DRYDEN, AND THE RESTORED STUARTS.
The Court of Charles II. Dryden's Early Life. The Death of Cromwell.
The Restoration. Dryden's Tribute. Annus Mirabilis. Absalom and
Achitophel. The Death of Charles. Dryden's Conversion. Dryden's Fall.
His Odes.
THE COURT OF CHARLES II.
The antithetic literature which takes its coloring from the great
rebellion, was now to give place to new forms not immediately connected
with it, but incident to the Restoration. Puritanism was now to be
oppressed, and the country was to be governed, under a show of
constitutional right, more arbitrarily than ever before. The moral
rebound, too, was tremendous; the debaucheries of the cavaliers of Charles
I. were as nothing in comparison with the lewdness and filth of the court
of Charles II. To say that he brought in French fashions and customs, is
to do injustice to the French: there never was a viler court in Europe
than his own. It is but in accordance with our historical theory that the
literature should partake of and represent the new condition of things;
and the most remarkable illustrations of this are to be found in the works
of Dryden.
It may indeed with truth be said that we have now reached the most
absolute of the literary types of English history. There was no great
event, political or social, which is not mirrored in his poems; no
sentiment or caprice of the age which does not there find expression; no
kingly whim which he did not prostitute his great powers to gratify; no
change of creed, political or religious, of which he was not the
recorder--few indeed, where royal favor was concerned, to which he was not
the convert. To review the life of Dryden himself, is therefore to enter
into the chronicle and philosophy of the times in which he lived. With
this view, we shall dwell at some length upon his character and works.
EARLY LIFE.--Dryden was born on the 10th of August, 1631, and died on the
1st of May, 1700. He lived, therefore, during the reign of Charles I., the
interregnum of Parliament, the protectorate of Cromwell, the restoration
and reign of Charles II., and the reign of James II.; he saw and suffered
from the accession of William and Mary--a wonderful and varied volume in
English history. And of all these Dryden was, more than any other man, the
literary type. He was of a good family, and was educated at Westminster
and Cambridge, where he gave early proofs of his literary talents.
His father, a zealous Presbyterian, had reared his children in his own
tenets; we are not therefore astonished to find that his earliest poetical
efforts are in accordance with the political conditions of the day. He
settled in London, under the protection of his kinsman, Sir Gilbert
Pickering, who was afterward one of the king's judges in 1649, and one of
the council of eight who controlled the kingdom after Charles lost his
head. As secretary to Sir Gilbert, young Dryden learned to scan the
political horizon, and to aspire to preferment.
CROMWELL'S DEATH, AND DRYDEN'S MONODY.--But those who had depended upon
Cromwell, forgot that he was not England, and that his breath was in his
nostrils. The time of his departure was at hand. He had been offered the
crown (April 9, 1656,) by a subservient parliament, and wanted it; but his
friends and family opposed his taking it; and the officers of the army,
influenced by Pride, sent such a petition against it, that he felt obliged
to refuse it. After months of mental anxiety and nervous torture--fearing
assassination, keeping arms under his pillow, never sleeping above three
nights together in the same chamber, disappointed that even after all his
achievements, and with all his cunning efforts, he had been unable to put
on the crown, and to be numbered among the English sovereigns--Cromwell
died in 1658, leaving his title as Lord Protector to his son Richard, a
weak and indolent man, who, after seven months' rule, fled the kingdom at
the Restoration, to return after a generation had passed away, a very old
man, to die in his native land. The people of Hertfordshire knew Richard
Cromwell as the excellent and benevolent Mr. Clarke.
Very soon after the death of Oliver Cromwell, Dryden, not yet foreseeing
the Restoration, presented his tribute to the Commonwealth, in the shape
of "Heroic Stanzas on the Death of Oliver Cromwell; written after his
funeral." A few stanzas will show his political principles, and are in
strange contrast with what was soon to follow:
How shall I then begin, or where conclude,
To draw a fame so truly circular?
For, in a round, what order can be showed,
Where all the parts so equal perfect are?
He made us freemen of the continent,
Whom nature did like captives treat before;
To nobler preys the English lion sent,
And taught him first in Belgian walks to roar.
His ashes in a peaceful urn shall rest;
His name a great example stands, to show
How strangely high endeavors may be blest,
Where piety and valor jointly go.
THE RESTORATION.--Cromwell died in September: early in the next year these
stanzas were written. One year later was the witness of a great event,
which stirred England to its very depths, because it gave vent to
sentiments for some time past cherished but concealed. The Long Parliament
was dissolved on the 10th of March, 1660. The new parliament meets April
25th; it is almost entirely of Royalist opinions; it receives Sir John
Granville, the king's messenger, with loud acclamations; the old lords
come forth once more in velvet, ermine, and lawn. It is proclaimed that
General Monk, the representative of the army, soon to be Duke of
Albemarle, has gone from St. Albans to Dover,
To welcome home again discarded faith.
The strong are as tow, and the maker as a spark. From the house of every
citizen, lately vocal with the praises of the Protector, issues a subject
ready to welcome his king with the most enthusiastic loyalty.
Royal proclamations follow each other in rapid succession: at length the
eventful day has come--the 29th of May, 1660. All the bells of London are
ringing their merriest chimes; the streets are thronged with citizens in
holiday attire; the guilds of work and trade are out in their uniforms;
the army, late the organ of Cromwell, is drawn up on Black Heath, and is
cracking its myriad throat with cheers. In the words of Master Roger
Wildrake, "There were bonfires flaming, music playing, rumps roasting,
healths drinking; London in a blaze of light from the Strand to
Rotherhithe." At length the sound of herald trumpets is heard; the king is
coming; a cry bursts forth which the London echoes have almost forgotten:
"God save the king! The king enjoys his own again!"
It seems to the dispassionate reader almost incredible that the English
people, who shed his father's blood, who rallied round the Parliament, and
were fulsome in their praises of the Protector, should thus suddenly
change; but, allowing for "the madness of the people," we look for
strength and consistency to the men of learning and letters. We feel sure
that he who sang his eulogy of Cromwell dead, can have now no lyric burst
for the returning Stuart. We are disappointed.
DRYDEN'S TRIBUTE.--The first poetic garland thrown at the feet of the
restored king was Dryden's _Astræa Redux_, a poem on _The happy
restoration of his sacred majesty Charles II._ To give it classic force,
he quotes from the Pollio as a text.
Jam redit et virgo, redeunt saturnia regna;
thus hailing the saturnian times of James I. and Charles I. A few lines of
the poem complete the curious contrast:
While our cross stars deny us Charles his bed,
Whom our first flames and virgin love did wed,
For his long absence church and state did groan;
Madness the pulpit, faction seized the throne.
* * * * *
How great were then our Charles his woes, who thus
Was forced to suffer for himself and us.
* * * * *
Oh happy prince whom Heaven hath taught the way,
By paying vows to have more vows to pay:
Oh happy age! oh, times like those alone
By Fate reserved for great Augustus' throne,
When the joint growth of arts and arms foreshow
The world a monarch, and that monarch you!
The contrast assumes a clearer significance, if we remember that the real
time which elapsed between the publications of these two poems was less
than two years.
This is greatly to Dryden's shame, as it is to Waller's, who did the same
thing; but it must be clearly pointed out that in this the poets were
really a type of all England, for whose suffrages they wrote thus. From
this time the career of Dryden was intimately associated with that of the
restored king. He wrote an ode for the coronation in 1661, and a poetical
tribute to Clarendon, the Lord High Chancellor, the king's better self.
To Dryden, as a writer of plays, we shall recur in a later chapter, when
the other dramatists of the age will be considered.
A concurrence of unusual events in 1665, brought forth the next year the
"Annus Mirabilis," or _Wonderful Year_, in which these events are recorded
with the minuteness of a chronicle. This is indeed its chief value; for,
praised as it was at the time, it does not so well bear the analysis of
modern criticism.
ANNUS MIRABILIS.--It describes the great naval battle with the Dutch; the
fire of London; and the ravages of the plague. The detail with which these
are described, and the frequent felicity of expression, are the chief
charm of the poem. In the refreshingly simple diary of Pepy's, we find
this jotting under date of 3d February, 1666-7: "_Annus Mirabilis_. I am
very well pleased this night with reading a poem I brought home with me
last night from Westminster Hall, of Dryden's, upon the present war: a
very good poem."
Dryden's subserviency, aided by the power of his pen, gained its reward.
In 1668, on the death of Sir William Davenant, he was appointed Laureate,
and historiographer to the king, with an annual salary of £200. He soon
became the most famous literary man in England. Milton, the Puritan, was
producing his wonderful visions in darkened retirement, while at court, or
in the seat of honor on the stage, or in his sacred chair at Will's
Coffee-house in Covent Garden (near the fire-place in winter, and carried
into the balcony in summer), "Glorious John" was the observed of all
observers. Of Will's Coffee-house, Congreve says, in _Love for Love_, "Oh,
confound that Will's Coffee-house; it has ruined more young men than the
Royal Oak Lottery:" this speaks at once of the fashion and social license
of the time.
Charles II. was happy to have so fluent a pen, to lampoon or satirize his
enemies, or to make indecent comedies for his amusement; while Dryden's
aim seems to have been scarcely higher than preferment at court and
honored contemporary notoriety for his genius. But if the great majority
lauded and flattered him, he was not without his share in those quarrels
of authors, which were carried on at that day not only with goose-quills,
but with swords and bludgeons. It is recorded that he was once waylaid by
the hired ruffians of the Earl of Rochester, and beaten almost to death:
these broils generally had a political as well as a social significance.
In his quarrels with the literary men, he used the shafts of satire. His
contest with Thomas Shadwell has been preserved in his satire called
McFlecknoe. Flecknoe was an Irish priest who wrote dull plays; and in this
poem Dryden proposes Shadwell as his successor on the throne of dulness.
It was the model or suggester of Pope's _Dunciad_; but the model is by no
means equal to the copy.
ABSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL.--Nothing which he had yet written is so true an
index to the political history as his "Absalom and Achitophel," which he
published in 1681. The history may be given in few words. Charles II. had
a natural son by an obscure woman named Lucy Walters. This boy had been
created Duke of Monmouth. He was put forward by the designing Earl of
Shaftesbury as the head of a faction, and as a rival to the Duke of York.
To ruin the Duke was their first object; and this they attempted by
inflaming the people against his religion, which was Roman Catholic. If
they could thus have him and his heirs put out of the succession to the
throne, Monmouth might be named heir apparent; and Shaftesbury hoped to be
the power behind the throne.
Monmouth was weak, handsome, and vain, and was in truth a puppet in wicked
hands; he was engaged in the Rye-house plot, and schemed not only against
his uncle, but against the person of his father himself. To satirize and
expose these plots and plotters, Dryden (at the instance of the king, it
is said,) wrote _Absalom and Achitophel_, in which are introduced, under
Scripture names, many of the principal political characters of the day,
from the king down to Titus Oates. The number of the names is 61. Charles
is, of course, David, and Monmouth, the wayward son, is Absalom.
Shaftesbury is Achitophel, and Dr. Oates figures as Corah. The Ethnic plot
is the popish plot, and Gath is that land of exile where Charles so long
resided. Strong in his praise of David, the poet is discreet and delicate
in his handling of Absalom; his instinct is as acute as that of Falstaff:
"Beware! instinct, the lion will not touch a true prince," or touch him so
gently that the lion at least will not suffer. Thus, Monmouth is
represented as
Half loath, and half consenting to the ill,
For royal blood within him struggled still;
He thus replied: "And what pretence have I
To take up arms for public liberty?
My father governs with unquestioned right,
The faith's defender and mankind's delight;
Good, gracious, just, observant of the laws,
And heaven by wonders has espoused his cause."
But he may, and does, roundly rate Achitophel, who tempts with satanic
seductions, and proves to the youth, from the Bible, his right to the
succession, peaceably or forcibly obtained. Among those who conspired with
Monmouth were honest hearts seeking for the welfare of the realm. Chief of
these were Lord Russel and Sidney, of whom the latter was in favor of a
commonwealth; and the former, only sought the exclusion of the Roman
Catholic Duke of York, and the redress of grievances, but not the
assassination or deposition of the king. Both fell on the scaffold; but
they have both been considered martyrs in the cause of civil liberty.
And here we must pause to say that in the literary structure, language,
and rhythm of the poem, Dryden had made a great step toward that mastery
of the rhymed pentameter couplet, which is one of his greatest claims to
distinction.
DEATH OF CHARLES.--At length, in 1685, Charles II., after a sudden and
short illness, was gathered to his fathers. His life had been such that
England could not mourn: he had prostituted female honor, and almost
destroyed political virtue; sold English territory and influence to France
for beautiful strumpets; and at the last had been received, on his
death-bed, into, the Roman Catholic Church, while nominally the supreme
head of the Anglican communion. England cannot mourn, but Dryden tortures
language into crocodile tears in his _Threnodia Augustalis, sacred to the
happy memory of King Charles II_. A few lines will exhibit at once the
false statements and the absolute want of a spark of sorrow--dead,
inanimate words, words, words!
Thus long my grief has kept me drunk:
Sure there 's a lethargy in mighty woe;
Tears stand congealed, and cannot flow.
........
Tears for a stroke foreseen, afford relief;
But unprovided for a sudden blow,
Like Niobe, we marble grow,
And petrify with grief!
DRYDEN'S CONVERSION.--The Duke of York succeeded as James II.: he was an
open and bigoted Roman Catholic, who at once blazoned forth the death-bed
conversion of his brother; and who from the first only limited his hopes
to the complete restoration of the realm to popery. Dryden's course was at
once taken; but his instinct was at fault, as but three short years were
to show. He gave in his adhesion to the new king's creed; he who had been
Puritan with the commonwealth, and churchman with the Restoration, became
Roman Catholic with the accession of a popish king. He had written the
_Religio Laici_ to defend the tenets of the Church of England against the
attacks of papists and dissenters; and he now, to leave the world in no
doubt as to his reasons and his honesty, published a poem entitled the
_Hind and Panther_, which might in his earlier phraseology have been
justly styled "The Christian experience of pious John Dryden." It seems a
shameless act, but it is one exponent of the loyalty of that day. There
are some critics who believe him to have been sincere, and who insist that
such a man "is not to be sullied by suspicion that rests on what after all
might prove a fortuitous coincidence." But such frequent changes with the
government--with a reward for each change--tax too far even that charity
which "thinketh no evil." Dryden's pen was eagerly welcomed by the Roman
Catholics. He began to write at once in their interest, and thus to
further his own. Dr. Johnson says: "That conversion will always be
suspected which apparently concerns with interest. He that never finds his
error till it hinders his progress toward wealth or honor, will not be
thought to love truth only for herself."
In this long poem of 2,000 lines, we have the arguments which conducted
the poet to this change. The different beasts represent the different
churches and sects. The Church of Rome is thus represented:
A milk-white hind, immortal and unchanged,
Fed on the lawns, and in the forest ranged;
Without unspotted, innocent within,
She feared no danger, for she knew no sin.
The other beasts were united to destroy her; but she could "venture to
drink with them at the common watering-place under the protection of her
friend the kingly lion."
The Panther is the Church of England:
The Panther, sure the noblest, next the hind,
And fairest creature of the spotted kind;
Oh, could her inborn stains be washed away,
She were too good to be a beast of prey!
Then he Introduces.--
The _Bloody Bear_, an _Independent_ beast; the _Quaking Hare_, for the
_Quakers_; the _Bristled Baptist Boar_.
In this fable, quite in the style of Æsop, we find the Dame, _i.e._, the
Hind, entering into the subtle points of theology, and trying to prove her
position. The poem, as might be supposed; was well received, and perhaps
converted a few to the monarch's faith; for who were able yet to foresee
that the monarch would so abuse his power, as to be driven away from his
throne amid the execrations of his subjects.
The harmony of Dryden and the power of James could control progressive
England no longer. Like one man, the nation rose and uttered a mighty cry
to William of Orange. James, trembling, flies hither and thither, and at
length, fearing the fate of his father, he deserts his throne; the commons
call this desertion abdication, and they give the throne to his nephew
William and his daughter Mary. Such was the end of the restored Stuarts;
and we can have no regret that it is: whatever sympathy we may have had
with the sufferings of Charles I.,--and the English nation shared it, as
is proved by the restoration of his son,--we can have none with his
successors: they threw away their chances; they dissipated the most
enthusiastic loyalty; they squandered opportunities; and had no enemies,
even the bitterest, who were more fatal than themselves. And now it was
manifest that Dryden's day was over. Nor does he shrink from his fate. He
neither sings a Godspeeding ode to the runaway king, nor a salutatory to
the new comers.
DRYDEN'S FALL.--Stripped of his laureate-wreath and all his emoluments, he
does not sit down to fold his hands and repine. Sixty years of age, he
girds up his loins to work manfully for his living. He translates from the
classics; he renders Chaucer into modern English: in 1690 he produced a
play entitled Don Sebastian, which has been considered his dramatic
master-piece, and, as if to inform the world that age had not dimmed the
fire of his genius, he takes as his caption,--
... nec tarda senectus
Debilitat vires animi, mutat que vigorem.
This latter part of his life claims a true sympathy, because he is every
inch a man.
It must not be forgotten that Dryden presented Chaucer to England anew,
after centuries of neglect, almost oblivion; for which the world owes him
a debt of gratitude. This he did by modernizing several of the Canterbury
Tales, and thus leading English scholars to seek the beauties and
instructions of the original. The versions themselves are by no means well
executed, it must be said. He has lost the musical words and fresh diction
of the original, as a single comparison between the two will clearly show.
Perhaps there is no finer description of morning than is contained in
these lines of Chaucer:
The besy lark, the messager of day,
Saleweth in hir song the morwe gray;
And firy Phebus riseth up so bright
That all the orient laugheth of the sight.
How expressive the words: the _busy_ lark; the sun rising like a strong
man; _all the orient_ laughing. The following version by Dryden, loses at
once the freshness of idea and the felicity of phrase:
The morning lark, the messenger of day,
Saluted in her song the morning gray;
And soon the sun arose with beams so bright
That all the horizon laughed to see the joyous sight.
The student will find this only one of many illustrations of the manner
in which Dryden has belittled Chaucer in his versions.
ODES.--Dryden has been regarded as the first who used the heroic couplet
with entire mastery. In his hands it is bold and sometimes rugged, but
always powerful and handled with great ease: he fashioned it for Pope to
polish. Of this, his larger poems are full of proof. But there is another
verse, of irregular rhythm, in which he was even more successful,--lyric
poetry as found in the irregular ode, varying from the short line to the
"Alexandrine dragging its slow length along;" the staccato of a harp
ending in a lengthened flow of melody.
Thus long ago,
Ere heaving billows learned to blow,
While organs yet were mute;
Timotheus to his breathing flute
And sounding lyre
Could swell the soul to rage, or kindle soft desire.
When he became a Roman Catholic, St. Cecilia, "inventress of the vocal
frame," became his chief devotion; and the _Song on St. Cecilia's Day_ and
_An Ode to St. Cecilia_, are the principal illustrations of this new
power.
Gray, who was remarkable for his own lyric power, told Dr. Beattie that if
there were any excellence in his own numbers, he had learned it wholly
from Dryden.
The _Ode on St. Cecilia's Day_, also entitled "_Alexander's Feast_," in
which he portrays the power of music in inspiring that famous monarch to
love, pity, and war, has to the scholar the perfect excellence of the best
Greek lyric. It ends with a tribute to St. Cecilia.
At last divine Cecilia came,
Inventress of the vocal frame:
Now let Timotheus yield the prize,
Or both divide the crown.
He raised a mortal to the skies;
She drew an angel down,
Dryden's prose, principally in the form of prefaces and dedications, has
been admired by all critics; and one of the greatest has said, that if he
had turned his attention entirely in that direction, he would have been
_facile princeps_ among the prose writers of his day. He has, in general
terms, the merit of being the greatest refiner of the English language,
and of having given system and strength to English poetry above any writer
up to his day; but more than all, his works are a transcript of English
history--political, religious, and social--as valuable as those of any
professed historian. Dryden married Lady Elizabeth Howard, the daughter of
an earl, who, it is said, was not a congenial companion, and who
afterwards became insane. He died from a gangrene in the foot. He declared
that he died in the profession of the Roman Catholic faith; which raises a
new doubt as to his sincerity in the change. Near the monument of old
father Chaucer, in Westminster, is one erected, by the Duke of Buckingham,
to Dryden. It merely bears name and date, as his life and works were
supposed to need no eulogy.