SECTION I.

THE

DRAMATIC WORKS

OF

JOHN DRYDEN

WITH A

LIFE OF THE AUTHOR

BY

SIR WALTER SCOTT, BART.

EDITED BY GEORGE SAINTSBURY

_VOL. I._

EDINBURGH: WILLIAM PATERSON

_1882_

[Illustration: _M' John Dryden._]

THE DRAMATIC WORKS

OF

JOHN DRYDEN

EDITOR'S PREFACE.

The best-edited book in the English language is, according to Southey,

Wilkin's edition of Sir Thomas Browne. If Sir Walter Scott's "Dryden"

cannot challenge this highest position, it certainly deserves the credit

of being one of the best-edited books on a great scale in English, save

in one particular,--the revision of the text. In reading it long ago,

with no other object than to make acquaintance with Dryden; again, more

recently and more minutely, for the purpose of a course of lectures

which I was asked to deliver at the Royal Institution; and

again, more recently and more minutely still, for the purposes of a

monograph on the same subject in Mr. Morley's series of _English

Men of Letters_, I have had tolerably ample opportunities of

recognising its merits. It was therefore with pleasure that I found,

on being consulted by the publisher of these volumes as to a re-issue of

it, that Mr. Paterson was as averse as I was myself to any attempt to

efface or to mutilate Scott's work. Neither the number, the order, nor

the contents of Scott's eighteen volumes will be altered in any way. The

task which I propose to myself is a sufficiently modest one, that of

re-editing Scott's "Dryden," as--putting differences of ability out of

question--he might have re-edited it himself had he been alive to-day;

that is to say, to set right errors into which he fell either by

inadvertence or deficiency of information, to correct the text in

accordance with modern requirements, and to add the results of the

students of Dryden during the last three quarters of a century in matter

of text as well as of comment.

The first part of the plan requires no further remarks, and the last not

much. No literary work of Dryden's of any great importance has been

discovered since Scott's edition appeared. A few letters will have to be

added, though I am sorry to say that I cannot promise my readers the

satisfaction which Dryden students chiefly desire,--the satisfaction of

reading, or at least knowing the contents of, the Knole correspondence.

In reply to a request of mine, Lord Sackville has positively, though

very courteously, refused to lift the embargo which his predecessors

have placed on this, nor have my inquiries succeeded as yet in

discovering any hitherto unpublished letters, though the present

collection will for the first time present those which have been

published in a complete form. I think that it may not be uninteresting

for readers to have an opportunity of comparing with the undoubted work

two plays, "The Mistaken Husband," and "The Modish Lovers," which good

authorities have suspected to be possibly Dryden's. These will

accordingly be given in the last volume of the plays. A bibliography of

Dryden, and writers on Dryden, and a certain number of _pieces

justificatives_ of various kinds, will also be added, as well as

notes, and where the subject seems to demand them, appendices on points

of importance. These additional notes and appendices will be bracketed

and signed ED., Dryden's own notes, which are rare, will be indicated by

a D., and Scott's will stand without indication.

The principles upon which I have proceeded in re-editing the text

require somewhat fuller explanation. Dryden never superintended any

complete edition of his works, but on the other hand there is evidence

in his letters that he bestowed considerable pains on them when they

first passed through the press. The first editions have therefore in

every case been followed, though they have been corrected in case of

need by the later ones. But the adoption of this standard leaves

unsettled the problem of orthography, punctuation, etc. I have adopted a

solution of this which will not, I fear, be wholly agreeable to some of

my friends. Capital letters, apostrophes, and the like, will be looked

for in vain. It would, I need hardly say, have been much less trouble to

put copies of the original editions into the hands of the printers, to

bid them "follow copy," and to content myself with seeing that the

reprint was faithful. The result would have been, to a very small number

of professed students of English literature, an interesting example of

the changes which printers' spelling underwent in the last forty years

of the seventeenth century. But it would have been a nuisance and a

stumbling-block to the ordinary reader, in whose way it is certainly not

the business of the editor of a great English classic to throw stones of

offence. Where a writer has written in a distinctly archaic form of

language, as in the case of all English writers before the Renaissance,

adherence to the original orthography is necessary and right. Even in

the so-called Elizabethan age, where a certain archaism of phrase

survives, the appreciation of temporal and local colour may be helped by

such an adherence. But Dryden is in every sense a modern. His list of

obsolete words is insignificant, of archaic phrases more insignificant

still, of obsolete constructions almost a blank. If any journalist or

reviewer were to write his to-morrow's leader or his next week's article

in a style absolutely modelled on Dryden, no one would notice anything

strange in it, except perhaps that the English was a good deal better

than usual There can therefore be no possible reason for erecting an

artificial barrier between him and his readers of to-day, especially as

that barrier would be not only artificial but entirely arbitrary. I

shall however return to this point in some prefatory remarks to the

dramas.

Another problem which presented itself was the question of retaining the

irregular stichometric division in some plays and passages which are not

in verse. Scott has in such case generally printed them in prose, and

with some hesitation I have, though not uniformly, followed him.

I have already received much help from divers persons, and I trust,

_dis faventibus_, to acknowledge this and more at the end of my

journey, in (to use a word for which a great writer of French fought

hard) a "postface." In a work of magnitude such as the present, which

can only be proceeded with _pedetentim_, the proverb about the

relations of beginner and finisher is peculiarly applicable. For the

present I shall confine myself to mentioning with the utmost

thankfulness the kindness of Mr. E.W. Gosse, who has placed at my

disposal an almost complete set of first editions of the plays and

poems. One word must be said as to the Life which fills this first

volume. Except in minor details, there is little to add to it. Any

biographer of Dryden who is not carried away by the desire to magnify

his office, must admit that Johnson's opening sentence as to the paucity

of materials is still applicable.

In conclusion, I have but to repeat that in this edition it is not my

ambition to put myself or my own writing forward, even to the extent

ordinarily possible to an editor. In particular, my plan excludes

indulgence in critical disquisitions, however tempting they may be. For

such I must refer my readers to the monograph already mentioned.

Occasionally where critical opinions of Scott's are advanced which seem

demonstrably erroneous or imperfect, something of this nature will be

found, but on the whole my object is to give the reader my author, and

not what I have to say about him. The office of [Greek: neokoros] is a

comparatively humble one in itself, but it is honourable enough when the

shrine is at once the work and the monument of two such masters of

English as Scott and Dryden.

GEORGE SAINTSBURY.

LONDON, _July 8_, 1882.

ADVERTISEMENT.

[_Prefaced to Edition issued in_ 1808, _edited by Sir Walter

Scott_.]

After the lapse of more than a century since the author's death, the

Works of Dryden are now, for the first time, presented to the public in

a complete and uniform edition. In collecting the pieces of one of our

most eminent English classics,--one who may claim at least the third

place in that honoured list, and who has given proofs of greater

versatility of talent than either Shakespeare or Milton, though justly

placed inferior to them in their peculiar provinces,--the Editor did not

feel himself entitled to reject any part of his writings; even of those

which reflect little honour on the age, by whose taste they were

dictated. Had a selection been permitted, he would have excluded several

of the Comedies, and some part of the Translations: but this is a

liberty which has not lately been indulged to editors of classical

poetry. Literary history is an important step in that of man himself;

and the unseductive coarseness of Dryden is rather a beacon than a

temptation.

In commencing this task, the Editor had hopes of friendly assistance,

which might have rendered his toil more easy, and the result more

accurate. Deprived of this by a concurrence of unlucky circumstances, he

has both to dread the imperfection of his labours, and the consequence

of perhaps an over-zeal to render his edition complete. In the first

respect, although he has many thanks to return for information readily

afforded, it has sometimes been received after the irrevocable

operations of the printer had taken place.[1] On the second point, he

may have been too lavish in historical notes, and entered too deeply

into the secret history of the persons and times to which Dryden's

satirical poems refer. But he has endeavoured to avail himself of all

information, so soon as communicated, whether corrective or

corroborative of his prior opinions; and the wish, not only to render

intelligible, blanks, allusions, and feigned names, but to present, if

possible, the very spirit and political character of Dryden's

contemporaries, must be the excuse for intruding a few pages of

political history and personal anecdote; which, after all, they, whose

memory does not require such refreshment, may easily dispense with

reading. In this last part of his task, the Editor has been greatly

assisted by free access to a valuable collection of the fugitive pieces

of the reigns of Charles II., James II., William III., and Queen Anne.

This curious collection was made by Narcissus Luttrell, Esq., under

whose name the Editor usually quotes it The industrious collector seems

to have bought every poetical tract, of whatever merit, which was hawked

through the streets in his time, marking carefully the price and date of

the purchase. His collection contains the earliest editions of many of

our most excellent poems, bound up, according to the order of time, with

the lowest trash of Grub Street. It was dispersed on Mr. Luttrell's

death; but a number of the volumes, referring chiefly to the latter part

of Charles the Second's reign, have fortunately become the property of

Mr. James Bindley of Somerset Place, who, with the utmost urbanity,

permitted the Editor the unlimited use of these, and other literary

curiosities in his valuable library.--It is so much a matter of course,

with every adventurer in the field of antiquities, to acknowledge the

liberality and kindness of Mr. Richard Heber, that the public would

probably be surprised had his extensive literary treasures escaped

contribution on this occasion, particularly as it contains several

additional volumes of the Luttrell collection. To both gentlemen the

Editor has to offer his public thanks; nor will he be tempted to dilate

further on the liberality of the one, and the tried friendship of the

other. It is possible, that these researches may, by their very nature,

have in some degree warped the Editor's taste, and induced him to

consider that as curious which was only scarce, and to reprint

quotations, from the adversaries or contemporaries of Dryden, of a

length more than sufficient to satisfy the reader of their unworthiness.

But, as the painter places a human figure, to afford the means of

computing the elevation of the principal object in his landscape, it

seemed that the giant-height of Dryden, above the poets of his day,

might be best ascertained by extracts from those who judged themselves,

and were sometimes deemed by others, his equals, or his superiors. For

the same reason, there are thrown into the Appendix a few indifferent

verses to the poet's memory; which, while they show how much his loss

was felt, point out, at the same time, the impossibility of supplying

it.

In the Biographical Memoir, it would have been hard to exact, that the

Editor should rival the criticism of Johnson, or produce facts which had

escaped the accuracy of Malone. While, however, he has availed himself

of the labours of both, particularly of the latter, whose industry has

removed the cloud which so long hung over the events of Dryden's life,

he has endeavoured to take a different and more enlarged view of the

subject than that which his predecessors have presented. The general

critical view of Dryden's works being sketched by Johnson with

unequalled felicity, and the incidents of his life accurately discussed

and ascertained by Malone, something seemed to remain for him who should

consider these literary productions in their succession, as actuated by,

and operating upon, the taste of an age, where they had so predominant

influence; and who might, at the same time, connect the life of Dryden

with the history of his publications, without losing sight of the fate

and character of the individual. How far this end has been attained, is

not for the Editor to guess, especially when, as usual at the close of a

work, he finds he is possessed of double the information he had when he

commenced it. The kindness of Mr. Octavius Gilchrist, who undertook a

journey to Northamptonshire to examine the present state of Rushton,

where Dryden often lived, and of Mr. Finlay of Glasgow, who favoured the

Editor with the use of some original editions, falls here to be

gratefully acknowledged.

In collecting the poetry of Dryden, some hymns translated from the

service of the Catholic Church were recovered, by the favour of Captain

MacDonogh of the Inverness Militia.[2] As the body of the work was then

printed off, they were inserted in the Life of the Author; but should a

second impression of this edition be required by the public, they shall

be transferred to their proper place. To the Letters of Dryden,

published in Mr. Malone's edition of his prose works, the Editor has

been enabled to add one article, by the favour of Mrs. White of

Bownanhall, Gloucestershire. Those preserved at Knowles were examined at

the request of a noble friend, and the contents appeared unfit for

publication. Dryden's translations of Fresnoy's Art of Painting, and of

the Life of Xavier, are inserted without abridgment, for reasons which

are elsewhere alleged.[3] From the version of Maimbourg's "History of

the League," there is an extract given, which may be advantageously read

along with the Duke of Guise, and the Vindication of that play. The

prefaces and dedications are, of course, prefixed to the pieces to which

they belong; but those who mean to study them with reference to

theatrical criticism, will do well to follow the order recommended by

Mr. Malone.[4]

Several pieces published in Derrick's edition of Dryden's poetry, being

obviously spurious, are here published separately from his authentic

poetry, and with a suitable note of suspicion prefixed to each. They

might indeed have been altogether discarded without diminishing the

value of the work. Some account might be here given of the various

editions of Dryden's poems; but notices of this kind have been liberally

scattered through the Life and preliminary matter.

Upon the whole, it is hoped, that as the following is the first complete

edition of the Works of Dryden, it will be found, in accuracy of text

and copiousness of illustration, not altogether unworthy of the time,

labour, and expense which have been ungrudgingly bestowed upon an object

so important to English literature.

FOOTNOTES

[1] The octavo edition of the "_Annus Mirabilis_" did not fall into my

hands till the volume containing it was printed off. It contains two

important variations: as, stanza 4, _the year_, read THEIR _year_;

stanza 53, _their main_, read MEN; both of which the reader is requested

to correct. Also an _erratum_ in verse 104, line 2, where the word

_fortune_ should be VIRTUE.

[2] By the hands of Mrs. Jackson, who has honoured me with a note,

stating, that they are mentioned in Butler's "Tour through Italy;" that

after Butler's death, the translations passed into the hands of the

celebrated Dr. Alban, whence they were transferred to those of the

present possessor.

[3] Vol. i. p. 283; vol. xvii.

[4] Which is, the Essay of Dramatic Poesy, the Defence of that Essay,

the Preface to the Mock Astrologer, the Essay on Heroic Plays, the

Defence of the Epilogue to the Second Part of the Conquest of Granada,

the Grounds of Criticism in Tragedy, and the Answer to Rymer.

CONTENTS

OF

VOLUME FIRST.

The Life of John Dryden

SECT. I. Preliminary remarks on the Poetry of England before the Civil

Wars--The Life of Dryden from his Birth till the Restoration--His Early

Poems, including the Annus Mirabilis

SECT. II. Revival of the Drama at the Restoration--Heroic Plays--

Comedies of Intrigue--Commencement of Dryden's Dramatic Career--The Wild

Gallant--Rival Ladies--Indian Queen and Emperor--Dryden's Marriage--

Essay on Dramatic Poetry, and subsequent Controversy with Sir Robert

Howard--The Maiden Queen--The Tempest--Sir Martin Mar-all--The Mock

Astrologer--The Royal Martyr--The two Parts of the Conquest of Granada--

Dryden's situation at this period

SECT. III. Heroic Plays--The Rehearsal--Marriage à la Mode--The

Assignation--Controversy with Clifford--with Leigh--with Ravenscroft--

Massacre of Amboyna--State of Innocence

SECT. IV. Dryden's controversy with Settle--with Rochester--He is

assaulted in Rose Street--Aureng-Zebe--Dryden meditates an Epic Poem--

All for Love--Limberham--Oedipus--Troilus and Cressida--The Spanish

Friar--Dryden supposed to be in opposition to the Court

SECT. V. Dryden engages in Politics--Absalom and Achitophel, Part First

--The Medal--MacFlecknoe--Absalom and Achitophel, Part Second--The Duke

of Guise

SECT. VI. Threnodia Augustalis--Albion and Albanius--Dryden becomes a

Catholic--The Controversy of Dryden with Stillingfleet--The Hind and

Panther--Life of St. Francis Xavier--Consequences of the Revolution to

Dryden--Don Sebastian--King Arthur--Cleomenes--Love Triumphant

SECT. VII. State of Dryden's Connections in Society after the

Revolution--Juvenal and Persius--Smaller Pieces--Eleanora--Third

Miscellany--Virgil--Ode to St. Cecilia--Dispute with Milbourne--with

Blackmore--Fables--The Author's Death and Funeral--His Private

Character--Notices of his Family

SECT. VIII. The State of Dryden's Reputation at his Death, and

afterwards--The general Character of his Mind--His Merit as a Dramatist

--As a Lyrical Poet--As a Satirist--As a Narrative Poet--As a

Philosophical and Miscellaneous Poet--As a Translator--As a Prose

Author--As a Critic

THE

LIFE

OF

JOHN DRYDEN.

VOL. I.

THE LIFE OF JOHN DRYDEN.

* * * * *

SECTION I.

_Preliminary Remarks on the Poetry of England before the Civil Wars--

The Life of Dryden from his Birth till the Restoration--His early Poems,

including the "Annus Mirabilis."_

The Life of Dryden may be said to comprehend a history of the Literature

of England, and its changes, during nearly half a century. While his

great contemporary Milton was in silence and secrecy laying the

foundation of that immortal fame, which no poet has so highly deserved

Dryden's labours were ever in the eye of the public; and he maintained,

from the time of the Restoration till his death, in 1700, a decided and

acknowledged superiority over all the poets of his age. As he wrote from

necessity, he was obliged to pay a certain deference to the public

opinion; for he, whose bread depends upon the success of his volume, is

compelled to study popularity; but, on the other hand, his better

judgment was often directed to improve that of his readers; so that he

alternately influenced and stooped to the national taste of the day. If,

therefore, we would know the gradual changes which took place in our

poetry during the above period, we have only to consult the writings of

an author, who produced yearly some new performance allowed to be most

excellent in the particular style which was fashionable for the time. It

is the object of this memoir to connect, with the account of Dryden's

life and publications such a general view of the literature of the time,

as may enable the reader to estimate how far the age was indebted to the

poet, and how far the poet was influenced by the taste and manners of

the age. A few preliminary remarks on the literature of the earlier part

of the seventeenth century will form a necessary introduction to this

biographical memoir.

[1]When James I. ascended the throne of England he came to rule a court

and people, as much distinguished for literature as for commerce and

arms. Shakespeare was in the zenith of his reputation, and England

possessed other poets inferior to Shakespeare alone; or, indeed, the

higher order of whose plays may claim to be ranked above the inferior

dramas ascribed to him. Among these we may reckon Massinger, who

approached to Shakespeare in dignity; Beaumont and Fletcher, who

surpassed him in drawing female characters, and those of polite and

courtly life; and Jonson, who attempted to supply, by depth of learning,

and laboured accuracy of character, the want of that flow of

imagination, which nature had denied to him. Others, who flourished in

the reign of James and his son, though little known to the general

readers of the present age even by name, had a just claim to be

distinguished from the common herd of authors. Ford, Webster, Marston,

Brome, Shirley, even Chapman and Decker, added lustre to the stage for

which they wrote. The drama, it is true, was the branch of poetry most

successfully cultivated; for it afforded the most ready appeal to the

public taste. The number of theatres then open in all parts of the city,

secured to the adventurous poet the means of having his performance

represented upon one stage or other; and he was neither tired nor

disgusted by the difficulties, and disagreeable observances, which must

now be necessarily undergone by every candidate for dramatic laurels.[2]

But, although during the reigns of Queen Elizabeth and James I, the

stage seems to have afforded the principal employment of the poets,

there wanted not many, who cultivated, with success, the other

departments of Parnassus. It is only necessary to name Spenser, whose

magic tale continues to interest us, in despite of the languor of a

continued allegory; Drayton, who, though less known, possesses perhaps

equal powers of poetry; Beaumont the elder, whose poem on Bosworth Field

carries us back to the days of the Plantagenets; Fairfax, the translator

of Tasso, the melody of whose numbers became the model of Waller;

besides many others, who ornamented this era of British literature.

Notwithstanding the splendour of these great names, it must be

confessed, that one common fault, in a greater or less degree, pervaded

the most admired poetry of Queen Elizabeth's age. This was the fatal

propensity to _false wit_; to substitute, namely, strange and

unexpected connections of sound, or of idea, for real humour, and even

for the effusions of the stronger passions It seems likely that this

fashion arose at court, a sphere in which its denizens never think they

move with due lustre, until they have adopted a form of expression, as

well as a system of manners, different from that which is proper to

mankind at large. In Elizabeth's reign, the court language was formed on

the plan of one Lillie, a pedantic courtier, who wrote a book, entitled

"Euphues and his England, or the Anatomy of Wit;"[3] which quality he

makes to consist in the indulgence of every monstrous and overstrained

conceit, that can be engendered by a strong memory and a heated brain,

applied to the absurd purpose of hatching unnatural conceits.[4] It

appears, that this fantastical person had a considerable share in

determining the false taste of his age, which soon became so general,

that the tares which sprung from it are to be found even among the

choicest of the wheat. Shakespeare himself affords us too many instances

of this fashionable heresy in wit; and he, who could create new worlds

out of his own imagination descended to low, and often ill-timed puns

and quibbles. This was not an evil to be cured by the accession of our

Scottish James, whose qualifications as a punster were at least equal to

his boasted _king-craft._[5] The false taste, which had been

gaining ground even in the reign of Elizabeth, now overflowed the whole

kingdom with the impetuosity of a land-flood. These outrages upon

language were committed without regard to time and place. They were held

good arguments at the bar, though Bacon sat on the woolsack; and

eloquence irresistible by the most hardened sinner, when King or Corbet

were in the pulpit.[6] Where grave and learned professions set the

example, the poets, it will readily be believed, ran headlong into an

error, for which they could plead such respectable example. The

affectation "of the word" and "of the letter," for alliteration was

almost as fashionable as punning, seemed, in some degree, to bring back

English composition to the barbarous rules of the ancient Anglo-Saxons,

the merit of whose poems consisted, not in the ideas, but in the quaint

arrangement of the words, and the regular recurrence of some favourite

sound or letter.

This peculiar taste for twisting and playing upon words, instead of

applying them to their natural and proper use, was combined with the

similar extravagance of those whom Dr. Johnson has entitled Metaphysical

Poets. This class of authors used the same violence towards images and

ideas which had formerly been applied to words; in truth, the two styles

were often combined and, even when separate, had a kindred alliance with

each other. It is the business of the punster to discover and yoke

together two words, which, while they have some resemblance in sound,

the more exact the better, convey a totally different signification. The

metaphysical poet, on the other hand, piqued himself in discovering

hidden resemblances between ideas apparently the most dissimilar, and in

combining by some violent and compelled association, illustrations and

allusions utterly foreign from each other. Thus did the metaphysical

poet resemble the quibbler exercising precisely the same tyranny over

ideas, which the latter practised upon sounds only.

Jonson gave an early example of metaphysical poetry; indeed, it was the

natural resource of a mind amply stored with learning, gifted with a

tenacious memory and the power of constant labour, but to which was

denied that vivid perception of what is naturally beautiful, and that

happiness of expression, which at once conveys to the reader the idea of

the poet These latter qualities unite in many passages of Shakespeare,

of which the reader at once acknowledges the beauty, the justice, and

the simplicity. But such Jonson was unequal to produce; and he

substituted the strange, forced, and most unnatural though ingenious

analogies, which were afterwards copied by Donne and Cowley.[7] In

reading Shakespeare, we often meet passages so congenial to our nature

and feelings, that, beautiful as they are, we can hardly help wondering

they did not occur to ourselves; in studying Jonson, we have often to

marvel how his conceptions could have occurred to any human being. The

one is like an ancient statue, the beauty of which, springing from the

exactness of proportion does not always strike at first sight, but rises

upon us as we bestow time in considering it; the other is the

representation of a monster, which is at first only surprising, and

ludicrous or disgusting ever after. When the taste for simplicity

however, is once destroyed, it is long ere a nation recovers it; and the

metaphysical poets seem to have retained possession of the public favour

from the reign of James I. till the beginning of the Civil Wars silenced

the muses. The universities were perhaps to blame during this period of

usurpation; for which it may be admitted in excuse, that the

metaphysical poetry could only be practised by men whose minds were

deeply stored with learning, and who could boldly draw upon a large fund

of acquired knowledge for supplying the expenditure of far-fetched and

extravagant images, which their compositions required. The book of

Nature is before all men; but when her limits are to be overstepped, the

acquirement of adventitious knowledge becomes of paramount necessity;

and it was but natural that Cambridge and Oxford should prize a style of

poetry, to which depth of learning was absolutely indispensable.

I have stated, that the metaphysical poetry was fashionable during the

early part of Charles the First's reign. It is true, that Milton

descended to upbraid that unfortunate prince, that the chosen companion

of his private hours was one _William Shakespeare, a player_; but

Charles admitted less sacred poets to share his partiality. Ben Jonson

supplied his court with masques, and his pageants with verses; and,

notwithstanding an ill-natured story, shared no inconsiderable portion

of his bounty.[8] Donne, a leader among the metaphysical poets, with

whom King James had punned and quibbled in person.[9] shared, in a

remarkable degree, the good graces of Charles I., who may therefore be

supposed no enemy to his vein of poetry, although neither his sincere

piety nor his sacred office restrained him from fantastic indulgence in

extravagant conceit, even upon the most solemn themes which can be

selected for poetry.[10] Cowley, who with the learning and acuteness of

Donne, possessed the more poetical qualities of a fertile imagination,

and frequent happiness of expression, and who claims the highest place

of all who ever plied the unprofitable trade of combining dissimilar and

repugnant ideas, was not indeed known to the king during his prosperity;

but his talents recommended him at the military court of Oxford, and the

[Transcriber's note: word missing here in the original] ingenious poet

of the metaphysical class enjoyed the applause of Charles before he

shared the exile of his consort Henrietta. Cleveland also was honoured

with the early notice of Charles;[11] one of the most distinguished

metaphysical bards, who afterwards exerted his talents of wit and satire

upon the royal side, and strained his imagination for extravagant

invective against the Scottish army, who sold their king, and the

parliament leaders, who bought him. All these, and others unnecessary to

mention, were read and respected at court; being esteemed by their

contemporaries, and doubtless believing themselves the wonder of their

own, and the pattern of succeeding ages; and however much they

[Transcriber's note: fragment of word only in original, presume "might"]

differ from each other in parts and genius, they sought the same road to

poetical fame, by starting the most unnatural images which their

imaginations could conceive, or by hunting more common allusions through

the most minute and circumstantial particulars and ramifications.

Yet, though during the age of Charles I. the metaphysical poets enjoyed

the larger proportion of public applause, authors were not wanting who

sought other modes of distinguishing themselves. Milton, who must not be

named in the same paragraph with others, although he had not yet

meditated the sublime work which was to carry his name to immortality,

disdained, even in his lesser compositions, the preposterous conceits

and learned absurdities, by which his contemporaries acquired

distinction. Some of his slighter academic prolusions are, indeed,

tinged with the prevailing taste of his age, or, perhaps, were written

in ridicule of it; but no circumstance in his life is more remarkable,

than that "Comus," the "Monody on Lycidas," the "Allegro and Penseroso,"

and the "Hymn on the Nativity," are unpolluted by the metaphysical

jargon and affected language which the age esteemed indispensable to

poetry. This refusal to bend to an evil so prevailing, and which held

out so many temptations to a youth of learning and genius, can only be

ascribed to the natural chastity of Milton's taste, improved by an

earnest and eager study of the purest models of antiquity.

But besides Milton, who stood aloof and alone, there was a race of

lesser poets, who endeavoured to glean the refuse of the applause reaped

by Donne, Cowley, and their followers, by adopting ornaments which the

latter had neglected, perhaps because they could be attained without

much labour or abstruse learning. The metaphysical poets, in their

slip-shod pindarics, had totally despised, not only smoothness and

elegance but the common rhythm of versification. Many and long passages

may be read without perceiving the least difference between them and

barbarous jingling, ill-regulated prose; and in appearance, though the

lines be divided into unequal lengths, the eye and ear acknowledge

little difference between them and the inscription on a tomb-stone. In a

word, not only harmony of numbers, but numbers themselves, were

altogether neglected; or if an author so far respected ancient practice

as to make lines which could be scanned like verse, he had done his

part, and was perfectly indifferent, although they sounded like

prose.[12] But as melody will be always acceptable to the ear, some

poets chose this neglected road to fame, and gained a portion of public

favour, by attending to the laws of harmony, which their rivals had

discarded. Waller and Denham were the first who thus distinguished

themselves; but, as Johnson happily remarks, what was acquired by

Denham, was inherited by Waller. Something there was in the situation of

both these authors, which led them to depart from what was then the

beaten path of composition. They were men of rank, wealth, and fashion,

and had experienced all the interruptions to deep study, with which such

elevated station is naturally attended. It was in vain for Waller, a

wit, a courtier, and a politician; or for Denham, who was only

distinguished at the university as a dreaming, dissipated gambler, to

attempt to rival the metaphysical subtleties of Donne and Cowley, who

had spent serious and sequestered lives in acquiring the knowledge and

learning which they squandered in their poetry. Necessity, therefore and

perhaps a dawning of more simple taste, impelled these courtly poets to

seek another and more natural mode of pleasing. The melody of verse was

a province unoccupied, and Waller, forming his rhythm upon the

modulation of Fairfax, and other poets of the maiden reign, exhibited in

his very first poem[13] striking marks of attention to the suavity of

numbers. Denham, in his dedication to Charles II., informs us, that the

indulgence of his poetical vein had drawn the notice, although

accompanied with the gentle censure, of Charles I., when, in 1647, he

obtained access to his person by the intercession of Hugh Peters.

Suckling, whom Dryden has termed "a sprightly wit, and a courtly

writer," may be added to the list of smooth and easy poets of the

period, and had the same motives as Denham and Waller for attaching

himself to that style of composition. He was allowed to have the

peculiar art of making whatever he did become him; and it cannot be

doubted, that his light and airy style of ballads and sonnets had many

admirers. Upon the whole, this class of poets, although they hardly

divided the popular favour with the others, were also noticed and

applauded. Thus the poets of the earlier part of the seventeenth century

may be divided into one class, who sacrificed both sense and sound to

the exercise of extravagant, though ingenious, associations of imagery;

and a second, who, aiming to distinguish themselves by melody of

versification, were satisfied with light and trivial subjects, and too

often contented with attaining smoothness of measure, neglected the more

essential qualities of poetry. The intervention of the civil wars

greatly interrupted the study of poetry. The national attention was

called to other objects, and those who, in the former peaceful reigns,

would have perhaps distinguished themselves as poets and dramatists,

were now struggling for fame in the field, or declaiming for power in

the senate. The manners of the prevailing party, their fanatical

detestation of everything like elegant or literary amusement, their

affected horror at stage representations, which at once silenced the

theatres, and their contempt for profane learning, which degraded the

universities, all operated, during the civil wars and succeeding

usurpation, to check the pursuits of the poet, by withdrawing that

public approbation, which is the best, and often the sole, reward of his

labour. There was, at this time, a sort of interregnum in the public

taste, as well as in its government. The same poets were no doubt alive

who had distinguished themselves at the court of Charles: but Cowley and

Denham were exiled with their sovereign; Waller was awed into silence,

by the rigour of the puritanic spirit; and even the muse of Milton was

scared from him by the clamour of religious and political controversy,

and only returned, like a sincere friend, to cheer the adversity of one

who had neglected her during his career of worldly importance.[14]

During this period, the most unfavourable to literature which had

occurred for at least two centuries, Dryden, the subject of this memoir,

was gradually and silently imbibing those stores of learning, and

cultivating that fancy which was to do so much to further the

reformation of taste and poetry. It is now time to state his descent and

parentage.

The name of Dryden is local, and probably originated in the north of

England, where, as well as in the neighbouring counties of Scotland, it

frequently occurs, though it is not now borne by any person of

distinction. David Driden, or Dryden, married the daughter of William

Nicholson of Staff-hill, in the county of Cumberland and was the

great-great-grandfather of our poet. John Dryden, eldest son of David,

settled in Northamptonshire, where he acquired the estate of

Canons-Ashby, by marriage with Elizabeth, daughter and heiress of Sir

John Cope of that county. Wood says, that John Dryden was by profession

a schoolmaster, and honoured with the friendship of the great Erasmus,

who stood godfather to one of his sons.[15] He appears, from some

passages in his will, to have entertained the puritanical principles,

which, we shall presently find, descended to his family.[16] Erasmus

Driden, his eldest son, succeeded to the estate of Canons-Ashby, was

high-sheriff of Northamptonshire in the fortieth year of Queen

Elizabeth, and was created a knight baronet in the seventeenth of King

James I. Sir Erasmus married Frances, second daughter and co-heiress of

William Wilkes of Hodnell, in Warwickshire by whom he had three sons,

first, Sir John Driden, his successor in the title and estate of

Canons-Ashby; second, William Driden of Farndon, in Northamptonshire;

third, Erasmus Driden of Tichmarsh, in the same county. The last of

these was the father of the poet.

Erasmus Driden married Mary, the daughter of the reverend Henry

Pickering, younger son of Sir Gilbert Pickering, a person who, though in

considerable favour with James I., was a zealous puritan, and so noted

for opposition to the Catholics that the conspirators in the Gunpowder

Treason, his own brother-in-law being one of the number,[17] had

resolved upon his individual murder, as an episode to the main plot;

determined so to conduct it, as to throw the suspicion of the

destruction of the Parliament upon the puritans.[18] These principles,

we shall soon see, became hereditary in the family of Pickering. Mr.

Malone's industry has collected little concerning our author's maternal

grandfather, excepting, that he was born in 1584; named minister of

Oldwinkle All-Saints in 1647; and died in 1657. From the time when he

attained this preferment, it is highly probable, that he had been

recommended to it by the puritanical tenets which he doubtless held in

common with the rest of his family.

Of the poet's father, Erasmus, we know even less than of his other

relations. He acted as a justice of peace during the usurpation, and was

the father of no less than fourteen children; four sons and ten

daughters. The sons were John, Erasmus, Henry, and James; the daughters,

Agnes, Rose, Lucy, Mary, Martha, Elizabeth, Hester, Hannah, Abigail,

Frances. Such anecdotes concerning them as my predecessors have

recovered, may be found in the note.[19]

JOHN DRYDEN, the subject of this memoir, was born at the parsonage house

of Oldwinkle All-Saints, on or about the 9th day of August 1631.[20] The

village then belonged to the family of Exeter, as we are informed by the

poet himself in the postscript to his Virgil. That his family were

Puritans may readily be admitted; but that they were Anabaptists,

although confidently asserted by some of our author's political or

poetical antagonists, appears altogether improbable. Notwithstanding,

therefore, the sarcasm of the Duke of Buckingham, the register of

Oldwinkle All-Saints parish, had it been in existence, would probably

have contained the record of our poet's baptism.[21]

Dryden seems to have received the rudiments of his education at

Tichmarsh,[22] and was admitted a king's scholar at Westminster,[23]

under the tuition of the celebrated Dr. Bushby,[24] for whom he ever

afterwards entertained the most sincere veneration. One of his letters

to his old master is addressed, "Honoured Sir," and couched in terms of

respect, and even humility, fully sufficient for the occasion. Another

written by Dryden, when his feelings were considerably irritated by a

supposed injustice done to his son, is nevertheless qualified by great

personal deference to his old preceptor. It may be readily supposed,

that such a scholar, under so able a teacher, must have made rapid

progress in classical learning. The bent of the juvenile poet, even at

this early period, distinguished itself. He translated the third satire

of Persius, as a Thursday night's task, and executed many other

exercises of the same nature, in English verse, none of which are now in

existence.[25] During the last year of his residence at Westminster, the

death of Henry Lord Hastings, a young nobleman of great learning, and

much beloved, called forth no less than ninety-eight elegies, one of

which was written by our poet, then about eighteen years old. They were

published in 1650, under the title of "_Lachrymae Musarum._"

Dryden, having obtained a Westminster scholarship was admitted to

Trinity College, Cambridge on the 11th May 1650, his tutor being the

reverend John Templer, M.A., a man of some learning, who wrote a Latin

Treatise in confutation of Hobbes, and a few theological tracts and

single sermons. While at college, our author's conduct seems not to have

been uniformly regular. He was subjected to slight punishment for

contumacy to the vice-master,[26] and seems, according to the statement

of an obscure libeller, to have been engaged in some public and

notorious dispute with a nobleman's son, probably on account of the

indulgence of his turn for satire.[27] He took, however, the degree of

Bachelor, in January 1653-4, but neither became Master of Arts,[28] nor

a fellow of the university and certainly never retained for it much of

that veneration usually paid by an English scholar to his Alma Mater. He

often celebrates Oxford, but only mentions Cambridge as the contrast of

the sister university in point of taste and learning:

"Oxford to him a dearer name shall be

Than his own mother-university:

Thebes did his green unknowing youth engage,

He chooses Athens in his riper age."[29]

A preference so uncommon, in one who had studied at Cambridge, probably

originated in some cause of disgust, which we may now search for in

vain.

In June 1654, the death of his father, Erasmus Dryden, proved a

temporary interruption to our author's studies. He left the university,

on this occasion, to take possession of his inheritance, consisting of

two-thirds of a small estate near Blakesley, in Northamptonshire, worth,

in all, about sixty pounds a year. The other third part of this small

property was bequeathed to his mother during her life, and the property

reverted to the poet after her death in 1676. With this little patrimony

our author returned to Cambridge, where he continued until the middle of

the year 1657.

Although Dryden's residence at the university was prolonged to the

unusual space of nearly seven years, we do not find that he

distinguished himself during that time by any poetical prolusions

excepting a few lines prefixed to a work, entitled, "Sion and Parnassus;

or Epigrams on several Texts of the Old and New Testament," published in

1650, by John Hoddesdon.[30] Mr. Malone conjectures that our poet would

have contributed to the academic collection of verses, entitled, "Oliva

Pacis," and published in 1654, on the peace between England and Holland,

had not his father's death interfered at that period. It is probable, we

lose but little by the disappearance of any occasional verses which may

have been produced by Dryden at this time. The elegy on Lord Hastings,

the lines prefixed to "Sion and Parnassus," and some complimentary

stanzas which occur in a letter to his cousin Honor Driden,[31] would

have been enough to assure us, even without his own testimony, that

Cowley was the darling of his youth; and that he imitated his points of

wit, and quirks of epigram, with a similar contempt for the propriety of

their application. From these poems, we learn enough to be grateful,

that Dryden was born at a later period in his century; for had not the

road to fame been altered in consequence of the Restoration, his

extensive information and acute ingenuity would probably have betrayed

the author of the "Ode to St. Cecilia," and the father of English

poetical harmony, into rivalling the metaphysical pindarics of Donne and

Cowley.

The verses, to which we allude, display their sublety [Transcriber's

note: sic] of thought, their puerile extravagance of conceit, and that

structure of verse, which, as the poet himself says of Holyday's

translations, has nothing of verse in it except the worst part of it--

the rhyme, and that far from being unexceptionable The following lines,

in which the poet describes the death of Lord Hastings by the small-pox,

will be probably admitted as a justification of this censure:

"Was there no milder way but the small-pox;

The very filthiness of Pandora's box?

So many spots, like naeves, our Venus soil?

One jewel set off with so many a foil?

Blisters with pride swelled, which through 's flesh did sprout,

Like rose-buds, stuck i'the lily-skin about.

Each little pimple had a tear in it,

To wail the fault its rising did commit,

Which, rebel-like, with its own lord at strife,

Thus made an insurrection 'gainst his life.

Or were these gems sent to adorn his skin,

The cabinet of a richer soul within?

No comet need foretel his change drew on,

Whose corpse might seem a constellation."

This is exactly in the tone of Bishop Corbet's invective against the

same disease:

"Oh thou deformed unwoman-like disease,

Thou plough'st up flesh and blood, and there sow'st pease;

And leav'st such prints on beauty that dost come,

As clouted shoon do on a floor of loam.

Thou that of faces honey-combs dost make,

And of two breasts two cullenders, forsake

Thy deadly trade; now thou art rich, give o'er,

And let our curses call thee forth no more."[32]

After leaving the university, our author entered the world, supported by

friends, from whose character, principles, and situation, it might have

been prophesied, with probability, that his success in life, and his

literary reputation, would have been exactly the reverse of what they

actually proved. Sir Gilbert Pickering was cousin-german to the poet,

and also to his mother; thus standing related to Dryden in a double

connection.[33] This gentleman was a staunch puritan, and having set out

as a reformer, ended by being a regicide, and an abettor of the tyranny

of Cromwell. He was one of the judges of the unfortunate Charles; and

though he did not sit in that bloody court upon the last and fatal day,

yet he seems to have concurred in the most violent measures of the

unconscientious men who did so. He had been one of the parliamentary

counsellors of state, and hesitated not to be numbered among the godly

and discreet persons who assisted Cromwell as a privy council. Moreover

he was lord chamberlain of the Protector's court, and received the

honour of his mock peerage.

The patronage of such a person was more likely to have elevated Dryden

to the temporal greatness and wealth acquired by the sequestrators and

committee-men of that oppressive time, than to have aided him in

attaining the summits of Parnassus. For, according to the slight records

which Mr. Malone has recovered concerning Sir Gilbert Pickering's

character, it would seem, that, to the hard, precise, fanatical contempt

of every illumination, save the inward light, which he derived from his

sect, he added the properties of a fiery temper, and a rude and savage

address.[34] In what capacity Dryden lived with his kinsman, or to what

line of life circumstances seemed to destine the future poet, we are

left at liberty to conjecture. Shadwell, the virulent antagonist of our

author, has called him Sir Gilbert Pickering's clerk; and it is indeed

highly probable that he was employed as his amanuensis, or secretary.

The next step of advancement you began

Was being clerk to Noll's lord chamberlain,

A sequestrator and committee-man.

_The Medal of John Bayes_.

But I cannot, with Mr. Malone, interpret the same passage, by supposing

the third line of the triplet to apply to Dryden. Had he been actually a

member of a committee of sequestration, that circumstance would never

have remained in the dubious obscurity of Shadwell's poetry; it would

have been as often echoed and re-echoed as every other incident of the

poet's life which was capable of bearing an unfavourable interpretation.

I incline therefore to believe, that the terms _sequestrator_ and

_committee-man_ apply not to the poet, but to his patron Sir

Gilbert, to whom their propriety cannot be doubted.

Sir Gilbert Pickering was not our author's only relation at the court of

Cromwell. The chief of his family, Sir John Driden, elder brother of the

poet's father, was also a flaming and bigoted puritan,[35] through whose

gifts and merits his nephew might reasonably hope to attain preferment

In a youth entering life under the protection of such relations, who

could have anticipated the future dramatist and poet laureate, much less

the advocate and martyr of prerogative and of the Stuart family, the

convert and confessor of the Roman Catholic faith? In his after career,

his early connections with the puritans, and the principles of his

kinsmen during the civil wars and usurpation, were often made subjects

of reproach, to which he never seems to have deigned an answer.[36]

The death of Cromwell was the first theme of our poet's muse. Averse as

the puritans were to any poetry, save that of Hopkins, of Withers, or of

Wisdom, they may be reasonably supposed to have had some sympathy with

Dryden's sorrow upon the death of Oliver, even although it vented itself

in the profane and unprofitable shape of an elegy. But we have no means

of estimating its reception with the public, if, in truth, the public

long interested themselves about the memory of Cromwell, while his

relations and dependants presented to them the more animated and

interesting spectacle of a struggle for his usurped power. Richard

perhaps, and the immediate friends of the deceased Protector, with such

of Dryden's relations as were attached to his memory, may have thought,

like the tinker at the Taming of the Shrew, that this same elegy was

"marvellous good matter." It did not probably attract much general

attention. The first edition, in 1659, is extremely rare: it was

reprinted, however, along with those of Sprat and Waller, in the course

of the same year. After the Restoration this piece fell into a slate of

oblivion, from which it may be believed that the author, who had seen a

new light in politics, was by no means solicitous to recall it. His

political antagonist did not, however, fail to awaken its memory, when

Dryden became a decided advocate for the royal prerogative, and the

hereditary right of the Stuarts. During the controversies of Charles the

Second's reign, in which Dryden took so decided a share, his eulogy on

Cromwell was often objected to him, as a proof of inconsistence and

apostasy. One passage, which plainly applies to the civil wars in

general, was wrested to signify an explicit approbation of the murder of

Charles the First; and the whole piece was reprinted by an incensed

antagonist, under the title of "An Elegy on the Usurper O.C., by the

author of Absalom and Achitophel, published (it is ironically added) to

show the loyalty and integrity of the poet,"--an odd piece of vengeance,

which has perhaps never been paralleled, except in the single case of

"Love in a Hollow Tree."[37] The motives of the Duchess of Marlborough,

in reprinting Lord Grimestone's memorable dramatic essay, did not here

apply. The elegy on Cromwell, although doubtless sufficiently faulty,

contained symptoms of a regenerating taste; and, politically considered,

although a panegyric on an usurper, the topics of praise are selected

with attention to truth, and are, generally speaking, such as Cromwell's

worst enemies could not have denied to him. Neither had Dryden made the

errors, or misfortunes, of the royal family, and their followers, the

subject of censure or of contrast. With respect to them, it was hardly

possible that a eulogy on such a theme could have less offence in it.

This was perhaps a fortunate circumstance for Dryden at the Restoration;

and it must be noticed to his honour, that as he spared the exiled

monarch in his panegyric on the usurper, so, after the Restoration, in

his numerous writings on the side of royalty, there is no instance of

his recalling his former praise of Cromwell.

After the frequent and rapid changes which the government of England

underwent from the death of Cromwell, in the spring of 1660, Charles II.

was restored to the throne of his ancestors. It may be easily imagined,

that this event, a subject in itself highly fit for poetry, and which

promised the revival of poetical pursuits, was hailed with universal

acclamation by all whose turn for verse had been suppressed and stifled

during the long reign of fanaticism. The Restoration led the way to the

revival of letters, as well as that of legal government. With diaries,

as Dryden has expressed it,

The officious muses came along,

A gay, harmonious quire, like angels ever young.

It was not, however, to be expected, that an alteration of the taste

which had prevailed in the days of Charles I., was to be the immediate

consequence of the new order of things. The muse awoke, like the

sleeping beauty of the fairy tale, in the same antiquated and absurd

vestments in which she had fallen asleep twenty years before; or, if the

reader will pardon another simile, the poets were like those who, after

long mourning, resume for a time their ordinary dresses, of which the

fashion has in the meantime passed away. Other causes contributed to a

temporary revival of the metaphysical poetry. Almost all its professors,

attached to the house of Stuart, had been martyrs, or confessors at

least, in its cause. Cowley, their leader, was yet alive, and returned

to claim the late reward of his loyalty and his sufferings. Cleveland

had died a victim to the contempt, rather than the persecution, of the

republicans;[38] but this most ardent of cavalier poets was succeeded by

Wild, whose "_Iter Boreale_" a poem on Monk's march from Scotland

formed upon Cleveland's model, obtained extensive popularity among the

citizens of London.[39] Dryden's good sense and natural taste perceived

the obvious defects of these, the very coarsest of metaphysical poets;

insomuch, that, in his "Essay on Dramatic Poetry," he calls wresting and

torturing one word into another, a catachresis, or Clevelandism, and

charges Wild with being in poetry what the French call _un mauvais

buffon_.

Sprat, and an host of inferior imitators, marched for a time in the

footsteps of Cowley; delighted, probably, to discover in Pindaric

writing, as it was called, a species of poetry which required neither

sound nor sense, provided only there was a sufficient stock of florid

and extravagant thoughts, expressed in harsh and bombastic language.

But this style of poetry, although it was for a time revived, and indeed

continued to be occasionally employed even to the end of the eighteenth

century, had too slight foundation in truth and nature to maintain the

exclusive pre-eminence, which it had been exalted to during the reigns

of the two first monarchs of the Stuart race. As Rochester profanely

expressed it, Cowley's poetry was not of God, and therefore could not

stand. An approaching change of public taste was hastened by the manners

of the restored monarch and his courtiers. That pedantry which had

dictated the excessive admiration of metaphysical conceits, was not the

characteristic of the court of Charles II., as it had been of those of

his grandfather and father. Lively and witty by nature, with all the

acquired habits of an adventurer, whose wanderings, military and

political, left him time neither for profound reflection nor for deep

study, the restored monarch's literary taste, which was by no means

contemptible, was directed towards a lighter and more pleasing style of

poetry than the harsh and scholastic productions of Donne and Cowley.

The admirers, therefore, of this old school were confined to the ancient

cavaliers, and the old courtiers of Charles I.; men unlikely to lead the

fashion in the court of a gay monarch, filled with such men as

Buckingham, Rochester, Etherege, Sedley, and Mulgrave, whose time and

habits confined their own essays to occasional verses, and satirical

effusions, in which they often ridiculed the heights of poetry they were

incapable of attaining. With such men the class of poets, which before

the civil war held but a secondary rank, began to rise in estimation.

Waller, Suckling, and Denham, began to assert a pre-eminence over Cowley

and Donne; the ladies, whose influence in the court of James and Charles

I. was hardly felt, and who were then obliged to be contented with such

pedantic worship as is contained in the "Mistress" of Cowley, and the

"Epithalamion" of Donne, began now, when their voices were listened to,

and their taste consulted, to determine that their poetical lovers

should address them in strains more musical, if not more intelligible.

What is most acceptable to the fair sex will always sway the mode of a

gay court; and the character of a smooth and easy sonneteer was soon

considered as an indispensable requisite to a man of wit and fashion,

terms which were then usually synonymous.

To those who still retained a partiality for that exercise of the fancy

and memory, afforded by the metaphysical poetry, the style of satire

then prevalent afforded opportunities of applying it. The same depth of

learning, the same extravagant ingenuity in combining the most remote

images, and in driving casual associations to the verge of absurdity,

almost all the remarkable features which characterised the poetry of

Cowley, may be successfully traced in the satire of Hudibras. The sublime

itself borders closely on the ludicrous; but the bombast and extravagant

cannot be divided from it. The turn of thought, and the peculiar kind of

mental exertion, corresponds in both styles of writing; and although

Butler pursued the ludicrous, and Cowley aimed at the surprising, the

leading features of their poetry only differ like those of the same face

convulsed with laughter, or arrested in astonishment The district of

metaphysical poetry was thus invaded by the satirists, who sought

weapons there to avenge the misfortunes and oppression which they had so

lately sustained from the puritans; and as it is difficult in a laughing

age to render serious what has been once applied to ludicrous purposes,

Butler and his imitators retained quiet possession of the style which

they had usurped from the grave bards of the earlier age.

A single poet, Sir William Davenant,[40] made a meritorious, though a

misguided and unsuccessful effort, to rescue poetry from becoming the

mere handmaid of pleasure, or the partisan of political or personal

disputes, and to restore her to her natural rank in society, as an

auxiliary of religion, policy, law, and virtue. His heroic poem of

"Gondibert" has, no doubt, great imperfections; but it intimates

everywhere a mind above those laborious triflers, who called that poetry

which was only verse; and very often exhibits a majestic, dignified, and

manly simplicity, equally superior to the metaphysical school, by the

doctrines of which Davenant was occasionally misled. Yet, if that author

too frequently imitated their quaint affectation of uncommon sentiment

and associations, he had at least the merit of couching them in stately

and harmonious verse; a quality of poetry totally neglected by the

followers of Cowley. I mention Davenant here, and separate from the

other poets, who were distinguished about the time of the Restoration,

because I think that Dryden, to whom we are about to return, was, at

that period, an admirer and imitator of "Gondibert," as we are certain

that he was a personal and intimate friend of the author.

With the return of the king, the fall of Dryden's political patrons was

necessarily involved. Sir Gilbert Pickering, having been one of

Charles's judges, was too happy to escape into obscurity, under an

absolute disqualification for holding any office, political, civil, or

ecclesiastical. The influence of Sir John Driden was ended at the same

time; and thus both those relations, under whose protection Dryden

entered life, and by whose influence he was probably to have been aided

in some path to wealth or eminence, became at once incapable of

assisting him; and even connection with them was rendered, by the change

of times, disgraceful, if not dangerous. Yet it may be doubted whether

Dryden felt this evil in its full extent. Sterne has said of a

character, that a blessing which closed his mouth, or a misfortune which

opened it with a good grace, were nearly equal to him; nay, that

sometimes the misfortune was the more acceptable of the two. It is

possible, by a parity of reasoning, that Dryden may have felt himself

rather relieved from, than deprived of, his fanatical patrons, under

whose guidance he could never hope to have indulged in that career of

literary pursuit, which the new order of things presented to the

ambition of the youthful poet; at least, he lost no time in useless

lamentation, but, now in his thirtieth year, proceeded to exert that

poetical talent, which had heretofore been repressed by his own

situation, and that of the country.

Dryden, left to his own exertions, hastened to testify his joyful

acquiescence in the restoration of monarchy, by publishing "_Astroea

Redux_," a poem which was probably distinguished among the innumerable

congratulations poured forth upon the occasion; and he added to those

which hailed the coronation, in 1661, the verses entitled, "A Panegyric

to his Sacred Majesty." These pieces testify, that the author had

already made some progress in harmonising his versification. But they

also contain many of those points of wit, and turns of epigram, which he

condemned in his more advanced judgment. The same description applies,

in a yet stronger degree, to the verses addressed to Lord Chancellor

Hyde (Lord Clarendon) on the new-year's-day of 1662, in which Dryden has

more closely imitated the metaphysical poetry than in any poem, except

the juvenile elegy on Lord Hastings. I cannot but think, that the poet

consulted the taste of his patron, rather than his own, in adopting this

peculiar style. Clarendon was educated in the court of Charles I., and

Dryden may have thought it necessary, in addressing him, to imitate the

"strong verses," which were then admired.

According to the fashion of the times, such copies of occasional verses

were rewarded by a gratuity from the person to whom they were addressed;

and poets had not yet learned to think this mode of receiving assistance

incompatible with the feelings of dignity or delicacy. Indeed, in the

common transactions of that age, one sees something resembling the

eastern custom of accompanying with a present, and not always a splendid

one, the usual forms of intercourse and civility. Thus we find the

wealthy corporation of Hull, backing a polite address to the Duke of

Monmouth, their governor, with a present of _six broad pieces_; and his

grace deemed it a point of civility to press the acceptance of the same

gratuity upon the member of parliament for the city, by whom it was

delivered to him.[41] We may therefore believe, that Dryden received

some compliment from the king and chancellor; and I am afraid the same

premises authorise us to conclude that it was but trifling. Meantime,

our author having no settled means of support, except his small landed

property, and having now no assistance to expect from his more wealthy

kinsmen, to whom, probably, neither his literary pursuits, nor his

commencing them by a panegyric on the restoration, were very agreeable,

and whom he had also offended by a slight change in spelling his

name,[42] seems to have been reduced to narrow and uncomfortable

circumstances. Without believing, in its full extent, the exaggerated

account given by Brown and Shadwell,[43] we may discover from their

reproaches, that, at the commencement of his literary career, Dryden was

connected, and probably lodged, with Herringman the bookseller, in the

New Exchange, for whom he wrote prefaces, and other occasional pieces.

But having, as Mr. Malone has observed, a patrimony, though a small one,

of his own, it seems impossible that our author was ever in that state

of mean and abject dependence, which the malice of his enemies

afterwards pretended. The same malice misrepresented, or greatly

exaggerated, the nature of Dryden's obligations to Sir Robert Howard,

with whom he became acquainted probably about the time of the

Restoration, whose influence was exerted in his favour, and whose good

offices the poet returned by literary assistance.

Sir Robert Howard was a younger son of Thomas Earl of Berkshire,[44]

and, like all his family, had distinguished himself as a royalist,

particularly at the battle of Cropredy[45] Bridge. He had recently

suffered a long imprisonment in Windsor Castle during the usurpation.

His rank and merits made him, after the Restoration, a patron of some

consequence; and upon his publishing a collection of verses very soon

after that period, Dryden prefixed an address "to his honoured friend"

on "his excellent poems." Sir Robert Howard understood the value of

Dryden's attachment, introduced him into his family, and probably aided

in procuring his productions that degree of attention from the higher

world, for want of which the most valuable efforts of genius have often

sunk into unmerited obscurity. Such, in short, were his exertions in

favour of Dryden, that, though we cannot believe he was indebted to

Howard, for those necessaries of life which he had the means to procure

for himself, the poet found ground to acknowledge, that his patron had

not only been "carefull of his fortune, which was the effect of his

nobleness, but solicitous of his reputation, which was that of his

kindness."

Thus patronised, our author seems to have advanced in reputation, as he

became more generally known to the learned and ingenious of his time.

Yet we have but few traces of the labour, by which he doubtless

attained, and secured, his place in society. A short satire on the

Dutch, written to animate the people of England against them, appeared

in 1662.[46] It is somewhat in the hard style of invective, which

Cleveland applied to the Scottish nation; yet Dryden thought it worth

while to weave the same verses into the prologue and epilogue of the

tragedy of "Amboyna," a piece written in 1673, with the same kind

intentions towards the states-general.

Science, as well as poetry, began to revive after the iron dominion of

military fanaticism was ended; and Dryden, who through life was attached

to experimental philosophy, speedily associated himself with those who

took interest in its progress. He was chosen a member of the newly

instituted Royal Society, 26th November 1662; an honour which cemented

his connection with the most learned men of the time, and is an evidence

of the respect in which he was already held. Most of these, and the

discoveries by which they had distinguished themselves, Dryden took

occasion to celebrate in his "Epistle to Dr. Walter Charleton," a

learned physician, upon his treatise of Stonehenge. Gilbert, Boyle,

Harvey, and Ent, are mentioned with enthusiastic applause as treading in

the path pointed out by Bacon, who first broke the fetters of Aristotle,

and taught the world to derive knowledge from experiment. In these

elegant verses, the author divests himself of all the flippant

extravagance of point and quibble, in which, complying with his age, he

had hitherto indulged, though of late in a limited degree.

While thus united in friendly communion with men of kindred and

congenial spirits, Dryden seems to have been sensible of the necessity

of applying his literary talents to some line, in which he might derive

a steadier and more certain recompence, than by writing occasional

verses to the great, or doing literary drudgery for the bookseller. His

own genius would probably have directed him to the ambitious labours of

an epic poem; but for this the age afforded little encouragement.

"Gondibert," the style of which, Dryden certainly both admired and

copied, became a martyr to the raillery of the critics; and to fill up

the measure of shame, the "Paradise Lost" fell still-born from the

press. This last instance of bad taste had not, it is true, yet taken

place; but the men who were guilty of it, were then living under

Dryden's observation and their manners and habits could not fail to

teach him, to anticipate the little encouragement they were likely to

afford to the loftier labours of poetry. One only line remained, in

which poetical talents might exert themselves, with some chance of

procuring their possessor's reward, or at least maintenance, and this

was dramatic composition. To this Dryden sedulously applied himself,

with various success, for many years. But before proceeding to trace the

history of his dramatic career, I proceed to notice such pieces of his

poetry, as exhibit marks of his earlier style of composition.

The victory gained by the Duke of York over the Dutch fleet on the 3d of

June 1665, and his Duchess's subsequent journey into the north,

furnished Dryden with the subject of a few occasional verses; in which

the style of Waller (who came forth with a poem on the same subject) is

successfully imitated. In addressing her grace, the poet suppresses all

the horrors of the battle, and turns her eyes upon the splendour of a

victory, for which the kingdom was indebted to her husband's valour, and

her "chaste vows." In these verses, not the least vestige of

metaphysical wit can be traced; and they were accordingly censured, as

wanting height of fancy, and dignity of words. This criticism Dryden

refuted, by alleging, that he had succeeded in what he did attempt, in

the softness of expression and smoothness of the measure (the

appropriate ornaments of an address to a lady), and that he was accused

of that only thing which he could well defend. It seems, however, very

possible, that these remarks impelled him to undertake a task, in which

vigour of fancy and expression might, with propriety, be exercised.

Accordingly, his next poem was of greater length and importance. This is

a historical account of the events of the year 1666, under the title of

"_Annus Mirabilis_" to which distinction the incidents which had

occurred in that space gave it some title. The poem being in the elegiac

stanza, Dryden relapsed into an imitation of "Gondibert," from which he

had departed ever since the "Elegy on Cromwell." From this it appears,

that the author's admiration of Davenant had not decreased. Indeed, he,

long afterwards, bore testimony to that author's quick and piercing

imagination; which at once produced thoughts remote, new, and

surprising, such as could not easily enter into any other fancy. Dryden

at least equalled Davenant in this quality; and certainly excelled him

in the powers of composition, which are to embody the conceptions of the

imagination; and in the extent of acquired knowledge, by which they were

to be enforced and illustrated. In his preface, he has vindicated the

choice of his stanza, by a reference to the opinion of Davenant,[47]

which he sanctions by affirming, that he had always himself thought

quatrains, or stanzas of verse in alternate rhyme, more noble, and of

greater dignity, both for sound and number, than any other verse in use

among us. By this attention to sound and rhythm, he improved upon the

school of metaphysical poets, which disclaimed attention to either; but

in the thought and expression itself, the style of Davenant more nearly

resembled Cowley's, than that of Denham and Waller. The same ardour for

what Dryden calls "wit-writing," the same unceasing exercise of the

memory, in search of wonderful thoughts and allusions, and the same

contempt for the subject, except as the medium of displaying the

author's learning and ingenuity, marks the style of Davenant, though in

a less degree than that of the metaphysical poets, and though chequered

with many examples of a simpler and chaster character. Some part of this

deviation was, perhaps, owing to the nature of the stanza; for the

structure of the quatrain prohibited the bard, who used it, from

rambling into those digressive similes, which, in the pindaric strophe,

might be pursued through endless ramifications. If the former started an

extravagant thought, or a quaint image, he was compelled to bring it to

a point within his four-lined stanza. The snake was thus scotched,

though not killed; and conciseness being rendered indispensable, a great

step was gained towards concentration of thought, which is necessary to

the simple and to the sublime The manner of Davenant, therefore, though

short-lived, and ungraced by public applause, was an advance towards

true taste, from the unnatural and frantic indulgence of unrestrained

fancy; and, did it claim no other merit, it possesses that of having

been twice sanctioned by the practice of Dryden, upon occasions of

uncommon solemnity.

The "_Annus Mirabilis_" evinces a considerable portion of labour and

attention; the lines and versification are highly polished, and the

expression was probably carefully corrected. Dryden as Johnson remarks,

already exercised the superiority of his genius, by recommending his own

performance, as written upon the plan of Virgil; and as no unsuccessful

effort at producing those well-wrought images and descriptions, which

create admiration, the proper object of heroic poetry. The "_Annus

Mirabilis_" may indeed be regarded as one of Dryden's most elaborate

pieces; although it is not written in his later, better, and most

peculiar style of poetry.

The poem first appeared in octavo, in 1667, and was afterwards

frequently reprinted in quarto. It was dedicated to the metropolis of

Great Britain, as represented by the lord mayor and magistrates. A

letter to Sir Robert Howard was prefixed to the poem, in which the

author explains the purpose of the work, and the difficulties which

presented themselves in the execution. And in this epistle, as a

contrast between the smooth and easy style of writing which was proper

in addressing a lady, and the exalted style of heroic, or at least

historical, poetry, he introduces the verses to the Duchess of York,

already mentioned.

The "_Annus Mirabilis_" being the last poetical work of any importance

produced by our author, until "Absalom and Achitophel," the reader may

here pause, and consider, in the progressive improvement of Dryden, the

gradual renovation of public taste. The irregular pindaric ode was now

abandoned to Arwaker, Behn, Durfey, and a few inferior authors; who

either from its tempting facility of execution, or from an affected

admiration of old times and fashions, still pestered the public with

imitations of Cowley. The rough measure of Donne (if it had any

pretension to be called a measure) was no longer tolerated, and it was

expected, even of those who wrote satires, lampoons, and occasional

verses, that their rhymes should be rhymes, both to the ear and eye; and

that they should neither adore their mistresses nor abuse their

neighbours, in lines which differed only from prose in the fashion of

printing. Thus the measure used by Rochester, Buckingham Sheffield,

Sedley, and other satirists, if not polished or harmonized, approaches

more nearly to modern verse, than that of Hall or Donne. In the "Elegy

on Cromwell," and the "_Annus Mirabilis_," Dryden followed Davenant, who

abridged, if he did not explode, the quaintnesses of his predecessors.

In "_Astroea Redux_" and his occasional verses to Dr. Charlton, the

Duchess of York, and others, the poet proposed a separate and simpler

model, more dignified than that of Suckling or Waller; more harmonious

in measure, and chaste in expression, than those of Cowley and Crashaw.

Much, there doubtless remained, of ancient subtlety, and ingenious

quibbling; but when Dryden declares, that he proposes Virgil, in

preference to Ovid, to be his model in the "_Annus Mirabilis_" it

sufficiently implies that the main defect of the poetry of the last age

had been discovered, and was in the way of being amended by gradual and

almost imperceptible degrees.

In establishing, or refining, the latter style of writing, in couplet

verse, our author found great assistance from his dramatic practice; to

trace the commencement of which is the purpose of the next Section.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] [The statements in this paragraph are somewhat rhetorical.

Massinger, for instance, was still at Oxford when James ascended the

throne, and though he began to write a few years later, his earliest

published play now extant appeared nearly twenty years afterwards. But

the general drift is untouched.--ED.]

[2] I do not pretend to enter into the question of the effect of the

drama upon morals. If this shall be found prejudicial, two theatres are

too many. But, in the present woful decline of theatrical exhibition, we

may be permitted to remember, that the gardener who wishes to have a

rare diversity of a common flower, sows whole beds with the species; and

that the monopoly granted to two huge theatres must necessarily

diminish, in a complicated ratio, both the number of play-writers, and

the chance of anything very excellent being brought forward.

[3] [Scott is here far too harsh. "Euphues" is not a book to be

despatched in a note, but the reader may be requested to suspend his

judgment until he has read it.--ED.]

[4] Our deserved idolatry of Shakespeare and Milton was equalled by that

paid to this pedantic coxcomb in his own time. He is called in the

title-page of his plays (for, besides "Euphues," he wrote what he styled

"Court Comedies"), "the only rare poet of that time; the witty, comical,

facetiously quick, and unparalleled John Lillie." Moreover, his editor,

Mr. Blount, assures us, "that he sate at Apollo's table; that Apollo

gave him a wreath of his own bays without snatching; and that the lyre

he played on had no broken strings." Besides which, we are informed,

"Our nation are in his debt for a new English, which he taught them;

'Euphues and his England' began first that language. All our ladies were

then his scholars; and that beauty in court who could not _parle

Euphuism_, was as little regarded, as she which now there speaks not

French."

[5] So that learned and sapient monarch was pleased to call his skill in

politics.

[6] Witness a sermon preached at St. Mary's before the university of

Oxford. It is true the preacher was a layman, and harangued in a gold

chain, and girt with a sword, as high sheriff of the county; but his

eloquence was highly applauded by the learned body whom he addressed,

although it would have startled a modern audience, at least as much as

the dress of the orator. "Arriving," said he, "at the Mount of St.

Mary's, in the stony stage where I now stand, I have brought you some

fine biscuits, baked in the oven of charity, carefully conserved for the

chickens of the church, the sparrows of the spirit, and the sweet

swallows of salvation." "Which way of preaching," says Anthony Wood, the

reporter of the homily, "was then mostly in fashion, and commended by

the generality of scholars."--_Athenae Oxon_. vol. i. p.183.

[7] Look at Ben Jonson's "Ode to the Memory of Sir Lucius Carey and Sir

H. Morison," and at most of his Pindarics. But Ben, when he pleased,

could assume the garb of classic simplicity; witness many of his lesser

poems.

[8] In Jonson's last illness, Charles is said to have sent him ten

pieces. "He sends me so miserable a donation," said the expiring

satirist, "because I am poor, and live in an alley; go back and tell

him, his soul lives in an alley." Whatever be the truth of this

tradition, we know from an epigram by Jonson, that the king at one time

gave him an hundred pounds; no trifling gift for a poor bard, even in

the present day.

[9] "About a year after his return out of Germany, Dr. Cary was made

bishop of Exeter; and by his removal, the deanery of St. Paul's being

vacant, the king sent to Dr. Donne, and appointed him to attend him at

dinner the next day. When his majesty was sate down, before he had eat

any meat, he said, after his pleasant manner, 'Dr. Donne, I have invited

you to dinner; and though you sit not down with me, yet I will carve to

you of a dish that I know you love well; for knowing you love London, I

do therefore make you dean of Paul's; and when I have dined, then do you

take your beloved dish home to your study; say grace there to yourself,

and much good may it do you."--WALTON'S _Life of Donne._

[10] See his "Verses to Mr. George Herbert, sent him with one of my

seals of the anchor and Christ. A sheaf of snakes used heretofore to be

my seal, which is the crest of our poor family." Upon the subject of

this change of device he thus quibbles:

"Adopted in God's family, and so

My old coat lost, into new arms I go;

The cross my seal, in baptism spread below,

Does by that form into an anchor grow:

Crosses grow anchors; bear as thou shouldst do

Thy cross, and that cross grows an anchor too," etc.

[11] See his Life, prefixed to his Poems, 12mo, 1677.

[12] It is pleasing to see the natural good taste of honest old Isaac

Walton struggling against that of his age. He introduces the beautiful

lines,

"Come live with me, and be my love,"

as "that smooth song made by Kit Marlow, now at least fifty years ago."

"The milkmaid's mother," he adds, "sung an answer to it, which was made

by Sir Walter Raleigh in his younger days. They were old-fashioned

poetry, but choicely good. I think much better than _the strong lines_

that are in fashion in this critical age."--_The Complete Angler_, Edit.

vi. p. 65.

[13] "A Poem on the Danger Charles I., being Prince, escaped in the Road

at St. Andero."

[14] [The Jacobean and Caroline poets, especially Donne and Cowley,

require considerable allowance to be made on Scott's judgment by those

who are not familiar with them.--ED.]

[15] _Fasti Oxon._ vol. i. p. 115. Considering John Dryden's marriage

with the heiress of a man of knightly rank, it seems unlikely that he

followed the profession of a schoolmaster. But Wood could hardly be

mistaken in the second circumstance some of the family having gloried in

it in his hearing.

[16] See Collins' _Baronetage_, vol. ii. The testator bequeaths his soul

to his Creator, with this singular expression of confidence, "the Holy

Ghost assuring my spirit, that I am the elect of God."

[17] Robert Keies, executed 31st January 1606, of whom Fuller, in his

Church History, tells the following anecdote:--"A few days before the

fatal blow should have been given, Keies, being at Tichmarsh, in

Northamptonshire, at his brother-in-law's house, Mr. Gilbert Pickering,

a Protestant, he suddenly whipped out his sword, and in merriment made

many offers therewith at the heads, necks, and sides, of several

gentlemen and ladies then in his company. It was then taken for a mere

frolic, and so passed accordingly; but afterwards, when the treason was

discovered, such as remembered his gestures thought he practised what he

intended to do when the plot should take effect; that is, to hack and

hew, kill and destroy, all eminent persons of a different religion from

himself."--CAULFIELD's _History of the Gunpowder Plot._

[18] The following curious story is told to that effect, in Caulfield's

"History of the Gunpowder Plot," p. 67:--

"There was a Mr. Pickering of Tichmarsh-Grove, in Northamptonshire who

was in great esteem with King James. This Mr. Pickering had a horse of

special note for swiftness, on which he used to hunt with the king. A

little before the blow was to be given, Mr. Keies, one of the

conspirators, and brother-in-law to Mr. Pickering, borrowed this horse

of him, and conveyed him to London upon a bloody design, which was thus

contrived:--Fawkes, upon the day of the fatal blow, was appointed to

retire himself into St. George's Fields, where this horse was to attend

him, to further his escape (as they made him believe) as soon as the

Parliament should be blown up. It was likewise contrived, that Mr.

Pickering, who was noted for a puritan, should that morning be murdered

in his bed, and secretly conveyed away; and also that Fawkes, as soon as

he came into St. George's Fields, should be there murdered, and so

mangled, that he could not be known; upon which, it was to be spread

abroad, that the puritans had blown up the parliament-house; and the

better to make the world believe it, there was Mr. Pickering, with his

choice horse ready to escape. But that stirred up some, who seeing the

heinousness of the fact, and him ready to escape, in detestation of so

horrible a deed, fell upon him, and hewed him to pieces; and to make it

more clear, there was his horse, known to be of special speed and

swiftness, ready to carry him away; and upon this rumour, a massacre

should have gone through the whole land upon the puritans.

"When the contrivance of this plot was discovered by some of the

conspirators, and Fawkes, who was now a prisoner in the Tower, made

acquainted with it, whereas before he was made to believe by his

companions, that he should be bountifully rewarded for that his good

service to the Catholic cause, now perceiving, that, on the contrary,

his death had been contrived by them, he thereupon freely confessed all

that he knew concerning that horrid conspiracy, which before all the

torments of the rack could not force him to do.

"The truth of this was attested by Mr. William Perkins, who had it from

Mr. Clement Cotton, to whom Mr. Pickering gave the above relation."

[19] Erasmus, the poet's immediate younger brother, was in trade, and

resided in King-street, Westminster. He succeeded to the family title

and estate upon the death of Sir John Dryden, and died at the seat of

Canons-Ashby 3d November 1718, leaving one daughter and five grandsons.

Henry, the poet's third brother, went to Jamaica, and died there,

leaving a son, Richard. James, the fourth of the sons, was a tobacconist

in London, and died there, leaving two daughters. Of the daughters, Mr.

Malone, after Oldys, says, that Agnes married Sylvester Emelyn of

Stanford, Gent.; that Rose married ---- Laughton of Calworth, D.D., in

the county of Huntington; that Lucy became the wife of Stephen Umwell of

London, merchant; and Martha of ---- Bletso of Northampton. Another of

the daughters was married to one Shermardine, a bookseller in Little

Britain; and Frances, the youngest, to Joseph Sandwell, a tobacconist in

Newgate-street This last died 10th October 1730, at the advanced age of

ninety. She had survived the poet about thirty years. Of the remaining

four sisters, no notices occur.

[20] [A few facts of a more precise kind about the contents of this and

the foregoing paragraphs may be grouped here. The Rev. H. Pickering was

rector of Aldwinkle (the better form) All-Saints from 1507 to 1637, not

from 1647 to 1657. This destroys Scott's inference. The error arose from

a misreading of his epitaph. "The village" did not strictly belong to

Lord Exeter: but he had property in Aldwinkle St. Peter's, and the two

parishes are close together, one church being at one end and the other

at the other of the joint village. Erasmus Dryden and Mary Pickering

were married at the church of Pilton, a very small village between

Aldwinkle and Oundle, on October 21, 1630. Dryden was therefore

indisputably the eldest son. Blakesley, where his father's property was

situated, is not near Aldwinkle or Tichmarsh, which are close together

on opposite sides of the river Nene, and about two miles from Thrapston,

but near Canons-Ashby on the other side of the county. The estate (of

about two hundred acres) was united to that of Canons-Ashby after the

death of Dryden's youngest son. But, unlike Canons-Ashby, it does not

now belong to the family, having been sold many years ago.--ED.]

[21]

"And though no wit ran royal blood infuse,

No more than melt a mother to a muse,

Yet much a certain poet undertook,

That men and manners deals in without book;

And might not more to gospel truth belong,

Than he _(if christened)_ does by name of John."

_Poetical Reflections_, etc. See vol. ix.

Another opponent of our author calls him

"A bristled Baptist bred, and then thy strain

Immaculate was free from sinful stain."

_The Laureat_, vol. x.

[22] Upon a monument, erected by Elizabeth Creed to the poet's memory in

the church at Tichmarsh, are these words:--"We boast that he was bred

and had his first learning here." [A rival tradition favours Oundle,

which had and has a grammar school of merit.--ED.]

[23] The date is not known. That of his admission to Trinity, _infra_,

should be May 18. He matriculated on July 16, and was not elected to his

scholarship till October 2.--ED.

[24] [More usually Busby.--ED.]

[25] "I remember (says Dryden, in a postscript to the argument of the

third satire of Perseus) I translated this satire when I was a King's

scholar at Westminster school, for Thursday night's exercise; and

believe, that it, and many other of my exercises of this nature in

English verse, are still in the hands of my learned master, the Rev. Dr.

Bushby."

[26] The following order is quoted, by Mr. Malone, from the

Conclusion-book, in the archives of Trinity College, p. 221.

"July 19, 1652. Agreed, then, That Dryden be put out of Comons, for a

fortnight at least; and that he goe not out of the colledg, during the

time aforesaid, excepting to sermons, without express leave from the

master, or vice-master; and that, at the end of the fortnight, he read

a confession of his crime in the hall, at dinner time, at the three

... fellowes table.

"His crime was, his disobedience to the vice-master, and his contumacy

in taking his punishment inflicted by him."

[27] Shadwell, in the Medal of John Bayes,

"At Cambridge Brat your scurrilous vein began,

Where saucily you traduced a nobleman;

Who for that crime rebuked you on the head,

And you had been expelled, had you not fled."

[28] He received this degree by dispensation from the Archbishop of

Canterbury.

[29] Prologue to the University of Oxford.

[30] Jonathan Dryden, elected a scholar from Westminster into Trinity

College, Cambridge, in 1656, of which he became fellow in 1662, was

author of some verses in the Cambridge Collections in 1661, on the death

of the Duke of Gloucester, and the marriage of the Princess of Orange;

and in 1662, on the marriage of Charles II., which have been imputed to

our author. An order, quoted by Mr. Malone, for abatement of the

commencement-money paid at taking the Bachelor's degree, on account of

poverty, applies to Jonathan, not to John Dryden.--MALONE, vol. i. p.17,

note.

[31] [This letter will be found in its proper place. It is the sole

personal utterance in prose, and almost the only biographical fact of

importance that we have for the first thirty years of Dryden's life.

Upon it, an entirely baseless romance has been built of disappointed

love and parental unkindness. There is absolutely no evidence that

Dryden ever seriously pretended to his cousin's hand, or that he was

rejected, or that this rejection was due to his uncle's influence.--ED.]

[32] Elegy on Lady Haddington, in Corbet's Poems, p. 121. Gilchrist's

edition.

[33] Sir John Pickering, father of Sir Gilbert, married Susan, the

sister of Erasmus Dryden, the poet's father. But Mary Pickering, the

poet's mother, was niece to Sir John Pickering; and thus his son Sir

Gilbert was _her_ cousin-german also.

[34] In one lampoon, he is called "fiery Pickering." Walker, in his

"Sufferings of the Clergy," prints Jeremiah Stevens' account of the

Northamptonshire committee of sequestration in which the character of

Pickering, one of the members of that oppressive body, is thus drawn:--

"Sir G---- P---- had an uncle, whose ears were cropt for a libel on

Archbishop Whitgift; was first a presbyterian, then an independent, then

a Brownist, and afterwards an anabaptist. He was a most furious, fiery,

implacable man; was the principal agent in casting out most of the

learned clergy; a great oppressor of the country; got a good manor for

his booty of the E. of R. and a considerable purse of gold by a plunder

at Lynn in Norfolk." He is thus characterized by an angry limb of the

commonwealth, whose republican spirit was incensed by Cromwell creating

a peerage:--"Sir Gilbert Pickering, knight of the old stamp, and of

considerable revenue in Northamptonshire; one of the Long Parliament,

and a great stickler in the change of the government from kingly to that

of a commonwealth;--helped to make those laws of treason against

kingship; has also changed with all changes that have been since. He was

one of the Little Parliament, and helped to break it, as also of all the

parliaments since; is one of the Protector's council (his salary £1000

_per annum_, besides other places), and as if he had been pinned to this

slieve, was never to seek; is become high steward of Westminster; and

being so finical, spruce, and like an old courtier, is made

lord-chamberlain of the Protector's household or court; so that he may

well be counted fit and worthy to be taken out of the House to have a

negative voice in the other House, though he helped to destroy it in the

king and lords. There are more besides him, that make themselves

transgressors by building again the things which they once destroyed."

Quoted by Mr. Malone from a rare pamphlet in his collection entitled "A

Second Narrative of the late Parliament, 1658."

[35] Like Sir Gilbert Pickering, he was a member of the Northamptonshire

committee of sequestration, and his deeds are thus commemorated in

Walker's "Sufferings of the Clergy:"--"Sir J---- D----n was never noted

for ability or discretion; was a puritan by tenure, his house (Canons

Ashby) being an ancient college, where he possessed the church, and

abused most part of it to profane uses: the chancel he turned to a barn;

the body of it to a corn-chamber and storehouse, reserving one side

aisle of it for the public service of prayers, etc. He was noted for

weakness and simplicity, and never put on any business of moment, but

was very furious against the clergy."

[36] In a satire called "The Protestant Poets," our author is thus

contrasted with Sir Roger L'Estrange. In levelling his reproaches, the

satirist was not probably very solicitous about genealogical accuracy;

as, in the eighth line, I conceive Sir John Dryden to be alluded to,

although he is termed our poet's grandfather, when he was in fact his

uncle. Sir Erasmus Dryden was indeed a fanatic, and so was Henry

Pickering, Dryden's paternal and maternal grandfather; but neither were

men of mark or eminence:

"But though he spares no waste of words or conscience,

He wants the Tory turn of thorough nonsense,

That thoughtless air, that makes light Hodge so jolly;--

Void of all weight, _he_ wantons in his folly.

No so forced BAYES, whom sharp remorse attends,

While his heart loaths the cause his tongue defends;

Hourly he acts, hourly repents the sin,

And is all over _grandfather_ within:

By day that ill-laid spirit checks,--o' nights

Old Pickering's ghost, a dreadful spectre, frights.

Returns of spleen his slacken'd speed remit,

And crump his loose careers with intervals of wit:

While, without stop at sense, or ebb of spite,

Breaking all bars, bounding o'er wrong and right,

Contented Roger gallops out of sight."

[37] This piece was called in, and destroyed by the noble author; but

Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, when opposing Lord Grimestone at an

election, maliciously printed and dispersed a large impression of his

smothered performance, with a frontispiece representing an elephant

dancing on the slack rope.

[38] He was one of the garrison of Newark, which held out so long for

Charles I., and has left a curious specimen of the wit of the time, in

his controversy with a parliamentary officer, whose servant had robbed

him, and taken refuge in Newark. The following is the beginning of his

answer to a demand that the fugitive should be surrendered:

"Sixthly, Beloved,

"Is it so then, that our brother and fellow-labourer in the Gospel is

start aside? then this may serve for an use of instruction, not to trust

in man, nor in the son of man. Did not Demas leave Paul? did not

Onesimus run from his master Philemon? besides, this should teach us to

employ our talent, and not to lay it up in a napkin. Had it been done

among the cavaliers, it had been just; then the Israelite had spoiled

the Egyptian; but for Simeon to plunder Levi, that! that! You see, sir,

what use I make of the doctrine you sent me; and indeed since you change

style so far as to nibble at wit, you must pardon me, if, to quit

scores, I pretend a little to the gift of preaching," etc.

Such was the wit of Cleveland. After the complete subjugation of the

royalists, he was apprehended, having in his possession a bundle of

poems and satirical songs against the republicans. He appeared before

the commonwealth-general with the dignified air of one who is prepared

to suffer for his principles. He was disappointed; for the military

judge, after a contemptuous glance at the papers, exclaimed to

Cleveland's accusers, "Is this all ye have against him? Go, let the poor

knave sell his ballads!" Such an acquittal was more severe than any

punishment. The conscious virtue of the loyalist would have borne the

latter; but the pride of the poet could not sustain his contemptuous

dismissal; and Cleveland is said to have broken his heart in

consequence.--_Biographia Britannica_, voce _Cleveland_.

[39] "He is the very Withers of the city," says Dryden of Wild; "they

have bought more editions of his works than would serve to lay under all

their pies at the lord mayor's Christmas. When his famous poem first

came out in the year 1660, I have seen them reading it in the midst of

change time; nay, so vehement they were at it, that they lost their

bargain by the candles' ends; but what will you say, if he has been

received amongst great persons? I can assure you he is this day the envy

of one who is lord in the art of quibbling, and who does not take it

well, that any man should intrude so far into his province."--Vol. xv.

[40] [It may be well to note that "Gondibert" was published in 1651, ten

years before the Restoration. This does not affect the general accuracy

of Scott's remarks as to Davenant's poetical position and his influence

on Dryden, but the reader might draw a mistaken inference from those

remarks as to the date of the poem.--ED.]

[41] "The Duke of Monmouth returned on Saturday from New-Market. To-day

I waited on him, and first presented him with your letter, which he read

all over very attentively; and then prayed me to assure you, that he

would, upon all occasions, be most ready to give you the marks of his

affection, and assist you in any affairs you should recommend to him. I

then delivered him the six broad pieces, telling him, that I was deputed

to blush on your behalf for the meanness of the present, etc.; but he

took me off, and said he thanked you for it, and accepted it as a token

of your kindness. He had, before I came in, as I was told, considered

what to do with the gold; and but that I by all means prevented the

offer, or I had been in danger of being reimbursed with it."--ANDREW

MARVELL'S _Works_, vol. i. p. 210; _Letter to the Mayor of Hull_.

[42] From Driden to Dryden.

[43] Shadwell makes Dryden say, that after some years spent at the

university, he came to London. "At first I struggled with a great deal

of persecution, took up with a lodging which had a window no bigger than

a pocket looking-glass, dined at a three-penny ordinary enough to starve

a vacation tailor, kept little company, went clad in homely drugget, and

drunk wine as seldom as a rechabite, or the grand seignior's confessor."

The old gentleman, who corresponded with the "Gentleman's Magazine," and

remembered Dryden before the rise of his fortunes, mentions his suit of

plain drugget, being, by the bye, the same garb in which he has clothed

Flecnoe, who "coarsely clad in Norwich drugget came."

[44] [Scott, by an evident slip, "Berkeley."--ED.]

[45] [Scott, "Cropley."--ED.]

[46] [This is a mistake. See "Amboyna."--ED.]

[47] Davenant alleges the advantages of a respite and pause between

every stanza, which should be so constructed as to comprehend a period;

and adds, "nor doth alternate rhyme, by any lowliness of cadence, make

the sound less heroic, but rather adapt it to a plain and stately

composing of music; and the brevity of the stanza renders it less subtle

to the composer, and more easy to the singer, which, in _stilo

recitativo_, when the story is long, is chiefly requisite."--_Preface

to Gondibert._