[30] "Thine be the laurel, then; thy blooming age

Can best, if any can, support the stage,

Which to declines, that shortly we may see

Players and plays reduced to second infancy.

Sharp to the world, but thoughtless of renown,

They plot not on the stage, but on the town;

And in despair their empty pit to fill,

Set up some foreign monster in a bill:

Thus they jog on, still tricking, never thriving,

And murth'ring plays, which they miscall--reviving.

Our sense is nonsense, through their pipes conveyed;

Scarce can a poet know the play he made,

'Tis so disguised in death; nor thinks 'tis he

That suffers in the mangled tragedy:

Thus Itys first was killed, and after dressed

For his own sire, the chief invited guest."

This gave great offence to the players; one of whom (Powell) made a

petulant retort, which the reader will find in a note upon the Epistle

itself, vol. xi.

[31] Milbourne, in a note on that passage in the dedication to the

Aeneid--"_He who can write well in rhyme, may write better in blank

verse_," says,--"We shall know that, when we see how much better

Dryden's Homer will be than his Virgil."

[32] "Much the same character he gave of it (_i.e._ Paradise Lost) to

a north-country gentleman, to whom I mentioned the book, he being a

great reader, but not in a right train, coming to town seldom, and

keeping little company. Dryden amazed him with speaking so loftily of

it. 'Why, Mr. Dryden, says he (Sir W.L. told me the thing himself), 'tis

not in rhyme.' 'No, [replied Dryden;] _nor would I have done_ Virgil

_in rhyme, if I was to begin it again._'"--This conversation is supposed

by Mr. Malone to have been held with Sir Wilfrid Lawson, of Isell in

Cumberland.

[33] See a letter to Mrs. Thomas, vol. xviii.

[34] "Some of these poets, to excuse their guilt, allege for themselves,

that the degeneracy of the age makes their lewd way of writing

necessary: they pretend the auditors will not be pleased, unless they

are thus entertained from the stage; and to please, they say, is the

chief business of the poet. But this is by no means a just apology: it

is not true, as was said before, that the poet's chief business is to

please. His chief business is to instruct, to make mankind wiser and

better; and in order to this, his care should be to please and entertain

the audience with all the wit and art he is master of. Aristotle and

Horace, and all their critics and commentators all men of wit and sense

agree, that this is the end of poetry. But they say, it is their

profession to write for the stage; and that poets must starve, if they

will not in this way humour the audience: the theatre will be as

unfrequented as the churches, and the poet and the parson equally

neglected. Let the poet then abandon his profession, and take up some

honest lawful calling, where, joining industry to his great wit, he may

soon get above the complaints of poverty, so common among these

ingenious men, and lie under no necessity of prostituting his wit to any

such vile purposes as are here censured. This will-be a course of life

more profitable and honourable to himself, and more useful to others.

And there are among these writers _some, who think they might have risen

to the highest dignities in other professions, had they employed their

wit in those ways._ It is a mighty dishonour and reproach to any man

that is capable of being useful to the world in any _liberal and

virtuous_ profession, _to lavish out his life and wit in propagating

vice and corruption of manners_, and in battering from the stage the

strongest entrenchments and best works of religion and virtue. Whoever

makes this his choice, when the other was in his power, may he go off

the stage unpitied, _complaining of neglect and poverty, the just

punishments of his irreligion and folly!_"

[35] Mr. Malone conceives, that the Fables were published before the

"Satire upon Wit;" but he had not this evidence of the contrary before

him. It is therefore clear, that Dryden endured a second attack from

Blackmore, before making any reply.

[36] Since Scott wrote, the Collier-Congreve controversy has been the

subject of well-known essays by Lamb, Hazlitt, Leigh Hunt, and Macaulay.

Very recently a fresh and excellent account of Collier's book has

appeared in M.A. Beljame's _Le Public et les Hommes de Lettres en

Angleterre au xviiième siecle_ (Paris: Hachette, 1881), a remarkable

volume, to which, and to its author, I owe much.--Ed.

[37] In his apology for "The Tale of a Tub," he points out to the

resentment of the clergy, "those heavy illiterate scribblers, prostitute

in their reputations, vicious in their lives, and ruined in their

fortunes, who, to the shame of good sense, as well as piety, are

greedily read, merely upon the strength of bold, false, impious

assertions, mixed with unmannerly reflections on the priesthood." And,

after no great interval, he mentions the passage quoted, p. 375 "in

which Dryden, L'Estrange, and some others I shall not name, are levelled

at; who, having spent their lives in faction, and apostasies, and all

manner of vice, pretended to be sufferers for loyalty and religion. So

Dryden tells us, in one of his prefaces, of his merits and sufferings,

and thanks God that he possesses his soul in patience. In other places

he talks at the same rate."

[38] Vol. xviii.

[39] Thus in a lampoon already quoted (footnote 29, Section VI)

"Quitting my duller hopes, the poor renown

Of Eton College, or a Dublin gown."

Tom Brown makes the charge more directly. "But, prithee, why so severe

always on the priesthood, Mr. Bayes? What have they merited to pull down

your indignation? I thought the ridiculing men of that character upon

the stage, was by this time a topic as much worn out with you, as love

and honour in the play, or good fulsome flattery in the dedication. But

you, I find, still continue your old humour, to date from the year of

Hegira, the loss of Eton, or since orders were refused you. Whatever

hangs out, either black or green colours is presently your prize: and

you would, by your good will, be as mortifying a vexation to the whole

tribe, as an unbegetting year, a concatenation of briefs, or a voracious

visitor; so that I am of opinion, you had much better have written in

your title-page,

Manet alta mente repostum

Judicium _Cleri_, spretaeque injuria _Musoe_."

The same reproach is urged by Settle. See vol. ix.

[40] Vol. xviii. [The _Diary_ had not been deciphered when Scott wrote.

--ED.]

[41] There was, to be sure, in the provoking scruples of that rigid

sect, something peculiarly tempting to a satirist. How is it possible to

forgive Baxter, for the affectation with which he records the enormities

of his childhood?

"Though my conscience," says he, "would trouble me when I sinned, yet

divers sins I was addicted to, and oft committed against my conscience,

which, for the warning of others, I will here confess to my shame. I was

much addicted to the _excessive gluttonous eating of apples and pears_,

which I think laid the foundation of the imbecility and flatulency of my

stomach, which caused the bodily calamities of my life. To this end, and

to concur with naughty boys that gloried in evil, I have oft gone into

other men's orchards, and stolen the fruit, when I had enough at home."

There are six other retractions of similar enormities, when he

concludes: "These were my sins in my childhood, as to which, conscience

troubled me for a great while before they were overcome." Baxter was a

pious and worthy man; but can any one read this confession without

thinking of Tartuffe, who subjected himself to penance for killing a

flea, with too much anger?

[42] See vol. xviii. Mr. Malone thinks tradition has confounded a

present made to the poet himself probably of £100, with a legacy

bequeathed to his son Charles, which last did amount to £500, but which

Charles lived not to receive.

[43] She is distinguished for beauty and virtue, by the author of "The

Court at Kensington." 1699-1700.

"So Ormond's graceful mien attracts all eyes,

And nature needs not ask from art supplies;

An heir of grandeur shines through every part,

And in her beauteous form is placed the noblest heart:

In vain mankind adore, unless she were

By Heaven made less virtuous, or less fair."

[44] Gildon, in his "Comparison between the Stages."--"Nay then," says

the whole party at Drury-lane, "we'll even put 'The Pilgrim' upon him."

"Ay, 'faith, so we will," says Dryden: "and if you'll let my son have

the profits of the third night, I'll give you a Secular Masque." "Done,"

says the House; and so the bargain was struck.

[45] _i.e._ Upon the 25th March 1700; it being supposed (as by many in

our own time) that the century was concluded so soon as the hundredth

year commenced; as if a play was ended at the _beginning of the fifth

act._

[46] It was again set by Dr. Boyce, and in 1749 performed in the

Drury-lane theatre, with great success.

[47] By a letter to Mrs. Steward, dated the 11th April 1700, it appears

they were then only in his contemplation, and the poet died upon the

first of the succeeding month. Vol. xviii.

[48]

"Quick Maurus, though he never took degrees

In either of our universities,

Yet to be shown by Rome kind wit he looks,

Because he played the fool, and writ three books.

But if he would be worth a poet's pen,

He must be more a fool, and write again:

For all the former fustian stuff he wrote

Was dead-born doggrel, or is quite forgot;

His man of Uz, stript of his Hebrew robe,

Is just the proverb, and 'As poor as Job.'

One would have thought he could no longer jog;

But Arthur was a level, Job's a bog.

_There_ though he crept, yet still he kept in sight;

But _here_ he founders in, and sinks downright.

Had he prepared us, and been dull by rule,

Tobit had first been turned to ridicule;

But our bold Briton, without fear or awe,

O'erleaps at once the whole Apocrypha;

Invades the Psalms with rhymes, and leaves no room

For any Vandal Hopkins yet to come.

But when, if, after all, this godly gear

Is not so senseless as it would appear,

Our mountebank has laid a deeper train;

His cant, like Merry Andrew's noble vein,

Cat-calls the sects to draw them in again.

At leisure hours in epic song he deals,

Writes to the rumbling of his coach's wheels;

Prescribes in haste, and seldom kills by rule,

But rides triumphant between stool and stool.

Well, let him go,--'tis yet too early day

To get himself a place in farce or play;

We know not by what name we should arraign him,

For no one category can contain him.

A pedant,--canting preacher,--and a quack,

Are load enough to break an ass's back.

At last, grown wanton, he presumed to write,

Traduced two kings, their kindness to requite;

One made the doctor, and one dubbed the knight."

[49] One of these well-meaning persons insulted the ashes of Dryden

while they were still warm, in "An Epistle to Sir Richard Blackmore,

occasioned by the New Session of the Poets." Marked by Mr. Luttrell, 1st

November 1700.

"His mighty Dryden to the shades is gone,

And Congreve leaves successor of his throne:

Though long before his final exit hence,

He was himself an abdicated Prince;

Disrobed of all regalities of state,

Drawn by a hind and panther from his seat.

Heir to his plays, his fables, and his tales,

Congreve is the poetic prince of Wales;

Not at St. Germains, but at Will's, his court,

Whither the subjects of his dad resort;

Where plots are hatched, and councils yet unknown,

How young Ascanius may ascend the throne,

That in despite of all the Muses' laws,

He may revenge his injured father's cause,

Go, nauseous rhymers, into darkness go,

And view your monarch in the shades below,

Who takes not now from Helicon his drink,

But sips from Styx a liquor black as ink;

Like Sisyphus a restless stone he turns,

And in a pile of his own labours burns;

Whose curling flames most ghastly fiends do raise,

Supplied with fuel from his impious plays;

And when he fain would puff away the flame,

One stops his mouth with bawdy Limberham;

There, to augment the terrors of the place,

His Hind and Panther stare him in the face;

They grin like devils at the cursed toad,

Who made [them] draw on earth so vile a load.

Could some infernal painter draw the sight,

And once transmit it to the realms of light,

It might our poets from their sins affright;

Or could they hear, how there the sons of verse

In dismal yells their tortures do express;

How scorched with ballads on the Stygian shore,

They horrors in a dismal chorus roar;

Or see how the laureate does his grandeur bear,

Crowned with a wreath of flaming sulphur there.

This, sir, 's your fate, cursed critics you oppose,

The most tyrannical and cruel foes;

Dryden, their huntsman dead, no more he wounds,

But now you must engage his pack of hounds."

[50] According to Ward, his expressions were, "that he was an old man,

and had not long to live by course of nature, and therefore did not care

to part with one limb, at such an age, to preserve an uncomfortable life

on the rest."--_London Spy_, Part xviii.

[51] "I come now from Mr. Dryden's funeral, where we had an Ode in

Horace sung, instead of David's Psalms; whence you may find, that we

don't think a poet worth Christian burial. The pomp of the ceremony was

a kind of rhapsody, and fitter, I think, for Hudibras, than him; because

the cavalcade was mostly burlesque: but he was an extraordinary man, and

buried after an extraordinary fashion; for I do believe there was never

such another burial seen. The oration, indeed, was great and ingenious,

worthy the subject, and like the author; whose prescriptions can restore

the living, and his pen embalm the dead. And so much for Mr. Dryden;

whose burial was the same as his life,--variety, and not of a piece:--

the quality and mob, farce and heroics; the sublime and ridicule mixed

in a piece;--great Cleopatra in a hackney coach."

[52] Those who wish to peruse this memorable romance may find it in vol.

xviii. It was first published in Wilson's "Life of Congreve," 1730. Mr.

Malone has successfully shown that it is false in almost all its parts;

for, independently of the extreme improbability of the whole story, it

is clear, from Ward's account, written at the time, that Lord Jefferies,

who it is pretended interrupted the funeral, did, in fact, largely

contribute to it. This also appears from a paragraph, in a letter from

Doctor afterwards Bishop Tanner, dated May 6th, 1700, and thus given by

Mr. Malone:--"Mr. Dryden died a papist, if at all a Christian. Mr.

Montague had given orders to bury him; but some lords (my Lord Dorset,

Jefferies, etc.), thinking it would not be splendid enough, ordered him

to be carried to Russel's: there he was embalmed; and now lies in state

at the Physicians' College, and is to be buried with Chaucer, Cowley,

etc., at Westminster Abbey, on Monday next."--_MSS. Ballard. in Bibl.

Bodl._ vol. iv. p. 29.

[53] The following lines are given by Mr. Malone as a specimen:--

"Before the hearse the mourning hautboys go,

And screech a dismal sound of grief and woe:

More dismal notes from bog-trotters may fall,

More dismal plaints at Irish funeral;

But no such floods of tears e'er stopped our tide,

Since Charles, the martyr and the monarch, died.

The decency and order first describe,

Without regard to either sex or tribe.

The sable coaches led the dismal van,

But by their side, I think, few footmen ran;

Nor needed these; the rabble fill the streets,

And mob with mob in great disorder meets.

See next the coaches, how they are accouter'd,

Both in the inside, eke and on the outward:

One p----y spark, one sound as any roach,

One poet and two fiddlers in a coach:

The playhouse drab, that beats the beggar's bush,

* * * * *

By everybody kissed, good truth,--but such is

Now her good fate, to ride with mistress Duchess.

Was e'er immortal poet thus buffooned!

In a long line of coaches thus lampooned!"

[54] [Transcriber's note: "Page 73" in original. See Footnote 14,

Section II.]

[55] [Transcriber's note: "'Poet Squab,' p. 215" in original. See

Footnote 14, Section V.]

[56] From "Epigrams on the Paintings of the most eminent Masters," by

J.E. (John Elsum), Esq., 8vo, 1700, Mr. Malone gives the following

lines:--

The Effigies of Mr. Dryden, by Closterman,

_Epig_. clxiv.

"A sleepy eye he shows, and no sweet feature,

Yet was indeed a favourite of nature:

Endowed and graced with an exalted mind,

With store of wit, and that of every kind.

Juvenal's tartness, Horace's sweet air,

With Virgil's force, in him concentered were.

But though the painter's art can never show it,

That his exemplar was so great a poet,

Yet are the lines and tints so subtly wrought,

You may perceive he was a man of thought.

Closterman, 'tis confessed, has drawn him well,

But short of Absalom and Achitophel."

[57] [Transcriber's note: "See pages 258-261" in original. This

corresponds to the discussion on Dryden's conversion to Catholicism,

Section VI.]

[58] A correspondent of the Gentleman's Magazine, in 1745, already

quoted, says of him as a personal acquaintance: "Posterity is absolutely

mistaken as to that great man: though forced to be a satirist, he was

the mildest creature breathing, and the readiest to help the young and

deserving. Though his comedies are horribly full of _double entendre_,

yet 'twas owing to a false complaisance. He was, in company, the

modestest man that ever conversed."

[59] Letter to the author of "Reflections Historical and Political."

4to, 1732.

[60] See vol. xi.; vol. xviii. From the poem in the passage last quoted,

it seems that the original sign of Will's Coffee-house had been a _cow._

It was changed however, to a _rose_, in Dryden's time. This wit's

coffeehouse was situated at the end of Bow-street, on the north side of

Russel-street, and frequented by all who made any pretence to

literature, or criticism. Their company, it would seem, was attended

with more honour than profit; for Dennis describes William Envin, or

Urwin, who kept the house, as taking refuge in White-friars, then a

place of asylum, to escape the clutches of his creditors. "For since the

law," says the critic, "thought it just to put Will out of its

protection, Will thought it but prudent to put himself out of its

power."

[61] See Appendix, vol. xviii.; vol. xi.

[62] The Dean of Peterborough. "I was," says he, "about seventeen, when

I first came to town; an odd-looking boy, with short rough hair, and

that sort of awkwardness which one always brings out of the country with

one: however, in spite of my bashfulness and appearance, I used now and

then to thrust myself into Will's, to have the pleasure of seeing the

most celebrated wits of that time, who used to resort thither. The

second time that ever I was there, Mr. Dryden was speaking of his own

things, as he frequently did, especially of such as had been lately

published. If anything of mine is good (says he), 'tis my Mac-Flecknoe;

and I value myself the more on it, because it is the first piece of

ridicule written in heroics.' Lockier overhearing this, plucked up his

spirit so far, as to say, in a voice just loud enough to be heard, that

Mac-Flecknoe was a very fine poem, but that he had not imagined it to be

the first that ever was wrote that way. On this Dryden turned short upon

him, as surprised at his interposing; asked him how long he had been a

dealer in poetry; and added, with a smile,--'But pray, sir, what is it,

that you did imagine to have been writ so before?' Lockier named

Boileau's Lutrin, and Tassoni's Secchia Rapita; which he had read, and

knew Dryden had borrowed some strokes from each. ''Tis true,' says

Dryden;--'I had forgot them.' A little after, Dryden went out, and in

going spoke to Lockier again, and desired him to come to him the next

day. Lockier was highly delighted with the invitation, and was well

acquainted with him as long as he lived."--MALONE, vol. i. p. 481.

[63] "I have often heard," says Mr. George Russell, "that Mr. Dryden,

dissatisfied and envious at the reputation Creech obtained by his

translation of Lucretius, purposely advised him to undertake Horace, to

which he knew him unequal, that he might by his ill performance lose the

fame he had acquired. Mr. Southerne, author of 'Oroonoko,' set me right

as to the conduct of Mr. Dryden in this affair; affirming that, being

one evening at Mr. Dryden's lodgings, in company with Mr. Creech, and

some other ingenious men, Mr. Creech told the company of his design to

translate Horace; from which Mr. Dryden, with many arguments, dissuaded

him, as an attempt which his genius was not adapted to, and which would

risk his losing the good opinion the world had of him, by his successful

translation of Lucretius. I thought it proper to acquaint you with this

circumstance, since it rescues the fame of one of our greatest poets

from the imputation of envy and malevolence." See also, upon this

subject, a note in vol. viii. Yet Jacob Tonson told Spence, "that Dryden

would compliment Crowne when a play of his failed, but was cold to him

if he met with success. He used sometimes to say, that Crowne had some

genius; but then he always added, that his father and Crowne's mother

were very well acquainted."--MALONE, vol. i. p. 500.

[64] His conversation is thus characterised by a contemporary writer:

"O, Sir, there's a medium in all things. Silence and chat are distant

enough, to have a convenient discourse come between them; and thus far I

agree with you, that the company of the author of 'Absalom and

Achitophel' is more valuable, though not so talkative, than that of the

modern men of _banter_; for what he says is like what he writes, much to

the purpose, and full of mighty sense; and if the town were for anything

desirable, it were for the conversation of him, and one or two more of

the same character."--_The Humours and Conversation of the Town exposed,

in two Dialogues_, 1693, p. 73

[65] [This story is probably as old as the first married pair of whom

the husband was studious. It certainly appears without names in the

_Historiettes_ of Tallemant des Réaux, most of which were written five

years before Dryden's marriage.--ED]

[66] "When Dryden, our first great master of verse and harmony, brought

his play of 'Amphitryon' to the stage, I heard him give it his first

reading to the actors; in which, though it is true he delivered the

plain sense of every period, yet the whole was in so cold, so flat, and

unaffecting a manner, that I am afraid of not being believed, when I

affirm it."--_Cibber's Apology_, 4to.

[67] [Transcriber's note: "See page 112" in original. This is to be

found in Section III.]

[68] Vol. xviii.

[69] "I find (says Gildon) Mr. Bayes, the younger [Rowe], has two

qualities, like Mr. Bayes, the elder; his admiration of some odd books,

as 'Reynard the Fox,' and the old ballads of 'Jane Shore,' etc."--

_Remarks on Mr. Rome's Plays_. "Reynard the Fox" is also mentioned in

"The Town and Country Mouse," as a favourite book of Dryden. And

Addison, in the 85th number of the Spectator, informs us, that Dorset

and Dryden delighted in perusing the collection of old ballads which the

latter possessed.

[70] Vol. xviii.

[71] It is now No. 43.

[72] Vol. vii.

[73] [The unfavourable accounts of Lady Elizabeth's temper after

marriage are not much better founded than those of her maidenly or

unmaidenly conduct before it. Dryden's supposed to almost all his

contemporaries in _belles-lettres_. There is no sign in his letters of

any conjugal unhappiness, and Malone's "respectable authority" is family

gossip a century after date.--ED.]

[74] [Transcriber's note: "P. 85" in original. This is to be found in

Section II.]

[75] These are--1. Latin verses prefixed to Lord Roscommon's Essay on

Translated Verse. 2. Latin verses on the Death of Charles II., published

in the Cambridge collection of Elegies on that occasion. 3. A poem in

the same language, upon Lord Arlington's Gardens, published in the

Second Miscellany. 4. A translation of the seventh Satire of Juvenal,

mentioned in the text. 5. An English poem, on the Happiness of a Retired

Life. 6. A pretty song, printed by Mr. Malone, to which Charles Dryden

also composed music.

[76] The prologue was spoken by the ghosts of Shakespeare and Dryden;

from which Mr. Malone selects the following curious quotation:--"Mr.

Bevil Higgons, the writer of it, _ventured_ to make the representative

of our great dramatic poet speak these lines!--

"These scenes in their rough native dress were mine;

_But now, improved, with nobler lustre shine_

The first rude sketches Shakespeare's pencil drew,

_But all the shining master strokes are new._

This play, ye critics, shall your fury stand,

Adorned and rescued by a faultless hand."

To which our author replies,

"I long endeavoured to support the stage,

With the faint copies of thy nobler rage,

But toiled in vain for an ungenerous age.

They starved me living, nay, denied me fame,

And scarce, now dead, do justice to my name.

Would you repent? Be to my ashes kind;

Indulge the pledges I have left behind."--MALONE.

[77] [Transcriber's note: "Page 206, and vol. ix." in original. This is

to be found in Section V.]

[78] Mr. Malone says, "Edward Dryden, the eldest son of the last Sir

Erasmus Dryden, left by his wife, Elizabeth Allen, who died in London in

1761, five sons; the youngest of whom, Bevil, was father of the present

Lady Dryden. Sir John, the eldest, survived all his brothers, and died

without issue, at Canons-Ashby, March 20, 1770." [The subsequent history

of the family is as follows:--Elizabeth Dryden, the "present Lady

Dryden" referred to by Scott, married Mr. John Turner, to whom she

carried the estates. Mr. Turner assumed the name and arms of Dryden in

1791, and was created a baronet four years later. The title and property

passed successively to his two sons, and then to the son of the younger,

the present Sir Henry Dryden, a distinguished archaeologist.--ED.]

SECTION VIII.

_The State of Dryden's Reputation at his Death, and afterwards--The

General Character of his Mind--His Merit as a Dramatist--As a Lyrical

Poet---As a Satirist--As a Narrative Poet--As a Philosophical and

Miscellaneous Poet--As a Translator--As a Prose Author--As a Critic._

If Dryden received but a slender share of the gifts of fortune, it was

amply made up to him in reputation. Even while a poet militant upon

earth, he received no ordinary portion of that applause, which is too

often reserved for the "dull cold ear of death." He combated, it is

true, but he conquered; and, in despite of faction, civil and religious,

of penury, and the contempt which follows it, of degrading patronage,

and rejected solicitation, from 1666 to the year of his death, the name

of Dryden was first in English literature. Nor was his fame limited to

Britain. Of the French literati, although Boileau,[1] with unworthy

affectation, when he heard of the honours paid to the poet's remains,

pretended ignorance even of his name, yet Rapin, the famous critic,

learned the English language on purpose to read the works of Dryden.[2]

Sir John Shadwell, the son of our author's ancient adversary, bore an

honourable and manly testimony to the general regret among the men of

letters at Paris for the death of Dryden. "The men of letters here

lament the loss of Mr. Dryden very much. The honours paid to him have

done our countrymen no small service; for, next to having so

considerable a man of our own growth, 'tis a reputation to have known

how to value him; as patrons very often pass for wits, by esteeming

those that are so." And from another authority we learn, that the

engraved copies of Dryden's portrait were bought up with avidity on the

Continent.[3]

But it was in England where the loss of Dryden was chiefly to be felt.

It is seldom the extent of such a deprivation is understood, till it has

taken place; as the size of an object is best estimated, when we see the

space void which it had long occupied. The men of literature, starting

as it were from a dream, began to heap commemorations, panegyrics, and

elegies: the great were as much astonished at their own neglect of such

an object of bounty, as if the same had never been practised before; and

expressed as much compunction, as it were never to occur again. The

poets were not silent; but their strains only evinced their woful

degeneracy from him whom they mourned. Henry Playford, a publisher of

music, collected their effusions into a compilation, entitled, "Luctus

Britannici, or the Tears of the British Muses, for the death of John

Dryden;" which he published about two months after Dryden's death.[4]

Nine ladies, assuming each the character of a Muse, and clubbing a

funeral ode, or elegy, produced "The Nine Muses;" of which very rare

(and very worthless) collection, I have given a short account in the

Appendix; where the reader will also find an ode on the same subject, by

Oldys, which may serve for ample specimen of the poetical lamentations

over Dryden.

The more costly, though equally unsubstantial, honour of a monument, was

projected by Montague; and loud were the acclamations of the poets on

his generous forgiveness of past discords with Dryden, and the

munificence of this universal patron. But Montague never accomplished

his purpose, if he seriously entertained it. Pelham, Duke of Newcastle,

announced the same intention; received the panegyric of Congreve for

having done so; and having thus pocketed the applause, proceeded no

further than Montague had done. At length Pope, in some lines which were

rather an epitaph on Dryden, who lay in the vicinity, than on Rowe, over

whose tomb they were to be placed,[5] roused Dryden's original patron,

Sheffield, formerly Earl of Mulgrave, and now Duke of Buckingham, to

erect over the grave of his friend the present simple monument which

distinguishes it. The inscription was comprised in the following

words:--_J. Dryden. Natus 1632. Mortuus I Maii 1700. Joannes Sheffield,

Duxx Buckinghamiensis posuit, 1720_.[6]

In the school of reformed English poetry, of which Dryden must be

acknowledged as the founder, there soon arose disciples not unwilling to

be considered as the rivals of their muster. Addison had his partisans,

who were desirous to hold him up in this point of view; and he himself

is said to have taken pleasure, with the assistance of Steele, to

depreciate Dryden, whose fame was defended by Pope and Congreve. No

serious invasion of Dryden's pre-eminence can be said, however, to have

taken place, till Pope himself, refining upon that structure of

versification which our author had first introduced, and attending with

sedulous diligence to improve every passage to the highest pitch of

point and harmony, exhibited a new style of composition, and claimed at

least to share with Dryden the sovereignty of Parnassus. I will not

attempt to concentrate what Johnson has said upon this interesting

comparison:--

"In acquired knowledge, the superiority must be allowed to Dryden, whose

education was more scholastic, and who, before he became an author, had

been allowed more time for study, with better means of information. His

mind has a larger range, and he collects his images and illustrations

from a more extensive circumference of science. Dryden knew more of man

in his general nature, and Pope in his local manners. The notions of

Dryden were formed by comprehensive speculation, and those of Pope by

minute attention. There is more dignity in the knowledge of Dryden, and

more certainty in that of Pope.

"Poetry was not the sole praise of either; for both excelled likewise in

prose; but Pope did not borrow his prose from his predecessor. The style

of Dryden is capricious and varied, that of Pope is cautious and

uniform. Dryden obeys the motions of his own mind, Pope constrains his

mind to his own rules of composition. Dryden is sometimes vehement and

rapid; Pope is always smooth, uniform, and gentle. Dryden's page is a

natural field, rising into inequalities, and diversified by the varied

exuberance of abundant vegetation; Pope's is a velvet lawn, shaven by

the scythe, and levelled by the roller.

"Of genius, that power which constitutes a poet; that quality, without

which judgment is cold, and knowledge is inert; that energy, which

collects, combines, amplifies, and animates; the superiority must, with

some hesitation, be allowed to Dryden. It is not to be inferred, that of

this poetical vigour Pope had only a little, because Dryden had more;

for every other writer, since Milton, must give place to Pope: and even

of Dryden it must be said, that if he has brighter paragraphs, he has

not better poems. Dryden's performances were always hasty, either

excited by some external occasion, or extorted by domestic necessity; he

composed without consideration, and published without correction. What

his mind could supply at call, or gather in one excursion, was all that

he sought, and all that he gave. The dilatory caution of Pope enabled

him to condense his sentiments, to multiply his images, and to

accumulate all that study might produce, or chance might supply. If the

flights of Dryden, therefore, are higher, Pope continues longer on the

wing. If of Dryden's fire the blaze is brighter, of Pope the heat is

more regular and constant. Dryden often surpasses expectation, and Pope

never falls below it. Dryden is read with frequent astonishment, and

Pope with perpetual delight."[7]

As the eighteenth century advanced, the difference between the styles of

these celebrated authors became yet more manifest. It was then obvious,

that though Pope's felicity of expression, his beautiful polish of

sentiment, and the occasional brilliancy of his wit, were not easily

imitated, yet many authors, by dint of a good ear, and a fluent

expression, learned to command the unaltered sweetness of his melody,

which, like a favourite tune, when descended to hawkers and

ballad-singers, became disgusting as it became common. The admirers of

poetry then reverted to the brave negligence of Dryden's versification,

as, to use Johnson's simile, the eye, fatigued with the uniformity of a

lawn, seeks variety in the uncultivated glade or swelling mountain. The

preference for which Dennis, asserting the cause of Dryden, had raved

and thundered in vain, began, by degrees, to be assigned to the elder

bard; and many a poet sheltered his harsh verses and inequalities under

an assertion that he belonged to the school of Dryden. Churchill--

"Who, born for the universe, narrowed his mind,

And to party gave up what was meant for mankind,"--

Churchill was one of the first to seek in the "Mac-Flecknoe," the

"Absalom," and "The Hind and Panther," authority for bitter and personal

sarcasm, couched in masculine, though irregular versification, dashed

from the pen without revision, and admitting occasional rude and flat

passages, to afford the author a spring to comparative elevation. But

imitation always approaches to caricature; and the powers of Churchill

have been unable to protect him from the oblivion into which his poems

are daily sinking, owing to the ephemeral interest of political

subjects, and his indolent negligence of severe study and regularity. To

imitate Dryden, it were well to study his merits, without venturing to

adopt the negligences and harshness, which the hurry of his composition,

and the comparative rudeness of his age, rendered in him excusable. At

least, those who venture to sink as low, should be confident of the

power of soaring as high; for surely it is a rash attempt to dive,

unless in one conscious of ability to swim. While the beauties of Dryden

may be fairly pointed out as an object of emulation, it is the less

pleasing, but not less necessary, duty of his biographer and editor, to

notice those deficiencies, which his high and venerable name may excuse,

but cannot render proper objects of applause or imitation.

So much occasional criticism has been scattered in various places

through these volumes, that, while attempting the consideration of one

or two of his distinguishing and pre-eminent compositions, which have

been intentionally reserved to illustrate a few pages of general

criticism, I feel myself free from the difficult, and almost

contradictory task, of drawing my maxims and examples from the extended

course of his literary career.

My present task is limited to deducing his poetic character from those

works which he formed on his last and most approved model. The general

tone of his genius, however, influenced the whole course of his

publications; and upon that, however his taste, a few preliminary

notices may not be misplaced.

The distinguishing characteristic of Dryden's genius seems to have been

the power of reasoning, and of expressing the result in appropriate

language.[8] This may seem slender praise; yet these were the talents

that led Bacon into the recesses of philosophy, and conducted Newton to

the cabinet of nature. The prose works of Dryden bear repeated evidence

to his philosophical powers. His philosophy was not indeed of a formed

and systematic character; for he is often contented to leave the path of

argument which must have conducted him to the fountain of truth, and to

resort with indolence or indifference to the leaky cisterns which had

been hewn out by former critics. But where his pride or his taste are

interested, he shows evidently, that it was not want of the power of

systematising, but of the time and patience necessary to form a system,

which occasions the discrepancy that we often notice in his critical and

philological disquisitions. This power of ratiocination, of

investigating, discovering, and appreciating that which is really

excellent, if accompanied with the necessary command of fanciful

illustration, and elegant expression, is the most interesting quality

which can be possessed by a poet. It must indeed have a share in the

composition of everything that is truly estimable in the fine arts, as

well as in philosophy. Nothing is so easily attained as the power of

presenting the extrinsic qualities of fine painting, fine music, or fine

poetry; the beauty of colour and outline, the combination of notes, the

melody of versification, may be imitated by artists of mediocrity; and

many will view, hear, or peruse their performances, without being able

positively to discover why they should not, since composed according to

all the rules, afford pleasure equal to those of Raphael, Handel, or

Dryden. The deficiency lies in the vivifying spirit, which, like

_alcohol_, may be reduced to the same principle in all, though it

assumes such varied qualities from the mode in which it is exerted or

combined. Of this power of intellect, Dryden seems to have possessed

almost an exuberant share, combined, as usual, with the faculty of

correcting his own conceptions, by observing human nature, the practical

and experimental philosophy as well of poetry as of ethics or physics.

The early habits of Dryden's education and poetical studies gave his

researches somewhat too much of a metaphysical character; and it was a

consequence of his mental acuteness, that his dramatic personages often

philosophised or reasoned, when they ought only to have felt. The more

lofty, the fiercer, the more ambitious feelings, seem also to have been

his favourite studies. Perhaps the analytical mode in which he exercised

his studies of human life tended to confine his observation to the more

energetic feelings of pride, anger, ambition, and other high-toned

passions. He that mixes in public life must see enough of these stormy

convulsions; but the finer and more imperceptible operations of love, in

its sentimental modifications, if the heart of the author does not

supply an example from its own feelings, cannot easily be studied at the

expense of others. Dryden's bosom, it must be owned, seems to have

afforded him no such means of information; the licence of his age, and

perhaps the advanced period at which he commenced his literary career,

had probably armed him against this more exalted strain of passion. The

love of the senses he has in many places expressed, in as forcible and

dignified colouring as the subject could admit; but of a mere moral and

sentimental passion he seems to have had little idea, since he

frequently substitutes in its place the absurd, unnatural, and

fictitious refinements of romance. In short, his love is always in

indecorous nakedness, or sheathed in the stiff panoply of chivalry. But

if Dryden fails in expressing the milder and more tender passions, not

only did the stronger feelings of the heart, in all its dark or violent

workings, but the face of natural objects, and their operation upon the

human mind, pass promptly in review at his command. External pictures,

and their corresponding influence on the spectator, are equally ready at

his summons; and though his poetry, from the nature of his subjects, is

in general rather ethic and didactic, than narrative of composition,

than his figures and his landscapes are presented to the mind with the

same vivacity as the flow of his reasoning, or the acute metaphysical

discrimination of his characters.

But the powers of observation and of deduction are not the only

qualities essential to the poetical character. The philosopher may

indeed prosecute his experimental researches into the _arcana_ of

nature, and announce them to the public through the medium of a friendly

_rédacteur_, as the legislator of Israel obtained permission to speak to

the people by the voice of Aaron; but the poet has no such privilege;

nay, his doom is so far capricious, that, though he may be possessed of

the primary quality of poetical conception to the highest possible

extent, it is but like a lute without its strings, unless he has the

subordinate, though equally essential, power of expressing what he feels

and conceives, in appropriate and harmonious language. With this power

Dryden's poetry was gifted in a degree, surpassing in modulated harmony

that of all who had preceded him, and inferior to none that has since

written English verse. He first showed that the English language was

capable of uniting smoothness and strength. The hobbling verses of his

predecessors were abandoned even by the lowest versifiers; and by the

force of his precept and example, the meanest lampooners of the year

seventeen hundred wrote smoother lines than Donne and Cowley, the chief

poets of the earlier half of the seventeenth century. What was said of

Rome adorned by Augustus, has been, by Johnson, applied to English

poetry improved by Dryden; that he found it of brick, and left it of

marble. This reformation was not merely the effect of an excellent ear,

and a superlative command of gratifying it by sounding language; it was,

we have seen, the effect of close, accurate, and continued study of the

power of the English tongue. Upon what principles he adopted and

continued his system of versification, he long meditated to communicate

in his projected prosody of English poetry. The work, however, might

have been more curious than useful, as there would have been some danger

of its diverting the attention, and misguiding the efforts of poetical

adventurers; for as it is more easy to be masons than architects, we may

deprecate an art which might teach the world to value those who can

build rhymes, without attending to the more essential qualities of

poetry. Strict attention might no doubt discover the principle of

Dryden's versification; but it seems no more essential to the analysing

his poetry, than the principles of mathematics to understanding music,

although the art necessarily depends on them. The extent in which Dryden

reformed our poetry, is most readily proved by an appeal to the ear; and

Dr. Johnson has forcibly stated, that "he knew how to choose the flowing

and the sonorous words; to vary the pauses and adjust the accents; to

diversify the cadence, and yet preserve the smoothness of the metre." To

vary the English hexameter, he established the use of the triplet and

Alexandrine. Though ridiculed by Swift, who vainly thought he had

exploded them for ever, their force is still acknowledged in classical

poetry.

Of the various kinds of poetry which Dryden occasionally practised, the

drama was that which, until the last six years of his life, he chiefly

relied on for support. His style of tragedy, we have seen, varied with

his improved taste, perhaps with the change of manners. Although the

heroic drama, as we have described it at length in the preceding pages,

presented the strongest temptation to the exercise of argumentative

poetry in sounding rhyme, Dryden was at length contented to abandon it

for the more pure and chaste style of tragedy, which professes rather

the representation of human beings, than the creation of ideal

perfection, or fantastic and anomalous characters. The best of Dryden's

performances in this latter style, are unquestionably "Don Sebastian,"

and "All for Love." Of these, the former is in the poet's very best

manner; exhibiting dramatic persons, consisting of such bold and

impetuous characters as he delighted to draw, well contrasted, forcibly

marked, and engaged in an interesting succession of events. To many

tempers, the scene between Sebastian and Dorax must appear one of the

most moving that ever adorned the British stage. Of "All for Love," we

may say, that it is successful in a softer style of painting; and that

so far as sweet and beautiful versification, elegant language, and

occasional tenderness, can make amends for Dryden's deficiencies in

describing the delicacies of sentimental passion, they are to be found

in abundance in that piece. But on these, and on the poet's other

tragedies, we have enlarged in our preliminary notices prefixed to each

piece.

Dryden's comedies, besides being stained with the licence of the age (a

licence which he seems to use as much from necessity as choice), have,

generally speaking, a certain heaviness of character. There are many

flashes of wit; but the author has beaten his flint hard ere he struck

them out. It is almost essential to the success of a jest, that it

should at least seem to be extemporaneous. If we espy the joke at a

distance, nay, if without seeing it we have the least reason to suspect

we are travelling towards one, it is astonishing how the perverse

obstinacy of our nature delights to refuse it currency. When, therefore,

as is often the case in Dryden's comedies, two persons remain on the

stage for no obvious purpose but to say good things, it is no wonder

they receive but little thanks from an ungrateful audience. The

incidents, therefore, and the characters, ought to be comic; but actual

jests, or _bon mots_, should be rarely introduced, and then naturally,

easily, without an appearance of premeditation, and bearing a strict

conformity to the character of the person who utters them. Comic

situation Dryden did not greatly study; indeed I hardly recollect any,

unless in the closing scene of "The Spanish Friar," which indicates any

peculiar felicity of invention. For comic character, he is usually

contented to paint a generic representative of a certain class of men or

women; a Father Dominic, for example, or a Melantha, with all the

attributes of their calling and manners, strongly and divertingly

portrayed, but without any individuality of character. It is probable

that, with these deficiencies, he felt the truth of his own

acknowledgment, and that he was forced upon composing comedies to

gratify the taste of the age, while the bent of his genius was otherwise

directed.

In lyrical poetry, Dryden must be allowed to have no equal. "Alexander's

Feast" is sufficient to show his supremacy in that brilliant department.

In this exquisite production, he flung from him all the trappings with

which his contemporaries had embarrassed the ode. The language, lofty

and striking as the ideas are, is equally simple and harmonious; without

far-fetched allusions, or epithets, or metaphors, the story is told as

intelligibly as if it had been in the most humble prose. The change of

tone in the harp of Timotheus, regulates the measure and the melody, and

the language of every stanza. The hearer, while he is led on by the

successive changes, experiences almost the feelings of the Macedonian

and his peers; nor is the splendid poem disgraced by one word or line

unworthy of it, unless we join in the severe criticism of Dr. Johnson,

on the concluding stanzas. It is true, that the praise of St. Cecilia is

rather abruptly introduced as a conclusion to the account of the Feast

of Alexander; and it is also true, that the comparison,

"He raised a mortal to the sky,

She drew an angel down,"

is inaccurate, since the feat of Timotheus was metaphorical, and that of

Cecilia literal. But, while we stoop to such criticism, we seek for

blots in the sun.

Of Dryden's other pindarics, some, as the celebrated "Ode to the Memory

of Mrs. Killigrew," are mixed with the leaven of Cowley; others, like

the "_Threnodia Augustalis_," are occasionally flat and heavy. All

contain passages of brilliancy, and all are thrown into a versification,

melodious amidst its irregularity. We listen for the completion of

Dryden's stanza, as for the explication of a difficult passage in music;

and wild and lost as the sound appears, the ear is proportionally

gratified by the unexpected ease with which harmony is extracted from

discord and confusion.

The satirical powers of Dryden were of the highest order. He draws his

arrow to the head, and dismisses it straight upon his object of aim. In

this walk he wrought almost as great a reformation as upon versification

in general; as will plainly appear, if we consider, that the satire,

before Dryden's time, bore the same reference to "Absalom and

Achitophel," which an ode of Cowley bears to "Alexander's Feast." Butler

and his imitators had adopted a metaphysical satire, as the poets in the

earlier part of the century had created a metaphysical vein of serious

poetry.[9] Both required store of learning to supply the perpetual

expenditure of extraordinary and far-fetched illustration; the object of

both was to combine and hunt down the strangest and most fanciful

analogies; and both held the attention of the reader perpetually on the

stretch, to keep up with the meaning of the author. There can be no

doubt, that this metaphysical vein was much better fitted for the

burlesque than the sublime. Yet the perpetual scintillation of Butler's

wit is too dazzling to be delightful; and we can seldom read far in

"Hudibras" without feeling more fatigue than pleasure. His fancy is

employed with the profusion of a spendthrift, by whose eternal round of

banqueting his guests are at length rather wearied out than regaled.

Dryden was destined to correct this, among other errors of his age; to

show the difference between burlesque and satire; and to teach his

successors in that species of assault, rather to thrust than to flourish

with their weapon. For this purpose he avoided the unvaried and

unrelieved style of grotesque description and combination, which had

been fashionable since the satires of Cleveland and Butler. To render

the objects of his satire hateful and contemptible, he thought it

necessary to preserve the lighter shades of character, if not for the

purpose of softening the portrait, at least for that of preserving the

likeness. While Dryden seized, and dwelt upon, and aggravated, all the

evil features of his subject, he carefully retained just as much of its

laudable traits as preserved him from the charge of want of candour, and

fixed down the resemblance upon the party. And thus, instead of

unmeaning caricatures, he presents portraits which cannot be mistaken,

however unfavourable ideas they may convey of the originals. The

character of Shaftesbury, both as Achitophel, and as drawn in "The

Medal," bears peculiar witness to this assertion. While other court

poets endeavoured to turn the obnoxious statesman into ridicule on

account of his personal infirmities and extravagances, Dryden boldly

confers upon him all the praise for talent and for genius that his

friends could have claimed, and trusts to the force of his satirical

expression for working up even these admirable attributes with such a

mixture of evil propensities and dangerous qualities, that the whole

character shall appear dreadful, and even hateful, but not contemptible.

But where a character of less note, a Shadwell or a Settle, crossed his

path, the satirist did not lay himself under these restraints, but wrote

in the language of bitter irony and immeasurable contempt: even then,

however, we are less called on to admire the wit of the author, than the

force and energy of his poetical philippic. These are the verses which

are made by indignation, and, no more than theatrical scenes of real

passion, admit of refined and protracted turns of wit, or even the

lighter sallies of humour. These last ornaments are proper in that

Horatian satire, which rather ridicules the follies of the age, than

stigmatises the vices of individuals; but in this style Dryden has made

few essays. He entered the field as champion of a political party, or as

defender of his own reputation; discriminated his antagonists, and

applied the scourge with all the vehemence of Juvenal. As he has himself

said of that satirist, "his provocations were great, and he has revenged

them tragically." This is the more worthy of notice, as, in the Essay

on Satire, Dryden gives a decided preference to those nicer and more

delicate touches of satire, which consist in fine raillery. But whatever

was the opinion of his cooler moments, the poet's practice was dictated

by the furious party-spirit of the times, and the no less keen

stimulative of personal resentment. It is perhaps to be regretted, that

so much energy of thought, and so much force of expression, should have

been wasted in anatomising such criminals as Shadwell and Settle; yet we

cannot account the amber less precious, because they are grubs and flies

that are enclosed within it.

The "Fables" of Dryden are the best examples of his talents as a

narrative poet; those powers of composition, description, and narration,

which must have been called into exercise by the Epic Muse, had his fate

allowed him to enlist among her votaries. The "Knight's Tale," the

longest and most laboured of Chaucer's stories, possesses a degree of

regularity which might satisfy the most severe critic. It is true, that

the honour arising from thence must be assigned to the more ancient

bard, who had himself drawn his subject from an Italian model; but the

high and decided preference which Dryden has given to this story,

although somewhat censured by Trapp, enables us to judge how much the

poet held an accurate combination of parts, and coherence of narrative,

essentials of epic poetry.[10] That a classic scholar like Trapp should

think the plan of the "Knight's Tale" equal to that of the Iliad, is a

degree of candour not to be hoped for; but surely to an unprejudiced

reader, a story which exhausts in its conclusion all the interest which

it has excited in its progress, which, when terminated, leaves no

question to be asked, no personage undisposed of, and no curiosity

unsatisfied, is, abstractedly considered, more gratifying than the

history of a few weeks of a ten years' war, commencing long after the

siege had begun, and ending long before the city was taken. Of the other

tales, it can hardly be said that their texture is more ingenious or

closely woven than that of ordinary novels or fables: but in each of

them Dryden has displayed the superiority of his genius, in selecting

for amplification and ornament those passages most susceptible of

poetical description. The account of the procession of the Fairy

Chivalry in the "Flower and the Leaf;" the splendid description of the

champions who came to assist at the tournament in the "Knight's Tale;"

the account of the battle itself, its alternations and issue,--if they

cannot be called improvements on Chaucer, are nevertheless so spirited a

transfusion of his ideas into modern verse, as almost to claim the merit

of originality. Many passages might be shown in which this praise may be

carried still higher, and the merit of invention added to that of

imitation. Such is the description of the commencement of the tourney,

which is almost entirely original, and most of the ornaments in the

translations from Boccacio, whose prose fictions demanded more additions

from the poet than the exuberant imagery of Chaucer. To select instances

would be endless; but every reader of poetry has by heart the

description of Iphigenia asleep, nor are the lines in "Theodore and

Honoria,"[11] which describe the approach of the apparition, and its

effects upon animated and inanimated nature even before it becomes

visible, less eminent for beauties of the terrific order:

"While listening to the murmuring leaves he stood,

More than a mile immersed within the wood,

At once the wind was laid; the whispering sound

Was dumb; a rising earthquake rocked the ground;

With deeper brown the grove was overspread,

A sudden horror seized his giddy head,

And his ears tingled, and his colour fled,

Nature was in alarm; some danger nigh

Seemed threatened, though unseen to mortal eye."

It may be doubted, however, whether the simplicity of Boccacio's

narrative has not sometimes suffered by the additional decorations of

Dryden. The retort of Guiscard to Tancred's charge of ingratitude is

more sublime in the Italian original,[12] than as diluted by the English

poet into five hexameters. A worse fault occurs in the whole colouring

of Sigismonda's passion, to which Dryden has given a coarse and

indelicate character, which he did not derive from Boccacio. In like

manner, the plea used by Palamon in his prayer to Venus, is more nakedly

expressed by Dryden than by Chaucer. The former, indeed, would probably

have sheltered himself under the mantle of Lucretius; but he should have

recollected, that Palamon speaks the language of chivalry, and ought

not, to use an expression of Lord Herbert, to have spoken like a

_paillard_, but a _cavalier_. Indeed, we have before noticed it as the

most obvious and most degrading imperfection of Dryden's poetical

imagination, that he could not refine that passion, which, of all

others, is susceptible either of the purest refinement, or of admitting

the basest alloy. With Chaucer, Dryden's task was more easy than with

Boccacio. Barrenness was not the fault of the Father of English poetry;

and amid the profusion of images which he presented, his imitator had

only the task of rejecting or selecting. In the sublime description of

the temple of Mars, painted around with all the misfortunes ascribed to

the influence of his planet, it would be difficult to point out a single

idea, which is not found in the older poem. But Dryden has judiciously

omitted or softened some degrading and some disgusting circumstances; as

the "cook scalded in spite of his long ladle," the "swine devouring the

cradled infant," the "pickpurse," and other circumstances too grotesque

or ludicrous to harmonise with the dreadful group around them. Some

points, also, of sublimity, have escaped the modern poet. Such is the

appropriate and picturesque accompaniment of the statue of Mars:--

"A wolf stood before him at his feet,

With eyen red, and of a man he eat."[13]

In the dialogue, or argumentative parts of the poem, Dryden has

frequently improved on his original, while he falls something short of

him in simple description, or in pathetic effect. Thus, the quarrel

between Arcite and Palamon is wrought up with greater energy by Dryden

than Chaucer, particularly by the addition of the following lines,

describing the enmity of the captives against each other:--

"Now friends no more, nor walking hand in hand,

But when they met, they made a surly stand,

And glared like angry lions as they passed,

And wished that every look might be their last."

But the modern must yield the palm, despite the beauty of his

versification, to the description of Emily by Chaucer; and may be justly

accused of loading the dying speech of Arcite with conceits for which

his original gave no authority.[14]

When the story is of a light and ludicrous kind, as the Fable of the

Cock and Fox, and the Wife of Bath's Tale, Dryden displays all the

humorous expression of his satirical poetry, without its personality.

There is indeed a quaint Cervantic gravity in his mode of expressing

himself, that often glances forth, and enlivens what otherwise would be

mere dry narrative. Thus, he details certain things which passed,

"While Cynion was _endeavouring_ to be wise;"

the force of which single word contains both a ludicrous and appropriate

picture of the revolution which the force of love was gradually creating

in the mind of the poor clown. This tone of expression he perhaps

borrowed from Ariosto, and other poets of Italian chivalry, who are

wont, ever and anon, to raise the mask, and smile even at the romantic

tale they are themselves telling.

Leaving these desultory reflections on Dryden's powers of narrative, I

cannot but notice, that, from haste or negligence, he has sometimes

mistaken the sense of his author. Into the hands of the champions in

"The Flower and the Leaf," he has placed _bows_ instead of _boughs_,

because the word is in the original spelled _bowes_; and, having made

the error, he immediately devises an explanation of the device which he

had mistaken:--

"For bows the strength of brawny arms imply,

Emblems of valour, and of victory."

He has, in like manner, accused Chaucer of introducing Gallicisms into

the English language; not aware that French was the language of the

court of England not long before Chaucer's time, and, that, far from

introducing French phrases into the English tongue, the ancient bard was

successfully active in introducing the English as a fashionable dialect,

instead of the French, which had, before his time, been the only

language of polite literature in England. Other instances might be given

of similar oversights, which, in the situation of Dryden, are

sufficiently pardonable.

Upon the whole, in introducing these romances of Boccacio and Chaucer to

modern readers, Dryden has necessarily deprived them of some of the

charms which they possess for those who have perused them in their

original state. With a tale or poem, by which we have been sincerely

interested, we connect many feelings independent of those arising from

actual poetical merit. The delight, arising from the whole, sanctions,

nay, sanctifies, the faulty passages; and even actual improvements, like

supplements to a mutilated statue of antiquity, injure our preconceived

associations, and hurt, by their incongruity with our feelings, more

than they give pleasure by their own excellence. But to antiquaries

Dryden has sufficiently justified himself, by declaring his version made

for the sake of modern readers, who understand sense and poetry as well

as the old Saxon admirers of Chaucer, when that poetry and sense are put

into words which they can understand. Let us also grant him, that, for

the beauties which are lost, he has substituted many which the original

did not afford; that, in passages of gorgeous description, he has added

even to the chivalrous splendour of Chaucer, and has graced with

poetical ornament the simplicity of Boccacio; that, if he has failed in

tenderness, he is never deficient in majesty; and that if the heart be

sometimes untouched, the understanding and fancy are always exercised

and delighted.

The philosophy of Dryden, we have already said, was that of original and

penetrating genius; imperfect only, when, from want of time and of

industry, he adopted the ideas of others, when he should have communed

at leisure with his own mind. The proofs of his philosophical powers are

not to be sought for in any particular poem or disquisition. Even the

"Religio Laici," written expressly as a philosophical poem, only shows

how easily the most powerful mind may entangle itself in sophistical

toils of its own weaving; for the train of argument there pursued was

completed by Dryden's conversion to the Roman Catholic faith.[15] It is

therefore in the discussion of incidental subjects, in his mode of

treating points of controversy, in the new lights which he seldom fails

to throw upon a controversial subject, in his talent of argumentive

discussion, that we are to look for the character of Dryden's moral

powers. His opinions, doubtless, are often inconsistent, and sometimes

absolutely contradictory; for, pressed by the necessity of discussing

the object before him, he seldom looked back to what he said formerly,

or forward to what he might be obliged to say in future. His sole

subject of consideration was to maintain his present point; and that by

authority, by declamation, by argument, by every means. But his

philosophical powers are not the less to be estimated, because thus

irregularly and unphilosophically employed. His arguments, even in the

worst cause, bear witness to the energy of his mental conceptions; and

the skill with which they are stated, elucidated, enforced, and

exemplified, ever commands our admiration, though, in the result, our

reason may reject their influence. It must be remembered also, to

Dryden's honour, that he was the first to hail the dawn of experimental

philosophy in physics; to gratulate his country on possessing Bacon,

Harvey, and Boyle; and to exult over the downfall of the Aristotelian

tyranny.[16] Had he lived to see a similar revolution commenced in

ethics, there can be little doubt he would have welcomed it with the

same delight; or had his leisure and situation permitted him to dedicate

his time to investigating moral problems, he might himself have led the

way to deliverance from error and uncertainty. But the dawn of

reformation must ever be gradual, and the acquisitions even of those

calculated to advance it must therefore frequently appear desultory and

imperfect. The author of the _Novum Organum_ believed in charms and

occult sympathy; and Dryden in the chimeras of judicial astrology, and

probably in the jargon of alchemy. When these subjects occur in his

poetry, he dwells on them with a pleasure which shows the command they

maintained over his mind. Much of the astrological knowledge displayed

in the Knight's Tale is introduced, or at least amplified, by Dryden;

and while, in the fable of the Cock and the Fox, he ridicules the

doctrine of prediction from dreams, the inherent qualities of the four

complexions,[17] and other abstruse doctrines of Paracelsus and his

followers, we have good reason to suspect that, like many other

scoffers, he believed in the efficacy and truth of the subject of his

ridicule. However this shade of credulity may injure Dryden's character

as a philosopher, we cannot regret its influence on his poetry. Collins

has thus celebrated Fairfax:--

"Prevailing poet, whose undoubting mind,

Believed the magic wonders which he sung."

Nor can there be a doubt that, as every work of imagination is tinged

with the author's passions and prejudices, it must be deep and energetic

in proportion to the character of these impressions. Those superstitious

sciences and pursuits, which would, by mystic rites, doctrines, and

inferences, connect us with the invisible world of spirits, or guide our

daring researches to a knowledge of future events, are indeed usually

found to cow, crush, and utterly stupefy, understandings of a lower

rank; but if the mind of a man of acute powers, and of warm fancy,

becomes slightly imbued with the visionary feelings excited by such

studies, their obscure and undefined influence is ever found to aid the

sublimity of his ideas, and to give that sombre and serious effect,

which he can never produce, who does not himself feel the awe which it

is his object to excite. The influence of such a mystic creed is often

felt where the cause is concealed; for the habits thus acquired are not

confined to their own sphere of belief, but gradually extend themselves

over every adjacent province: and perhaps we may not go too far in

believing, that he who has felt their impression, though only in one

branch of faith, becomes fitted to describe, with an air of reality and

interest, not only kindred subjects, but superstitions altogether

opposite to his own. The religion, which Dryden finally adopted, lent

its occasional aid to the solemn colouring of some of his later

productions, Tipon which subject we have elsewhere enlarged at some

length.[18]

The occasional poetry of Dryden is marked strongly by masculine

character. The Epistles vary with the subject; and are light, humorous,

and satirical, or grave, argumentative, and philosophical, as the case

required. In his Elegies, although they contain touches of true feeling,

especially where the stronger passions are to be illustrated, the poet

is often content to substitute reasoning for passion, and rather to show

us cause why we ought to grieve, than to set us the example by grieving

himself. The inherent defect in Dryden's composition becomes here

peculiarly conspicuous; yet we should consider, that, in composing

elegies for the Countess of Abingdon, whom he never saw, and for Charles

II., by whom he had been cruelly neglected, and doubtless on many

similar occasions, Dryden could not even pretend to be interested in the

mournful subject of his verse; but attended, with his poem, as much in

the way of trade, as the undertaker, on the same occasion, came with his

sables and his scutcheon. The poet may interest himself and his reader,

even to tears, in the fate of a being altogether the creation of his own

fancy, but hardly by a hired panegyric on a real subject, in whom his

heart acknowledges no other interest than a fee can give him. Few of

Dryden's elegiac effusions, therefore, seem prompted by sincere sorrow.

That to Oldham may be an exception; but, even there, he rather strives

to do honour to the talents of his departed friend, than to pour out

lamentations for his loss. Of the Prologues and Epilogues we have spoken

fully elsewhere.[19] Some of them are coarsely satirical, and others

grossly indelicate. Those spoken at Oxford are the most valuable, and

contain much good criticism and beautiful poetry. But the worst of them

was probably well worth the petty recompence which the poet

received.[20] The songs and smaller pieces of Dryden have smoothness,

wit, and when addressed to ladies, gallantry in profusion, but are

deficient in tenderness. They seem to have been composed with great

ease; thrown together hastily and occasionally; nor can we doubt that

many of them are now irrecoverably lost. Mr. Malone gives us an instance

of Dryden's fluency in extempore composition, which was communicated to

him by Mr. Walcott. "Conversation, one day after dinner, at Mrs.

Creed's, running upon the origin of names, Mr. Dryden bowed to the good

old lady, and spoke extempore the following verses:--

"So much religion in _your_ name doth dwell,

Your soul must needs with piety excel.

Thus names, like [well-wrought] pictures drawn of old,

Their owners' nature and their story told.--

Your name but half expresses; for in you

Belief and practice do together go.

My prayers shall be, while this short life endures,

These may go hand in hand, with you and yours;

Till faith hereafter is in vision drowned,

And practice is with endless glory crowned."

The Translations of Dryden form a distinguished part of his poetical

labours. No author, excepting Pope, has done so much to endenizen the

eminent poets of antiquity. In this sphere, also, it was the fate of

Dryden to become a leading example to future poets, and to abrogate laws

which had been generally received although they imposed such trammels on

translation as to render it hardly intelligible. Before his

distinguished success showed that the object of the translator should be

to transfuse the spirit, not to copy servilely the very words of his

original, it had been required, that line should be rendered for line,

and, almost, word for word. It may easily be imagined, that, by the

constraint and inversion which this cramping statute required, a poem

was barely rendered _not Latin_, instead of being made English, and

that, to the mere native reader, as the connoisseur complains in "The

Critic", the interpreter was sometimes "the harder to be understood of

the two." Those who seek examples, may find them in the jaw-breaking

translations of Ben Jonson and Holyday. Cowley and Denham had indeed

rebelled against this mode of translation, which conveys pretty much the

same idea of an original, as an imitator would do of the gait of

another, by studiously stepping after him into every trace which his

feet had left upon the sand. But they assumed a licence equally faulty,

and claimed the privilege of writing what might be more properly termed

imitations, than versions of the classics. It was reserved to Dryden

manfully to claim and vindicate the freedom of a just translation; more

limited than paraphrase, but free from the metaphrastic severity exacted

from his predecessors.

With these free yet unlicentious principles, Dryden brought to the task

of translation a competent knowledge of the language of the originals,

with an unbounded command of his own. The latter is, however, by far the

most marked characteristic of his Translations. Dryden was not indeed

deficient in Greek and Roman learning; but he paused not to weigh and

sift those difficult and obscure passages, at which the most learned

will doubt and hesitate for the correct meaning. The same rapidity,

which marked his own poetry, seems to have attended his study of the

classics. He seldom waited to analyse the sentence he was about to

render, far less scrupulously to weigh the precise purport and value of

every word it contained. If he caught the general spirit and meaning of

the author, and could express it with equal force in English verse, he

cared not if minute elegancies were lost, or the beauties of accurate

proportion destroyed, or a dubious interpretation hastily adopted on the

credit of a _scholium_. He used abundantly the licence he has claimed

for a translator, to be deficient rather in the language out of which he

renders, than of that into which he translates. If such be but master of

the sense of his author, Dryden argues, he may express that sense with

eloquence in his own tongue, though he understand not the nice turns of

the original. "But without the latter quality he can never arrive at the

useful and the delightful, without which reading is a penance and

fatigue."[21] With the same spirit of haste, Dryden if often contented

to present to the English reader some modern image, which he may at once

fully comprehend, instead of rendering precisely a classic expression,

which might require explanation or paraphrase. Thus the _pulchra

Sicyonia_, or buskins of Sicyon, are rendered,

"Diamond-buckles sparkling in their shoes."

By a yet more unfortunate adaptation of modern technical phraseology,

the simple direction of Helenus,

"_Læva tibi tellus, et longo læva pelantur

Æquora circuitu: dextrum fage lillus et undas_,"

is translated,

"Tack to the larboard, and stand off to sea,

Veer starboard sea and land:"

--a counsel which, I shrewdly suspect, would have been unintelligible,

not only to Palinurus, but to the best pilot in the British navy.[22] In

the same tone, but with more intelligibility, if not felicity, Dryden

translates _palatia coeli_ in Ovid, the _Louvre of the sky_; and, in the

version of the first book of Homer, talks of the court of Jupiter in the

phrases used at that of Whitehall. These expressions, proper to modern

manners, often produce an unfortunate confusion between the age in which

the scene is laid, and the date of the translation. No judicious poet is

willing to break the interest of a tale of ancient times, by allusions

peculiar to his own period: but when the translator, instead of

identifying himself as closely as possible with the original author,

pretends to such liberty, he removes us a third step from the time of

action, and so confounds the manners of no less than three distinct

eras,--that in which the scene is laid, that in which the poem was

written, and that, finally, in which the translation was executed. There

are passages in Dryden's Æneid, which, in the revolution of a few pages,

transport our ideas from the time of Troy's siege to that of the court

of Augustus, and thence downward to the reign of William the Third of

Britain.

It must be owned, at the same time, that when the translator places

before you, not the exact words, but the image of the original, as the

classic author would probably have himself expressed it in English, the

licence, when moderately employed, has an infinite charm for those

readers for whose use translations are properly written. Pope's Homer

and Dryden's Virgil can never indeed give exquisite satisfaction to

scholars, accustomed to study the Greek and Latin originals. The minds

of such readers have acquired a classic tone; and not merely the ideas

and poetical imagery, but the manners and habits of the actors, have

become intimately familiar to them. They will not, therefore, be

satisfied with any translation in which these are violated, whether for

the sake of indolence in the translator, or ease to the unlettered

reader; and perhaps they will be more pleased that a favourite bard

should move with less ease and spirit in his new habiliments, than that

his garments should be cut upon the model of the country to which the

stranger is introduced. In the former case, they will readily make

allowance for the imperfection of modern language; in the latter, they

will hardly pardon the sophistication of ancient manners. But the mere

English reader, who finds rigid adherence to antique costume rather

embarrassing than pleasing, who is prepared to make no sacrifices in

order to preserve the true manners of antiquity, shocking perhaps to his

feelings and prejudices, is satisfied that the Iliad and Æneid shall

lose their antiquarian merit, provided they retain that vital spirit and

energy, which is the soul of poetry in all languages, and countries, and

ages whatsoever. He who sits down to Dryden's translation of Virgil,

with the original text spread before him, will be at no loss to point

out many passages that are faulty, many indifferently understood, many

imperfectly translated, some in which dignity is lost, others in which

bombast is substituted in its stead. But the unabated vigour and spirit

of the version more than overbalances these and all its other

deficiencies. A sedulous scholar might often approach more nearly to the

dead letter of Virgil, and give an exact, distinct, sober-minded idea of

the meaning and scope of particular passages. Trapp, Pitt, and others

have done so. But the essential spirit of poetry is so volatile, that it

escapes during such an operation, like the life of the poor criminal,

whom the ancient anatomist is said to have dissected alive, in order to

ascertain the seat of the soul. The carcase indeed is presented to the

English reader, but the animating vigour is no more. It is in this art,

of communicating the ancient poet's ideas with force and energy equal to

his own, that Dryden has so completely exceeded all who have gone

before, and all who have succeeded him. The beautiful and unequalled

version of the Tale of Myrrha in the "Metamorphoses," the whole of the

Sixth Æneid, and many other parts of Dryden's translations, are

sufficient, had he never written one line of original poetry, to

vindicate the well-known panegyric of Churchill:--

"Here let me bend, great Dryden, at thy shrine,

Thou dearest name to all the tuneful Nine!

What if some dull lines in cold order creep,

And with his theme the poet seems to sleep?

Still, when his subject rises proud to view,

With equal strength the poet rises too:

With strong invention, noblest vigour fraught,

Thought still springs up, and rises out of thought;

Numbers ennobling numbers in their course,

In varied sweetness flow, in varied force;

The powers of genius and of judgment join,

And the whole art of poetry is thine."

We are in this disquisition naturally tempted to inquire, whether Dryden

would have succeeded in his proposed design to translate Homer, as

happily as in his Virgil? And although he himself more fiery, and

therefore better suited to his own than that of the Roman poet, there

may be room to question, whether in this case he rightly estimated his

own talents, or rather, whether, being fully conscious of their extent,

he was aware of labouring under certain deficiencies of taste, which

must have been more apparent in a version of the Iliad than of the

Æneid. If a translator has any characteristic and peculiar foible, it is

surely unfortunate to choose an original, who may give peculiar

facilities to exhibit them. Thus, even Dryden's repeated disclamation of

puns, points, and quibbles, and all the repentance of his more sober

hours, was unable, so soon as he began to translate Ovid, to prevent his

sliding back into the practice of that false wit with which his earlier

productions are imbued. Hence he has been seduced, by the similarity of

style, to add to the offences of his original, and introduce, though it

needed not, points of wit and antithetical prettinesses, for which he

cannot plead Ovid's authority. For example, he makes Ajax say of

Ulysses, when surrounded by the Trojans,

"No wonder if he roared that all might hear,

His elocution was increased by fear."

The Latin only bears, _conclamat socios._ A little lower,

"_Opposui molem clypei, texique jacentem_,"

is amplified by a similar witticism,

"My broad buckler hid him from the foe,

Even the shield trembled as he lay below."

If, in translating Ovid, Dryden was tempted by the manner of his

original to relapse into a youthful fault, which he had solemnly

repented of and abjured, there is surely room to believe, that the

simple and almost rude manners described by Homer, might have seduced

him into coarseness both of ideas and expression, for which the studied,

composed, and dignified style of the Aeneid gave neither opening nor

apology. That this was a fault which Dryden, with all his taste, never

was able to discard, might easily be proved from various passages in his

translations, where the transgression is on his own part altogether

gratuitous. Such is the well-known version of

"_Ut possessor agelli

Diceret, hoec mea sunt, veteres migrate coloni,

Nune vidi," etc._

"When the grim captain, with a surly tone,

Cries out, Pack up, ye rascals, and be gone!

Kicked out, we set the best face on't we could," etc.

In translating the most indelicate passage of Lucretius, Dryden has

rather enhanced than veiled its indecency. The story of Iphis in the

Metamorphoses is much more bluntly told by the English poet than by

Ovid. In short, where there was a latitude given for coarseness of

description and expression, Dryden has always too readily laid hold of

it. The very specimen which he has given us of a version of Homer,

contains many passages in which the antique Grecian simplicity is

vulgarly and inelegantly rendered. The Thunderer terms Juno

"My household curse, my lawful plague, the spy

Of Jove's designs, his other squinting eye."

The ambrosial feast of Olympus concludes like a tavern revel:--

"Drunken at last, and drowsy, they depart

Each to his house, adored with laboured art

Of the lame architect. The thundering God,

Even he, withdrew to rest, and had his load;

His swimming head to needful sleep applied,

And Juno lay unheeded by his side."

There is reason indeed to think, that, after the Revolution, Dryden's

taste was improved in this, as in some other respects. In his

translation of Juvenal, for example, the satire against women, coarse as

it is, is considerably refined and softened from the grossness of the

Latin poet; who has, however, been lately favoured by a still more

elegant, and (excepting perhaps one or two passages) an equally spirited

translation, by Mr. Gifford of London. Yet, admitting this apology for

Dryden as fully as we dare, from the numerous specimens of indelicacy

even in his later translations, we are induced to judge it fortunate

that Homer was reserved for a poet who had not known the age of Charles

II.; and whose inaccuracies and injudicious decorations may be pardoned,

even by the scholar, when he considers the probability, that Dryden

might have slipped into the opposite extreme, by converting rude

simplicity into indecency or vulgarity. The Æneid, on the other hand, if

it restrained Dryden's poetry to a correct, steady, and even flight, if

it damped his energy by its regularity, and fettered his excursive

imagination by the sobriety of its decorum, had the corresponding

advantage of holding forth to the translator no temptation to licence,

and no apology for negligence. Where the fervency of genius is required,

Dryden has usually equalled his original; where peculiar elegance and

exact propriety is demanded, his version may be sometimes found flat and

inaccurate, but the mastering spirit of Virgil prevails, and it is never

disgusting or indelicate. Of all the classical translations we can

boast, none is so acceptable to the class of readers, to whom the

learned languages are a clasped book and a sealed fountain. And surely

it is no moderate praise to say, that a work is universally pleasing to

those for whose use it is principally intended, and to whom only it is

absolutely indispensable.

The prose of Dryden may rank with the best in the English language. It

is no less of his own formation than his versification, is equally

spirited, and equally harmonious. Without the lengthened and pedantic

sentences of Clarendon, it is dignified where dignity is becoming, and

is lively without the accumulation of strained and absurd allusions and

metaphors, which were unfortunately mistaken for wit by many of the

author's contemporaries. Dryden has been accused of unnecessarily

larding his style with Gallicisms. It must be owned that, to comply

probably with the humour of Charles, or from an affectation of the

fashionable court dialect, the poet-laureate employed such words as

_fougue, fraicheur_, etc., instead of the corresponding expressions in

English; an affectation which does not appear in our author's later

writings. But even the learned and excellent Sir David Dalrymple was led

to carry this idea greatly too far. "Nothing," says that admirable

antiquary, "distinguishes the genius of the English language so much as

its general naturalisation of foreigners. Dryden in the reign of Charles

II., printed the following words as pure French newly imported: _amour,

billet-doux, caprice, chagrin, conversation, double-entendre,

embarrassed, fatigue, figure, foible, gallant, good graces, grimace,

incendiary, levée, maltreated, rallied, repartée, ridicule, tender,

tour_; with several others which are now considered as natives.--

'Marriage à la Mode.'"[23] But of these words many had been long

naturalised in England, and, with the adjectives derived from them, are

used by Shakespeare and the dramatists of his age.[24] By their being

printed in italics in the play of "Marriage à la Mode," Dryden only

meant to mark, that Melantha, the affected coquette in whose mouth they

are placed, was to use the _French_, not the vernacular pronunciation.

It will admit of question, whether any single French word has been

naturalised upon the sole authority of Dryden.

Although Dryden's style has nothing obsolete, we can occasionally trace

a reluctance to abandon an old word or idiom; the consequence, doubtless

of his latter studies in ancient poetry. In other respects, nothing can

be more elegant than the diction of the praises heaped upon his patrons,

for which he might himself plead the apology he uses for Maimbourg,

"who, having enemies, made himself friends by panegyrics." Of these

lively critical prefaces, which, when we commence, we can never lay

aside till we have finished, Dr. Johnson has said with equal force and

beauty,--"They have not the formality of a settled style, in which the

first half of the sentence betrays the other. The clauses are never

balanced, nor the periods modelled; every word seems to drop by chance,

though it falls into its proper place. Nothing is cold or languid; the

whole is airy, animated, and vigorous; what is little is gay, what is

great is splendid. He may be thought to mention himself too frequently;

but while he forces himself upon our esteem, we cannot refuse him to

stand high in his own. Everything is excused by the play of images and

the sprightliness of expression. Though all is easy, nothing is feeble;

though all seems careless, there is nothing harsh; and though, since his

earlier works, more than a century has passed, they have nothing yet

uncouth or obsolete."

"He, who writes much, will not easily escape a manner, such a recurrence

of particular modes as may be easily noted. Dryden is always _another

and the same._ He does not exhibit a second time the same elegancies in

the same form, nor appears to have any art other than that of expressing

with clearness what he thinks with vigour. His style could not easily be

imitated, either seriously or ludicrously; for, being always equable and

always varied, it has no prominent or discriminative characters. The

beauty, who is totally free from disproportion of parts and features,

cannot be ridiculed by an overcharged resemblance."

The last paragraph is not to be understood too literally; for although

Dryden never so far copied himself as to fall into what has been

quaintly called _mannerism_; yet accurate observation may trace, in his

works, the repetition of some sentiments and illustrations from prose to

verse, and back again to prose.[24] In his preface to the _Æneid_, he

has enlarged on the difficulty of varying phrases, when the same sense

returned on the author; and surely we must allow full praise to his

fluency and command of language, when, during so long a literary career,

and in the course of such a variety of miscellaneous productions, we can

detect in his style so few instances of repetition, or self-imitation.

The prose of Dryden, excepting his translations, and one or two

controversial tracts, is entirely dedicated to criticism, either general

and didactic, or defensive and exculpatory. There, as in other branches

of polite learning, it was his lot to be a light to his people. About

the time of the Restoration, the cultivation of letters was prosecuted

in France with some energy. But the genius of that lively nation being

more fitted for criticism than poetry; for drawing rules from what

others have done, than for writing works which might be themselves

standards; they were sooner able to produce an accurate table of laws

for those intending to write epic poems and tragedies, according to the

best Greek and Roman authorities, than to exhibit distinguished

specimens of success in either department; just as they are said to

possess the best possible rules for building ships of war, although not

equally remarkable for their power of fighting them. When criticism

becomes a pursuit separate from poetry, those who follow it are apt to

forget, that the legitimate ends of the art for which they lay down

rules, are instruction or delight, and that these points being attained,

by what road soever, entitles a poet to claim the prize of successful

merit. Neither did the learned authors of these disquisitions

sufficiently attend to the general disposition of mankind, which cannot

be contented even with the happiest imitations of former excellence, but

demands novelty as a necessary ingredient for amusement. To insist that

every epic poem shall have the plan of the Iliad and Æneid, and every

tragedy be fettered by the rules of Aristotle, resembles the principle

of an architect, who should build all his houses with the same number of

windows, and of stories. It happened too, inevitably, that the critics,

in the plenipotential authority which they exercised, often assumed as

indispensable requisites of the drama, or epopeia, circumstances, which,

in the great authorities they quoted, were altogether accidental and

indifferent. These they erected into laws, and handed down as essentials

to be observed by all succeeding poets; although the forms prescribed

have often as little to do with the merit and success of the originals

from which they are taken, as the shape of the drinking-glass with the

flavour of the wine which it contains. "To these encroachments," says

Fielding, after some observations to the same purpose, "time and

ignorance, the two great supporters of imposture, gave authority; and

thus many rules for good writing have been established, which have not

the least foundation in truth or nature; and which commonly serve for no

other purpose than to curb and restrain genius, in the same manner as it

would have restrained the dancing-master, had the many excellent

treatises on that art laid it down as an essential rule, that every man

must dance in chains."[25] It is probable, that the tyranny of the

French critics, fashionable as the literature of that country was with

Charles and his courtiers, would have extended itself over England at

the Restoration, had not a champion so powerful as Dryden placed himself

in the gap. We have mentioned in its place his "Essay on Dramatic

Poetry," the first systematic piece of criticism which our literature

has to exhibit. In this Essay, he was accused of entertaining private

views, of defending some of his own pieces, at least of opening the door

of the theatre wider, and rendering its access more easy, for his own

selfish convenience. Allowing this to be true in whole, as it may be in

part, we are as much obliged to Dryden for resisting the domination of

Gallic criticism, as we are to the fanatics who repressed the despotism

of the crown, although they buckled on their armour against white

surplices, and the cross in baptism. The character which Dryden has

drawn of our English dramatists in the Essay, and the various prefaces

connected with it, have unequalled spirit and precision. The contrast of

Ben Jonson with Shakespeare is peculiarly and strikingly felicitous. Of

the latter portrait, Dr. Johnson has said, that the editors and admirers

of Shakespeare, in all their emulation of reverence, cannot boast of

much more than of having diffused and paraphrased this epitome of

excellence, of having changed Dryden's gold for baser metal, of lower

value, though of greater bulk. While Dryden examined, discussed,

admitted, or rejected the rules proposed by others, he forbore, from

prudence, indolence, or a regard for the freedom of Parnassus, to erect

himself into a legislator. His doctrines, which chiefly respect the

intrinsic qualities necessary in poetry, are scattered, without system

of pretence to it, over the numerous pages of prefatory and didactic

essays, with which he enriched his publications. It is impossible to

read far in any of them, without finding some maxim for doing or

forbearing, which every student of poetry will do well to engrave upon

the tablets of his memory. But the author's mode of instruction is

neither harsh nor dictatorial. When his opinion changed, as in the case

of rhyming tragedies, he avows the change with candour, and we are

enabled the more courageously to follow his guidance, when we perceive

the readiness with which he retracts his path, if he strays into error.

The gleams of philosophical spirit which so frequently illumine these

pages of criticism; the lively and appropriate grace of illustration;

the true and correct expression of the general propositions; the simple

and unaffected passages, in which, when led to allude to his personal

labours and situation, he mingles the feelings of the man with the

instructions of the critic,--unite to render Dryden's Essays the most

delightful prose in the English language.

The didactic criticism of Dryden is necessarily, at least naturally,

mingled with that which he was obliged to pour forth in his own defence;

and this may be one main cause of its irregular and miscellaneous form.

What might otherwise have resembled the extended and elevated front of a

regular palace, is deformed by barriers, ramparts, and bastions of

defence; by cottages, mean additions, and offices necessary for personal

accommodation. The poet, always most in earnest about his immediate

task, used, without ceremony, those arguments, which suited his present

purpose, and thereby sometimes supplied his foes with weapons to assail

another quarter. It also happens frequently, if the same allusion may be

continued, that Dryden defends with obstinate despair, against the

assaults of his foemen, a post which, in his cooler moments, he has

condemned as untenable. However easily he may yield to internal

conviction, and to the progress of his own improving taste, even these

concessions, he sedulously informs us, are not wrung from him by the

assault of his enemies; and he often goes out of his road to show, that,

though conscious he was in the wrong, he did not stand legally convicted

by their arguments. To the chequered and inconsistent appearance which

these circumstances have given to the criticism of Dryden, it is an

additional objection, that through the same cause his studies were

partial, temporary, and irregular. His mind was amply stored with

acquired knowledge, much of it perhaps the fruits of early reading and

application. But, while engaged in the hurry of composition, or overcome

by the lassitude of continued literary labour, he seems frequently to

have trusted to the tenacity of his memory, and so drawn upon this fund

with injudicious liberality, without being sufficiently anxious as to

accuracy of quotation, or even of assertion. If, on the other hand, he

felt himself obliged to resort to more profound learning than his own,

he was at little pains to arrange or digest it, or even to examine

minutely the information he acquired, from hasty perusal of the books he

consulted; and thus but too often poured it forth in the crude form in

which he had himself received it, from the French critic, or Dutch

schoolman. The scholarship, for example, displayed in the Essay on

Satire, has this raw and ill-arranged appearance; and stuck, as it

awkwardly is, among some of Dryden's own beautiful and original writing,

gives, like a borrowed and unbecoming garment, a mean and inconsistent

appearance to the whole disquisition. But these occasional imperfections

and inaccuracies are marks of the haste with which Dryden was compelled

to give his productions to the world, and cannot deprive him of the

praise due to the earliest and most entertaining of English critics.

I have thus detailed the life, and offered some remarks on the literary

character, of JOHN DRYDEN: who, educated in a pedantic taste, and a

fanatical religion, was destined, if not to give laws to the stage of

England, at least to defend its liberties; to improve burlesque into

satire; to free translation from the fetters of verbal metaphrase, and

exclude it from the licence of paraphrase; to teach posterity the

powerful and varied poetical harmony of which their language was

capable; to give an example of the lyric ode of unapproached excellence;

and to leave to English literature a name, second only to those of

Milton and of Shakespeare.

FOOTNOTES

[1] Life and Works of Arthur Maynwaring, 1715, p. 17.

[2] So says Charles Blount, in the dedication to the _Religio Laici_. He

is contradicted by Tom Brown.

[3] In a poem published on Dryden's death, by Brome, written, as Mr.

Malone conjectures, by Captain Gibbon, son of the physician.

[4] In "The Postboy," for Tuesday, May 7, 1700, Playford inserted the

following advertisement:

"The death of the famous John Dryden, Esq., Poet-Laureate to their two

late Majesties, King Charles, and King James the Second, being a subject

capable of employing the best pens; and several persons of quality, and

others, having put a stop to his interment, which is designed to be in

Chaucer's grave, in Westminster Abbey; this is to desire the gentlemen

of the two famous Universities, and others, who have a respect for the

memory of the deceased, and are inclinable to such performances, to send

what copies they please, as Epigrams, etc., to Henry Playford, at his

shop at the Temple 'Change, in Fleet Street, and they shall be inserted

in a Collection, which is designed after the same nature, and in the

same method (in what language they shall please), as is usual in the

composures which are printed on solemn occasions, at the two

Universities aforesaid."

This advertisement (with some alterations) was continued for a month in

the same paper.

[5]

"Thy reliques, Rowe, to this fair urn we trust,

And sacred place by Dryden's awful dust:

Beneath a rude and nameless stone he lies,

To which thy tomb shall guide inquiring eyes:

Peace to thy gentle shade, and endless rest!

Blest in thy genius, in thy love too, blest!

One greatful woman to thy fame supplies,

What a whole thankless land to his denies."

[6] The epitaph at first intended by Pope for this monument was,

"This Sheffield raised; the sacred dust below

Was Dryden once:--the rest, who does not know?"

Atterbury had thus written to him on this subject, in 1720: "What I said

to you in mine, about the monument, was intended only to quicken, not to

alarm you. It is not worth your while to know what I meant by it; but

when I see you, you shall. I hope you may be at the Deanery towards the

end of October, by which time I think of settling there for the winter.

What do you think of some such short inscription as this in Latin, which

may, in a few words, say all that is to be said of Dryden, and yet

nothing more than he deserves?

JOHANNI DRYDENO,

CUI POESIS ANGICANA

VIM SUAM AC VENERES DEBET;

ET SI QUA IN POSTERUM AUGEBITUR LAUDE,

EST ADHUC DEBITURA.

HONORIS ERGO P. ETC.

"To show you that I am as much in earnest in the affair as you yourself,

something I will send you of this kind in English. If your design holds,

of fixing Dryden's name only below, and his busto above, may not lines

like these be graved just under the name?

This Sheffield raised, to Dryden's ashes just;

Here fixed his name, and there his laureled bust:

What else the Muse in marble might express,

Is known already: praise would make him less.

"Or thus:

More needs not; when acknowledged merits reign,

Praise is impertinent, and censure vain."

The thought, as Mr. Malone observes, is nearly the same as in the

following lines in "Luctus Britannici," by William Marston, of Trinity

College, Cambridge:

"_In_ JOANNEM DRYDEN, _poelarum facile principem._

Si quis in has aedes intret fortasse viator,

Busta poetarum dum veneranda notet,

Cernat et exuvias Drydeni,--plura referre

Haud opus: ad laudes _vox ea_ sola satis."

[7] Life of Pope.

[8] ["The Bacon of the rhyming tribe," as Landor has since called him in

a vigorous description (_Works_, vol. viii. p. 137).--ED.]

[9] [Transcriber's note: "See page 39" in original. This is to be found

in Section I.]

[10] "_Novimus judicium Drydeni de poemate quodam Chauceri, pulchro sane

illo, et admodum laudando, nimirum quod non modo vere epicura sit, sed

Iliada etiam alque Aeneada aequet, imo superet. Sed novimus eodem

tempore viri illius maximi non semper accuratissimas esse censuras, nec

ad severissimam critices normam exactas: illo judice id plerumque

optimum est, quod nunc prae manibus habet, et in quo nunc occupatur_."

[11] Dryden was not the first who translated this tale of terror. There

is in the collection of the late John, Duke of Roxburghe, "A Notable

History of Nastagio and Traversari, no less pitiful than pleasaunt;

translated out of Italian into English verse, by C.T. London, 1569."

[12] "_Amor puo troppo piu, che ne voi ne io possiamo_." This sentiment

loses its dignity amid the "levelling of mountains and raising plains,"

with which Dryden has chosen to illustrate it.

[13] An emblem of a similar kind is said to have been found in the

palace of Tippoo Sultan.

[14] As "Near bliss, and yet not blessed." And this merciless quibble,

where Arcite complains of the flames he endures for Emily:--

"Of such a goddess no time leaves record,

Who burnt the temple where she was adored."--Vol. xi.

Yet Dryden, in the preface, declaims against the "_inopem me copia

fecit_," and similar jingles of Ovid.

[15] [Transcriber's note: "See p. 258" in original. This is to be found

in Section VI.]

[16]

"The longest tyranny that ever swayed,

Was that wherein our ancestors betrayed

Their free-born reason to the Stagyrite,

And made his torch their universal light.

So truth, while only one supplied the state,

Grew scarce, and dear, and yet sophisticate.

Still it was bought, like emp'ric wares, or charms,

Hard words sealed up with Aristotle's arms."

[17] These I found quaintly summed up in an old rhyme:

"With a red man read thy rede,

With a brown man break thy bread,

On a pale man draw thy knife,

From a black man keep thy wife."

[18] See the introduction to Britannia Rediviva, vol. x.

[19] Vol. x.

[20] It is twice stated in these volumes (p. 246, and vol. x.), on the

authority of the "Life of Southerne," that Dryden had originally five

guineas for each prologue, and raised the sum to ten guineas on occasion

of Southerne's requiring such a favour for his first play. But I am

convinced the sum is exaggerated; and incline now to believe, with Dr.

Johnson, that the advance was from _two_ to _three_ guineas only. [See

note _supra_, l.c.--ED.]

[21] Life of Lucian, vol. xviii.

[22] [Is it possible that in this famous passage "Veer" is a clerical

error or a misprint for "Ware"? This would at once make sense and a

literal version.--ED.]

[23] Poems from the Bannatyne Manuscript, p. 228.

[24] Shakespeare has _capricious, conversation_, fatigate

(if not _fatigue_), _figure, gallant, good graces; incendiary_ is in

Minshew's "Guide to the Tongues," ed. 1627. _Tender_ often occurs in

Shakespeare both as a substantive and verb. And many other of the above

words may be detected by those who have time and inclination to search

for them, in authors prior to Dryden's time. [See, for a discussion of

Dryden's Gallicisms, vol. xviii. of the present edition.--ED.]

[24] The remarkable phrase, "to possess the soul in patience," occurs in

"The Hind and Panther;" and in the Essay on Satire, vol. xiii., we have

nearly the same expression. The image of a bird's wing flagging in a

damp atmosphere occurs in Don Sebastian, and in prose elsewhere, though

I have lost the reference. The same thought is found in "The Hind and

Panther," but is not there used metaphorically:--

"Nor need they fear the dampness of the sky

Should flag their wings, and hinder them to fly."

Dryden is ridiculed by an imitator of Rabelais, for the recurrence of

the phrase by which he usually prefaces his own defensive criticism:

"_If it be allowed me to speak so much in my own commendation;--_ see

Dryden's preface to his Fables, or to any other of his works that you

please." The full title of this whimsical tract, from which Sterne

borrowed several hints, is "An Essay towards the theory of the

intelligible world intuitively considered. Designed for forty-nine

parts. Part Third, consisting of a preface, a postscript, and a little

something between, by Gabriel Johnson; enriched by a faithful account of

his ideal voyages, and illustrated with poems by several hands, as

likewise with other strange things not insufferably clever, nor

furiously to the purpose; printed in the year 17," etc. [The phrase

mentioned first is perhaps less remarkable than Scott's apparent

forgetfulness of its Biblical origin.--ED.]

[25] Introduction to Book Fifth of "Tom Jones."

END OF VOLUME FIRST.