their early writings with flashes of genius
which their maturer skill hardly enabled them to eclipse. This cannot be
said of Dryden, who of our great poets, unless Pope be an exception,
probably owed least to inspiration and most to pains and practice. Even
Pope at this age had produced _The Rape of the Lock_, _The Temple of
Fame_, _Eloisa to Abelard_, and his translation of the Iliad, enough to
have given him a high place among English poets. The _Annus Mirabilis_
was the first production of Dryden that could have insured him
remembrance with posterity, and even this is sadly disfigured with
conceits. After all, the poet finds only two marvels of his wonderful
year worthy of record--the Dutch war, which had been going on for two
years, and which produced a much greater wonder in the year ensuing,
when the Dutch sailed up to Gravesend and burned the English fleet; and
the Great Fire of London. The treatment of the former is very tedious
and dragging; there are many striking lines, but more conceits like the
following, descriptive of the English attack upon the Dutch East
Indiamen:
'Amidst whole heaps of spices lights a ball,
And now their odours armed against them fly;
Some preciously by shattered porcelain fall,
And some by aromatic splinters die.'
The second part, treating of the Fire of London, is infinitely better.
Dryden exhibits one of the most certain marks of a good writer, he rises
with his subject. Yet there is no lack of absurdities. The Deity
extinguishes the conflagration precisely in the manner in which Dryden
would have put out his own candle:
'An hollow crystal pyramid he takes,
In firmamental waters dipt above;
Of it a broad extinguisher he makes,
And hoods the flames that to their quarry drove.'
Nothing in Dryden is more amazing than his inequality. This stanza is
succeeded by the following:
'The vanquished fires withdraw from every place,
Or, full with feeding, sink into a sleep;
Each household genius shows again his face,
And from the hearths the little Lares creep.'
Other quatrains are still better, as, for instance, this on the burning
of St. Paul's:
'The daring flames peeped in, and saw from far
The awful beauties of the sacred quire;
But since it was profaned by civil war,
Heaven thought it fit to have it purged by fire.'
A thought so striking, that the reader does not pause to reflect that
the celestial sentence would have been equally applicable to every
cathedral in the country. Perhaps the following stanzas compose the
passage of most sustained excellence. In them, as in the apostrophe to
the Royal Society, in an earlier part of the poem, Dryden appears truly
the _vates sacer_, and his poetry becomes prophecy:
'Methinks already from this chymic flame
I see a city of more precious mould;
Rich as the town which gives the Indies name,
With silver paved, and all divine with gold.
'Already labouring with a mighty fate
She shakes the rubbish from her mounting brow,
And seems to have renewed her charter's date,
Which heaven will to the death of Time allow.
'More great than human now, and more august,
Now deified she from her fires doth rise;
Her widening streets on new foundations trust,
And opening into larger parts she flies.
'Before, she like some shepherdess did show,
Who sat to bathe her by a river's side;
Not answering to her fame, but rude and low,
Nor taught the beauteous arts of modern pride.
'Now like a Maiden Queen she will behold
From her high turrets hourly suitors come;
The East with incense and the West with gold
Will stand like suppliants to receive her doom.
'The silver Thames, her own domestic flood,
Shall bear her vessels like a sweeping train;
And often wind, as of his mistress proud,
With longing eyes to meet her face again.
'The wealthy Tagus, and the wealthier Rhine,
The glory of their towns no more shall boast;
And Seine, that would with Belgian rivers join,
Shall find her lustre stained and traffic lost.
'The venturous merchant, who designed more far,
And touches on our hospitable shore,
Charmed with the splendour of this northern star,
Shall here unlade him, and depart no more.'
For several years after _Annus Mirabilis_, Dryden produced but little
poetry apart from his dramas. Fashion, Court encouragement, and the
necessity of providing for his family, had bound him to what was then
the most conspicuous and lucrative form of authorship. In one point of
view he committed a great error in addicting himself to the drama. He
was not naturally qualified to excel in it, and could only obtain even a
temporary success by condescending to the prevalent faults of the
contemporary stage, its bombast and its indecency. The latter
transgression was eventually so handsomely confessed by himself that but
little need be said of it. Bombast is natural to two classes of writers,
the ardent and the phlegmatic, and those whose emotions require the most
working up are frequently the worst offenders. Such was Dryden's case,
and his natural proclivity was much enhanced by his adoption of the new
fashion of writing in rhyme, beloved at Court, but affording every
temptation and every facility for straining after effect in the place of
Nature. Mr. Saintsbury justly reminds us that Dryden was not forsaking
the blank verse of Shakespeare and Fletcher, the secret of which had
long been lost; nevertheless, although, as we shall see when we come to
his critical writings, he pleaded very ingeniously for rhyme in 1665,
his adoption of it was condemned by his maturer judgment and practice.
It was, however, fortunate in the long run; his rhyming plays, of which
we shall speak in another place, would not have been great successes in
any metre, while practice in their composition, and the necessity of
expressing the multitude of diverse sentiments required by bustling
scenes and crowds of characters, gradually gave him that command of the
heroic couplet which bestows such strength and brilliancy on his later
writings. His 'fourteen years of dramatic practice,' as Mr. Saintsbury
justly says, 'acted as a filtering reservoir for his poetical powers, so
that the stream, which, when it ran into them, was the turbid and
rubbish-laden current of _Annus Mirabilis_, flowed out as impetuous, as
strong, but clear and without base admixture, in the splendid verse of
_Absalom and Achitophel_.'[3]
This great poem, published in November, 1681, at the height of the
contest over the Exclusion Bill and its consequences, remains to this
day the finest example of political satire in English literature. The
theme was skilfully selected. James II. had not yet convinced the most
sceptical of the justice and wisdom of the Exclusion Bill, and its
advocates laboured under the serious disadvantage of having no strong
claimant for the succession if they prevailed in setting the Duke of
York aside. James's son-in-law, the Prince of Orange, would not, it is
safe to say, ever have been accepted by the nation as king if James's
folly and tyranny had not, years afterwards, given him the opportunity
of presenting himself in the character of Deliverer; and, failing him,
there was no one but the popular but unfortunately illegitimate
Monmouth. The character of Absalom seemed exactly made for this handsome
and foolish prince. The resemblance of his royal father to David, except
in matters akin to the affair of Bathsheba, was not quite so obvious.
Dryden might almost have been suspected of satirizing his master when he
wrote:
'When nature prompted, and no law denied
Promiscuous use of concubine and bride;
Then Israel's monarch after heaven's own heart
His vigorous warmth did variously impart
To wives and slaves; and, wide as his command,
Scattered his Maker's image through the land.
Of all the numerous progeny was none
So beautiful, so brave as Absolon.'
The management of Absalom was a difficult matter. With all his
transgressions, the rebel Monmouth was still beloved by his father, and
Dryden could not have ventured to treat him as his prototype is treated
by Scripture. He has extricated himself from the dilemma with abundant
dexterity, but at some expense to his poem. The catastrophe required by
poetical justice does not come to pass, and the conclusion is tame. All
such defects, however, are forgotten in the splendour of the execution.
The versification is the finest in its style that English literature had
yet seen, the perfection of heroic verse. The sense is weighty and
massive, as befits such an organ of expression, and, whatever may be
thought of Dryden's flatteries of individuals, there is no reason to
doubt the sincerity with which he here expresses his political
convictions. He unquestionably belonged to that class of mankind who
cannot discern principles apart from persons, and his contempt for
abstractions is pointedly expressed in one of his ringing couplets:
'Thought they might ruin him they could create,
Or melt him to that golden calf--a state.'
This is not a very high manifestation of the intellect in its
application to political questions, but it bespeaks the class of persons
who provide ballast for the vessel of the state in tempestuous times;
and, on the whole, _Absalom and Achitophel_ is a poem which the patriot
as well as the admirer of genius may read with complacency. The royal
side of the question could not be better put than in these lines placed
in the mouth of David:
'Thus long have I, by native mercy sway'd,
My wrongs dissembled, my revenge delay'd;
So willing to forgive the offending age,
So much the father did the king assuage.
But now so far my clemency they slight,
The offenders question my forgiving right.
That one was made for many, they contend;
But 'tis to rule; for that's a monarch's end.
They call my tenderness of blood, my fear;
Though manly tempers can the longest bear.
Yet since they will divert my native course,
'Tis time to shew I am not good by force.
Those heap'd affronts, that haughty subjects bring,
Are burdens for a camel, not a king.
Kings are the public pillars of the state,
Born to sustain and prop the nation's weight:
If my young Sampson will pretend a call
To shake the column, let him share the fall.
But oh, that he yet would repent and live!
How easy 'tis for parents to forgive!
With how few tears a pardon might be won
From nature pleading for a darling son!
Poor, pitied youth, by my paternal care
Raised up to all the height his frame could bear!
Had God ordain'd his fate for empire born,
He would have given his soul another turn:
Gull'd with a patriot's name, whose modern sense
Is one that would by law supplant his prince;
The people's brave, the politician's tool;
Never was patriot yet, but was a fool.
Whence comes it, that religion and the laws
Should more be Absolom's than David's cause?
His old instructor, ere he lost his place,
Was never thought endued with so much grace.
Good heavens, how faction can a patriot paint!
My rebel ever proves my people's saint.
Would they impose an heir upon the throne?
Let Sanhedrims be taught to give their own.
A king's at least a part of government;
And mine as requisite as their consent.
Without my leave a future king to choose,
Infers a right the present to depose.
True, they petition me to approve their choice;
But Esau's hands suit ill with Jacob's voice.
My pious subjects for my safety pray;
Which to secure, they take my power away.
From plots and treasons heaven preserve my years,
And save me most from my petitioners!'
It will be observed that 'the right the present to depose,' is mentioned
by Dryden as something manifestly preposterous, and the derivation of it
as a logical corollary from the Exclusion Bill is assumed to be a
sufficient _reductio ad absurdum_ of the latter. In the view of the
majority of the nation, this was sound doctrine until the Revolution,
which reduced Dryden's poem from the rank of a powerful political
manifesto to that of a brilliant exercise of fancy and dialectic. As
such, it will never cease to please and to impress. The finest passages
are, no doubt, those descriptive of character, whether carefully studied
portraits or strokes against particular foibles imputed to the poet's
adversaries, such as this mock apology for the parsimonious kitchen of
the Whig sheriff, Slingsby Bethel:
'Such frugal virtue malice may accuse,
But sure 'twas necessary to the Jews:
For towns, once burnt, such magistrates require,
As dare not tempt God's providence by fire.'
The elaborate and glowing characters of Achitophel (Shaftesbury) and
Zimri (Buckingham) it is needless to transcribe, as they are universally
known. It may be remarked that the character of the turbulent and
adventurous Shaftesbury does not match very well with that of the
Ulyssean Achitophel of Scripture, but Dryden has wisely drawn from what
he had before his eyes.
_The Medal_, which we have seen reason for attributing to the suggestion
of Charles II. himself, appeared in March, 1682. It is a bitter
invective against Shaftesbury, its theme the medal which his partisans
had very naturally struck upon the occasion of his acquittal in the
preceding autumn. It is entirely in a serious vein, and wants the grace
and urbanity of some parts of _Absalom and Achitophel_, but is no way
inferior as a piece of strong, vehement satire. Shaftesbury's conduct as
a minister, before his breach with the Court, is thus described:
'Behold him now exalted into trust;
His counsel's oft convenient, seldom just:
Even in the most sincere advice he gave
He had a grudging still to be a knave.
The frauds he learned in his fanatic years
Made him uneasy in his lawful gears;
At best, as little honest as he could,
And, like white witches, mischievously good.'
The second part of _Absalom and Achitophel_ appeared in November, 1682.
It was mainly the work of Nahum Tate, who imitated his master's
versification with success, but has numerous touches from the pen of
Dryden, who inserted a long passage of unparalleled satire against his
adversaries, especially Settle and Shadwell:
'Who by my means to all succeeding times
Shall live in spite of their own doggrel rhymes.'
The character of Shadwell (Og) is well known, but it is impossible to
avoid quoting a portion of it:
'The midwife laid her hand on his thick skull,
With this prophetic blessing--"Be thou dull;
Drink, swear and roar; forbear no lewd delight
Fit for thy bulk; do any thing but write.
Thou art of lasting make, like thoughtless men,
A strong nativity--but for the pen;
Eat opium, mingle arsenic in thy drink,
Still thou mayst live, avoiding pen and ink."
I see, I see, 'tis counsel given in vain,
For treason, botch'd in rhyme, will be thy bane;
Rhyme is the rock on which thou art to wreck,
'Tis fatal to thy fame and to thy neck.
Why should thy metre good King David blast?
A psalm of his will surely be thy last.
Darest thou presume in verse to meet thy foes,
Thou, whom the penny pamphlet foil'd in prose?
Doeg, whom God for mankind's mirth has made,
O'ertops thy talent in thy very trade;
Doeg, to thee, thy paintings are so coarse,
A poet is, though he's the poet's horse.
A double noose thou on thy neck dost pull,
For writing treason, and for writing dull.
To die for faction is a common evil,
But to be hang'd for nonsense is the devil.
Hadst thou the glories of thy king exprest,
Thy praises had been satire at the best;
But thou in clumsy verse, unlickt, unpointed,
Hast shamefully defiled the Lord's anointed.
I will not rake the dunghill of thy crimes,
For who would read thy life that reads thy rhymes?
But of King David's foes, be this the doom,
May all be like the young man Absolom;
And, for my foes, may this their blessing be,
To talk like Doeg, and to write like thee!'
Only a month before the appearance of this annihilating attack, Dryden
had devoted an entire poem to Shadwell, who had justly provoked him by a
scandalous libel. The title of _MacFlecknoe_ is derived from an Irish
priest and, with the exception of some good lines pointed out by Southey
and Lamb, a bad poet, already satirized by Marvell. It is a vigorous
attack, but not equal to the passage in _Absalom and Achitophel_, and
chiefly memorable inasmuch as the machinery evidently suggested that of
Pope's _Dunciad_.
Dryden's next poetical efforts, the dramatic excepted, were of quite
another kind. Simultaneously with the second part of _Absalom and
Achitophel_ appeared _Religio Laici_, an argument for the faith of the
Church of England as a _juste milieu_ between Popery and Deism. In one
respect this takes the highest place among the works of Dryden, for it
is the most perfect example he has given of that reasoning in rhyme of
which he was so great a master. There is not and could not be any
originality in the reasonings themselves, but Pope's famous couplet was
never so finely illustrated, except by Pope himself:
'True wit is nature to advantage drest;
What oft was thought, but ne'er so well exprest.'
At the same time the poetry hardly rises to the height which the theme
might have justified. There is little to captivate or astonish, but
perpetual admiration attends upon the masterly conduct of the argument,
and the ease with which dry and difficult propositions melt and glide in
harmonious verse. The execution is singularly equable; but perhaps
hardly maintains the elevation of the fine exordium:
'Dim as the borrow'd beams of moon and stars
To lonely, weary, wandering travellers,
Is reason to the soul: and as, on high,
Those rolling fires discover but the sky,
Not light us here; so reason's glimmering ray }
Was lent, not to assure our doubtful way, }
But guide us upwards to a better day. }
And as those nightly tapers disappear,
When day's bright lord ascends our hemisphere;
So pale grows reason at religion's sight,
So dies, and so dissolves in supernatural light.
Some few, whose lamp shone brighter, have been led
From cause to cause, to nature's sacred head,
And found that one First Principle must be:
But what, or who, that universal He;
Whether some soul, encompassing this ball,
Unmade, unmoved; yet making, moving all;
Or various atoms' interfering dance
Leap'd into form, the noble work of chance;
Or this great All was from eternity.-- }
Not even the Stagyrite himself could see, }
And Epicurus guess'd as well as he. }
As blindly groped they for a future state,
As rashly judged of providence and fate;
But least of all could their endeavours find
What most concern'd the good of human kind;
For happiness was never to be found,
But vanish'd from them like enchanted ground.
One thought content the good to be enjoy'd;
This very little accident destroy'd:
The wiser madmen did for virtue toil,
A thorny, or, at best, a barren soil:
In pleasure some their glutton souls would steep; }
But found their line too short, the well too deep, }
And leaky vessels which no bliss could keep. }
Thus anxious thoughts in endless circles roll,
Without a centre where to fix the soul:
In this wild maze their vain endeavours end:--
How can the less the greater comprehend?
Or finite reason reach infinity?
For what could fathom God were more than he.'
Dryden's next important poem brought obloquy upon him in his own day,
and must be perused with mingled feelings in this. Between 1682 and
1687, the date of the publication of _The Hind and the Panther_, the
laureate of the Church of England had, as we have seen, become a Roman
Catholic, and most reasonably desired to justify this step to the world.
The Court also expected his pen to be drawn in their service, and hence
the double purpose which runs through the poem, of vindicating his
personal change of conviction and of justifying the political measures
to which James had had recourse for establishing the supremacy of his
church. All this was perfectly natural; the extraordinary thing is that
so great a master of ridicule should have been blind to the ludicrous
character of the machinery which he devised to carry out his purpose.
The comparison of the true church to the milk-white hind, and of the
corrupt church to the beautiful but spotted panther, might have been
employed with propriety as an ornament or illustration of the poem, but
the endeavour to make it the groundwork of the entire piece is pregnant
with absurdity. Animals may very well be introduced as actors in a
fiction upon condition that they behave like animals; and their
faculties may even be expanded to suit the author's purpose so long as
their exercise is confined to visible and concrete things; but the
notion of a pair of quadrupeds discussing the sacraments, tradition, and
the infallibility of the Pope, is only fit for burlesque, and
constitutes, indeed, a running burlesque upon the poem. Dryden probably
took up the idea without sufficient consideration, and when he had made
some progress in his work he may well have been too enamoured with the
beautiful but preposterous exordium to surrender it to common sense.
Perverse and fantastic as is the plan of his poem, none of his works is
richer in beauties of detail. 'In none,' says Macaulay, 'can be found
passages more pathetic and magnificent, greater ductility and energy of
language, or a more pleasing and various music.' The power of reasoning
in rhyme is little inferior to that displayed in _Religio Laici_, and
the narrative character of the piece allows of a diversified variety
excluded by the simply didactic character of its predecessor. The
invective against Calvinists and Socinians, typified by the wolf and the
fox, is an average, and not beyond an average, example of Dryden's
matchless force. Near the end, it will be perceived, he suddenly
bethinks himself that, as the apologist of James's ostensible policy, it
is his business to recommend not persecution but toleration, and he caps
his objurgation with a passage conceived in a widely different spirit,
a severe though unintentional reflection upon the practice of his own
church:
'O happy pair, how well you have increased!
What ills in church and state have you redress'd!
With teeth, untried, and rudiments of claws,
Your first essay was on your native laws;
Those having torn with ease, and trampled down, }
Your fangs you fasten'd on the mitred crown, }
And freed from God and monarchy your town. }
What though your native kennel still be small,
Bounded betwixt a puddle and a wall;
Yet your victorious colonies are sent
Where the north ocean girds the continent.
Quicken'd with fire below, your monsters breed
In fenny Holland, and in fruitful Tweed;
And, like the first, the last affects to be
Drawn to the dregs of a democracy.
As, where in fields the fairy rounds are seen,
A rank sour herbage rises on the green;
So, springing where those midnight elves advance,
Rebellion prints the footsteps of the dance.
Such are their doctrines, such contempt they show }
To heaven above, and to their prince below, }
As none but traitors and blasphemers know. }
God, like the tyrant of the skies, is placed,
And kings, like slaves, beneath the crowd debased.
So fulsome is their food, that flocks refuse
To bite, and only dogs for physic use.
As, where the lightning runs along the ground,
No husbandry can heal the blasting wound;
Nor bladed grass, nor bearded corn succeeds,
But scales of scurf and putrefaction breeds;
Such wars, such waste, such fiery tracks of dearth
Their zeal has left, and such a teemless earth.
But, as the poisons of the deadliest kind
Are to their own unhappy coasts confined;
As only Indian shades of sight deprive,
And magic plants will but in Colchos thrive
So presbytery and pestilential zeal
Can only flourish in a commonweal.
From Celtic woods is chased the wolfish crew;
But ah! some pity e'en to brutes is due;
Their native walks, methinks, they might enjoy,
Curb'd of their native malice to destroy.
Of all the tyrannies on human kind,
The worst is that which persecutes the mind.
Let us but weigh at what offence we strike;
'Tis but because we cannot think alike.
In punishing of this, we overthrow
The laws of nations and of nature too.
Beasts are the subjects of tyrannic sway,
Where still the stronger on the weaker prey;
Man only of a softer mould is made,
Not for his fellows' ruin, but their aid;
Created kind, beneficent and free,
The noble image of the Deity.'
Dryden produced yet one more poem in the interest of the Court, his
_Britannia Rediviva_, an official panegyric on the birth of the Prince
of Wales, June, 1688. Literature has perhaps no more signal instance of
adulation wasted and prediction falsified. Many lines are spirited, but
others betray Dryden's fatal insensibility to the ridiculous in his own
person:
'When humbly on the royal babe we gaze,
The manly lines of a majestic face
Give awful joy.'
The raptures of the Byzantine courtiers over the imperial infant Protus
were nothing to this. Dryden did not want eloquence or dignity to
celebrate the hero if he could have found him; it was his and our
misfortune that when the hero did at last come to the throne the poet
had disqualified himself from extolling him. The landing in Torbay and
the triumphal march to London; the victory at the Boyne and the defence
of Londonderry were transactions as worthy of epical treatment as any
history records; but the only man in England who could have treated
them epically deemed them rather matter for elegy; and to have indulged
in elegy he must have fled to France. Public events and political and
religious controversy were no longer for him: stripped of his means and
position he betook himself to translation and playwriting as the
readiest means of repairing his shattered fortunes, and it was not until
the mellow sunset of his life that he turned to the compositions which,
of all he ever wrote, have given the most delight and the least offence,
his _Fables_. These, published at the beginning of 1700, include five
adaptations from Chaucer, and three stories told after Boccaccio, as
well as _Alexander's Feast_, and a few other pieces. It would not be too
much to say that this book achieved two things, either of which would
have immortalized a poet: it fixed the standard of narrative poetry,
except of the metrical romance or ballad class, and also that of heroic
versification. The latter, indeed, was thought for a time to have been
transcended by Pope, but modern ears have tired of the balanced seesaw
of the Popian couplet, and crave the ease and variety of Dryden,
restored to literature in Leigh Hunt's _Story of Rimini_, and afterwards
imitated by Keats in _Lamia_. The freedom which so great a master allows
himself in rhyming should be a lesson to modern purists: final sounds so
slightly akin as _guard_ and _prepared_, _placed_ and _last_, are of
continual occurrence. In matters still more important than versification
Dryden is in general equally admirable. He subjected himself to a severe
test in competing with Chaucer--severer than he knew, for Chaucer was
not yet, even by Dryden, valued at his full worth. In some respects
Dryden certainly suffers greatly by the comparison. He is pre-eminently
an intellectual poet, to whom the tree of knowledge had been the tree of
life; there is perhaps scarcely a thought in his writings that charms by
absolute simplicity and pure nature. Wherever, therefore, Chaucer is
transparently simple and unaffected, we find him altered for the worse
in Dryden. The very important part, however, of _The Knight's Tale_
which is concerned with courts, camps, and chivalry is even better in
Dryden than in his model. He might have defined his sphere in the words
of Ariosto, a poet who has many points of contact with him:
'Le donne, i cavalier, l'arme, gli amori,
Le cortesie, l'audaci imprese io canto.'
If this is true of portions of _Palamon and Arcite_, it is still truer
of _The Flower and the Leaf_ (then believed to be a genuine work of
Chaucer's), throughout a most brilliant picture of natural beauty and
courtly glitter, painted in language of chastened splendour. The other
pieces modelled after Chaucer are of inferior interest, yet all
excellent in their way. Two of the three tales from Boccaccio are
acknowledged masterpieces, _Cymon and Iphigenia_ and _Theodore and
Honoria_. The interest of the first chiefly consists in the narrative
itself, and that of the second in the way of telling it. The story,
indeed, though striking, is fantastic and hardly pleasing, but Dryden's
treatment of it is perhaps the most perfect specimen in our language of
_l'art de conter_.
An example of Dryden's descriptive power may be given in a passage from
_The Flower and the Leaf_:
'Thus while I sat intent to see and hear,
And drew perfumes of more than vital air,
All suddenly I heard the approaching sound
Of vocal music, on the enchanted ground:
An host of saints it seem'd, so full the choir; }
As if the bless'd above did all conspire }
To join their voices, and neglect the lyre. }
At length there issued from the grove behind
A fair assembly of the female kind:
A train less fair, as ancient fathers tell,
Seduced the sons of heaven to rebel.
I pass their forms, and every charming grace;
Less than an angel would their worth debase:
But their attire, like liveries of a kind,
All rich and rare, is fresh within my mind.
In velvet white as snow the troop was gown'd,
The seams with sparkling emeralds set around:
Their hoods and sleeves the same; and purpled o'er
With diamonds, pearls, and all the shining store
Of eastern pomp; their long-descending train
With rubies edged, and sapphires, swept the plain.
High on their heads, with jewels richly set,
Each lady wore a radiant coronet.
Beneath the circles, all the choir was graced
With chaplets green on their fair foreheads placed;
Of laurel some, of woodbine many more,
And wreath of Agnus castus others bore:
These last, who with those virgin crowns were dress'd,
Appear'd in higher honour than the rest.
They danced around; but in the midst was seen }
A lady of a more majestic mien; }
By stature, and by beauty, mark'd their sovereign queen. }
She in the midst began with sober grace;
Her servants' eyes were fix'd upon her face,
And as she moved or turn'd, her motions view'd,
Her measures kept, and step by step pursued.
Methought she trod the ground with greater grace,
With more of godhead shining in her face;
And as in beauty she surpass'd the choir,
So, nobler than the rest was her attire.
A crown of ruddy gold inclosed her brow,
Plain without pomp, and rich without a show:
A branch of Agnus castus in her hand
She bore aloft (her sceptre of command;)
Admired, adored by all the circling crowd,
For wheresoe'er she turn'd her face, they bow'd.
And as she danced, a roundelay she sung,
In honour of the laurel, ever young.
She raised her voice on high, and sung so clear, }
The fawns came scudding from the groves to hear, }
And all the bending forest lent an ear. }
At every close she made, the attending throng
Replied, and bore the burden of the song:
So just, so small, yet in so sweet a note,
It seem'd the music melted in the throat.'
One remarkable feature of the principal poets of the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries is the infrequency of the casual visitations of the
Muse. They seem to have hardly ever experienced an unsought lyrical
inspiration, or to have sung merely for singing's sake. Hence Dryden is
permitted to appear only twice in the _Golden Treasury_. His songs, to
be treated of more fully when we consider the lyrical poetry of the
period, though often instinct with true lyrical spirit, seem to have
been deliberately composed for insertion in his plays, and the same is
the case with almost the whole of what he would have called his
occasional poetry. His two chief odes, _Alexander's Feast_ and the
memorial verses to Anne Killigrew, were indubitably commissions; and it
is probable that few of the epistles, elegies, dedications, and
prologues which form so considerable a portion of his poetical works
were composed without some similar inducement. As a whole, this
collection is creditable to his powers of intellect, quickness of wit,
and command of nervous masculine diction. It is frequently the work of a
master, though conceived in the spirit of a journeyman. The adulation of
the patron or the defunct is generally fulsome enough; yet some
compliments are so graceful that it is difficult not to believe them
sincere, as when he apostrophizes the Duchess of Ormond:
'O daughter of the Rose, whose cheeks unite
The differing titles of the Red and White!
Who heaven's alternate beauty well display,
The blush of morning and the milky way.'
Or the conclusion of his epistle to Kneller:
'More cannot be by mortal art exprest,
But venerable age shall add the rest.
For Time shall with his ready pencil stand,
Retouch your figures with his ripening hand,
Mellow your colours, and imbrown the teint,
Add every grace which Time alone can grant;
To future ages shall your fame convey,
And give more beauties than he takes away.'
Or these from the epistle to his kinsman, John Driden, more likely than
any of the others to have been the unbought manifestation of genuine
regard:
'O true descendant of a patriot line!
Who while thou shar'st their lustre lendest thine!
Vouchsafe this picture of thy soul to see,
'Tis so far good as it resembles thee.
The beauties to the original I owe,
Which when I miss my own defects I show;
Nor think the kindred Muses thy disgrace;
A poet is not born in every race;
Two of a house few ages can afford,
One to perform, another to record.
Praiseworthy actions are by thee embraced,
And 'tis my praise to make thy praises last.'
The last couplet, excellent in sense, is an example of Dryden's one
metrical defect. He is not sufficiently careful to vary his
vowel-sounds.
* * * * *
Dryden's translations alone would give him a conspicuous place in
English literature. The most important, his complete version of Virgil,
has been improved upon in many ways, and yet after all it remains true,
that 'Pitt is quoted, and Dryden read.' Had he never translated Virgil,
his renderings or imitations of Juvenal, Horace, and others, would
suffice to entitle him to no inconsiderable rank among those who have
enriched their native literature from foreign stores. His principle of
translation was correct, and accords with that of the greatest of
English critics. Coleridge assured Wordsworth that there were only two
legitimate systems of metrical translation, strict literality, or
compensation carried to its fullest extent. Dryden most probably had not
sufficient Latin to be literal; but in any case his genius would have
disdained such trammels, not to mention the more prosaic, but not less
potent consideration, that what is written for bread must usually be
written in haste--a fact which weighed with Dryden when he discontinued
rhyme in his tragedies. Thus thrown back on the system of compensation,
he has richly repaid his authors for the beauties of which he has
bereaved them, by the beauties which he has bestowed--or which, as he
maintains, were actually latent in them--and has expressed many of their
thoughts with even enhanced energy. He has, in fact, made them write
very much as they would have written if they had been English poets of
the seventeenth century, and his work is less translation than
transfusion. They necessarily appear much metamorphosed from the
originals, but the fault is less that of Dryden than of his age. Could
he have attempted the same task in our day with equal resources of
genius, and on the same principles of workmanship, he would have
succeeded much better, for he would have enjoyed more comprehension of
the spirit of his originals than was possible in the seventeenth
century. The scholarship of that age had not vivified the information
which it had amassed; the idealized, but still vital conceptions of the
Renaissance had given place to inanimate conventionality; the people of
Greece and Rome appeared to the moderns like people in books; and such
warm, affectionate contact between the souls of the present and the past
as afterwards inspired Shelley's versions from Homer and Euripides was
in that age impossible.
* * * * *
So great and versatile were Dryden's powers that, after all that has
been said, his performances as a lyric poet, as a dramatist, and as a
critic remain to be spoken of, and his rank in each has to be recognized
as that of the foremost writer of his country in his own day. These will
be treated in their appropriate places. The present is, perhaps, the
most appropriate for a few words on his position as a poet. It is most
difficult to determine whether he and his successor, Pope, should be
placed at the bottom of the first class, or at the head of the second
class of great English poets. If the very highest gifts of
all--originality, creative imagination, unstudied music, unconscious
inspiration, lofty ideal, the power to interpret nature, are essential
conditions of rank in the first class, then assuredly Dryden and Pope
must be contented with the second. If not positively excluded by the
very nature of the case--if deficiency in the very highest qualities can
be compensated by consummate excellence in all the rest--if intellect
will supply the place of inspiration, and art that of nature--then they
stand so high above the average of the second rank that it seems
injurious not to place them in the first. The principle of exclusion,
logically carried out, might involve the elevation above them of other
writers whom we instinctively feel to be their inferiors; too absolute
an insistence, on the other hand, upon the claims of intellectual power
and perfect execution as qualifications for supreme poetical rank, must
result in preferring Pope to Dryden. Inferior to his successor in both
these respects, Dryden may still justly be preferred to him on the
ground of his more ample endowment with that divine insanity without
which, as Plato truly says, no one can be a poet. But this consideration
cannot be invoked in his favour against Pope without admitting his
inferiority to poets of the very first order; and it may be seriously
questioned whether any poet can belong to the first order who is so
exclusively a town poet as Dryden and Pope, and has so little knowledge
of nature. The resemblances and contrasts between him and Pope have been
frequently discussed; there are two other poets with whom comparison is
less hackneyed and not unprofitable. In fecundity, in versatility, in
energy, in the frequent application of his poetry to public affairs, in
his influence on contemporary literature, position as head of a school,
and incontestable superiority to all the poets around him, no less,
unfortunately, in bombast and incomprehensible breaches of good taste,
he strongly reminds us of Victor Hugo. Hugo, undoubtedly, was a much
greater lyrical poet than Dryden, and was enkindled by spontaneous
inspirations which never visited Dryden; yet the two are essentially of
the same genus; the differences between them are rather characteristic
of their eras than of themselves; and while Hugo's imagination would
have pined in the seventeenth century, Dryden's intellect and Dryden's
modesty would have been highly serviceable to Hugo in the nineteenth.
Another poet, whose talent and career offer many analogies to Dryden's,
is one whom Dryden himself disparages upon metrical grounds. Claudian,
like Dryden, is a remarkable instance of a poet owing a large portion of
his fame to his dexterous treatment of occasional subjects. As Dryden
drew material for his most powerful writings from the political and
religious controversies of his day, so Claudian found his themes in the
exploits of Stilicho and the misdeeds of Rufinus. Both have made
uninteresting subjects attractive by admirable treatment; both are
greatly indebted to art and little to nature; both in their latter
days[4] sought relief from politics in more ideal compositions, Dryden
in his _Fables_, Claudian in his _Rape of Proserpine_, a poem imbued
with the characteristic qualities of Dryden.
Among the greatest services which Dryden rendered to our language and
literature are to be reckoned his improvements in heroic versification,
of which he has left an unsurpassed model.
'Waller was smooth, but Dryden taught to join
The varying verse, the full majestic line,
The long-resounding march, and energy divine.'
His changes, nevertheless, were not always improvements. He is too
uniform, though not absolutely uniform, in confining the sense to the
couplet; and, in adding dignity to Chaucer's verse, he has lost
something of its sweetness. Leigh Hunt well observes: 'Though Dryden's
versification is noble, beautiful, and so complete of its kind that to
an ear uninstructed in the metre of the old poet all comparison between
the two in this respect seems out of the question and even ludicrous,
yet the measure in which Dryden wrote not only originated, but attained
to a considerable degree of its beauty in Chaucer; and the old poet's
immeasurable superiority in sentiment and imagination, not only to
Dryden, but to all, up to a very late period, who have written in the
same form of verse, left him in possession of beauties, even in
versification, which it remains for some future poet to amalgamate with
Dryden's in a manner worthy of both, and so carry England's noble heroic
rhyme to its pitch of perfection.' It need not be said that Pope's
magnificent eulogy solely respects Dryden as a rhyming poet. His blank
verse, though in general good enough for the stage, and better than that
of most of his contemporaries, is utterly destitute of the sweetness and
variety of the Elizabethans.
Dryden's works were edited with exemplary zeal and fidelity by Sir
Walter Scott. The standard modern edition is Mr. Saintsbury's; the one
most convenient for general use, Mr. Christie's.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] He was an ungrateful son of his _alma mater_, having pointedly
declared his preference for Oxford. Perhaps this disloyalty may be
connected with the appearance at Cambridge of a pamphlet against him, in
the form of a mock defence against "the censure of the Rota," in the
same year (1673).
[2] Malone thinks that it was the translation of _The History of the
League_, but Dryden can have hardly deemed country retirement necessary
for a work of this nature.
[3] It is perhaps worth remarking that, although not yet a Roman
Catholic, Dryden in this name employs the orthography, not of the
authorized English version, but of the Vulgate.
[4] In his dedication to the second book of _De Raptu Proserpinae_,
Claudian says:
'Tu mea plectra moves,
Antraque Musarum longo torpentia somno
Excutis et placito ducis ab ore sonos.'