Let us then leave this drama in the obscurity which it deserves, and
seek elsewhere, in studied writings, for a happier employment of a
fuller talent.
Pamphlets and dissertations in verse, letters, satires, translations and
imitations; here was the true domain of Dryden and of classical reason;
this the field on which logical faculties and the art of writing find
their best occupation.[435] Before descending into it, and observing
their work, it will be as well to study more closely the man who so
wielded them.
His was a singularly solid and judicious mind, an excellent reasoner,
accustomed to mature his ideas, armed with good long-meditated proofs,
strong in discussion, asserting principles, establishing his
subdivisions, citing authorities, drawing inferences; so that, if we
read his prefaces without reading his dramas, we might take him for one
of the masters of the dramatic art. He naturally attains a prose style,
definite and precise; his ideas are unfolded with breadth and clearness;
his style is well moulded, exact and simple, free from the affectations
and ornaments with which Pope's was burdened afterwards; his expression
is, like that of Corneille, ample and full; the cause of it is simply to
be found in the inner arguments which unfold and sustain it. We can see
that he thinks, and that on his own behalf; that he combines and
verifies his thoughts; that besides all this, he naturally has a just
perception, and that with his method he has good sense. He has the
tastes and the weaknesses which suit his cast of intellect. He holds in
the highest estimation "the admirable Boileau, whose numbers are
excellent, whose expressions are noble, whose thoughts are just, whose
language is pure, whose satire is pointed, and whose sense is close.
What he borrows from the ancients, he repays with usury of his own, in
coin as good, and almost as universally valuable."[436] He has the
stiffness of the logician poets, too strict and argumentative, blaming
Ariosto "who neither designed justly, nor observed any unity of action,
or compass of time, or moderation in the vastness of his draught; his
style is luxurious, without majesty or decency, and his adventures
without the compass of nature and possibility."[437] He understands
delicacy no better than fancy. Speaking of Horace, he finds that "his
wit is faint and his salt almost insipid. Juvenal is of a more vigorous
and masculine wit; he gives me as much pleasure as I can bear."[438] For
the same reason he depreciates the French style: "Their language is not
strung with sinew's, like our English; it has the nimbleness of a
greyhound, but not the bulk and body of a mastiff.... They have set up
purity for the standard of their language; and a masculine vigor is that
of ours."[439] Two or three such words depict a man; Dryden has just
shown, unwittingly, the measure and quality of his mind.
This mind, as we may imagine, is heavy, and especially so in flattery.
Flattery is the chief art in a monarchical age. Dryden is hardly skilful
in it, any more than his contemporaries. Across the Channel, at the same
epoch, they praised just as much, but without cringing too low, because
praise was decked out; now disguised or relieved by charm of style; now
looking as if men took to it as to a fashion. Thus delicately tempered,
people are able to digest it. But here, far from the fine aristocratic
kitchen, it weighs like an undigested mass upon the stomach. I have
related how Lord Clarendon, hearing that his daughter had just married
the Duke of York in secret, begged the king to have her instantly
beheaded;[440] how the Commons, composed for the most part of
Presbyterians, declared themselves and the English people rebels, worthy
of the punishment of death, and moreover cast themselves at the king's
feet, with contrite air to beg him to pardon the House and the
nation.[441] Dryden is no more delicate than statesmen and legislators.
His dedications are as a rule nauseous. He says to the Duchess of
Monmouth: "To receive the blessings and prayers of mankind, you need
only be seen together. We are ready to conclude, that you are a pair of
angels sent below to make virtue amiable in your persons, or to sit to
poets when they would pleasantly instruct the age, by drawing goodness
in the most perfect and alluring shape of nature.... No part of Europe
can afford a parallel to your noble Lord in masculine beauty, and in
goodliness of shape."[442] Elsewhere he says to the Duke of Monmouth:
"You have all the advantages of mind and body, and an illustrious birth
conspiring to render you an extraordinary person. The Achilles and the
Rinaldo are present in you, even above their originals; you only want a
Homer or a Tasso to make you equal to them. Youth, beauty, and courage
(all which you possess in the height of their perfection) are the most
desirable gifts of Heaven."[443] His Grace did not frown nor hold his
nose, and his Grace was right.[444] Another author, Mrs. Aphra Behn,
burned a still more ill-savored incense under the nose of Nell Gwynne:
people's nerves were strong in those days, and they breathed freely
where others would be suffocated. The Earl of Dorset having written some
little songs and satires, Dryden swears that in his way he equalled
Shakespeare, and surpassed all the ancients. And these bare-faced
panegyrics go on imperturbably for a score of pages, the author
alternately passing in review the various virtues of his great man,
always finding that the last is the finest;[445] after which he receives
by way of recompense a purse of gold. Dryden in taking the money, is not
more a flunkey than others. The corporation of Hull, harangued one day
by the Duke of Monmouth, made him a present of six broad pieces, which
were presented to Monmouth by Marvell, the member for Hull.[446] Modern
scruples were not yet born. I can believe that Dryden, with all his
prostrations, lacked spirit more than honor.
A second talent, perhaps the first in carnival time, is the art of
saying broad things, and the Restoration was a carnival, about as
delicate as a bargee's ball. There are strange songs and rather
shameless prologues in Dryden's plays. His "Marriage à la Mode" opens
with these verses sung by a married woman:
"Why should a foolish marriage vow,
Which long ago was made,
Oblige us to each other now,
When passion is decay'd?
We loved, and we loved as long as we could,
'Till our love was loved out in us both.
But our marriage is dead when the pleasure is fled;
'Twas pleasure first made it an oath."[447]
The reader may read the rest for himself in Dryden's plays; it cannot be
quoted. Besides, Dryden does not succeed well; his mind is on too solid
a basis; his mood is too serious, even reserved, taciturn. As Sir Walter
Scott justly said, "his indelicacy was like the forced impudence of a
bashful man."[448] He wished to wear the fine exterior of a Sedley or a
Rochester, made himself petulant of set purpose, and squatted clumsily
in the filth in which others simply sported. Nothing is more sickening
than studied lewdness, and Dryden studies everything, even pleasantry
and politeness. He wrote to Dennis, who had praised him: "They (the
commendations) are no more mine when I receive them than the light of
the moon can be allowed to be her own, who shines but by the reflection
of her brother."[449] He wrote to his cousin, in a diverting narration,
these details of a fat woman, with whom he had travelled: "Her weight
made the horses travel very heavily; but, to give them a breathing time,
she would often stop us,... and tell us we were all flesh and no
blood."[450] It seems that these were the sort of jokes which would then
amuse a lady. His letters are made up of heavy official civilities,
vigorously hewn compliments, mathematical salutes; his badinage is a
dissertation, he props up his trifles with periods. I have found in his
works some beautiful passages, but never agreeable ones; he cannot even
argue with taste. The characters in his "Essay of Dramatic Poesy" think
themselves still at college, learnedly quote Paterculus, and in Latin
too, opposing the definition of the other side, and observing "that it
was only _à genere et fine_, and so not altogether perfect."[451] In
one of his prefaces he says in a professorial tone: "It is charged upon
me that I make debauched persons my protagonists, or the chief persons
of the drama; and that I make them happy in the conclusion of my play;
against the law of comedy, which is to reward virtue, and punish
vice."[452] Elsewhere he declares: "It is not that I would explode the
use of metaphors from passion, for Longinus thinks them necessary to
raise it." His great "Essay on Satire" swarms with useless or long
protracted passages, with the inquiries and comparisons of a
commentator. He cannot get rid of the scholar, the logician, the
rhetorician, and show the plain downright man.
But his true manliness was often apparent; in spite of several falls and
many slips, he shows a mind constantly upright, bending rather from
conventionality than from nature, possessing enthusiasm and afflatus,
occupied with grave thoughts, and subjecting his conduct to his
convictions. He was converted loyally and by conviction to the Roman
Catholic creed, persevered in it after the fall of James II, lost his
post of historiographer and poet-laureate, and though poor, burdened
with a family, and infirm, refused to dedicate his "Vergil" to King
William. He wrote to his sons: "Dissembling, though lawful in some
cases, is not my talent: yet, for your sake, I will struggle with the
plain openness of my nature.... In the mean time, I flatter not myself
with any manner of hopes, but do my duty, and suffer for God's sake....
You know the profits (of 'Vergil') might have been more; but neither my
conscience nor my honor would suffer me to take them; but I can never
repent of my constancy, since I am thoroughly persuaded of the justice
of the cause for which I suffer."[453] One of his sons having been
expelled from school, he wrote to the master, Dr. Busby, his own former
teacher, with extreme gravity and nobleness, asking without humiliation,
disagreeing without giving offence, in a sustained and proud style,
which is calculated to please, seeking again his favor, if not as a debt
to the father, at least as a gift to the son, and concluding, "I have
done something, so far to conquer my own spirit as to ask it." He was a
good father to his children, as well as liberal, and sometimes even
generous, to the tenant of his little estate.[454] He says: "More libels
have been written against me than almost any man now living.... I have
seldom answered any scurrilous lampoon,... and, being naturally
vindictive, have suffered in silence, and possessed my soul in
quiet."[455] Insulted by Collier as a corrupter of morals, he endured
this coarse reproof, and nobly confessed the faults of his youth: "I
shall say the less of Mr. Collier, because in many things he has taxed
me justly; and I have pleaded guilty to all thoughts and expressions of
mine which can be truly argued obscenity, profaneness, or immorality,
and retract them. If he be my enemy, let him triumph; if he be my
friend, as I have given him no personal occasion to be otherwise, he
will be glad of my repentance."[456] There is some wit in what follows:
"He (Collier) is too much given to horseplay in his raillery, and comes
to battle like a dictator from the plough. I will not say 'the zeal of
God's house has eaten him up,' but I am sure it has devoured some part
of his good manners and civility."[457] Such a repentance raises a man;
when he humbles himself thus, he must be a great man. He was so in mind
and in heart, full of solid arguments and individual opinions, above the
petty mannerism of rhetoric and affectations of style, a master of
verse, a slave to his idea, with that abundance of thought which is the
sign of true genius: "Thoughts such as they are, come crowding in so
fast upon me, that my only difficulty is to choose or to reject, to run
them into verses, or to give them the other harmony of prose: I have so
long studied and practised both, that they are grown into a habit, and
become familiar to me."[458] With these powers he entered upon his
second career; the English constitution and genius opened it to him.