SECTION VII.

_State of Dryden's Connections in Society after the Revolution--Juvenal

and Persius--Smaller Pieces--Eleonora--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._

The evil consequences of the Revolution upon Dryden's character and

fortunes began to abate sensibly within a year or two after that event.

It is well known, that King William's popularity was as short-lived as

it had been universal. All parties gradually drew off from the king,

under their ancient standards. The clergy returned to their maxims of

hereditary right, the Tories to their attachment to the house of Stuart,

the Whigs to their jealousy of the royal authority. Dryden, we have

already observed, so lately left in a small and detested party, was now

among multitudes who, from whatever contradictory motives, were joined

in opposition to the government and some of his kinsmen; particularly

with John Driden of Chesterton, his first cousin; with whom, till his

death, he lived upon terms of uninterrupted friendship. The influence of

Clarendon and Rochester, the Queen's uncles, were, we have seen, often

exerted in the poet's favour; and through them, he became connected with

the powerful families with which they were allied. Dorset, by whom he

had been deprived of his office, seems to have softened this harsh,

though indispensable, exertion of authority, by a liberal present; and

to his bounty Dryden had frequently recourse in cases of emergency.[1]

Indeed, upon one occasion it is said to have been administered in a mode

savouring more of ostentation than delicacy; for there is a tradition

that Dryden and Tom Brown, being invited to dine with the lord

chamberlain, found under their covers, the one a bank-note for £100, the

other for £50. I have already noticed, that these pecuniary benefactions

were not held so degrading in that age as at present; and, probably,

many of Dryden's opulent and noble friends, took, like Dorset,

occasional opportunities of supplying wants, which neither royal

munificence, nor the favour of the public, now enabled the poet fully to

provide for.

If Dryden's critical empire over literature was at any time interrupted

by the mischances of his political party, it was in _abeyance_ for a

very short period; since, soon after the Revolution, he appears to have

regained, and maintained till his death, that sort of authority in

Will's coffeehouse, to which we have frequently had occasion to allude.

His supremacy, indeed, seems to have been so effectually established,

that a "pinch out of Dryden's snuff-box"[2] was equal to taking a degree

in that academy of wit. Among those by whom it was frequented, Southerne

and Congreve were principally distinguished by Dryden's friendship. His

intimacy with the former, though oddly commenced, seems soon to have

ripened into such sincere friendship, that the aged poet selected

Southerne to finish "Cleomenes," and addressed to him an epistle of

condolence on the failure of "The Wives' Excuse," which, as he

delicately expresses it, "was with a kind civility dismissed" from the

scene. This was indeed an occasion in which even Dryden could tell, from

experience, how much the sympathy of friends was necessary to soothe the

injured feelings of an author. But Congreve seems to have gained yet

further than Southerne upon Dryden's friendship. He was introduced to

him by his first play, the celebrated "Old Bachelor," being put into the

poet's hands to be revised. Dryden, after making a few alterations to

fit it for the stage, returned it to the author with the high and just

commendation that it was the best first play he had ever seen. In truth,

it was impossible that Dryden could be insensible to the brilliancy of

Congreve's comic dialogue, which has never been equalled by any English

dramatist, unless by Mr. Sheridan. Less can be said for the tragedies of

Southerne, and for "The Mourning Bride." Although these pieces contain

many passages of great interest, and of beautiful poetry, I know not but

they contributed more than even the subsequent homilies of Rowe, to

chase natural and powerful expression of passion from the English stage,

and to sink it into that maudlin, and affected, and pedantic style of

tragedy, which haunted the stage till Shakespeare awakened at the call

of Garrick. "The Fatal Marriage" of Southerne is an exception to this

false taste; for no one who has seen Mrs. Siddons in Isabella, can deny

Southerne the power of moving the passions, till amusement becomes

bitter and almost insupportable distress. But these observations are

here out of place. Addison paid an early tribute to Dryden's fame, by

the verses addressed to him on his translations. Among Dryden's less

distinguished intimates, we observe Sir Henry Shere, Dennis the critic,

Moyle, Motteux, Walsh, who lived to distinguish the youthful merit of

Pope, and other men of the second rank in literature. These, as his

works testify, he frequently assisted with prefaces, occasional verses,

or similar contributions. But among our author's followers and admirers,

we must not reckon Swift, although related to him,[3] and now coming

into notice. It is said, that Swift had subjected to his cousin's

perusal, some of those performances, entitled _Odes_, which appear in

the seventh volume of the last edition of his works. Even the eye of

Dryden was unable to discover the wit and the satirist in the clouds of

incomprehensible pindaric obscurity in which he was enveloped; and the

aged bard pronounced the hasty, and never to be pardoned sentence,--

"Cousin Swift, you will never be a poet."[4] A doom which he, on whom it

was passed, attempted to repay, by repeated, although impotent, attacks

upon the fame of Dryden, everywhere scattered through his works. With

the exception of Swift, no author of eminence, whose labours are still

in request, has ventured to assail the poetical fame of Dryden.

Shortly after the Revolution, Dryden had translated several satires of

Juvenal; and calling in the aid of his two sons, of Congreve, Creech,

Tate, and others, he was enabled, in 1692, to give a complete version

both of that satirist, and of Persius. In this undertaking he himself

bore a large share, translating the whole of Persius, with the first,

third, sixth, tenth, and sixteenth satires of Juvenal. To this version

is prefixed the noted Essay on Satire, inscribed to the Earl of Dorset

and Middlesex. In that treatise, our author exhibits a good deal of that

sort of learning which was in fashion among the French critics; and, I

suspect, was contented rather to borrow something from them, than put

himself to the trouble of compiling more valuable materials. Such is the

disquisition concerning the origin of the word _Satire_, which is

chiefly extracted from Casaubon, Dacier, and Rigault. But the poet's own

incidental remarks upon the comparative merits of Horace, Juvenal, and

Persius, his declamation against the abuse of satire, his incidental

notices respecting epic poetry, translation, and English literature in

general, render this introduction highly valuable.

Without noticing the short prefaces to Walsh's "Essay upon Woman," a

meagre and stiff composition, and to Sir Henry Shere's wretched

translation of Polybius, published in 1691 and 1692, we hasten to the

elegy on the Countess of Abingdon, entitled Eleonora. This lady died

suddenly, 31st May 1691, in a ball-room in her own house, just then

prepared for an entertainment. The disconsolate husband, who seems to

have been a patron of the Muses,[5] not satisfied with the volunteer

effusions of some minor poets, employed a mutual friend to engage Dryden

to compose a more beautiful tribute to his consort's memory. The poet,

it would seem, neither knew the lord nor the lady, but was doubtless

propitiated upon the mournful occasion;[6] nor was the application and

fee judged more extraordinary than that probably offered, on the same

occasion, to the divine who was to preach the Countess's funeral sermon.

The leading and most characteristic features of the lady's character

were doubtless pointed out to our author as subjects for illustration;

yet so difficult is it, even for the best poet, to feign a sorrow which

he feels not, or to describe with appropriate and animated colouring a

person whom he has never seen, that Dryden's poem resembles rather an

abstract panegyric on an imaginary being, than an elegy on a real

character. The elegy was published early in 1692.

In 1693, Tonson's Third Miscellany made its appearance, with a

dedication to Lord Ratcliffe, eldest son of the Earl of Derwentwater,

who was himself a pretender to poetry, though our author thought so

slightly of his attempts in that way, that he does not even deign to

make them enter into his panegyric, but contents himself with saying,

"what you will be hereafter, may be more than guessed by what you are at

present." It is probable that the rhyming peer was dissatisfied with

Dryden's unusual economy of adulation; at least he disappointed some

expectations which the poet and bookseller seem to have entertained of

his liberality.[7] This dedication indicates, that a quarrel was

commenced between our author and the critic Rymer. It appears from a

passage in a letter to Tonson, that Rymer had spoken lightly of him in

his last critique (probably in the short view of tragedy), and that the

poet took this opportunity, as he himself expresses it, to snarl again.

He therefore acquaints us roundly, that the corruption of a poet was the

generation of a critic; exults a little over the memory of Rymer's

"Edgar," a tragedy just reeking from damnation; and hints at the

difference which the public is likely to experience between the present

royal historiographer and him whose room he occupied. In his epistle to

Congreve, alluding to the same circumstance of Rymer's succeeding to the

office of historiographer, as Tate did to the laurel, on the death of

Thomas Shadwell, in 1692, Dryden has these humorous lines:

"O that your brows my laurel had sustained!

Well had I been deposed, if you had reigned:

The father had descended for the son;

For only you are lineal to the throne.

Thus, when the state one Edward did depose,

A greater Edward in his room arose:

But now not I, but poetry, is cursed;

For Tom the second reigns like Tom the first.

But let them not mistake my patron's part,

Nor call his charity their own desert."

From the letter to Tonson above referred to, it would seem that the

dedication of the Third Miscellany gave offence to Queen Mary, being

understood to reflect upon her government, and that she had commanded

Rymer to return to the charge, by a criticism on Dryden's plays. But the

breach does not appear to have become wider; and Dryden has elsewhere

mentioned Rymer with civility.

The Third Miscellany contained, of Dryden's poetry, a few songs, the

first book, with part of the ninth and sixteenth books of the

Metamorphoses, and the parting of Hector and Andromache, from the Iliad.

It was also to have had the poem of Hero and Leander, from the Greek;

but none such appeared, nor is it clear whether Dryden ever executed the

version, or only had it in contemplation. The contribution, although

ample, was not satisfactory to old Jacob Tonson, who wrote on the

subject a most mercantile expostulatory letter[8] to Dryden, which is

fortunately the minutiae of a literary bargain in the 17th century.

Tonson, with reference to Dryden having offered a strange bookseller six

hundred lines for twenty guineas, enters into a question in the rule of

three, by which he discovers, and proves, that for fifty guineas he has

only 1446 lines, which he seems to take more unkindly, as he had not

_counted_ the lines until he had paid the money; from all which Jacob

infers, that Dryden ought, out of generosity, at least to throw him in

something to the bargain, especially as he had used him more kindly in

Juvenal, which, saith the said Jacob, is not reckoned so easy to

translate as Ovid. What weight was given to this supplication does not

appear; probably very little, for the translations were not extended,

and as to getting back any part of the copy-money, it is not probable

Tonson's most sanguine expectation ever reached that point. Perhaps the

songs were thrown in as a make-weight. There was a Fourth Miscellany

published in 1694; but to this Dryden only gave a version of the third

Georgic, and his Epistle to Sir Godfrey Kneller, the requital of a copy

of the portrait of Shakespeare.[9]

In 1963, Dryden addressed the beautiful lines to Congreve, on the cold

reception of his "Double Dealer." He was himself under a similar cloud,

from the failure of "Love Triumphant," and therefore in a fit mood to

administer consolation to his friend. The epistle contains, among other

striking passages, the affecting charge of the care of his posthumous

fame, which Congreve did not forget when Dryden was no more.

But, independently of occasional exertions, our author, now retired from

the stage, had bent his thoughts upon one great literary task, the

translation of Virgil. This weighty and important undertaking was

probably suggested by the experience of Tonson, the success of whose

"Miscellanies" had taught him the value placed by the public on Dryden's

translations from the classics. From hints thrown out by contemporary

scheme was meditated, even before 1964; but in that year the poet, in a

letter to Dennis, speaks of it as under his immediate contemplation. The

names of Virgil and Dryden were talismans powerful to arrest the eyes of

all that were literary in England, upon the progress of the work. Mr.

Malone has recorded the following particulars concerning it, with pious

enthusiasm.

"Dr. Johnson has justly remarked, that the nation seemed to consider its

honour interested in the event. Mr. Gilbert Dolben gave him the various

editions of his author: Dr. Knightly Chetwood furnished him with the

life of Virgil, and the Preface to the Pastorals; and Addison supplied

the arguments of the several books, and an Essay on the Georgics. The

first lines of this great poet which he translated, he wrote with a

diamond on a pane of glass in one of the windows of Chesterton House, in

Huntingdonshire, the residence of his kinsman and namesake, John Driden,

Esq.[10] The version of the first Georgic, and a great part of the last

Aeneid, was made at Denham Court, in Buckinghamshire, the seat of Sir

William Bowyer, Baronet; and the seventh Æneid was translated at

Burleigh, the noble mansion of the Earl of Exeter. These circumstances,

which must be acknowledged to be of no great importance, I yet have

thought it proper to record, because they will for ever endear those

places to the votaries of the Muses, and add to them a kind of

celebrity, which neither the beauties of nature, nor the exertions of

art, can bestow."

Neither was the liberality of the nation entirely disproportioned to the

general importance attached to the translation of Virgil, by so eminent

a poet. The researches of Mr. Malone have ascertained, in some degree,

the terms. There were two classes of subscribers, the first set of whom

paid five guineas apiece to adorn the work with engravings; beneath each

of which, in due and grateful remembrance, was blazoned the arms of a

subscriber: this class amounted to one hundred and one persons, a list

of whom appears in this edition, in vol. xiii., and presents an

assemblage of noble names, few of whom are distinguished more to their

credit than by the place they there occupy. The second subscribers were

two hundred and fifty in number, at two guineas each. But from these

sums was to be deducted the expense of the engravings, though these were

only the plates used for Ogilby's Virgil, a little retouched. Besides

the subscriptions, it would seem, that Dryden received from Tonson fifty

pounds for each Book of the "Georgics" and "Æneid," and probably the

same for the Pastorals collectively.[11] On the other hand, it is

probable that Jacob charged a price for the copies delivered to the

subscribers, which, with the expense of the plates, reduced Dryden's

profit to about twelve or thirteen hundred pounds;--a trifling sum when

compared to what Pope received for the "Iliad," which was certainly

between £5,000 and £6,000; yet great in proportion to what the age of

Dryden had ever afforded, as an encouragement to literature. It must

indeed be confessed, that the Revolution had given a new impulse and

superior importance to literary pursuits. The semi-barbarous age, which

succeeded the great civil war, had been civilised by slow degrees. It is

true, the king and courtiers, among their disorderly and dissolute

pleasures, enumerated songs and plays, and, in the course of their

political intrigues, held satires in request; but they had neither money

nor time to spare for the encouragement or study of any of the higher

and more elaborate departments of poetry. Meanwhile, the bulk of the

nation neglected verse, as what they could not understand, or, with

puritanical bigotry, detested as sinful the use, as well as the abuse,

of poetical talent. But the lapse of thirty years made a material change

in the manners of the English people. Instances began to occur of

individuals, who, rising at first into notice for their proficience in

the fine arts, were finally promoted for the active and penetrating

talents, which necessarily accompany a turn towards them. An outward

reformation of manners, at least the general abjuration of grosser

profligacy, was also favourable to poetry,--

Still first to fly where

sensual joys invade.

This was wrought, partly by the religious manners of Mary; partly by

the cold and unsocial temper of William, who shunned excess, not

perhaps because it was criminal, but because it was derogatory; partly

by the political fashion of the day, which was to disown the profligacy

that marked the partisans of the Stuarts; but, most of all, by the

general increase of good taste, and the improvement of education. All

these contributed to the encouragement of Dryden's great undertaking,

which promised to rescue Virgil from the degraded version of Ogilby, and

present him in a becoming form to a public, now prepared to receive him

with merited admiration.

While our author was labouring in this great work, and the public were

waiting the issue with impatience and attention, a feud, of which it is

now impossible to trace the cause, arose between the bard and his

publisher. Their union before seems to have been of a nature more

friendly than interest alone could have begotten; for Dryden, in one

letter, talks with gratitude of Tonson's affording him his company down

to Northamptonshire; and this friendly intimacy Jacob neglected not to

cultivate, by those occasional compliments of fruit and wine, which are

often acknowledged in the course of their correspondence. But a quarrel

broke out between them, when the translation of Virgil had advanced so

far as the completion of the seventh Aeneid; at which period Dryden

charges Tonson bitterly, with an intention, from the very beginning, to

deprive him of all profit by the second subscriptions; alluding, I

presume, to the price which the bookseller charged him upon the volumes

delivered to the subscribers. The bibliopolist seems to have bent before

the storm, and pacified the incensed bard, by verbal submission, though

probably without relaxing his exactions and drawbacks in any material

degree. Another cause of this dissension appears to have been the Notes

upon "Virgil," for which Tonson would allow no additional emolument to

the author, although Dryden says, "that to make them good, would cost

six months' labour at least," and elsewhere tells Tonson ironically,

that, since not to be paid, they shall be short, "for the saving of the

paper." I cannot think that we have sustained any great loss by Tonson's

penurious economy on this occasion. In his prefaces and dedications,

Dryden let his own ideas freely forth to the public; but in his Notes

upon the Classics, witness those on "Juvenal" and "Persius," he neither

indulged in critical dissertations on particular beauties and defects,

nor in general remarks upon the kind of poetry before him; but contented

himself with rendering into English the antiquarian dissertations of

Dacier and other foreign commentators, with now and then an explanatory

paraphrase of an obscure passage. The parodies of Martin Scriblerus had

not yet consigned to ridicule the verbal criticism, and solemn trifling,

with which the ancient schoolmen pretended to illustrate the classics.

But beside the dispute about the notes in particular, and the various

advantages which Dryden suspected Tonson of attempting in the course of

the transaction, he seems to have been particularly affronted at a

presumptuous plan of that publisher (a keen Whig, and secretary of the

Kit-cat club) to drive him into inscribing the translation of Virgil to

King William. With this view, Tonson had an especial care to make the

engraver aggravate the nose of Aeneas in the plates into a sufficient

resemblance of the hooked promontory of the Deliverer's countenance;[12]

and, foreseeing Dryden's repugnance to this favourite plan, he had

recourse, it would seem, to more unjustifiable means to further it; for

the poet expresses himself as convinced that, through Tonson's means,

his correspondence with his sons, then at Rome, was intercepted.[13] I

suppose Jacob, having fairly laid siege to his author's conscience, had

no scruple to intercept all foreign supplies, which might have confirmed

him in his pertinacity. But Dryden, although thus closely beleaguered,

held fast his integrity; and no prospect of personal advantage, or

importunity on the part of Tonson, could induce him to take a step

inconsistent with his religious and political sentiments. It was

probably during the course of these bickerings with his publisher, that

Dryden, incensed at some refusal of accommodation on the part of Tonson,

sent him three well-known coarse and forcible satirical lines,

descriptive of his personal appearance:

"With leering looks, bull-faced, and freckled fair,

With two left legs, and Judas-coloured hair,

And frowzy pores, that taint the ambient air."

"Tell the dog," said the poet to the messenger, "that he who wrote these

can write more." But Tonson, perfectly satisfied with this single

triplet, hastened to comply with the author's request, without requiring

any further specimen of his poetical powers. It would seem, however,

that when Dryden neglected his stipulated labour, Tonson possessed

powers of animadversion, which, though exercised in plain prose, were

not a little dreaded by the poet. Lord Bolingbroke, already a votary of

the Muses, and admitted to visit their high priest, was wont to relate,

that one day he heard another person enter the house. "This," said

Dryden, "is Tonson: you will take care not to depart before he goes

away: for I have not completed the sheet which I promised him; and if

you leave me unprotected, I shall suffer all the rudeness to which his

resentment can prompt his tongue."[14] But whatever occasional subjects

of dissension arose between Dryden and his bookseller appears always to

have brought them together, after the first ebullition of displeasure

had subsided. There might, on such occasions, be room for acknowledging

faults on both sides; for, if we admit that the bookseller was penurious

and churlish, we cannot deny that Dryden seems often to have been

abundantly captious, and irascible. Indeed, as the poet placed, and

justly, more than a mercantile value upon what he sold, the trader, on

his part, was necessarily cautious not to afford a price which his

returns could not pay; so that while, in one point of view, the author

sold at an inadequate price, the purchaser, in another, really got no

more than value for his money. That literature is ill recompensed, is

usually rather the fault of the public than the bookseller, whose trade

can only exist by buying that which can be sold to advantage. The

trader, who purchased the "Paradise Lost" for ten pounds, had probably

no very good bargain.[15]

However fretted by these teasing and almost humiliating discussions,

Dryden continued steadily advancing in his great labour; and about three

years after it had been undertaken, the translation of Virgil, "the most

noble and spirited," said Pope, "which I know in any language," was

given to the public in July 1697. So eager was the general expectation,

that the first edition was exhausted in a few months, and a second

published early in the next year. "It satisfied," says Johnson, "his

friends, and, for the most part, silenced his enemies." But, although

this was generally the case, there wanted not some to exercise the

invidious task of criticism, or rather of malevolent detraction. Among

those, the highest name is that of Swift; the most distinguished for

venomous and persevering malignity, that of Milbourne.

In his Epistle to Prince Posterity, prefixed to the "Tale of a Tub,"

Swift, in the character of the dedicator, declares, "upon the word of a

sincere man, that there is now actually in being a certain poet called

John Dryden, whose translation of Virgil was lately printed in a large

folio, well-bound, and, if diligent search were made, for aught I know,

is yet to be seen." In his "Battle of the Books," he tells us, "that

Dryden, who encountered Virgil, soothed the good ancient by the

endearing title of 'father,' and, by a large deduction of genealogies,

made it appear, that they were nearly related, and humbly proposed an

exchange of armour; as a mark of hospitality, Virgil consented, though

his was of gold, and cost an hundred beeves, the other's but of rusty

iron. However, this glittering armour became the modern still worse than

his own. Then they agreed to exchange horses; but, when it came to the

trial, Dryden was afraid, and utterly unable to mount." A yet more

bitter reproach is levelled by the wit against the poet, for his triple

dedication of the Pastorals, Georgics, and Aeneid, to three several

patrons, Clifford, Chesterfield, and Mulgrave.[16] But, though the

recollection of the contemned Odes, like the _spretae injuria formae_ of

Juno, still continued to prompt these overflowings of Swift's satire, he

had too much taste and perception of poetry to attempt, gravely, to

undermine, by a formal criticism, the merits of Dryden's Virgil.

This was reserved for Luke Milbourne, a clergyman, who, by that

assurance, has consigned his name to no very honourable immortality.

This person appears to have had a living at Great Yarmouth,[17] which,

Dryden hints, he forfeited by writing libels on his parishioners; and

from another testimony, he seems to have been a person of no very strict

morals.[18] Milbourne was once an admirer of our poet, as appears from

his letter concerning "Amphitryon," vol. viii. But either poetical

rivalry, for he had also thought of translating Virgil himself,[19] or

political animosity, for he seems to have held revolution principles, or

deep resentment for Dryden's sarcasms against the clergy, or, most

probably, all these united, impelled Milbourne to publish a most furious

criticism, entitled, "Notes on Dryden's Virgil, in a Letter to a

Friend." "And here," said he, "in the first place, I must needs own

Jacob Tonson's ingenuity to be greater than the translator's, who, in

the inscription of his fine gay (title) in the front of the book, calls

it very honestly Dryden's Virgil, to let the reader know, that this is

not that Virgil so much admired in the Augustaean age, an author whom

Mr. Dryden once thought untranslatable, but a Virgil of another stamp,

of a coarser allay; a silly, impertinent, nonsensical writer, of a

various and uncertain style, a mere Alexander Ross, or somebody inferior

to him; who could never have been known again in the translation, if the

name of Virgil had not been bestowed upon him in large characters in the

frontispiece, and in the running title. Indeed, there is scarce the

_magni nominis umbra_ to be met with in this translation, which being

fairly intimated by Jacob, he needs add no more, but _si populus vult

decipi, decipiatur._"

With an assurance which induced Pope to call him the fairest of critics,

not content with criticising the production of Dryden, Milbourne was so

ill advised as to produce, and place in opposition to it, a rickety

translation of his own, probably the fragments of that which had been

suppressed by Dryden's version. A short specimen, both of his criticism

and poetry, will convince the reader, that the powers of the former

were, as has been often the case, neutralised by the insipidity of the

latter; for who can rely on the judgment of a critic so ill qualified to

illustrate his own precepts? I take the remarks on the tenth Eclogue, as

a specimen, at hazard. "This eclogue is translated in a strain too

luscious and effeminate for Virgil, who might bemoan his friend, but

does it in a noble and a manly style, which Mr. Ogilby answers better

than Mr. D., whose paraphrase looks like one of Mrs. Behn's, when

somebody had turned the original into English prose before.

"Where Virgil says,

_Lauri et myricae flevêre_,

the figure's beautiful; where Mr. D. says,

the laurel stands in tears,

And hung with humid pearls, the lowly shrub appears,

the figure is lost, and a foolish and impertinent representation comes

in its place; an ordinary dewy morning might fill the laurels and shrubs

with Mr. D.'s tears, though Gallus had not been concerned in it.

And yet the queen of beauty blest his bed--

"Here Mr. D. comes with his ugly patch upon a beautiful face: what had

the queen of beauty to do here? Lycoris did not despise her lover for

his meanness, but because she had a mind to be a Catholic whore. Gallus

was of quality, but her spark a poor inferior fellow. And yet the queen

of beauty, etc., would have followed there very well, but not where

wanton Mr. D. has fixt her."

Flushed were his cheeks, and glowing were his eyes.

"This character is fitter for one that is drunk than one in an

amazement, and is a thought unbecoming Virgil."

And for thy rival, tempts the raging sea,

The forms of horrid war, and heaven's inclemency.

"Lycoris, doubtless, was a jilting baggage, but why should Mr. D. belie

her? Virgil talks nothing of her going to sea, and perhaps she had a

mind to be only a camp laundress, which office she might be advanced to

without going to sea: 'the forms of horrid war,' for _horrida castra_,

is incomparable."

his brows, a country crown

Of fennel, and of nodding lilies drown,

"is a very odd figure: Sylvanus had swinging brows to drown such a crown

as that, _i.e._ to make it invisible, to swallow it up; if it be a

country crown, drown his brows, it is false English."

The meads are sooner drunk with morning dews.

"_Rivi_ signifies no such thing; but then, that bees should be drunk

with flowery shrubs, or goats be drunk with brouze, for drunk's the

verb, is a very quaint thought."

After much more to the same purpose, Milbourne thus introduces his own

version of the first Eclogue, with a confidence worthy of a better

cause:--"That Mr. Dryden might be satisfied that I'd offer no foul play,

nor find faults in him, without giving him an opportunity of

retaliation, I have subjoined another metaphrase or translation of the

first and fourth pastoral, which I desire may be read with his by the

original.

TITYRUS.

ECLOGUE I.

_Mel._ Beneath a spreading beech you, Tityrus, lie,

And country songs to humble reeds apply;

We our sweet fields, our native country fly,

We leave our country; you in shades may lie,

And Amaryllis fair and blythe proclaim,

And make the woods repeat her buxom name.

_Tit._ O Melibaeus! 'twas a bounteous God,

These peaceful play-days on our muse bestowed;

At least, he'st alway be a God to me;

My lambs shall oft his grateful offerings be.

Thou seest, he lets my herds securely stray,

And me at pleasure on my pipe to play.

_Mel._ Your peace I don't with looks of envy view,

But I admire your happy state, and you.

In all our farms severe distraction reigns,

No ancient owner there in peace remains.

Sick, I, with much ado, my goats can drive,

This Tityrus, I scarce can lead alive;

On the bare stones, among yon hazels past,

Just now, alas! her hopeful twins she cast.

Yet had not all on's dull and senseless been,

We'd long agon this coming stroke foreseen.

Oft did the blasted oaks our fate unfold,

And boding choughs from hollow trees foretold.

But say, good Tityrus! tell me who's the God,

Who peace, so lost to us, on you bestow'd?"

Some critics there were, though but few, who joined Milbourne in his

abortive attempt to degrade our poet's translation. Oldmixon, celebrated

for his share in the games of the Dunciad,[20] and Samuel Parker,[21] a

yet more obscure name, have informed us of this, by volunteering in

Dryden's defence. But Dryden needed not their assistance. The real

excellencies of his version were before the public, and it was rather to

clear himself from the malignant charges against his moral principles,

which Melbourne had mingled with his criticism, than for any other

purpose, that the poet deemed his antagonist worthy of the following

animadversion:--"Milbourne, who is in orders, pretends amongst the rest

this quarrel to me, that I have fallen foul on priesthood: if I have, I

am only to ask pardon of good priests, and am afraid his part of the

reparation will come to little. Let him be satisfied, that he shall not

he able to force himself upon me for an adversary. I contemn him too

much to enter into competition with him. His own translations of Virgil

have answered his criticisms on mine. If (as they say he has declared in

print) he prefers the version of Ogilby to mine, the world has made him

the same compliment; for it is agreed on all hands, that he writes even

below Ogilby. That, you will say, is not easily to be done; but what

cannot Milbourne bring about? I am satisfied, however, that while he and

I live together, I shall not be thought the worst poet of the age. It

looks as if I had desired him underhand to write so ill against me; but

upon my honest word, I have not bribed him to do me this service, and am

wholly guiltless of his pamphlet. It is true, I should be glad if I

could persuade him to continue his good offices, and write such another

critique on anything of mine; for I find, by experience, he has a great

stroke with the reader, when he condemns any of my poems, to make the

world have a better opinion of them. He has taken some pains with my

poetry; but nobody will be persuaded to take the same with his. If I had

taken to the Church (as he affirms, but which was never in my thoughts),

I should have had more sense, if not more grace, than to have turned

myself out of my benefice by writing libels on my parishioners. But his

account of my manners, and my principles, are of a piece with his cavils

and his poetry; and so I have done with him for ever."[22]

While Dryden was engaged with his great translation, he found two

months' leisure to execute a prose version of Fresnoy's "Art of

Painting," to which he added an ingenious Preface, the work of twelve

mornings, containing a parallel between that art and poetry; of which

Mason has said, that though too superficial to stand the test of strict

criticism, yet it will always give pleasure to readers of taste, even

when it fails to convince their judgment. This version appeared in 1695.

Mr. Malone conjectures that our author was engaged in this task by his

friends Closterman, and Sir Godfrey Kneller, artists, who had been

active in procuring subscriptions for his Virgil. He also wrote a "Life

of Lucian," for a translation of his works, by Mr. Walter Moyle, Sir

Henry Shere, and other gentlemen of pretension to learning. This

version, although it did not appear till after his death, and although

he executed no part of the translation, still retains the title of

"Dryden's Lucian."

There was one event of political importance which occurred in December

1695, and which the public seem to have expected should have employed

the pen of Dryden;--this was the death of Mary, wife of William the

Third. It is difficult to conceive in what manner the poet laureate of

the unfortunate James could have treated the memory of his daughter.

Satire was dangerous, and had indeed been renounced by the poet; and

panegyric was contrary to the principles for which he was suffering.

Yet, among the swarm of rhymers who thrust themselves upon the nation on

that mournful occasion, there are few who do not call, with friendly or

unfriendly voice, upon our poet to break silence.[23] But the voice of

praise and censure was heard in vain, and Dryden's only interference

was, in character of the first judge of his time, to award the prize to

the Duke of Devonshire, as author of the best poem composed on occasion

of the Queen's death.[24]

Virgil was hardly finished, when our author distinguished himself by the

immortal Ode to Saint Cecilia, commonly called "Alexander's Feast."

There is some difference of evidence concerning the time occupied in

this splendid task. He had been solicited to undertake it by the

stewards of the Musical Meeting, which had for several years met to

celebrate the feast of St. Cecilia, their patroness, and whom he had

formerly gratified by a similar performance. In September 1697, Dryden

writes to his son:--"In the meantime, I am writing a song for St.

Cecilia's feast; who, you know, is the patroness of music. This is

troublesome, and no way beneficial; but I could not deny the stewards,

who came in a body to my house to desire that kindness, one of them

being Mr. Bridgeman, whose parents are your mother's friends." This

account seems to imply, that the Ode was a work of some time; which is

countenanced by Dr. Birch's expression, that Dryden himself "observes,

in an original letter of his, that he was employed for almost a

fortnight in composing and correcting it."[25] On the other hand, the

following anecdote is told upon very respectable authority. "Mr. St.

John, afterwards Lord Bolingbroke, happening to pay a morning visit to

Dryden, whom he always respected, found him in an unusual agitation of

spirits, even to a trembling. On inquiring the cause, 'I have been up

all night,' replied the old bard: 'my musical friends made me promise to

write them an Ode for their feast of St. Cecilia: I have been so struck

with the subject which occurred to me, that I could not leave it till I

had _completed_ it; here it is, _finished_ at one sitting.' And

immediately he showed him _this_ Ode, which places the British lyric

poetry above that of any other nation."[26] These accounts are not,

however, so contradictory as they may at first sight appear. It is

possible that Dryden may have completed, at one sitting, the whole Ode,

and yet have employed a fortnight, or much more, in correction. There is

strong internal evidence to show that the poem was, speaking with

reference to its general structure, wrought off at once. A halt or

pause, even of a day, would perhaps have injured that continuous flow of

poetical language and description which argues the whole scene to have

arisen at once upon the author's imagination. It seems possible, more

especially in lyrical poetry, to discover where the author has paused

for any length of time; for the union of the parts is rarely so perfect

as not to show a different strain of thought and feeling. There may be

something fanciful, however, in this reasoning, which I therefore

abandon to the reader's mercy; only begging him to observe, that we have

no mode of estimating the exertions of a quality so capricious as a

poetic imagination; so that it is very possible, that the Ode to St.

Cecilia may have been the work of twenty-four hours, whilst correction

and emendations, perhaps of no very great consequence, occupied the

author as many days. Derrick, in his "Life of Dryden," tells us, upon

the authority of Walter Moyle, that the society paid Dryden £40 for this

sublime Ode, which, from the passage in his letter above quoted, seems

to have been more than the bard expected at commencing his labour. The

music for this celebrated poem was originally composed by Jeremiah

Clarke,[27] one of the stewards of the festival, whose productions where

more remarkable for deep pathos and delicacy than for fire and energy.

It is probable that, with such a turn of mind and taste, he may have

failed in setting the sublime, lofty, and daring flights of the Ode to

St. Cecilia. Indeed his composition was not judged worthy of

publication. The Ode, after some impertinent alterations, made by

Hughes, at the request of Sir Richard Steele, was set to music by

Clayton, who, with Steele, managed a public concert in 1711; but neither

was this a successful essay to connect the poem with the art it

celebrated. At length, in 1736, "Alexander's Feast" was set by Handel,

and performed in the Theatre-Royal, Covent Garden, with the full success

which the combined talents of the poet and the musician seemed to

insure.[28] Indeed, although the music was at first less successful, the

poetry received, even in the author's time, all the applause which its

unrivalled excellence demanded. "I am glad to hear from all hands," says

Dryden, in a letter to Tonson, "that my Ode is esteemed the best of all

my poetry, by all the town. I thought so myself when I writ it; but,

being old, I mistrusted my own judgment." Mr. Malone has preserved a

tradition, that the father of Lord Chief-Justice Marlay, then a Templar,

and frequenter of Will's coffeehouse, took an opportunity to pay his

court to Dryden, on the publication of "Alexander's Feast;" and,

happening to sit next him, congratulated him on having produced the

finest and noblest Ode that had ever been written in any language. "You

are right, young gentleman (replied Dryden), a nobler Ode never _was_

produced, nor ever _will_." This singularly strong expression cannot be

placed to the score of vanity. It was an inward consciousness of merit,

which burst forth, probably almost involuntarily, and I fear must be

admitted as prophetic.

The preparation of a new edition of the Virgil, which appeared in 1698,

occupied nine days only, after which Dryden began seriously to consider

to what he should next address his pen. The state of his circumstances

rendered constant literary labour indispensable to the support of his

family, although the exertion, and particularly the confinement,

occasioned by his studies, considerably impaired his health. His son

Charles had met with an accident at Rome, which was attended with a

train of consequences perilous to his health; and Dryden, anxious to

recall him to Britain, was obliged to make extraordinary exertions to

provide against this additional expense. "If it please God," he writes

to Tonson, "that I must die of over-study, I cannot spend my life better

than in preserving his." It is affecting to read such a passage in the

life of such a man; yet the necessities of the poet, like the

afflictions of the virtuous, smooth the road to immortality. While

Milton and Dryden were favoured by the rulers of the day, they were

involved in the religious and political controversies which raged around

them; it is to hours of seclusion, neglect, and even penury, that we owe

the Paradise Lost, the Virgil, and the Fables.

Among other projects, Dryden seems to have had thoughts of altering and

revising a tragedy called the "Conquest of China by the Tartars,"

written by his ancient friend and brother-in-law, Sir Robert Howard. The

unkindness which had arisen between them upon the subject of blank verse

and rhyme, seems to have long since passed away; and we observe, with

pleasure, that Dryden, in the course of the pecuniary transactions about

Virgil, reckons upon the assistance of Sir Robert Howard, and consults

his taste also in the revisal of the version.[29] But Dryden never

altered the "Conquest of China," being first interrupted by the

necessity of revising Virgil, and afterwards, perhaps, by a sort of

quarrel which took place between him and the players, of whom he speaks

most resentfully in his "Epistle to Granville," upon his tragedy of

"Heroic Love," acted in the beginning of 1698.[30]

The success of Virgil encouraged Dryden about this time to turn his eyes

upon Homer; and the general voice of the literary world called upon him

to do the venerable Grecian the same service which the Roman had

received from him. It was even believed that he had fixed upon the mode

of translation, and that he was, as he elsewhere expresses it, to "fight

unarmed, without his rhyme."[31] A dubious anecdote bears, that he even

regretted he had not rendered Virgil into blank verse, and shows at the

same time, if genuine, how far he must now have disapproved of his own

attempt to turn into rhyme the Paradise Lost. The story is told by the

elder Richardson, in his remarks on the tardy progress of Milton's great

work in the public opinion.[32] When Dryden did translate the First Book

of Homer, which he published with the Fables, he rendered it into rhyme;

nor have we sufficient ground to believe that he ever seriously

intended, in so large a work, to renounce the advantages which he

possessed, by his unequalled command of versification. That in other

respects the task was consonant to his temper, as well as talents, he

has himself informed us. "My thoughts," he says, in a letter to Halifax,

in 1699, "are at present fixed on Homer; and by my translation of the

first Iliad, I find him a poet more according to my genius than Virgil,

and consequently hope I may do him more justice, in his fiery way of

writing; which, as it is liable to more faults, so it is capable of more

beauties than the exactness and sobriety of Virgil. Since it is for my

country's honour, as well as for my own, that I am willing to undertake

this task, I despair not of being encouraged in it by your favour." But

this task Dryden was not destined to accomplish, although he had it so

much at heart as to speak of resuming it only three months before his

death.[33]

In the meanwhile, our author had engaged himself in making those

imitations of Boccacio and Chaucer, which have been since called the

"Fables;" and in spring 1699, he was in such forwardness, as to put into

Tonson's hands "seven thousand five hundred verses, more or less," as

the contract bears, being a partial delivery to account of ten thousand

verses, which by that deed he agreed to furnish, for the sum of two

hundred and fifty guineas, to be made up three hundred pounds upon

publication of the second edition. This second payment Dryden lived not

to receive. With the contents of this miscellaneous volume we are to

suppose him engaged, from the revisal of the Virgil, in 1697, to the

publication of the Fables, in March 1699-1700. This was the last period

of his labours, and of his life; and, like all the others, it did not

pass undisturbed by acrimonious criticism, and controversy. The dispute

with Milbourne we noticed, before dismissing the subject of Virgil; but

there were two other persons who, in their zeal for morality and

religion, chose to disturb the last years of the life of Dryden.

The indelicacy of the stage, being, in its earliest period, merely the

coarse gross raillery of a barbarous age, was probably of no greater

injury to the morals of the audience, than it is to those of the lower

ranks of society, with whom similar language is everywhere admitted as

wit and humour. During the reigns of James I. and Charles I. this

licence was gradually disappearing. In the domination of the fanatics,

which succeeded, matters were so much changed, that, far from permitting

the use of indelicate or profane allusions, they wrapped up not only

their most common temporal affairs, but even their very crimes and

vices, in the language of their spiritual concerns. Luxury was _using

the creature_; avarice was _seeking experiences_; insurrection was

_putting the hand to the plough_; actual rebellion, _fighting the good

fight_; and regicide, _doing the great work of the Lord._ This

vocabulary became grievously unfashionable at the Reformation, and was

at once swept away by the torrent of irreligion, blasphemy, and

indecency, which were at that period deemed necessary to secure

conversation against the imputation of disloyalty and fanaticism. The

court of Cromwell, if lampoons can be believed, was not much less

vicious than that of Charles II., but it was less scandalous; and, as

Dryden himself expresses it,

"The sin was of our native growth, 'tis true;

The scandal of the sin was wholly new.

Misses there were, but modestly concealed,

Whitehall the naked Goddess first revealed;

Who standing, as at Cyprus, in her shrine,

The strumpet was adored with rites divine."

This torrent of licentiousness had begun in some degree to abate, even

upon the accession of James II., whose manners did not encourage the

same general licence as those of Charles. But after the Revolution, when

an affectation of profligacy was no longer deemed a necessary attribute

of loyalty, and when it began to be thought possible that a man might

have some respect for religion without being a republican, or even a

fanatic, the licence of the stage was generally esteemed a nuisance. It

then happened, as is not uncommon, that those, most bustling and active

to correct public abuses, were men whose intentions may, without doing

them injury, be estimated more highly than their talents. Thus, Sir

Richard Blackmore, a grave physician, residing and practising on the

sober side of Temple-Bar, was the first who professed to reform the

spreading pest of poetical licentiousness, and to correct such men as

Dryden, Congreve, and Wycherly. This worthy person, compassionating the

state to which poetry was reduced by his contemporaries, who used their

wit "in opposition to religion, and to the destruction of virtue and

good manners in the world," resolved to rescue the Muses from this

unworthy thraldom, "to restore them to their sweet and chaste mansions,

and to engage them in an employment suited to their dignity." With this

laudable view he wrote "Prince Arthur, an Epic Poem," published in 1695.

The preface contained a furious, though just, diatribe,

against the licence of modern comedy, with some personal reflections

aimed at Dry den directly.[34] This the poet felt more unkindly, as Sir

Richard had, without acknowledgment, availed himself of the hints he had

thrown out in the "Essay upon Satire," for the management of an epic

poem on the subject of King Arthur. He bore, however, the attack,

without resenting it, until he was again assailed by Sir Richard in his

"Satire upon Wit," written expressly to correct the dissolute and

immoral performances of the writers of his time. With a ponderous

attempt at humour, the good knight proposes, that a _bank for wit_

should be established, and that all which had hitherto passed as

current, should be called in, purified in the mint, re-coined, and

issued forth anew, freed from alloy.

This satire was published in 1700, as the title-page bears; but Mr.

Luttrell marks his copy 23rd November 1699.[35] It contains more than

one attack upon our author. Thus, we are told (wit being previously

described as a malady),

"Vanine, that looked on all the danger past,

Because he 'scaped so long, is seized at last;

By p----, by hunger, and by Dryden bit,

He grins and snarls, and, in his dogged fit,

Froths at the mouth, a certain sign of wit."

Elsewhere the poet complains, that the universities,

"debauched by Dryden and his crew,

Turn bawds to vice, and wicked aims pursue."

Again, p. 14--

"Dryden condemn, who taught men how to make,

Of dunces wits, an angel of a rake."

But the main offence lies in the following passage:--

"Set forth your edict; let it be enjoined,

That all defective species be recoined;

St. E--m--t and R--r both are fit

To oversee the coining of our wit.

Let these be made the masters of essay,

They'll every piece of metal touch and weigh,

And tell which is too light, which has too much allay.

'Tis true, that when the coarse and worthless dross

Is purged away, there will be mighty loss.

E'en Congreve, Southerne, manly Wycherly,

When thus refined, will grievous sufferers be.

Into the melting-pot when Dryden comes,

What horrid stench will rise, what noisome fumes!

How will he shrink, when all his lewd allay,

And wicked mixture, shall be purged away?

When once his boasted heaps are melted down,

A chest-full scarce will yield one sterling crown.

Those who will D--n--s melt, and think to find

A goodly mass of bullion left behind,

Do, as the Hibernian wit, who, as 'tis told,

Burnt his gilt feather, to collect the gold.

* * * * *

But what remains will be so pure, 'twill bear

The examination of the most severe;

'Twill S--r's scales, and Talbot's test abide,

And with their mark please all the world beside."

These repeated attacks at length called down the vengeance of Dryden.

who thus retorted upon him in the preface to the Fables:--

"As for the City Bard, or Knight Physician, I hear his quarrel to me is,

that I was the author of 'Absalom and Achitophel,' which he thinks, is

a little hard on his fanatic patrons in London.

"But I will deal the more civilly with his two poems, because nothing

ill is to be spoken of the dead; and, therefore, peace be to the manes

of his 'Arthurs.' I will only say, that it was not for this noble knight

that I drew the plan of an epic poem on King Arthur, in my preface to

the translation of Juvenal. The guardian angels of kingdoms were

machines too ponderous for him to manage; and therefore he rejected

them, as Dares did the whirl bats of Eryx, when they were thrown before

him by Entellus: yet from that preface, he plainly took his hint; for he

began immediately upon the story, though he had the baseness not to

acknowledge his benefactor, but, instead of it, to traduce me in a

libel."

Blackmore, who had perhaps thought the praise contained in his two last

couplets ought to have allayed Dryden's resentment, finding that they

failed in producing this effect, very unhandsomely omitted them in his

next edition, and received, as will presently be noticed, another

flagellation, in the last verses Dryden ever wrote.

But a more formidable champion than Blackmore had arisen, to scourge the

profligacy of the theatre. This was no other than the celebrated Jeremy

Collier, a nonjuring clergyman, who published, in 1698, "A Short View of

the Immorality and Profaneness of the Stage." His qualities as a

reformer are described by Dr. Johnson in language never to be amended.

"He was formed for a controvertist; with sufficient learning; with

diction vehement and pointed, though often vulgar and incorrect; with

unconquerable pertinacity; with wit in the highest degree keen and

sarcastic; and with all those powers exalted and invigorated by the just

confidence in his cause.

"Thus qualified, and thus incited, he walked out to battle, and assailed

at once most of the living writers, from Dryden to Durfey. His onset was

violent: those passages, which while they stood single, had passed with

little notice, when they were accumulated and exposed together caught

the alarm, and the nation wondered why it had so long suffered

irreligion and licentiousness charge."

Notwithstanding the justice of this description, there is a strange

mixture of sense and nonsense in Collier's celebrated treatise. Not

contented with resting his objections to dramatic immorality and

religion, Jeremy labours to confute the poets of the 17th century, by

drawing them into comparison with Plautus and Aristophanes, which is

certainly judging of one crooked line by another. Neither does he omit,

like his predecessor Prynne, to marshal against the British stage those

fulminations directed by the fathers of the Church against the Pagan

theatres; although Collier could not but know, that it was the

performance of the heathen ritual, and not merely the action of the

drama, which rendered it sinful for the early Christians to attend the

theatre. The book was, however, of great service to dramatic poetry,

which, from that time, was less degraded by licence and indelicacy.

Dryden, it may be believed, had, as his comedies well deserved, a

liberal share of the general censure; but, however he might have felt

the smart of Collier's severity, he had the magnanimity to acknowledge

its justice. In the preface to the Fables, he makes the _amende

honorable._ "I shall say the less of Mr. Collier, because in many things

he has taxed me justly; and I have pleaded guilty to all thoughts and

expressions of mine, which can be truly argued of obscenity,

profaneness, or immorality, and retract them. If he be my enemy, let him

triumph; if he be my friend, as I have given him no personal occasion to

be otherwise, he will be glad of my repentance. It becomes me not to

draw my pen in the defence of a bad cause, when I have so often drawn it

for a good one." To this manly and liberal admission, he has indeed

tacked a complaint, that Collier had sometimes, by a strained

interpretation, made the evil sense of which he complained; that he had

too much "horse-play in his raillery;" and that, "if the zeal for God's

house had not eaten him up, it had at least devoured some part of his

good manners and civility." Collier seems to have been somewhat pacified

by this qualified acknowledgment, and, during the rest of the

controversy, turned his arms chiefly against Congreve, who resisted, and

spared, comparatively at least, the sullen submission of Dryden.[36]

While these controversies were raging, Dryden's time was occupied with

the translations or imitations of Chaucer and Boccacio. Among these, the

"Character of the Good Parson" is introduced, probably to confute

Milbourne, Blackmore, and Collier, who had severally charged our author

with the wilful and premeditated contumely thrown upon the clergy in

many passages of his satirical writings. This too seems to have inflamed

the hatred of Swift, who, with all his levities, was strictly attached

to his order, and keenly jealous of its honours.[37] Dryden himself

seems to have been conscious of his propensity to assail churchmen. "I

remember," he writes to his sons, "the counsel you gave me in your

letter; but dissembling, although lawful in some cases, is not my

talent; yet, for your sake, I will struggle with the plain openness of

my nature, and keep in my just resentments against that _degenerate

order_."[38] Milbourne, and other enemies of our author, imputed this

resentment against the clergy, to his being refused orders when he

wished to take them, in the reign of Charles, with a view to the

Provostship of Eton, or some Irish preferment.[39] But Dryden assures

us, that he never had any thoughts of entering the Church. Indeed, his

original offences of this kind may be safely ascribed to the fashionable

practice, after the Restoration, of laughing at all that was accounted

serious before that period.

And when Dryden became a convert to the Catholic faith, he was, we have

seen, involved in an immediate and furious controversy with the clergy

of the Church of England. Thus, an unbeseeming strain of raillery,

adopted in wantonness, became aggravated, by controversy, into real

dislike and animosity. But Dryden, in the "Character of a Good Parson,"

seems determined to show that he could estimate the virtue of the

clerical order. He undertook the task at the instigation of Mr. Pepys,

the founder of the Library in Magdalen College, which bears his

name;[40] and has accomplished it with equal spirit and elegance; not

forgetting, however, to make his pattern of clerical merit of his own

jacobitical principles.

Another very pleasing performance, which entered [into] the Miscellany

called "The Fables," is the epistle to John Driden of Chesterton, the

poet's cousin. The letters to Mrs. Steward show the friendly intimacy in

which the relations had lived, since the opposition of the Whigs to King

William's government in some degree united that party in conduct, though

not in motive, with the favourers of King James. Yet our author's strain

of politics, as at first expressed in the epistle, was too severe for

his cousin's digestion. Some reflections upon the Dutch allies, and

their behaviour in the war, were omitted, as tending to reflect upon

King William; and the whole piece, to avoid the least chance of giving

offence, was subjected to the revision of Montague, with a deprecation

of his displeasure, an entreaty of his patronage, and the humiliating

offer, that, although repeated correction had already purged the spirit

out of the poem, nothing should stand in it relating to public affairs.

without Mr. Montague's permission. What answer "full-blown Bufo"

returned to Dryden's petition, does not appear; but the author's

opposition principles were so deeply woven in with the piece, that they

could not be obliterated without tearing it to pieces. His model of an

English member of parliament votes in opposition, as his Good Parson is

a nonjuror, and the Fox in the fable of Old Chaucer is translated into a

puritan.[41] The epistle was highly acceptable to Mr. Driden of

Chesterton, who acknowledged the immortality conferred on him, by "a

noble present," which family tradition states to have amounted to

£500.[42] Neither did Dryden neglect so fair an opportunity to avenge

himself on his personal, as well as his political adversaries. Milbourne

and Blackmore receive in the epistle severe chastisement for their

assaults upon his poetry and private character:

"What help from art's endeavours can we have?

Guibbons but guesses, nor is sure to save;

But Maurus sweeps whole parishes, and peoples every grave,

And no more mercy to mankind will use

Than when he robbed and murdered Maro's muse.

Wouldst thou be soon despatched, and perish whole,

Trust Maurus with thy life, and Milbourne with thy soul"

Referring to another place, what occurs upon the style and execution of

the Fables, I have only to add, that they were published early in spring

1700, in a large folio, and with the "Ode to Saint Cecilia." The epistle

to Driden of Chesterton, and a translation of the first Iliad, must have

move than satisfied the mercantile calculations of Tonson, since they

contained seventeen hundred verses above the quantity which Dryden had

contracted to deliver. In the preface, the author vindicates himself

with great spirit against his literary adversaries; makes his usual

strong and forcible remarks on the genius of the authors whom he had

imitated; and, in this his last critical work, shows all the acumen

which had so long distinguished his powers. The Fables were dedicated to

the last Duke of Ormond, the grandson of the Barzillai of "Absalom and

Achitophel," and the son of the heroic Earl of Ossory; friends both, and

patrons of Dryden's earlier essays. There is something affecting in a

connection so honourably maintained; and the sentiment, as touched by

Dryden, is simply pathetic. "I am not vain enough to boast, that I have

deserved the value of so illustrious a line; but my fortune is the

greater, that for three descents they have been pleased to distinguish

my poems from those of other men; and have accordingly made me their

peculiar care. May it be permitted me to say, that as your grandfather

and father were cherished monarchs, so I have been esteemed and

patronised by the grandfather, the father, and the son, descended from

one of the most ancient, most conspicuous, and most deserving families

in Europe."

There were also prefixed to the "Fables," those introductory verses

addressed to the beautiful Duchess of Ormond,[43] which have all the

easy, felicitous, and sprightly gallantry, demanded on such occasions.

The incense, it is said, was acknowledged by a present of £500; a

donation worthy of the splendid house of Ormond. The sale of the

"Fables" was surprisingly slow: even the death of the author, which has

often sped away a lingering impression, does not seem to have increased

the demand; and the second edition was not printed till 1713, when,

Dryden and all his immediate descendants being no more, the sum

stipulated upon that event was paid by Tonson to Lady Sylvius, daughter

of one of Lady Elizabeth Dryden's brothers, for the benefit of his

widow, then in a state of lunacy.--See Appendix, vol. xviii.

The end of Dryden's labours was now fast approaching; and, as his career

began upon the stage, it was in some degree doomed to terminate there.

It is true, he never recalled his resolution to write no more plays; but

Vanbrugh having about this time revised and altered for the Drury-lane

theatre, Fletcher's lively comedy of "The Pilgrim," it was agreed that

Dryden, or, as one account says, his son Charles,[44] should have the

profits of a third night on condition of adding to the piece a Secular

Masque, adapted to the supposed termination of the seventeenth

century;[45] a Dialogue in the Madhouse between two Distracted Lovers;

and a Prologue and Epilogue. The Secular Masque contains a beautiful and

spirited delineation of the reigns of James I., Charles I., and Charles

II., in which the influence of Diana, Mars, and Venus, are supposed to

have respectively predominated. Our author did not venture to assign a

patron to the last years of the century, though the expulsion of Saturn

might have given a hint for it. The music of the Masque is said to have

been good; at least it is admired by the eccentric author of John

Buncle.[46] The Prologue and Epilogue to "The Pilgrim," were written

within twenty days of Dryden's death; [47] and their spirit equals that

of any of his satirical compositions. They afford us the less pleasing

conviction, that even the last fortnight of Dryden's life was occupied

in repelling or retorting the venomed attacks of his literary foes. In

the Prologue, he gives Blackmore a drubbing which would have annihilated

any author of ordinary modesty; but the knight[48] was as remarkable for

his powers of endurance, as some modern pugilists are said to be, for

the quality technically called _bottom_. After having been "brayed in a

mortar," as Solomon expresses it, by every wit of his time, Sir Richard

not only survived to commit new offences against ink and paper, but had

his faction, his admirers, and his panegyrists, among that numerous and

sober class of readers, who think that genius consists in good

intention.[49] In the Epilogue, Dryden attacks Collier, but with more

courteous weapons: it is rather a palliation than a defence of dramatic

immorality, and contains nothing personally offensive to Collier. Thus

so dearly was Dryden's preeminent reputation purchased, that even his

last hours were embittered with controversy; and nature, over-watched

and worn out, was, like a besieged garrison, forced to obey the call to

arms, and defend reputation even with the very last exertion of the

vital spirit.

The approach of death was not, however, so gradual as might have been

expected from the poet's chronic diseases. He had long suffered both by

the gout and gravel, and more lately the erysipelas seized one of his

legs. To a shattered frame and a corpulent habit, the most trifling

accident is often fatal. A slight inflammation in one of his toes,

became, from neglect, a gangrene. Mr. Hobbes, an eminent surgeon, to

prevent mortification, proposed to amputate the limb; but Dryden, who

had no reason to be in love with life, refused the chance of prolonging

it by a doubtful and painful operation.[50] After a short interval, the

catastrophe expected by Mr. Hobbes took place, and, Dryden not long

surviving the consequences, left life on Wednesday morning, 1st May

1700, at three o'clock. He seems to have been sensible till nearly his

last moments, and died in the Roman Catholic faith, with submission and

entire resignation to the divine will; "taking of his friends," says

Mrs. Creed, one of the sorrowful number, "so tender and obliging a

farewell, as none but he himself could have expressed."

The death of a man like Dryden, especially in narrow and neglected

circumstances, is usually an alarum-bell to the public. Unavailing and

mutual reproaches, for unthankful and pitiless negligence, waste

themselves in newspaper paragraphs, elegies, and funeral processions;

the debt to genius is then deemed discharged, and a new account of

neglect and commemoration is opened between the public and the next who

rises to supply his room. It was thus with Dryden: His family were

preparing to bury him with the decency becoming their limited

circumstances, when Charles Montague, Lord Jefferies, and other men of

quality, made a subscription for a public funeral. The body of the poet

was then removed to the Physicians' Hall, where it was embalmed, and lay

in state till the 13th day of May, twelve days after the decease. On

that day, the celebrated Dr. Garth pronounced a Latin oration over the

remains of his departed friend; which were then, with considerable

state, preceded by a band of music, and attended by a numerous

procession of carriages, transported to Westminster Abbey, and deposited

between the graves of Chaucer and Cowley.

The malice of Dryden's contemporaries, which he had experienced through

life, attempted to turn into burlesque these funeral honours. Farquhar,

the comic dramatist, wrote a letter containing a ludicrous account of

the funeral;[51] in which, as Mr. Malone most justly remarks, he only

sought to amuse his fair correspondent by an assemblage of ludicrous and

antithetical expressions and ideas, which, when accurately examined,

express little more than the bustle and confusion which attends every

funeral procession of uncommon splendour. Upon this ground-work, Mrs.

Thomas (the Corinna of Pope and Cromwell) raised, at the distance of

thirty years, the marvellous structure of fable, which has been copied

by all Dryden's biographers, till the industry of Mr. Malone has sent

it, with other figments of the same lady, to "the grave of all the

Capulets."[52] She appears to have been something assisted by a

burlesque account of the funeral, imputed by Mr. Malone to Tom Brown,

who certainly continued to insult Dryden's memory whenever an

opportunity offered.[53] Indeed, Mrs. Thomas herself quotes this last

respectable authority. It must be a well-conducted and uncommon public

ceremony, where the philosopher can find nothing to condemn, nor the

satirist to ridicule; yet, to our imagination, what can be more

striking, than the procession of talent and rank, which escorted the

remains of DRYDEN to the tomb of CHAUCER!

The private character of the individual, his personal appearance, and

rank in society, are the circumstances which generally interest the

public most immediately upon his decease.

We are enabled, from the various paintings and engravings of Dryden, as

well as from the less flattering delineations of the satirists of his

time, to form a tolerable idea of his face and person. In youth, he

appears to have been handsome,[54] and of a pleasing countenance: when

his age was more advanced, he was corpulent and florid, which procured

him the nickname attached to him by Rochester.[55] In his latter days,

distress and disappointment probably chilled the fire of his eye, and

the advance of age destroyed the animation of his countenance.[56]

Still, however, his portraits bespeak the look and features of genius;

especially that in which he is drawn with his waving grey hairs.

In disposition and moral character, Dryden is represented as most

amiable, by all who had access to know him; and his works, as well as

letters, bear evidence to the justice of their panegyric. Congreve's

character of the poet was drawn doubtless favourably, yet it contains

points which demonstrate its fidelity.

"Whoever shall censure me, I dare be confident, you, my lord, will

excuse me for anything that I shall say with due regard to a gentleman,

for whose person I had as just an affection as I have an admiration of

his writings. And indeed Mr. Dryden had personal qualities to challenge

both love and esteem from all who were truly acquainted with him.

"He was of a nature exceedingly humane and compassionate; easily

forgiving injuries, and capable of a prompt and sincere reconciliation

with them who had offended him.

"Such a temperament is the only solid foundation of all moral virtues

and sociable endowments. His friendship, where he professed it, went

much beyond his professions; and I have been told of strong and generous

instances of it by the persons themselves who received them, though his

hereditary income was little more than a bare competency.

"As his reading had been very extensive, so was he very happy in a

memory, tenacious of everything that he had read. He was not more

possessed of knowledge, than he was communicative of it. But then his

communication of it was by no means pedantic, or imposed upon the

conversation; but just such, and went so far, as, by the natural turns

of the discourse in which he was engaged, it was necessarily promoted or

required. He was extreme ready and gentle in his correction of the

errors of any writer, who thought fit to consult him: and full as ready

and patient to admit of the reprehension of others, in respect of his

own oversight or mistakes. He was of very easy, I may say, of very

pleasing access; but something slow, and, as it were, diffident in his

advances to others. He had something in his nature, that abhorred

intrusion into any society whatsoever. Indeed, it is to be regretted,

that he was rather blameable in the other extreme; for, by that means,

he was personally less known, and, consequently, his character might

become liable both to misapprehensions and misrepresentations.

"To the best of my knowledge and observation, he was, of all the men

that I ever knew, one of the most modest, and the most easily to be

discountenanced in his approaches either to his superiors or his

equals."

This portrait is from the pen of friendship; yet, if we consider all the

circumstances of Dryden's life, we cannot deem it much exaggerated. For

about forty years, his character, personal and literary, was the object

of assault by every subaltern scribbler, titled or untitled, laureated

or pilloried. "My morals," he himself has said, "have been sufficiently

aspersed; that only sort of reputation, which ought to be dear to every

honest man, and is to me." In such an assault, no weapon would remain

unhandled, no charge, true or false, unurged; and what qualities we do

not there find excepted against, must surely be admitted to pass to the

credit of Dryden. His change of political opinion, from the time he

entered life under the protection of a favourite of Cromwell, might have

argued instability, if he had changed a second time, when the current of

power and popular opinion set against the doctrines of the Reformation.

As it is, we must hold Dryden to have acted from conviction, since

personal interest, had that been the ruling motive of his political

conduct, would have operated as strongly in 1688 as in 1660. The change

of his religion we have elsewhere discussed; and endeavoured to show

that, although Dryden was unfortunate in adopting the more corrupted

form of our religion, yet, considered relatively, it was a fortunate and

laudable conviction which led him from the mazes of scepticism to become

a catholic of the communion of Rome.[57] It would be vain to maintain,

that in his early career he was free from the follies and vices of a

dissolute period; but the absence of every positive charge, and the

silence of numerous accusers, may be admitted to prove, that he partook

in them more from general example than inclination, and with a moderate,

rather than voracious or undistinguishing appetite. It must be admitted,

that he sacrificed to the Belial or Asmodeus of the age, in his

writings; and that he formed his taste upon the licentious and gay

society with which he mingled. But we have the testimony of one who knew

him well, that, however loose his comedies, the temper of the author was

modest;[58] his indelicacy was like the forced impudence of a bashful

man; and Rochester has accordingly upbraided him, that his

licentiousness was neither natural nor seductive. Dryden had

unfortunately conformed enough to the taste of his age, to attempt that

"nice mode of wit," as it is termed by the said noble author, whose name

has become inseparably connected with it; but it sate awkwardly upon his

natural modesty, and in general sounds impertinent, as well as

disgusting. The clumsy phraseology of Burnet, in passing censure on the

immorality of the stage, after the Restoration, terms "Dryden, the

greatest master of dramatic poesy, a monster of immodesty and of

impurity of all sorts." The expression called forth the animated defence

of Granville, Lord Lansdowne, our author's noble friend. "All who knew

him," said Lansdowne, "can testify this was not his character. He was so

much a stranger to immodesty, that modesty in too great a degree was his

failing: he hurt his fortune by it, he complained of it, and never could

overcome it. He was," adds he, "esteemed, courted, and admired, by all

the great men of the age in which he lived, who would certainly not have

received into friendship a monster abandoned to all sorts of vice and

impurity. His writings will do immortal honour to his name and country,

and his poems last as long, if I may have leave to say it, as the

Bishop's sermons, supposing them to be equally excellent in their

kind."[59]

The Bishop's youngest son, Thomas Burnet, in replying to Lord Lansdowne,

explained his father's last expressions as limited to Dryden's plays,

and showed, by doing so, that there was no foundation for fixing this

gross and dubious charge upon his private moral character.

Dryden's conduct as a father, husband, and master of a family, seems to

have been affectionate, faithful, and, so far as his circumstances

admitted, liberal and benevolent. The whole tenor of his correspondence

bears witness to his paternal feelings; and even when he was obliged to

have recourse to Tonson's immediate assistance to pay for the presents

he sent them, his affection vented itself in that manner. As a husband,

if Lady Elizabeth's peculiarities of temper precluded the idea of a warm

attachment, he is not upbraided with neglect or infidelity by any of his

thousand assailants. As a landlord, Mr. Malone has informed us, on the

authority of Lady Dryden, that "his little estate at Blakesley is at

this day occupied by one Harriots, grandson of the tenant who held it in

Dryden's time; and he relates, that his grandfather was used to take

great pleasure in talking of our poet. He was, he said, the easiest and

the kindest landlord in the world, and never raised the rent during the

whole time he possessed the estate."

Some circumstances, however, may seem to degrade so amiable a private,

so sublime a poetical character. The licence of his comedy, as we have

seen, had for it only the apology of universal example, and must be

lamented, though not excused. Let us, however, remember, that if in the

hey-day of the merry monarch's reign, Dryden ventured to maintain, that,

the prime end of poetry being pleasure, the muses ought not to be

fettered by the chains of strict decorum; yet in his more advanced and

sober mood, he evinced sincere repentance for his trespass, by patient

and unresisting submission to the coarse and rigorous chastisement of

Collier. If it is alleged, that, in the fury of his loyal satire, he was

not always solicitous concerning its justice, let us make allowance for

the prejudice of party, and consider at what advantage, after the laps

of more than a century, and through the medium of impartial history, we

now view characters, who were only known to their contemporaries as

zealous partisans of an opposite and detested faction. The moderation of

Dryden's reprisals, when provoked by the grossest calumny and personal

insult, ought also to plead in his favour. Of the hundreds who thus

assailed, not only his literary, but his moral reputation, he has

distinguished Settle and Shadwell alone by an elaborate retort. Those

who look into Mr. Luttrell's collections, will at once see the extent of

Dryden's sufferance, and the limited nature of his retaliation.

The extreme flattery of Dryden's dedications has been objected to him,

as a fault of an opposite description; and perhaps no writer has

equalled him in the profusion and elegance of his adulation. "Of this

kind of meanness," says Johnson, "he never seems to decline the

practice, or lament the necessity. He considers the great as entitled to

encomiastic homage, and brings praise rather as a tribute than a gift;

more delighted with the fertility of his invention than mortified by the

prostitution of his judgment." It may be noticed, in palliation of this

heavy charge, that the form of address to superiors must be judged of by

the manners of the times; and that the adulation contained in

dedications was then as much a matter of course, as the words of

submissive style which still precede the subscription Dryden considered

his panegyrics as merely conforming with the fashion of the day, and

rendering unto Caesar the things which were Caesar's,--attended with no

more degradation than the payment of any other tribute to the forms of

politeness and usage of the world.

Of Dryden's general habits of life we can form a distinct idea, from the

evidence assembled by Mr. Malone. His mornings were spent in study; he

dined with his family, probably about two o'clock. After dinner he went

usually to Will's Coffeehouse, the famous rendezvous of the wits of the

time, where he had his established chair by the chimney in winter, and

near the balcony in summer, whence he pronounced, _ex cathedra_, his

opinion upon new publications, and, in general, upon all matters of

dubious criticism.[60] Latterly, all who had occasion to ridicule or

attack him, represent him as presiding in this little senate.[61] His

opinions, however, were not maintained with dogmatism; and we have an

instance, in a pleasing anecdote told by Dr. Lockier,[62] that Dryden

readily listened to criticism, provided it was just, from whatever

unexpected and undignified quarter it happened to come. In general,

however, it may be supposed, that few ventured to dispute his opinion,

or place themselves of his censure. He was most falsely accused of

carrying literary jealousy to such a length, as feloniously to encourage

Creech to venture on a translation of Horace, that he might lose the

character he had gained by a version of Lucretius. But this is

positively contradicted, upon the authority of Southerne.[63]

We have so often stopped in our narrative of Dryden's life, to notice

the respectability of his general society, that little need here be said

on the subject. Although no enemy to conviviality, he is pronounced by

Pope to have been regular in his hours in comparison with Addison, who

otherwise lived the same coffee-house course of life. He has himself

told us, that he was "saturnine and reserved, and not one of those who

endeavour to entertain company by lively sallies of merriment and wit;"

and an adversary has put into his mouth this couplet--

"Nor wine nor love could ever see me gay;

To writing bred, I knew not what to say."

_Dryden's Satire to his Muse._

But the admission of the author, and the censure of the satirist, must

be received with some limitation. Dryden was thirty years old before he

was freed from the fetters of puritanism; and if the habits of lively

expression in society are not acquired before that age, they are seldom

gained afterward. But this applies only to the deficiency of repartee,

in the sharp encounter of wit which was fashionable at the court of

Charles, and cannot be understood to exclude Dryden's possessing the

more solid qualities of agreeable conversation, arising from a memory

profoundly stocked with knowledge, and a fancy which supplied modes of

illustration faster than the author could use them.[64] Some few sayings

of Dryden have been, however, preserved; which, if not witty, are at

least jocose. He is said to have been the original author of the

repartee to the Duke of Buckingham, who, in bowling, offered to lay "his

soul to a turnip," or something still more vile. "Give me the odds,"

said Dryden, "and I take the bet." When his wife wished to be a book,

that she might enjoy more of his company, "Be an almanac then, my dear,"

said the poet, "that I may change you once a year."[65] Another time, a

friend expressing his astonishment that even D'Urfey could write such

stuff as a play they had just witnessed, "Ah, sir," replied Dryden, "you

do not know my friend Tom so well as I do; I'll answer for him, he can

write worse yet." None of these anecdotes intimate great brilliancy of

repartee; but that Dryden, possessed of such a fund of imagination, and

acquired learning, should be dull in conversation, is impossible. He is

known frequently to have regaled his friends, by communicating to them a

part of his labours; but his poetry suffered by his recitation. He read

his productions very ill;[66] owing, perhaps, to the modest reserve of his

temper, which prevented his showing an animation in which he feared his

audience might not participate. The same circumstance may have repressed

the liveliness of his conversation. I know not, however, whether we are,

with Mr. Malone, to impute to diffidence his general habit of consulting

his literary friends upon his poems, before they became public, since it

might as well arise from a wish to anticipate and soften criticism.[67]

Of Dryden's learning, his works form the best proof. He had read

Polybius before he was ten years of age;[68] and was doubtless well

acquainted with the Greek and Roman classics. But from these studies he

could descend to read romances: and the present editor records with

pride, that Dryden was a decided admirer of old ballads and popular

tales.[69] His researches sometimes extended into the vain province of

judicial astrology, in which he was a firm believer; and there is reason

to think that he also credited divination by dreams. In the country, he

delighted in the pastime of fishing, and used, says Mr. Malone, to spend

some time with Mr. Jones of Ramsden, in Wiltshire. D'Urfey was sometimes

of this party; but Dryden appears to have undervalued his skill in

fishing, as much as his attempts at poetry. Hence Fenton, in his Epistle

to Mr. Lambard:

"By long experience, D'Urfey may no doubt

Ensnare a gudgeon, or sometimes a trout;

Yet Dryden once exclaimed, in partial spite,

'_He fish_!'--because the man attempts to write."

I may conclude this notice of Dryden's habits, which I have been enabled

to give chiefly by the researches of Mr. Malone, with two notices of a

minute nature. Dryden was a great taker of snuff, which he made himself.

Moreover, as a preparation to a course of study, he usually took

medicine, and observed a cooling diet.[70]

Dryden's house, which he appears to have resided in from the period of

his marriage till his death, was in Gerrard Street, the fifth on the

left hand coming from Little Newport Street.[71] The back windows looked

upon the gardens of Leicester House, of which circumstance our poet

availed himself to pay a handsome compliment to the noble owner.[72] His

excursions to the country seem to have been frequent; perhaps the more

so, as Lady Elizabeth always remained in town. In his latter days, the

friendship of his relations, John Driden of Chesterton, and Mrs. Steward

of Cotterstock, rendered their houses agreeable places of abode to the

aged poet. They appear also to have had a kind solicitude about his

little comforts, of value infinitely beyond aiding them. And thus

concludes all that we have learned of the private life of Dryden.

The fate of Dryden's family must necessarily interest the admirers of

English literature. It consisted of his wife, Lady Elizabeth Dryden, and

three sons, John, Charles, and Erasmus Henry. Upon the poet's death, it

may be believed, they felt themselves slenderly provided for, since all

his efforts, while alive, were necessary to secure them from the gripe

of penury.

Yet their situation was not very distressing. John and Erasmus Henry

were abroad; and each had an office at Rome, in which he was able to

support himself. Charles had for some time been entirely dependent on

his father, and administered to his effects, as he died without a will.

The liberality of the Duchess of Ormond, and of Driden of Chesterton,

had been lately received, and probably was not expended. There was,

besides, the poet's little patrimonial estate, and a small property in

Wiltshire, which the Earl of Berkshire settled upon Lady Elizabeth at

her marriage, and which yielded £50 or £60 annually. There was therefore

an income of about £100 a year, to maintain the poet's widow and

children; enough in these times to support them in decent frugality.

Lady Elizabeth Dryden's temper had long disturbed her husband's domestic

happiness. "His invectives," says Mr. Malone, "against the married state

are frequent and bitter, and were continued to the latest period of his

life;" and he adds, from most respectable authority, that the family of

the poet held no intimacy with his lady, confining their intercourse to

mere visits of ceremony.[73] A similar alienation seems to have taken

place between her and her own relations, Sir Robert Howard, perhaps,

being excepted; for her brother, the Honourable Edward Howard, talks of

Virgil, as a thing he had learned merely by common report.[74] Her

wayward disposition was, however, the effect of a disordered imagination

which, shortly after Dryden's death, degenerated into absolute insanity,

in which state she remained until her death in summer 1714, probably,

says Mr. Malone, in the seventy-ninth year of her life.

Dryden's three sons, says the inscription by Mrs. Creed, were ingenious

and accomplished gentlemen. Charles, the eldest, and favourite son of

the poet, was born at Charlton, Wiltshire, in 1666. He received a

classical education under Dr. Busby, his father's preceptor, and was

chosen King's Scholar in 1680. Being elected to Trinity College in

Cambridge, he was admitted a member in 1683. It would have been

difficult to conceive that the son of Dryden should not have attempted

poetry; but though Charles Dryden escaped the fate of Icarus, he was

very, very far from emulating his father's soaring flight. Mr. Malone

has furnished a list of his compositions in Latin and English.[75] About

1692, he went to Italy, and through the interest of Cardinal Howard, to

whom he was related by the mother's side, he became Chamberlain of the

Household; not, as Corinna pretends, "to that _remarkably fine

gentleman_, Pope Clement XI.," but to Pope Innocent XII. His way to this

preferment was smoothed by a pedigree drawn up in Latin by his father,

of the families of Dryden and Howard, which is said to have been

deposited in the Vatican. Dryden, whose turn for judicial astrology we

have noticed, had calculated the nativity of his son Charles; and it

would seem that a part of his predictions were fortuitously fulfilled.

Charles, however, having suffered, while at Rome, by a fall, and his

health, in consequence, being much injured, his father prognosticated he

would begin to recover in the month of September 1697. The issue did no

great credit to the prediction; for young Dryden returned to England in

1698 in the same indifferent state of health, as is obvious from the

anxious solicitude with which his father always mentions Charles in his

correspondence. Upon the poet's death, Charles, we have seen,

administered to his effects on 10th June 1700, Lady Elizabeth, his

mother, renouncing the succession. In the next year, Granville conferred

on him the profits arising from the author's night of an alteration of

Shakespeare's "Merchant of Venice;" and his liberality to the son of one

great bard may be admitted to balance his presumption in manufacturing a

new drama out of the labours of another.[76] Upon the 20th August 1704,

Charles Dryden was drowned, in an attempt to swim across the Thames, at

Datchet, near Windsor. I have degraded into the Appendix, the romantic

narrative of Corinna, concerning his father's prediction, already

mentioned. It contains, like her account of the funeral of the poet,

much positive falsehood, and gross improbability, with some slight

scantling of foundation in fact.

John Dryden, the poet's second son, was born in 1667, or 1668, was

admitted a King's Scholar in Westminster in 1682, and elected to Oxford

in 1685. Here he became a private pupil of the celebrated Obadiah

Walker, Master of University College, a Roman Catholic. It seems

probable that young Dryden became a convert to that faith before his

father. His religion making it impossible for him to succeed in England,

he followed his brother Charles to Rome, where he officiated as his

deputy in the Pope's household. John Dryden translated the fourteenth

Satire of Juvenal, published in his father's version, and wrote a comedy

entitled, "The Husband his own Cuckold," acted in Lincoln's Inn Fields

in 1696; Dryden, the father, furnishing a prologue, and Congreve an

epilogue. In 1700-1, he made a tour through Sicily and Malta, and his

journal was published in 1706. It seems odd, that in the whole course of

his journal, he never mentions his father's name, nor makes the least

allusion to his very recent death. John Dryden, the younger, died at

Rome soon after this excursion.

Erasmus Henry, Dryden's third son, was born 2d May 1669, and educated in

the Charterhouse, to which he was nominated by Charles II., shortly

after the publication of "Absalom and Achitophel."[77] He does not

appear to have been at any university; probably his religion was the

obstacle. Like his brothers, he went to Rome; and as both his father and

mother request his prayers, we are to suppose he was originally destined

for the Church. But he became a Captain in the Pope's guards, and

remained at Rome till John Dryden, his elder brother's death. After this

event, he seems to have returned to England, and in 1708 succeeded to

the title of Baronet, as representative of Sir Erasmus Driden. the

author's grandfather. But the estate of Canons-Ashby, which should have

accompanied the title, had been devised by Sir Robert Driden, the poet's

first cousin, to Edward Dryden, the eldest son of Erasmus, the younger

brother of the poet. Thus, if the author had lived a few years longer,

his pecuniary embarrassments would have been embittered by his

succeeding to the honours of his family, without any means of sustaining

the rank they gave him. With this Edward Dryden, Sir Erasmus Henry seems

to have resided until his death, which took place at the family mansion

of Canons-Ashby in 1710. Edward acted as a manager of his cousin's

affairs; and Mr. Malone sees reason to think, from their mode of

accounting, that Sir Erasmus Henry had, like his mother, been visited

with mental derangement before his death, and had resigned into Edward's

hands the whole management of his concerns. Thus ended the poet's

family, none of his sons surviving him above ten years. The estate of

Canons-Ashby became again united to the title, in the person of John

Dryden, the surviving brother.[78]

FOOTNOTES

[1] Such, I understand, is the general purport of some letters of

Dryden's, in possession of the Dorset family, which contain certain

particulars rendering them unfit for publication. Our author himself

commemorates Dorset's generosity in the Essay on Satire, in the

following affecting passage: "Though I must ever acknowledge to the

honour of your lordship, and the eternal memory of your charity, that

since this Revolution, wherein I have patiently suffered the ruin of my

small fortune, and the loss of that poor subsistence which I had from

two kings, whom I had served more faithfully than profitably to myself--

then your lordship was pleased, out of no other motive but your own

nobleness, without any desert of mine, or the least solicitation from

me, to make me a most bountiful present, which at that time, when I was

most in want of it, came most seasonably and unexpectedly to my relief.

That favour, my lord, is of itself sufficient to bind any grateful man

to a perpetual acknowledgment, and to all the future service which one

of my mean condition can be ever able to perform. May the Almighty God

return it for me, both in blessing you here, and rewarding you

hereafter!"--_Essay on Satire_, vol. xiii.

[2] So says Ward, in the London Spy.

[3] "Dryden, though my near relation," says Swift, "is one whom I have

often blamed, as well as pitied." Mr. Malone traces their consanguinity

to Swift's grandmother, Elizabeth Dryden, being the daughter of a

brother of Sir Erasmus Driden, the poet's grandfather; so that the Dean

of St. Patrick's was the son of Dryden's second cousin, which, in

Scotland, would even yet be deemed a near relation. The passages in

prose and verse, in which Swift reflects on Dryden, are various. He

mentions, in his best poem, "The Rhapsody,"

"The prefaces of Dryden,

For these our cities much confide in,

Though merely writ at first for filling,

To raise the volume's price a shilling."

He introduces Dryden in "The Battle of the Books," with a most

irreverent description; and many of the brilliant touches in the

following assumed character of a hack author, are directed against our

poet. The malignant allusions to merits, to sufferings, to changes of

opinion, to political controversies, and a peaceful consciences, cannot

be mistaken. The piece was probably composed _flagrante odio_, for it

occurs in the Introduction to "The Tale of a Tub," which was written

about 1692. "These notices may serve to give the learned reader an idea,

as well as taste, of what the whole work is likely to produce, wherein I

have now altogether circumscribed my thoughts and my studies; and, if I

can bring it to a perfection before I die, I shall reckon I have well

employed the poor remains of an unfortunate life. This indeed is more

than I can justly expect, from a quill worn to the pith in the service

of the state, in _pros_ and _cons_ upon popish plots, and meal tubs, and

exclusion bills, and passive obedience, and addresses of lives and

fortunes, and prerogative, and property and liberty of conscience, and

letters to a friend: from an understanding and a conscience, threadbare

and ragged with perpetual turning; from a head broken in a hundred

places by the malignants of the opposite factions; and from a body spent

with poxes ill cured, by trusting to bawds and surgeons, who, as it

afterwards appeared, were professed enemies to me and the government,

and revenged their party's quarrel upon my nose and shins. Fourscore and

eleven pamphlets have I written under three reigns, and for the service

of six and thirty factions. But finding the state has no farther

occasion for me and my ink, I retire willingly to draw it out into

speculations more becoming a philosopher; having, to my unspeakable

comfort, passed a long life with a conscience void of offence." [See

Appendix, vol. xviii., art. "Dryden and Swift."--ED.]

[4] [The exact sentence seems to have been "a Pindaric poet." But as

Swift had tried nothing but Pindarics, it was nearly if not quite as

severe as the more usually quoted and more sweeping verdict.--ED.]

[5] Robert Gould, author of that scandalous lampoon against Dryden,

entitled "The Laureat," inscribes his collection of poems, printed

1688-9, to the Earl of Abingdon; and it contains some pieces addressed

to him and to his lady. He survived also to compose, on the Earl's

death, in 1700, "The Mourning Swan," an eclogue to his memory, in which

a shepherd gives the following account of the proximate cause of that

event:

"_Menaleus_. To tell you true (whoe'er it may displease),

He died of the _Physician_--a disease

That long has reigned, and eager of renown,

More than a plague depopulates the town.

Inflamed with wine, and blasting at a breath,

All its _prescriptions_ are receipts for death.

Millions of mischiefs by its rage are wrought,

Safe where 'tis fled, but barbarous where 'tis sought;

A cursed ingrateful ill, that called to aid,

Is still most fatal where it best is paid."

[6] How far this was necessary, the reader may judge from Mirana, a

funeral eclogue; sacred to the memory of that excellent lady, Eleonora,

late Countess of Abingdon, 1691, 4th Aug., which concludes with the

following singular _imprecation_:

"Hear, friend, my sacred imprecation hear,

And let both of us kneel, and both be bare.

Doom me (ye powers) to misery and shame,

Let mine be the most ignominious name,

Let me, each day, be with new griefs perplext,

Curst in this life, nor blessed in the next,

If I believe the like of her survives,

Or if I think her not the best of mothers, and of wives."

[7] 30th August 1693, Dryden writes to Tonson, "I am sure you thought my

Lord Radclyffe would have done something; I guessed more truly, that he

could not."--Vol. xviii. The expression perhaps applies rather to his

lordship's want of ability than inclination; and Dryden says indeed, in

the dedication, that it is in his nature to be an encourager of good

poets, though fortune has not yet put into his hands the power of

expressing it. In a letter to Mrs. Steward, Dryden speaks of Ratcliffe

as a poet, "and none of the best."--Vol. xviii.

[8] Vol. xviii.

[9] Copied from the Chandos picture. Kneller's copy is now at Wentworth

House, the seat of Earl Fitzwilliam.

[10] The antiquary may now search in vain for this frail memorial; for

the house of Chesterton was, 1807, pulled down for the sake of the

materials.

[11] The exact pecuniary arrangements for the Virgil are a matter of

much dispute, almost every biographer taking a different view. It seems

most probable that the payment was fifty pounds per two books, not fifty

for each. The point will be more fully discussed on the letters dealing

with the subject.--Ed.

[12] This gave rise to a good epigram:

"Old Jacob, by deep judgment swayed,

To please the wise beholders,

Has placed old Nassau's hook-nosed head

On poor Aeneas' shoulders.

To make the parallel hold tack,

Methinks there's little lacking;

One took his father pick-a-pack,

And t'other sent his packing."

[13] "I am of your opinion," says the poet to his son Charles, "that, by

Tonson's means, almost all our letters have miscarried for this last

year. But, however, he has missed of his design in the dedication,

though he had prepared the book for it; for, in every figure of Aeneas,

he has caused him to be drawn, like King William, with a hooked nose."

Dryden hints to Tonson himself his suspicion of this unworthy device,

desiring him to forward a letter to his son Charles, but not by post.

"Being satisfied, that Ferrand will do by this as he did by two letters

which I sent my sons, about my dedicating to the king, of which they

received neither."--Vol. xviii.

[14] Johnson's "Life of Dryden."

[15] [Professor Masson calculates, apparently on good grounds, that

Simmons probably made about five or six times what he paid. This, in not

much more than a year, cannot be considered a bad trade return; but the

sale price of "Paradise Lost" seems to provoke unfounded commonplaces

from even the most unexpected sources.--ED.]

[16] "I confess to have been somewhat liberal in the business of titles,

having observed the humour of multiplying them, to bear great vogue

among certain writers, whom I exceedingly reverence. And indeed it seems

not unreasonable that books, the children of the brain, should have the

honour to be christened with variety of names, as well as other infants

of quality. Our famous Dryden has ventured to proceed a point farther,

endeavouring to introduce also a multiplicity of godfathers; which is an

improvement of much more advantage, upon a very obvious account. It is a

pity this admirable invention has not been better cultivated, so as to

grow by this time into general imitation, when such an authority serves

it for a precedent. Nor have my endeavours been wanting to second so

useful an example: but, it seems, there is an unhappy expense usually

annexed to the calling of a godfather, which was clearly out of my head,

as it is very reasonable to believe. Where the pinch lay, I cannot

certainly affirm; but, having employed a world of thoughts and pains to

split my treatise into forty sections, and having entreated forty lords

of my acquaintance, that they would do me the honour to stand, they all

made it a matter of conscience, and sent me their excuses."

[17] Besides the notes on Virgil, he wrote many single sermons, and a

metrical version of the psalms, and died in 1720.

[18] He is described as a rake in "The Pacificator," a poem bought by

Mr. Luttrell, 15th Feb. 1699-1700, which gives an account of a supposed

battle between the men of wit and men of sense, as the poet calls them:

"M----n, a renegade from wit, came on,

And made a false attack, and next to none;

The hypocrite, in sense, could not conceal

What pride, and want of brains, obliged him to reveal.

In him, the critic's ruined by the poet,

And Virgil gives his testimony to it.

The troops of wit were so enraged to see

This priest invade his own fraternity,

They sent a party out, by silence led,

And, without answer, shot the turn-coat dead.

The priest, the rake, the wit, strove all in vain,

For there, alas! he lies among the slain.

_Memento mori_; see the consequence,

When rakes and wits set up for men of sense."

[19] This, Mr. Malone has proved by the following extract from Motteux's

"Gentleman's Journal." "That best of poets (says Motteux) having so long

continued a stranger to tolerable English, Mr. Milbourne pitied his hard

fate; and seeing that several great men had undertaken some episodes of

his Aeneis, without any design of Englishing the whole, he gave us the

first book of it some years ago, with a design to go through the poem.

It was the misfortune of that first attempt to appear just about the

time of the late Revolution, when few had leisure to mind such books;

yet, though by reason of his absence, it was printed with a world of

faults, those that are sufficient judges have done it the justice to

esteem it a very successful attempt, and cannot but wish that he would

complete the entire translation."--_Gent. Journ._ for August 1692.

[20] See the Preface to "A Funeral Idyll, sacred to the glorious Memory

of King William III.," by Mr. Oldmixon.

"In the Idyll on the peace, I made the first essay to throw off rhymes,

and the kind reception that poem met with, has encouraged me to attempt

it again. I have not been persuaded by my friends to change the Idyll

into Idyllium; for having an English word set me by Mr. Dryden, which he

uses indifferently with the Greek, I thought it might be as proper in an

English poem. I shall not be solicitous to justify myself to those who

except against his authority, till they produce me a better: I have

heard him blamed for his innovations and coining of words, even by

persons who have already been sufficiently guilty of the fault they lay

to his charge; and shown us what we are to expect from them, were their

names as well settled as his. If I had qualifications enough to do it

successfully, I should advise them to write more naturally, delicately,

and reasonably themselves, before they attack Mr. Dryden's reputation;

and to think there is something more necessary to make a man write well,

than the favour of the great, or the success of a faction. We have every

year seen how fickle Fortune has been to her declared favourites; and

men of merit, as well as he who has none, have suffered by her

inconstancy, as much as they got by her smiles. This should alarm such

as are eminently indebted to her, and may be of use to them in their

future reflections on others' productions, not to assume too much to

themselves from her partiality to them, lest, when they are left like

their predecessor, it should only serve to render them the more

ridiculous."

[21] "Homer in a Nutshell," (16th Feb.) 1700-9, by Samuel Parker, Gent.

"_Preface_.--Ever since I caught some termagant ones in a club,

undervaluing our new translation of Virgil, I've known both what opinion

I ought to harbour, and what use to make of them; and since the

opportunity of a digression so luckily presents itself, I shall make

bold to ask the gentlemen their sentiments of two or three lines (to

pass over a thousand other instances) which they may meet with in that

work. The fourth Aeneid says of Dido, after certain effects of her

taking shelter with Aeneas in the cave appear,

_Conjuijium vocat, hoc proetexit lomine culpam,_ V. 172,

which Mr. Dryden renders thus:

She called it marriage, by that specious name

To veil the crime, and sanctify the shame.

Nor had he before less happily rendered the 39th verse of the second

Aeneid:

_Scinditur in certum studia in contraria vulgus._

The giddy vulgar, as their fancies guide,

With noise, say nothing, and in parts divide.

"If these are the lines which they call flat and spiritless, I wish mine

could be flat and spiritless too! And, therefore, to make short work, I

shall only beg Mr. Dryden's leave to congratulate him upon his admirable

flatness, and dulness, in a rapture of poetical indignation:

Then dares the poring critic snarl? And dare

The[21a] puny brats of Momus threaten war?

And can't the proud perverse Arachne's fate

Deter the[21a] mongrels e'er it prove too late?

In vain, alas! we warn the[21a] hardened brood;

In vain expect they'll ever come to good.

No: they'd conceive more venom if they could.

But let each[21a] viper at his peril bite,

While you defy the most ingenious spite.

So Parian columns, raised with costly care,

[21a] Vile snails and worms may daub, yet not impair,

While the tough titles, and obdurate rhyme,

Fatigue the busy grinders of old Time.

Not but your Maro justly may complain,

Since your translation ends his ancient reign,

And but by your officious muse outvied,

That vast immortal name had never died.

"[21a] I desire these appellations may not seem to affect the parties

concerned, any otherwise than as to their character of critics."

[22] Preface to the Fables, vol. xi.

[23] See several extracts from these poems in the Appendix, vol. xviii.,

which I have thrown together to show how much Dryden was considered as

sovereign among the poets of the time.

[24] This I learn from _Honori Sacellum_, a Funeral Poem, to the Memory

of William, Duke of Devonshire, 1707:

"'Twas so, when the destroyer's dreadful dart

Once pierced through ours, to fair Maria's heart.

From his state-helm then some short hours he stole,

T'indulge his melting eyes, and bleeding soul:

Whilst his bent knees, to those remains divine,

Paid their last offering to that royal shrine."

On which lines occurs this explanatory note:--"An Ode, composed by His

Grace, on the death of the late Queen Mary, justly adjudged by the

ingenious Mr. Dryden to have exceeded all that had been written on that

occasion."

[25] Dr. Birch refers to the authority of Richard Graham, junior; but no

such letter has been recovered.

[26] The authority, however respectable, has a very long chain of links.

Warton heard it from A, who heard it from B, who heard it from Pope, who

heard it from Bolingbroke.--Ed.

[27] This discovery was made by the researches of Mr. Malone. Dr. Burney

describes Clarke as excelling in the tender and plaintive, to which he

was prompted by a temperament of natural melancholy. In the agonies

which arose from an unfortunate attachment, he committed suicide in July

1707. See a full account of the catastrophe in Malone's "Life of

Dryden," p. 299.

[28] It was first performed on February 19, 1735-6, at opera prices.

"The public expectations and the effects of this representation (says

Dr. Burney) seem to have been correspondent, for the next day we are

told in the public papers [London Daily Post, and General Advertiser,

Feb. 20,] that 'there never was, upon the like occasion, so numerous and

splendid an audience at any theatre in London, there being at least

thirteen hundred persons present; and it is judged that the receipts of

the house could not amount to less than £450. It met with general

applause, though attended with the inconvenience of having the

performers placed at too great a distance from the audience, which we

hear will be rectified the next time of performance."--_Hist. of Music_,

iv. 391.

[29] See vol. xviii.