"Because 'Elkanah's similes are the most unlike things to what they are

compared in the world,' I'll venture to start a simile in his Annus

Mirabilis: he gives this poetical description of the ship called the

London:

"The goodly London in her gallant trim,

The phoenix-daughter of the vanquisht old,

Like a rich bride does on the ocean swim,

And on her shadow rides in floating gold.

Her flag aloft spread ruffling in the wind,

And sanguine streamers seem'd the flood to fire:

The weaver, charm'd with what his loom design'd,

Goes on to sea, and knows not to retire.

With roomy decks, her guns of mighty strength,

Whose low-laid mouths each mounting billow laves,

Deep in her draught, and warlike in her length,

She seems a sea-wasp flying on the waves.

"What a wonderful pother is here, to make all these poetical

beautifications of a ship! that is a _phoenix_ in the first stanza, and

but a _wasp_ in the last: nay, to make his humble comparison of a _wasp_

more ridiculous, he does not say it flies upon the waves as nimbly as a

wasp, or the like, but it seemed a _wasp_. But our author at the writing

of this was not in his altitudes, to compare ships to floating palaces: a

comparison to the purpose, was a perfection he did not arrive to till his

Indian Emperor's days. But, perhaps, his similitude has more in it than

we imagine; this ship had a great many guns in her, and they, put all

together, made the sting in the wasp's tail; for this is all the reason I

can guess, why it seem'd a _wasp_. But, because we will allow him all we

can to help out, let it be a _phoenix sea-wasp_, and the rarity of such

an animal may do much towards heightening the fancy.

"It had been much more to his purpose, if he had designed to render the

senseless play little, to have searched for some such pedantry as this:

"Two ifs scarce make one possibility.

If justice will take all and nothing give,

Justice, methinks, is not distributive.

To die or kill you, is the alternative.

Rather than take your life, I will not live.

"Observe how prettily our author chops logick in heroick verse. Three

such fustian canting words as _distributive, alternative_, and _two ifs_,

no man but himself would have come within the noise of. But he's a man of

general learning, and all comes into his play.

"'Twould have done well too if he could have met with a rant or two,

worth the observation; such as,

"Move swiftly, sun, and fly a lover's pace,

Leave months and weeks behind thee in thy race.

"But surely the sun, whether he flies a lover's or not a lover's pace,

leaves weeks and months, nay, years too, behind him in his race.

"Poor Robin, or any other of the philo-mathematicks, would have given him

satisfaction in the point:

"If I could kill thee now, thy fate's so low,

That I must stoop, ere I can give the blow.

But mine is fixt so far above thy crown,

That all thy men,

Piled on thy back, can never pull it down.

"Now where that is, Almanzor's fate is fixt, I cannot guess; but,

wherever it is, I believe Almanzor, and think that all Abdalla's

subjects, piled upon one another, might not pull down his fate so well as

without piling: besides, I think Abdalla so wise a man, that, if Almanzor

had told him piling his men upon his back might do the feat, he would

scarce bear such a weight, for the pleasure of the exploit; but it is a

huff, and let Abdalla do it if he dare.

"The people like a headlong torrent go,

And ev'ry dam they break or overflow.

But, unoppos'd, they either lose their force,

Or wind in volumes to their former course.

"A very pretty allusion, contrary to all sense or reason. Torrents, I

take it, let them wind never so much, can never return to their former

course, unless he can suppose that fountains can go upwards, which is

impossible; nay, more, in the foregoing page he tells us so too; a trick

of a very unfaithful memory:

"But can no more than fountains upward flow;

"which of a _torrent_, which signifies a rapid stream, is much more

impossible. Besides, if he goes to quibble, and say that it is possible

by art water may be made return, and the same water run twice in one and

the same channel: then he quite confutes what he says; for it is by being

opposed, that it runs into its former course; for all engines that make

water so return, do it by compulsion and opposition. Or, if he means a

headlong torrent for a tide, which would be ridiculous, yet they do riot

wind in volumes, but come foreright back, (if their upright lies straight

to their former course,) and that by opposition of the sea-water, that

drives them back again.

"And for fancy, when he lights of any thing like it, 'tis a wonder if it

be not borrowed. As here, for example of, I find this fanciful thought in

his Ann. Mirab.

"Old father Thames rais'd up his rev'rend head;

But fear'd the fate of Simoeis would return:

Deep in his ooze he sought his sedgy bed;

And shrunk his waters back into his urn.

"This is stolen from Cowley's Davideis, p. 9.

"Swift Jordan started, and strait backward fled,

Hiding amongst thick reeds his aged head.

And when the Spaniards their assault begin,

At once beat those without and those within.

"This Almanzor speaks of himself; and, sure, for one man to conquer an

army within the city, and another without the city, at once, is something

difficult; but this flight is pardonable to some we meet with in Granada:

Osmin, speaking of Almanzor,

"Who, like a tempest that outrides the wind,

Made a just battle, ere the bodies join'd.

"Pray, what does this honourable person mean by a 'tempest that outrides

the wind?' a tempest that outrides itself. To suppose a tempest without

wind, is as bad as supposing a man to walk without feet; for if he

supposes the tempest to be something distinct from the wind, yet, as

being the effect of wind only, to come before the cause is a little

preposterous; so that, if he takes it one way, or if he takes it the

other, those two _ifs_ will scarce make one _possibility_." Enough of

Settle.

Marriage à-la-mode, 1673, is a comedy dedicated to the earl of Rochester;

whom he acknowledges not only as the defender of his poetry, but the

promoter of his fortune. Langbaine places this play in 1673. The earl of

Rochester, therefore, was the famous Wilmot, whom yet tradition always

represents as an enemy to Dryden, and who is mentioned by him with some

disrespect in the preface to Juvenal.

The Assignation, or Love in a Nunnery, a comedy, 1673, was driven off the

stage, "against the opinion," as the author says, "of the best judges."

It is dedicated, in a very elegant address, to sir Charles Sedley; in

which he finds an opportunity for his usual complaint of hard treatment

and unreasonable censure.

Amboyna, 1673, is a tissue of mingled dialogue in verse and prose, and

was, perhaps, written in less time than the Virgin Martyr; though the

author thought not fit, either ostentatiously or mournfully, to tell how

little labour it cost him, or at how short a warning he produced it. It

was a temporary performance, written in the time of the Dutch war,

to inflame the nation against their enemies; to whom he hopes, as he

declares in his epilogue, to make his poetry not less destructive than

that by which Tyrtaeus of old animated the Spartans. This play was

written in the second Dutch war, in 1673.

Troilus and Cressida, 1679, is a play altered from Shakespeare; but so

altered, that, even in Langbaine's opinion, "the last scene in the third

act is a masterpiece." It is introduced by a discourse on the grounds

of criticism in tragedy, to which I suspect that Rymer's book had given

occasion.

The Spanish Fryar, 1681, is a tragicomedy, eminent for the happy

coincidence and coalition of the two plots. As it was written against the

papists, it would naturally, at that time, have friends and enemies; and

partly by the popularity which it obtained at first, and partly by the

real power both of the serious and risible part, it continued long a

favourite of the publick.

It was Dryden's opinion, at least for some time, and he maintains it in

the dedication of this play, that the drama required an alternation of

comick and tragick scenes; and that it is necessary to mitigate, by

alleviations of merriment, the pressure of ponderous events, and the

fatigue of toilsome passions. "Whoever," says he, "cannot perform both

parts, is but half a writer for the stage."

The Duke of Guise, a tragedy, 1683, written in conjunction with Lee, as

Oedipus had been before, seems to deserve notice only for the offence

which it gave to the remnant of the covenanters, and in general to the

enemies of the court, who attacked him with great violence, and were

answered by him; though, at last, he seems to withdraw from the conflict,

by transferring the greater part of the blame or merit to his partner. It

happened that a contract had been made between them, by which they were

to join in writing a play; and "he happened," says Dryden, "to claim the

promise just upon the finishing of a poem, when I would have been glad of

a little respite. _Two_-thirds of it belonged to him; and to me only the

first scene of the play, the whole fourth act, and the first half, or

somewhat more, of the fifth."

This was a play written professedly for the party of the duke of York,

whose succession was then opposed. A parallel is intended between the

leaguers of France, and the covenanters of England: and this intention

produced the controversy.

Albion and Albanius, 1685, is a musical drama or opera, written, like

the Duke of Guise, against the republicans. With what success it was

performed, I have not found[103].

The State of Innocence and Fall of Man, 1675, is termed, by him, an

opera: it is rather a tragedy in heroick rhyme, but of which the

personages are such as cannot decently be exhibited on the stage. Some

such production was foreseen by Marvel, who writes thus to Milton:

Or if a work so infinite be spann'd,

Jealous I was, lest some less skilful hand

(Such as disquiet always what is well,

And by ill-imitating would excel,)

Might hence presume the whole creation's day

To change in scenes, and show it in a play.

It is another of his hasty productions; for the heat of his imagination

raised it in a month.

This composition is addressed to the princess of Modena, then dutchess of

York, in a strain of flattery which disgraces genius, and which it was

wonderful that any man, that knew the meaning of his own words, could use

without self-detestation. It is an attempt to mingle earth and heaven, by

praising human excellence in the language of religion.

The preface contains an apology for heroick verse and poetick license; by

which is meant not any liberty taken in contracting or extending words,

but the use of bold fictions and ambitious figures.

The reason which he gives for printing what was never acted, cannot be

overpassed: "I was induced to it in my own defence, many hundred copies

of it being dispersed abroad without my knowledge or consent, and every

one gathering new faults, it became, at length, a libel against me."

These copies, as they gathered faults, were apparently manuscript; and

he lived in an age very unlike ours, if many hundred copies of fourteen

hundred lines were likely to be transcribed. An author has a right to

print his own works, and needs not seek an apology in falsehood; but he

that could bear to write the dedication, felt no pain in writing the

preface.

Aureng Zebe, 1676, is a tragedy founded on the actions of a great prince

then reigning, but over nations not likely to employ their criticks upon

the transactions of the English stage. If he had known and disliked

his own character, our trade was not in those times secure from his

resentment. His country is at such a distance, that the manners might be

safely falsified, and the incidents feigned; for remoteness of place is

remarked, by Racine, to afford the same conveniencies to a poet as length

of time.

This play is written in rhyme; and has the appearance of being the

most elaborate of all the dramas. The personages are imperial; but the

dialogue is often domestick, and, therefore, susceptible of sentiments

accommodated to familiar incidents. The complaint of life is celebrated;

and there are many other passages that may be read with pleasure.

This play is addressed to the earl of Mulgrave, afterwards duke of

Buckingham, himself, if not a poet, yet a writer of verses, and a

critick. In this address Dryden gave the first hints of his intention to

write an epick poem. He mentions his design in terms so obscure, that he

seems afraid lest his plan should be purloined, as, he says, happened to

him when he told it more plainly in his preface to Juvenal. "The design,"

says he, "you know is great, the story English, and neither too near the

present times, nor too distant from them."

All for Love, or the World well Lost, 1678, a tragedy, founded upon the

story of Antony and Cleopatra, he tells us, "is the only play which

he wrote for himself:" the rest were given to the people. It is, by

universal consent, accounted the work in which he has admitted the fewest

improprieties of style or character; but it has one fault equal to many,

though rather moral than critical, that, by admitting the romantick

omnipotence of love, he has recommended as laudable, and worthy of

imitation, that conduct which, through all ages, the good have censured

as vitious, and the bad despised as foolish.

Of this play the prologue and the epilogue, though written upon the

common topicks of malicious and ignorant criticism, and without any

particular relation to the characters or incidents of the drama, are

deservedly celebrated for their elegance and sprightliness.

Limberham, or the kind Keeper, 1680, is a comedy, which, after the third

night, was prohibited as too indecent for the stage. What gave offence,

was in the printing, as the author says, altered or omitted. Dryden

confesses that its indecency was objected to; but Langbaine, who yet

seldom favours him, imputes its expulsion to resentment, because it "so

much exposed the keeping part of the town."

Oedipus, 1679, is a tragedy formed by Dryden and Lee, in conjunction,

from the works of Sophocles, Seneca, and Corneille. Dryden planned the

scenes, and composed the first and third acts.

Don Sebastian, 1690, is commonly esteemed either the first or second of

his dramatick performances. It is too long to be all acted, and has many

characters and many incidents; and though it is not without sallies

of frantick dignity, and more noise than meaning, yet, as it makes

approaches to the possibilities of real life, and has some sentiments

which leave a strong impression, it continued long to attract attention.

Amidst the distresses of princes, and the vicissitudes of empire, are

inserted several scenes which the writer intended for comick; but which,

I suppose, that age did not much commend, and this would not endure.

There are, however, passages of excellence universally acknowledged; the

dispute and the reconciliation of Dorax and Sebastian has always been

admired.

This play was first acted in 1690, after Dryden had for some years

discontinued dramatick poetry.

Amphitryon is a comedy derived from Plautus and Molière. The dedication

is dated Oct. 1690. This play seems to have succeeded at its first

appearance; and was, I think, long considered as a very diverting

entertainment.

Cleomenes, 1692, is a tragedy, only remarkable as it occasioned an

incident related in the Guardian, and allusively mentioned by Dryden in

his preface. As he came out from the representation, he was accosted thus

by some airy stripling: "Had I been left alone with a young beauty, I

would not have spent my time like your Spartan." "That sir," said Dryden,

"perhaps, is true; but give me leave to tell you, that you are no hero."

King Arthur, 1691, is another opera. It was the last work that Dryden

performed for king Charles, who did not live to see it exhibited; and

it does not seem to have been ever brought upon the stage[104]. In the

dedication to the marquis of Halifax, there is a very elegant character

of Charles, and a pleasing account of his latter life. When this was

first brought upon the stage, news that the duke of Monmouth had landed

was told in the theatre; upon which the company departed, and Arthur was

exhibited no more.

His last drama was Love Triumphant, a tragicomedy. In his dedication to

the earl of Salisbury he mentions "the lowness of fortune to which he

has voluntarily reduced himself, and of which he has no reason to be

ashamed."

This play appeared in 1694. It is said to have been unsuccessful. The

catastrophe, proceeding merely from a change of mind, is confessed by the

author to be defective. Thus he began and ended his dramatick labours

with ill success.

From such a number of theatrical pieces, it will be supposed, by most

readers, that he must have improved his fortune; at least, that such

diligence, with such abilities, must have set penury at defiance. But

in Dryden's time the drama was very far from that universal approbation

which it has now obtained. The playhouse was abhorred by the puritans,

and avoided by those who desired the character of seriousness or decency.

A grave lawyer would have debased his dignity, and a young trader would

have impaired his credit, by appearing in those mansions of dissolute

licentiousness. The profits of the theatre, when so many classes of the

people were deducted from the audience, were not great; and the poet had,

for a long time, but a single night. The first that had two nights was

Southern; and the first that had three was Howe. There were, however, in

those days, arts of improving a poet's profit, which Dryden forbore to

practise; and a play, therefore, seldom produced him more than a hundred

pounds, by the accumulated gain of the third night, the dedication, and

the copy.

Almost every piece had a dedication, written with such elegance and

luxuriance of praise, as neither haughtiness nor avarice could be

imagined able to resist. But he seems to have made flattery too cheap.

That praise is worth nothing of which the price is known.

To increase the value of his copies, he often accompanied his work with a

preface of criticism; a kind of learning then almost new in the English

language, and which he, who had considered, with great accuracy, the

principles of writing, was able to distribute copiously as occasions

arose. By these dissertations the publick judgment must have been much

improved; and Swift, who conversed with Dryden, relates that he regretted

the success of his own instructions, and found his readers made suddenly

too skilful to be easily satisfied.

His prologues had such reputation, that for some time a play was

considered as less likely to be well received, if some of his verses did

not introduce it. The price of a prologue was two guineas, till, being

asked to write one for Mr. Southern, he demanded three: "Not," said he,

"young man, out of disrespect to you; but the players have had my goods

too cheap[105]."

Though he declares, that in his own opinion, his genius was not

dramatick, he had great confidence in his own fertility; for he is said

to have engaged, by contract, to furnish four plays a year.

It is certain, that in one year, 1678[106], he published All for Love,

Assignation, two parts of the Conquest of Granada, sir Martin Mar-all,

and the State of Innocence, six complete plays; with a celerity of

performance, which, though all Langbaine's charges of plagiarism should

be allowed, shows such facility of composition, such readiness of

language, and such copiousness of sentiment, as, since the time of Lopez

de Vega, perhaps no other author has possessed.

He did not enjoy his reputation, however great, nor his profits, however

small, without molestation. He had criticks to endure, and rivals to

oppose. The two most distinguished wits of the nobility, the duke of

Buckingham and earl of Rochester, declared themselves his enemies.

Buckingham characterized him, in 1671, by the name of Bayes, in the

Rehearsal; a farce which he is said to have written with the assistance

of Butler, the author of Hudibras; Martin Clifford, of the Charter-house;

and Dr. Sprat, the friend of Cowley, then his chaplain. Dryden and his

friends laughed at the length of time, and the number of hands, employed

upon this performance; in which, though by some artifice of action it yet

keeps possession of the stage, it is not possible now to find any thing

that might not have been written without so long delay, or a confederacy

so numerous.

To adjust the minute events of literary history, is tedious and

troublesome; it requires, indeed, no great force of understanding, but

often depends upon inquiries which there is no opportunity of making, or

is to be fetched from books and pamphlets not always at hand.

The Rehearsal was played in 1671[107], and yet is represented as

ridiculing passages in the Conquest of Granada and Assignation, which

were not published till 1678; in Marriage à-la-mode, published in 1673;

and in Tyrannick Love, in 1677. These contradictions show how rashly

satire is applied[108].

It is said that this farce was originally intended against Davenant, who,

in the first draught, was characterized by the name of Bilboa. Davenant

had been a soldier and an adventurer.

There is one passage in the Rehearsal still remaining, which seems to

have related originally to Davenant. Bayes hurts his nose, and comes in

with brown paper applied to the bruise; how this affected Dryden, does

not appear. Davenant's nose had suffered such diminution by mishaps among

the women, that a patch upon that part evidently denoted him.

It is said, likewise, that sir Robert Howard was once meant. The design

was, probably, to ridicule the reigning poet, whoever he might be.

Much of the personal satire, to which it might owe its first reception,

is now lost or obscured. Bayes, probably, imitated the dress, and

mimicked the manner, of Dryden: the cant words which are so often in

his mouth may be supposed to have been Dryden's habitual phrases, or

customary exclamations. Bayes, when he is to write, is blooded and

purged: this, as Lamotte relates himself to have heard, was the real

practice of the poet.

There were other strokes in the Rehearsal by which malice was gratified:

the debate between love and honour, which keeps prince Volscius in a

single boot, is said to have alluded to the misconduct of the duke

of Ormond, who lost Dublin to the rebels, while he was toying with a

mistress.

The earl of Rochester, to suppress the reputation of Dryden, took Settle

into his protection, and endeavoured to persuade the publick that its

approbation had been to that time misplaced. Settle was awhile in high

reputation: his Empress of Morocco, having first delighted the town, was

carried in triumph to Whitehall, and played by the ladies of the court.

Now was the poetical meteor at the highest; the next moment began its

fall. Rochester withdrew his patronage; seeming resolved, says one of his

biographers, "to have a judgment contrary to that of the town;" perhaps

being unable to endure any reputation beyond a certain height, even when

he had himself contributed to raise it.

Neither criticks nor rivals did Dryden much mischief, unless they gained

from his own temper the power of vexing him, which his frequent bursts of

resentment give reason to suspect. He is always angry at some past, or

afraid of some future censure; but he lessens the smart of his wounds by

the balm of his own approbation, and endeavours to repel the shafts of

criticism by opposing a shield of adamantine confidence.

The perpetual accusation produced against him, was that of plagiarism,

against which he never attempted any vigorous defence; for, though he

was, perhaps, sometimes injuriously censured, he would, by denying part

of the charge, have confessed the rest; and, as his adversaries had the

proof in their own hands, he, who knew that wit had little power against

facts, wisely left in that perplexity which generality produces a

question which it was his interest to suppress, and which, unless

provoked by vindication, few were likely to examine.

Though the life of a writer, from about thirty-five to sixty-three,

may be supposed to have been sufficiently busied by the composition of

eight-and-twenty pieces for the stage, Dryden found room in the same

space for many other undertakings. But, how much soever he wrote, he was

at least once suspected of writing more; for, in 1679, a paper of verses,

called an Essay on Satire, was shown about in manuscript; by which the

earl of Rochester, the dutchess of Portsmouth, and others, were so much

provoked, that, as was supposed, (for the actors were never discovered,)

they procured Dryden, whom they suspected as the author, to be

way-laid and beaten. This incident is mentioned by the duke of

Buckinghamshire[109], the true writer, in his Art of Poetry; where he

says of Dryden:

Though prais'd and beaten for another's rhymes,

His own deserve as great applause sometimes.

His reputation in time was such, that his name was thought necessary to

the success of every poetical or literary performance, and, therefore,

he was engaged to contribute something, whatever it might be, to many

publications. He prefixed the Life of Polybius to the translation of sir

Henry Sheers; and those of Lucian and Plutarch, to versions of their

works by different hands. Of the English Tacitus he translated the first

book; and, if Gordon be credited, translated it from the French. Such a

charge can hardly be mentioned without some degree of indignation; but

it is not, I suppose, so much to be inferred, that Dryden wanted the

literature necessary to the perusal of Tacitus, as that, considering

himself as hidden in a crowd, he had no awe of the publick; and, writing

merely for money, was contented to get it by the nearest way.

In 1680, the Epistles of Ovid being translated by the poets of the time,

among which one was the work of Dryden[110], and another of Dryden and

lord Mulgrave, it was necessary to introduce them by a preface; and

Dryden, who on such occasions was regularly summoned, prefixed a

discourse upon translation, which was then struggling for the liberty

that it now enjoys. Why it should find any difficulty in breaking the

shackles of verbal interpretation, which must for ever debar it from

elegance, it would be difficult to conjecture, were not the power of

prejudice every day observed. The authority of Jonson, Sandys, and

Holiday, had fixed the judgment of the nation; and it was not easily

believed that a better way could be found than they had taken, though

Fanshaw, Denham, Waller, and Cowley, had tried to give examples of a

different practice.

In 1681 Dryden became yet more conspicuous by uniting politicks with

poetry, in the memorable satire, called Absalom and Achitophel, written

against the faction which, by lord Shaftesbury's incitement, set the duke

of Monmouth at its head.

Of this poem, in which personal satire was applied to the support of

publick principles, and in which, therefore, every mind was interested,

the reception was eager, and the sale so large, that my father, an old

bookseller, told me, he had not known it equalled but by Sacheverell's

Trial.

The reason of this general perusal Addison has attempted to derive from

the delight which the mind feels in the investigation of secrets; and

thinks that curiosity to decipher the names, procured readers to the

poem. There is no need to inquire why those verses were read, which, to

all the attractions of wit, elegance, and harmony, added the cooperation

of all the factious passions, and filled every mind with triumph or

resentment.

It could not be supposed that all the provocation given by Dryden, would

be endured without resistance or reply. Both his person and his party

were exposed, in their turns, to the shafts of satire, which, though

neither so well pointed, nor, perhaps, so well aimed, undoubtedly drew

blood.

One of these poems is called, Dryden's Satire on his Muse; ascribed,

though, as Pope says, falsely, to Somers, who was afterwards chancellor.

The poem, whosesoever it was, has much virulence, and some sprightliness.

The writer tells all the ill that he can collect both of Dryden and his

friends.

The poem of Absalom and Achitophel had two answers, now both forgotten;

one called Azaria and Hushai; the other, Absalom senior. Of these hostile

compositions, Dryden apparently imputes Absalom senior to Settle, by

quoting in his verses against him the second line. Azaria and Hushai was,

as Wood says, imputed to him, though it is somewhat unlikely that he

should write twice on the same occasion. This is a difficulty which

I cannot remove, for want of a minuter knowledge of poetical

transactions[111].

The same year he published The Medal, of which the subject is a

medal struck on lord Shaftesbury's escape from a prosecution, by the

_ignoramus_ of a grand jury of Londoners.

In both poems he maintains the same principles, and saw them both

attacked by the same antagonist. Elkanah Settle, who had answered

Absalom, appeared with equal courage in opposition to The Medal, and

published an answer called, The Medal Reversed, with so much success

in both encounters, that he left the palm doubtful, and divided the

suffrages of the nation. Such are the revolutions of fame, or such is

the prevalence of fashion, that the man, whose works have not yet been

thought to deserve the care of collecting them, who died forgotten in

an hospital, and whose latter years were spent in contriving shows for

fairs, and carrying an elegy or epithalamium, of which the beginning and

end were occasionally varied, but the intermediate parts were always the

same, to every house where there was a funeral or a wedding, might with

truth have had inscribed upon his stone:

Here lies the rival and antagonist of Dryden.

Settle was, for this rebellion, severely chastised by Dryden, under the

name of Doeg, in the second part of Absalom and Achitophel; and was,

perhaps, for his factious audacity, made the city poet, whose annual

office was to describe the glories of the mayor's day. Of these bards he

was the last, and seems not much to have deserved even this degree of

regard, if it was paid to his political opinions; for he afterwards wrote

a panegyrick on the virtues of judge Jefferies; and what more could have

been done by the meanest zealot for prerogative?

Of translated fragments, or occasional poems, to enumerate the titles, or

settle the dates, would be tedious, with little use. It may be observed,

that, as Dryden's genius was commonly excited by some personal regard, he

rarely writes upon a general topick.

Soon after the accession of king James, when the design of reconciling

the nation to the church of Rome became apparent, and the religion of the

court gave the only efficacious title to its favours, Dryden declared

himself a convert to popery. This, at any other time, might have passed

with little censure. Sir Kenelm Digby embraced popery; the two Reynolds's

reciprocally converted one another[112]; and Chillingworth himself was

awhile so entangled in the wilds of controversy, as to retire for quiet

to an infallible church. If men of argument and study can find such

difficulties, or such motives, as may either unite them to the church of

Rome, or detain them in uncertainty, there can be no wonder that a man,

who, perhaps, never inquired why he was a protestant, should, by an

artful and experienced disputant, be made a papist, overborne by the

sudden violence of new and unexpected arguments, or deceived by a

representation which shows only the doubts on one part, and only the

evidence on the other.

That conversion will always be suspected that apparently concurs with

interest. He that never finds his errour till it hinders his progress

towards wealth or honour, will not be thought to love truth only for

herself.

Yet it may easily happen that information may come at a commodious time;

and, as truth and interest are not by any fatal necessity at variance,

that one may by accident introduce the other. When opinions are

struggling into popularity, the arguments by which they are opposed or

defended become more known; and he that changes his profession would,

perhaps, have changed it before, with the like opportunities of

instruction. This was then the state of popery; every artifice was used

to show it in its fairest form; and it must be owned to be a religion of

external appearance sufficiently attractive.

It is natural to hope that a comprehensive is, likewise, an elevated

soul, and that whoever is wise is also honest. I am willing to believe

that Dryden, having employed his mind, active as it was, upon different

studies, and filled it, capacious as it was, with other materials, came

unprovided to the controversy, and wanted rather skill to discover the

right, than virtue to maintain it. But inquiries into the heart are not

for man; we must now leave him to his judge.

The priests, having strengthened their cause by so powerful an adherent,

were not long before they brought him into action. They engaged him to

defend the controversial papers found in the strong box of Charles the

second; and, what yet was harder, to defend them against Stillingfleet.

With hopes of promoting popery, he was employed to translate Maimbourg's

History of the League; which he published with a large introduction. His

name is, likewise, prefixed to the English Life of Francis Xavier; but I

know not that he ever owned himself the translator. Perhaps the use of

his name was a pious fraud, which, however, seems not to have had much

effect; for neither of the books, I believe, was ever popular.

The version of Xavier's Life is commended by Brown, in a pamphlet not

written to flatter; and the occasion of it is said to have been, that the

queen, when she solicited a son, made vows to him as her tutelary saint.

He was supposed to have undertaken to translate Varillas's History of

Heresies; and, when Burnet published remarks upon it, to have written an

answer[113]; upon which Burnet makes the following observation:

"I have been informed from England, that a gentleman, who is famous

both for poetry and several other things, had spent three months in

translating M. Varillas's History; but that, as soon as my Reflections

appeared, he discontinued his labour, finding the credit of his author

was gone. Now, if he thinks it is recovered by his answer, he will,

perhaps, go on with his translation; and this may be, for aught I know,

as good an entertainment for him as the conversation that he had set on

between the Hinds and Panthers, and all the rest of animals, for whom M.

Varillas may serve well enough as an author: and this history, and that

poem, are such extraordinary things of their kind, that it will be but

suitable to see the author of the worst poem become, likewise, the

translator of the worst history that the age has produced. If his grace

and his wit improve both proportionably, he will hardly find that he has

gained much by the change he has made, from having no religion, to choose

one of the worst. It is true, he had somewhat to sink from in matter of

wit; but, as for his morals, it is scarce possible for him to grow

a worse man than he was. He has lately wreaked his malice on me for

spoiling his three months' labour; but in it he has done me all the

honour that any man can receive from him, which is to be railed at by

him. If I had ill-nature enough to prompt me to wish a very bad wish for

him, it should be, that he would go on and finish his translation. By

that it will appear, whether the English nation, which is the most

competent judge in this matter, has, upon the seeing our debate,

pronounced in M. Varillas's favour, or in mine. It is true, Mr. D. will

suffer a little by it; but, at least, it will serve to keep him in from

other extravagancies; and if he gains little honour by this work, yet he

cannot lose so much by it as he has done by his last employment."

Having, probably, felt his own inferiority in theological controversy, he

was desirous of trying whether, by bringing poetry to aid his arguments,

he might be'come a more efficacious defender of his new profession. To

reason in verse was, indeed, one of his powers; but subtilty and harmony,

united, are still feeble, when opposed to truth.

Actuated, therefore, by zeal for Rome, or hope of fame, he published The

Hind and Panther, a poem in which the church of Rome, figured by the

_milk-white hind_, defends her tenets against the church of England,

represented by the _panther_, a beast beautiful, but spotted.

A fable which exhibits two beasts talking theology, appears, at once,

full of absurdity; and it was accordingly ridiculed in the City Mouse and

Country Mouse, a parody, written by Montague, afterwards earl of Halifax,

and Prior, who then gave the first specimen of his abilities.

The conversion of such a man, at such a time, was not likely to pass

uneensured. Three dialogues were published by the facetious Thomas Brown,

of which the two first were called Reasons of Mr. Bayes's changing his

Religion; and the third, The Reasons of Mr. Hains the Player's Conversion

and Reconversion. The first was printed in 1688, the second not till

1690, the third in 1691. The clamour seems to have been long continued,

and the subject to have strongly fixed the publick attention.

In the two first dialogues Bayes is brought into the company of Crites

and Eugenius, with whom he had formerly debated on dramatick poetry. The

two talkers in the third are Mr. Bayes and Mr. Hains.

Brown was a man not deficient in literature, nor destitute of fancy; but

he seems to have thought it the pinnacle of excellence to be a _merry

fellow_; and, therefore, laid out his powers upon small jests or gross

buffoonery; so that his performances have little intrinsick value, and

were read only while they were recommended by the novelty of the event

that occasioned them. These dialogues are like his other works: what

sense or knowledge they contain is disgraced by the garb in which it is

exhibited. One great source of pleasure is to call Dryden "little Bayes."

Ajax, who happens to be mentioned, is "he that wore as many cow-hides

upon his shield as would have furnished half the king's army with

shoe-leather."

Being asked whether he had seen the Hind and Panther, Crites answers:

"Seen it! Mr. Bayes, why I can stir nowhere but it pursues me; it haunts

me worse than a pewter-buttoned serjeant does a decayed cit. Sometimes I

meet it in a bandbox, when my laundress brings home my linen; sometimes,

whether I will or no, it lights my pipe at a coffee-house; sometimes it

surprises me in a trunkmaker's shop; and sometimes it refreshes my memory

for me on the backside of a Chancery lane parcel. For your comfort too,

Mr. Bayes, I have not only seen it, as you may perceive, but have read it

too, and can quote it as freely upon occasion as a frugal tradesman

can quote that noble treatise The Worth of a Penny, to his extravagant

'prentice, that revels in stewed apples and penny custards."

The whole animation of these compositions arises from a profusion of

ludicrous and affected comparisons. "To secure one's chastity," says

Bayes, "little more is necessary than to leave off a correspondence with

the other sex, which, to a wise man, is no greater a punishment than it

would be to a fanatick parson to be forbid seeing The Cheats and The

Committee; or for my lord mayor and aldermen to be interdicted the sight

of The London Cuckold." This is the general strain, and, therefore, I

shall be easily excused the labour of more transcription.

Brown does not wholly forget past transactions: "You began," says Crites

to Bayes, "with a very indifferent religion, and have not mended the

matter in your last choice. It was but reason that your muse, which

appeared first in a tyrant's quarrel, should employ her last efforts to

justify the usurpations of the hind." Next year the nation was summoned

to celebrate the birth of the prince. Now was the time for Dryden to

rouse his imagination, and strain his voice. Happy days were at hand,

and he was willing to enjoy and diffuse the anticipated blessings. He

published a poem, filled with predictions of greatness and prosperity;

predictions of which it is not necessary to tell how they have been

verified.

A few months passed after these joyful notes, and every blossom of popish

hope was blasted for ever by the revolution. A papist now could be no

longer laureate. The revenue, which he had enjoyed with so much pride and

praise, was transferred to Shadwell, an old enemy, whom he had formerly

stigmatised by the name of Og. Dryden could not decently complain that he

was deposed; but seemed very angry that Shadwell succeeded him, and has,

therefore, celebrated the intruder's inauguration in a poem exquisitely

satirical, called Mac Flecknoe[114]; of which the Dunciad, as Pope

himself declares, is an imitation, though more extended in its plan, and

more diversified in its incidents.

It is related by Prior, that lord Dorset, when, as chamberlain, he was

constrained to eject Dryden from his office, gave him, from his own

purse, an allowance equal to the salary. This is no romantick or

incredible act of generosity; a hundred a year is often enough given to

claims less cogent, by men less famed for liberality. Yet Dryden always

represented himself as suffering under a publick infliction; and once

particularly demands respect for the patience with which he endured the

loss of his little fortune. His patron might, indeed, enjoin him to

suppress his bounty; but, if he suffered nothing, he should not have

complained.

During the short reign of king James, he had written nothing for

the stage[115], being, in his opinion, more profitably employed in

controversy and flattery. Of praise he might, perhaps, have been less

lavish without inconvenience, for James was never said to have much

regard for poetry: he was to be flattered only by adopting his religion.

Times were now changed: Dryden was no longer the court-poet, and was to

look back for support to his former trade; and having waited about two

years, either considering himself as discountenanced by the publick,

perhaps expecting a second revolution, he produced Don Sebastian in 1690;

and in the next four years four dramas more.

In 1693 appeared a new version of Juvenal and Persius. Of Juvenal, he

translated the first, third, sixth, tenth, and sixteenth satires; and of

Persius, the whole work. On this occasion, he introduced his two sons to

the publick, as nurslings of the muses. The fourteenth of Juvenal was the

work of John, and the seventh of Charles Dryden. He prefixed a very ample

preface, in the form of a dedication to lord Dorset; and there gives an

account of the design which he had once formed to write an epick poem on

the actions either of Arthur or the Black Prince. He considered the

epick as necessarily including some kind of supernatural agency, and had

imagined a new kind of contest between the guardian angels of kingdoms,

of whom he conceived that each might be represented zealous for his

charge, without any intended opposition to the purposes of the supreme

being, of which all created minds must in part be ignorant.

This is the most reasonable scheme of celestial interposition that ever

was formed. The surprises and terrours of enchantments, which have

succeeded to the intrigues and oppositions of pagan deities, afford very

striking scenes, and open a vast extent to the imagination; but, as

Boileau observes, (and Boileau will be seldom found mistaken,) with this

incurable defect, that, in a contest between heaven and hell, we know at

the beginning which is to prevail; for this reason we follow Rinaldo to

the enchanted wood with more curiosity than terrour.

In the scheme of Dryden there is one great difficulty, which yet he

would, perhaps, have had address enough to surmount. In a war, justice

can be but on one side; and, to entitle the hero to the protection of

angels, he must fight in the defence of indubitable right. Yet some

of the celestial beings, thus opposed to each other, must have been

represented as defending guilt.

That this poem was never written, is reasonably to be lamented. It would,

doubtless, have improved our numbers, and enlarged our language; and

might, perhaps, have contributed, by pleasing instruction, to rectify our

opinions, and purify our manners.

What he required as the indispensable condition of such an undertaking, a

publick stipend, was not likely, in those times, to be obtained. Riches

were not become familiar to us; nor had the nation yet learned to be

liberal.

This plan he charged Blackmore with stealing; "only," says he, "the

guardian angels of kingdoms were machines too ponderous for him to

manage."

In 1694, he began the most laborious and difficult of all his works, the

translation of Virgil; from which he borrowed two months, that he might

turn Fresnoy's Art of Painting into English prose. The preface, which he

boasts to have written in twelve mornings, exhibits a parallel of poetry

and painting, with a miscellaneous collection of critical remarks, such

as cost a mind, stored like his, no labour to produce them.

In 1697, he published his version of the works of Virgil; and, that no

opportunity of profit might be lost, dedicated the Pastorals to the lord

Clifford, the Georgicks to the earl of Chesterfield, and the Aeneid to the

earl of Mulgrave. This economy of flattery, at once lavish and discreet,

did not pass without observation.

This translation was censured by Milbourne, a clergyman, styled, by Pope,

"the fairest of criticks," because he exhibited his own version to be

compared with that which he condemned.

His last work was his Fables, published in 1699, in consequence, as is

supposed, of a contract now in the hands of Mr. Tonson; by which he

obliged himself, in considerationof three hundred pounds, to finish for

the press ten thousand verses.

In this volume is comprised the well-known ode on St. Cecilia's day,

which, as appeared by a letter communicated to Dr. Birch, he spent a

fortnight in composing and correcting. But what is this to the patience

and diligence of Boileau, whose Equivoque, a poem of only three hundred

and forty-six lines, took from his life eleven months to write it, and

three years to revise it?

Part of this book of Fables is the first Iliad in English, intended as a

specimen of a version of the whole. Considering into what hands Homer was

to fall, the reader cannot but rejoice that this project went no further.

The time was now at hand which was to put an end to all his schemes and

labours. On the first of May, 1701, having been some time, as he tells

us, a cripple in his limbs, he died, in Gerard street, of a mortification

in his leg.

There is extant a wild story relating to some vexatious events that

happened at his funeral, which, at the end of Congreve's Life, by a

writer of I know not what credit, are thus related, as I find the account

transferred to a biographical dictionary[116].

"Mr. Dryden dying on the Wednesday morning, Dr. Thomas Sprat, then bishop

of Rochester and dean of Westminster, sent the next day to the lady

Elizabeth Howard, Mr. Dryden's widow, that he would make a present of the

ground, which was forty pounds, with all the other abbey fees. The lord

Halifax, likewise, sent to the lady Elizabeth, and Mr. Charles Dryden

her son, that, if they would give him leave to bury Mr. Dryden, he would

inter him with a gentleman's private funeral, and afterwards bestow five

hundred pounds on a monument in the abbey; which, as they had no reason

to refuse, they accepted. On the Saturday following the company came:

the corpse was put into a velvet hearse; and eighteen mourning coaches,

filled with company, attended. When they were just ready to move, the

lord Jefferies, son of the lord chancellor Jefferies, with some of his

rakish companions, coming by, asked whose funeral it was; and, being

told Mr. Dryden's, he said, 'What, shall Dryden, the greatest honour

and ornament of the nation, be buried after this private manner! No,

gentlemen, let all that loved Mr. Dryden, and honour his memory, alight

and join with me in gaining my lady's consent to let me have the honour

of his interment, which shall be after another manner than this; and I

will bestow a thousand pounds on a monument in the abbey for him.' The

gentlemen in the coaches, not knowing of the bishop of Rochester's

favour, nor of the lord Halifax's generous design, (they both having, out

of respect to the family, enjoined the lady Elizabeth and her son to

keep their favour concealed to the world, and let it pass for their own

expense,) readily came out of the coaches, and attended lord Jefferies up

to the lady's bedside, who was then sick. He repeated the purport of what

he had before said; but she absolutely refusing, he fell on his knees,

vowing never to rise till his request was granted. The rest of the

company, by his desire, kneeled also; and the lady, being under a sudden

surprise, fainted away. As soon as she recovered her speech, she cried,

'No, no.' 'Enough, gentlemen,' replied he; 'my lady is very good; she

says, Go, go.' She repeated her former words with all her strength, but

in vain, for her feeble voice was lost in their acclamations of joy;

and the lord Jefferies ordered the horsemen to carry the corpse to Mr.

Russel's, an undertaker in Cheapside, and leave it there till he should

send orders for the embalment, which, he added, should be after the royal

manner. His directions were obeyed, the company dispersed, and lady

Elizabeth and her son remained inconsolable. The next day Mr. Charles

Dryden waited on the lord Halifax and the bishop, to excuse his mother

and himself, by relating the real truth. But neither his lordship nor the

bishop would admit of any plea; especially the latter, who had the abbey

lighted, the ground opened, the choir attending, an anthem ready set,

and himself waiting, for some time, without any corpse to bury. The

undertaker, after three days' expectance of orders for embalment without

receiving any, waited on the lord Jefferies; who, pretending ignorance of

the matter, turned it off with an ill-natured jest, saying, that those

who observed the orders of a drunken frolick deserved no better; that he

remembered nothing at all of it; and that he might do what he pleased

with the corpse. Upon this, the undertaker waited upon the lady Elizabeth

and her son, and threatened to bring the corpse home, and set it before

the door. They desired a day's respite, which was granted. Mr. Charles

Dryden wrote a handsome letter to the lord Jefferies, who returned it

with this cool answer: 'that he knew nothing of the matter, and would be

troubled no more about it.' He then addressed the lord Halifax and the

bishop of Rochester, who absolutely refused to do any thing in it. In

this distress Dr. Garth sent for the corpse to the College of Physicians,

and proposed a funeral by subscription, to which himself set a most noble

example. At last, a day, about three weeks after Mr. Dryden's decease,

was appointed for the interment. Dr. Garth pronounced a fine Latin

oration, at the college, over the corpse; which was attended to the abbey

by a numerous train of coaches. When the funeral was over, Mr. Charles

Dryden sent a challenge to the lord Jefferies, who refusing to answer it,

he sent several others, and went often himself; but could neither get a

letter delivered, nor admittance to speak to him: which so incensed

him, that he resolved, since his lordship refused to answer him like a

gentleman, that he would watch an opportunity to meet and fight off-hand,

though with all the rules of honour; which his lordship hearing, left the

town; and Mr. Charles Dryden could never have the satisfaction of meeting

him, though he sought it till his death with the utmost application."

This story I once intended to omit, as it appears with no great evidence;

nor have I met with any confirmation, but in a letter of Farquhar; and he

only relates that the funeral of Dryden was tumultuary and confused.[117]

Supposing the story true, we may remark, that the gradual change of

manners, though imperceptible in the process, appears great, when

different times, and those not very distant, are compared. If, at this

time, a young drunken lord should interrupt the pompous regularity of a

magnificent funeral, what would be the event, but that he would be

justled out of the way, and compelled to be quiet? If he should thrust

himself into a house, he would be sent roughly away; and, what is yet

more to the honour of the present time, I believe that those who had

subscribed to the funeral of a man like Dryden, would not, for such an

accident, have withdrawn their contributions[118].

He was buried among the poets in Westminster Abbey, where, though the

duke of Newcastle had, in a general dedication prefixed by Congreve to

his dramatick works, accepted thanks for his intention of erecting him

a monument, he lay long without distinction, till the duke of

Buckinghamshire gave him a tablet, inscribed only with the name of

DRYDEN.

He married the lady Elizabeth Howard, daughter of the earl of Berkshire,

with circumstances, according to the satire imputed to lord Somers, not

very honourable to either party: by her he had three sons, Charles, John,

and Henry. Charles was usher of the palace to pope Clement the eleventh;

and, visiting England in 1704, was drowned in an attempt to swim across

the Thames at Windsor.

John was author of a comedy called The Husband his own Cuckold. He is

said to have died at Rome. Henry entered into some religious order. It is

some proof of Dryden's sincerity in his second religion, that he taught

it to his sons. A man conscious of hypocritical profession in himself, is

not likely to convert others; and, as his sons were qualified, in 1693,

to appear among the translators of Juvenal, they must have been taught

some religion before their father's change.

Of the person of Dryden I know not any account; of his mind, the portrait

which has been left by Congreve, who knew him with great familiarity, is

such as adds our love of his manners to our admiration of his genius. "He

was," we are told, "of a nature exceedingly humane and compassionate,

ready to forgive injuries, and capable of a sincere reconciliation with

those who had offended him. His friendship, where he professed it, went

beyond his professions. He was of a very easy, of very pleasing, access;

but somewhat slow, and, as it were, diffident in his advances to others:

he had that in his nature which abhorred intrusion into any society

whatever. He was, therefore, less known, and consequently his character

became more liable to misapprehensions and misrepresentations: he was

very modest, and very easily to be discountenanced in his approaches to

his equals or superiours. As his reading had been very extensive, so was

he very happy in a memory tenacious of every thing that he had read. He

was not more possessed of knowledge than he was communicative of it; but

then his communication was by no means pedantick, or imposed upon the

conversation, but just such, and went so far as, by the natural turn of

the conversation in which he was engaged, it was necessarily promoted

or required. He was extremely ready and gentle in his correction of the

errours of any writer who thought fit to consult him, and full as ready

and patient to admit of the reprehensions of others, in respect of his

own over-sights or mistakes."

To this account of Congreve nothing can be objected but the fondness of

friendship; and to have excited that fondness in such a mind is no small

degree of praise. The disposition of Dryden, however, is shown in this

character rather as it exhibited itself in cursory conversation, than as

it operated on the more important parts of life. His placability and his

friendship, indeed, were solid virtues; but courtesy and good humour are

often found with little real worth. Since Congreve, who knew him well,

has told us no more, the rest must be collected, as it can, from other

testimonies, and particularly from those notices which Dryden has very

liberally given us of himself.

The modesty which made him so slow to advance, and so easy to

be repulsed, was certainly no suspicion of deficient merit, or

unconsciousness of his own value: he appears to have known, in its whole

extent, the dignity of his character, and to have set a very high value

on his own powers and performances. He probably did not offer his

conversation, because he expected it to be solicited; and he retired from

a cold reception, not submissive but indignant, with such reverence

of his own greatness as made him unwilling to expose it to neglect or

violation.

His modesty was by no means inconsistent with ostentatiousness: he is

diligent enough to remind the world of his merit, and expresses, with

very little scruple, his high opinion of his own powers; but his

self-commendations are read without scorn or indignation; we allow his

claims, and love his frankness.

Tradition, however, has not allowed that his confidence in himself

exempted him from jealousy of others. He is accused of envy and

insidiousness; and is particularly charged with inciting Creech to

translate Horace, that he might lose the reputation which Lucretius had

given him.

Of this charge we immediately discover that it is merely conjectural;

the purpose was such as no man would confess; and a crime that admits no

proof, why should we believe?

He has been described as magisterially presiding over the younger

writers, and assuming the distribution of poetical fame; but he who

excels has a right to teach, and he whose judgment is incontestable, may,

without usurpation, examine and decide.

Congreve represents him as ready to advise and instruct; but there

is reason to believe that his communication was rather useful than

entertaining. He declares of himself that he was saturnine, and not

one of those whose sprightly sayings diverted company; and one of his

censurers makes him say:

Nor wine nor love could ever see me gay;

To writing bred, I knew not what to say[119].

There are men whose powers operate only at leisure and in retirement, and

whose intellectual vigour deserts them in conversation; whom merriment

confuses, and objection disconcerts; whose bashfulness restrains their

exertion, and suffers them not to speak till the time of speaking is

past; or whose attention to their own character makes them unwilling to

utter at hazard what has not been considered, and cannot be recalled.

Of Dryden's sluggishness in conversation it is vain to search or to guess

the cause. He certainly wanted neither sentiments nor language; his

intellectual treasures were great, though they were locked up from his

own use. "His thoughts," when he wrote, "flowed in upon him so fast, that

his only care was which to choose, and which to reject." Such rapidity of

composition naturally promises a flow of talk; yet we must be content to

believe what an enemy says of him, when he, likewise, says it of himself.

But, whatever was his character as a companion, it appears that he lived

in familiarity with the highest persons of his time. It is related by

Carte of the duke of Ormond, that he used often to pass a night with

Dryden, and those with whom Dryden consorted: who they were Carte has

not told; but certainly the convivial table at which Ormond sat was not

surrounded with a plebeian society. He was, indeed, reproached with

boasting of his familiarity with the great; and Horace will support him

in the opinion, that to please superiours is not the lowest kind of

merit.

The merit of pleasing must, however, be estimated by the means. Favour

is not always gained by good actions or laudable qualities. Caresses and

preferments are often bestowed on the auxiliaries of vice, the procurers

of pleasure, or the flatterers of vanity. Dryden has never been charged

with any personal agency unworthy of a good character: he abetted vice

and vanity only with his pen. One of his enemies has accused him of

lewdness in his conversation; but, if accusation without proof be

credited, who shall be innocent?

His works afford too many examples of dissolute licentiousness and abject

adulation; but they were, probably, like his merriment, artificial and

constrained; the effects of study and meditation, and his trade rather

than his pleasure.

Of the mind that can trade in corruption, and can deliberately pollute

itself with ideal wickedness, for the sake of spreading the contagion in

society, I wish not to conceal or excuse the depravity. Such degradation

of the dignity of genius, such abuse of superlative abilities, cannot be

contemplated but with grief and indignation. What consolation can be had,

Dryden has afforded, by living to repent, and to testify his repentance.

Of dramatick immorality he did not want examples among his predecessors,

or companions among his contemporaries; but, in the meanness and

servility of hyperbolical adulation, I know not whether, since the days

in which the Roman emperours were deified, he has been ever equalled,

except by Afra Behn, in an address to Eleanor Gwyn. When once he has

undertaken the task of praise, he no longer retains shame in himself, nor

supposes it in his patron. As many odoriferous bodies are observed to

diffuse perfumes, from year to year, without sensible diminution of bulk

or weight, he appears never to have impoverished his mint of flattery

by his expenses, however lavish. He had all the forms of excellence,

intellectual and moral, combined in his mind, with endless variation;

and, when he had scattered on the hero of the day the golden shower of

wit and virtue, he had ready for him whom he wished to court on the

morrow, new wit and virtue with another stamp. Of this kind of meanness

he never seems to decline the practice, or lament the necessity: he

considers the great as entitled to encomiastick homage, and brings praise

rather as a tribute than a gift, more delighted with the fertility of his

invention, than mortified by the prostitution of his judgment. It is,

indeed, not certain, that on these occasions his judgment much rebelled

against his interest. There are minds which easily sink into submission,

that look on grandeur with undistinguishing reverence, and discover no

defect where there is elevation of rank and affluence of riches.

With his praises of others, and of himself, is always intermingled a

strain of discontent and lamentation, a sullen growl of resentment, or

a querulous murmur of distress. His works are undervalued, his merit is

unrewarded, and "he has few thanks to pay his stars that he was born

among Englishmen." To his criticks he is sometimes contemptuous,

sometimes resentful, and sometimes submissive. The writer who thinks his

works formed for duration, mistakes his interest when he mentions his

enemies. He degrades his own dignity by showing that he was affected by

their censures, and gives lasting importance to names, which, left to

themselves, would vanish from remembrance. From this principle Dryden did

not often depart; his complaints are, for the greater part, general; he

seldom pollutes his page with an adverse name. He condescended, indeed,

to a controversy with Settle, in which he, perhaps, may be considered

rather as assaulting than repelling; and since Settle is sunk into

oblivion, his libel remains injurious only to himself.

Among answers to criticks, no poetical attacks, or altercations, are to

be included; they are, like other poems, effusions of genius, produced as

much to obtain praise as to obviate censure. These Dryden practised, and

in these he excelled.

Of Collier, Blackmore, and Milbourne, he has made mention in the preface

to his Fables. To the censure of Collier, whose remarks may be rather

termed admonitions than criticisms, he makes little reply; being, at

the age of sixty-eight, attentive to better things than the claps of a

playhouse. He complains of Collier's rudeness, and the "horseplay of his

raillery;" and asserts, that "in many places he has perverted by his

glosses the meaning" of what he censures; but in other things he

confesses that he is justly taxed; and says, with great calmness and

candour, "I have pleaded guilty to all thoughts or expressions of mine

that can be truly accused of obscenity, immorality, or profaneness, and

retract them. If he be my enemy, let him triumph; if he be my friend,

he will be glad of my repentance." Yet, as our best dispositions are

imperfect, he left standing in the same book a reflection on Collier of

great asperity, and, indeed, of more asperity than wit.

Blackmore he represents as made his enemy by the poem of Absalom and

Achitophel, which "he thinks a little hard upon his fanatick patrons;"

and charges him with borrowing the plan of his Arthur from the preface to

Juvenal, "though he had," says he, "the baseness not to acknowledge his

benefactor, but instead of it to traduce me in a libel."

The libel in which Blackmore traduced him, was a Satire upon Wit; in

which, having lamented the exuberance of false wit, and the deficiency of

true, he proposes that all wit should be recoined before it is current,

and appoints masters of assay who shall reject all that is light or

debased:

'Tis true, that, when the coarse and worthless dross

Is purg'd away, there will be mighty loss:

E'en Congreve, Southern, manly Wycherley,

When thus refin'd, will grievous sufferers be;

Into the melting-pot when Dryden comes,

What horrid stench will rise, what noisome fumes!

How will he shrink, when all his lewd allay,

And wicked mixture, shall be purg'd away!

Thus stands the passage in the last edition; but in the original there

was an abatement of the censure, beginning thus:

But what remains will be so pure, 'twill bear

Th' examination of the most severe.

Blackmore, finding the censure resented, and the civility disregarded,

ungenerously omitted the softer part. Such variations discover a writer

who consults his passions more than his virtue; and it may be reasonably

supposed that Dryden imputes his enmity to its true cause.

Of Milbourne he wrote only in general terms, such as are always ready

at the call of anger, whether just or not: a short extract will be

sufficient. "He pretends a quarrel to me, that I have fallen foul upon

priesthood; if I have, I am only to ask pardon of good priests, and

am afraid his share of the reparation will come to little. Let him be

satisfied that he shall never be able to force himself upon me for an

adversary; I contemn him too much to enter into competition with him.

"As for the rest of those who have written against me, they are such

scoundrels that they deserve not the least notice to be taken of them.

Blackmore and Milbourne are only distinguished from the crowd by being

remembered to their infamy."

Dryden, indeed, discovered, in many of his writings, an affected and

absurd malignity to priests and priesthood, which naturally raised him

many enemies, and which was sometimes as unseasonably resented as it was

exerted. Trapp is angry that he calls the sacrificer in the Georgicks

"the holy butcher:" the translation is, indeed, ridiculous; but Trapp's

anger arises from his zeal, not for the author, but the priest; as if any

reproach of the follies of paganism could be extended to the preachers of

truth.

Dryden's dislike of the priesthood is imputed by Langbaine, and, I think,

by Brown, to a repulse which he suffered when he solicited ordination;

but he denies, in the preface to his Fables, that he ever designed to

enter into the church; and such a denial he would not have hazarded, if

he could have been convicted of falsehood.

Malevolence to the clergy is seldom at a great distance from irreverence

of religion, and Dryden affords no exception to this observation. His

writings exhibit many passages, which, with all the allowance that can

be made for characters and occasions, are such as piety would not have

admitted, and such as may vitiate light and unprincipled minds. But there

is no reason for supposing that he disbelieved the religion which he

disobeyed. He forgot his duty rather than disowned it. His tendency to

profaneness is the effect of levity, negligence, and loose conversation,

with a desire of accommodating himself to the corruption of the times, by

venturing to be wicked as far as he durst. When he professed himself a

convert to popery, he did not pretend to have received any new conviction

of the fundamental doctrines of Christianity.

The persecution of criticks was not the worst of his vexations; he was

much more disturbed by the importunities of want. His complaints of

poverty are so frequently repeated, either with the dejection of weakness

sinking in helpless misery, or the indignation of merit claiming its

tribute from mankind, that it is impossible not to detest the age which

could impose on such a man the necessity of such solicitations, or not to

despise the man who could submit to such solicitations without necessity.

Whether by the world's neglect, or his own imprudence, I am afraid that

the greatest part of his life was passed in exigencies. Such outcries

were, surely, never uttered but in severe pain. Of his supplies or his

expenses no probable estimate can now be made. Except the salary of

the laureate, to which king James added the office of historiographer,

perhaps with some additional emoluments, his whole revenue seems to have

been casual; and it is well known that he seldom lives frugally who lives

by chance. Hope is always liberal; and they that trust her promises make

little scruple of revelling to-day on the profits of the morrow.

Of his plays the profit was not great; and of the produce of his other

works very little intelligence can be had. By discoursing with the

late amiable Mr. Tonson, I could not find that any memorials of the

transactions between his predecessor and Dryden had been preserved,

except the following papers:

"I do hereby promise to pay John Dryden, esq. or order, on the 25th of

March, 1699, the sum of two hundred and fifty guineas, in consideration

of ten thousand verses, which the said John Dryden, esq. is to deliver

to me, Jacob Tonson, when finished, whereof seven thousand five hundred

verses, more or less, are already in the said Jacob Tonson's possession.

And I do hereby further promise and engage myself, to make up the said

sum of two hundred and fifty guineas three hundred pounds sterling to the

said John Dryden, esq. his executors, administrators, or assigns, at the

beginning of the second impression of the said ten thousand verses.

"In witness whereof I have hereunto set my hand and seal, this 20th day

of March, 1698-9.

"JACOB TONSON.

"Sealed and delivered, being

first duly stampt, pursuant

to the acts of parliament for

that purpose, in the presence

of

"BEN. PORTLOCK,

"WILL. CONGREVE."

"March 24, 1698.

"Received then of Mr. Jacob Tonson the sum of two hundred sixty-eight

pounds fifteen shillings, in pursuance of an agreement for ten thousand

verses, to be delivered by me to the said Jacob Tonson, whereof I have

already delivered to him about seven thousand five hundred, more or less;

he, the said Jacob Tonson, being obliged to make up the foresaid sum of

two hundred sixty-eight pounds fifteen shillings three hundred pounds,

at the beginning of the second impression of the foresaid ten thousand

verses;

"I say, received by me,

"JOHN DRYDEN.

"Witness, CHARLES DRYDEN."

Two hundred and fifty guineas, at 1_l_, 1_s_. 6_d_. is 268_l_. 15_s_.

It is manifest, from the dates of this contract, that it relates to the

volume of Fables, which contains about twelve thousand verses, and for

which, therefore, the payment must have been afterwards enlarged.

I have been told of another letter yet remaining, in which he desires

Tonson to bring him money, to pay for a watch which he had ordered for

his son, and which the maker would not leave without the price.

The inevitable consequence of poverty is dependence. Dryden had probably

no recourse in his exigencies but to his bookseller. The particular

character of Tonson I do not know; but the general conduct of traders

was much less liberal in those times than in our own; their views were

narrower, and their manners grosser. To the mercantile ruggedness of that

race, the delicacy of the poet was sometimes exposed. Lord Bolingbroke,

who in his youth had cultivated poetry, related to Dr. King, of

Oxford, that one day, when he visited Dryden, they heard, as they were

conversing, another person entering the house. "This," said Dryden, "is

Tonson. You will take care not to depart before he goes away; for I

have not completed the sheet which I promised him; and if you leave me

unprotected, I must suffer all the rudeness to which his resentment can

prompt his tongue."

What rewards he obtained for his poems, besides the payment of the

bookseller, cannot be known. Mr. Derrick, who consulted some of his

relations, was informed that his Fables obtained five hundred pounds from

the dutchess of Ormond; a present not unsuitable to the magnificence of

that splendid family; and he quotes Moyle, as relating that forty pounds

were paid by a musical society for the use of Alexander's Feast.

In those days the economy of government was yet unsettled, and the

payments of the exchequer were dilatory and uncertain: of this disorder

there is reason to believe that the laureate sometimes felt the effects;

for, in one of his prefaces he complains of those, who, being intrusted

with the distribution of the prince's bounty, suffer those that depend

upon it to languish in penury.

Of his petty habits or slight amusements, tradition has retained little.

Of the only two men, whom I have found, to whom he was personally known,

one told me, that at the house which he frequented, called Will's

Coffee-house, the appeal upon any literary dispute was made to him;

and the other related, that his armed chair, which in the winter had a

settled and prescriptive place by the fire, was in the summer placed in

the balcony, and that he called the two places his winter and his summer

seat. This is all the intelligence which his two survivers afforded me.

One of his opinions will do him no honour in the present age, though in

his own time, at least in the beginning of it, he was far from having it

confined to himself. He put great confidence in the prognostications

of judicial astrology. In the appendix to the Life of Congreve is a

narrative of some of his predictions wonderfully fulfilled; but I know

not the writer's means of information, or character of veracity. That he

had the configurations of the horoscope in his mind, and considered them

as influencing the affairs of men, he does not forbear to hint:

The utmost malice of the stars is past.

Now frequent _trines_ the happier lights among,

And _high-rais'd Jove_, from his dark prison freed,

Those weights took off that on his planet hung,

Will gloriously the new-laid works succeed.

He has, elsewhere, shown his attention to the planetary powers; and,

in the preface to his Fables, has endeavoured obliquely to justify his

superstition, by attributing the same to some of the ancients. The

letter, added to this narrative, leaves no doubt of his notions or

practice.

So slight and so scanty is the knowledge which I have been able to

collect concerning the private life and domestick manners of a man whom

every English generation must mention with reverence as a critick and a

poet.

Dryden may be properly considered as the father of English criticism, as

the writer who first taught us to determine upon principles the merit of

composition. Of our former poets, the greatest dramatist wrote without

rules, conducted through life and nature by a genius that rarely misled,

and rarely deserted him. Of the rest, those who knew the laws of

propriety had neglected to teach them.

Two Arts of English Poetry were written in the days of Elizabeth by Webb

and Puttenham, from which something might be learned, and a few hints had

been given by Jonson and Cowley; but Dryden's Essay on Dramatick Poetry

was the first regular and valuable treatise on the art of writing.

He who, having formed his opinions in the present age of English

literature, turns back to peruse this dialogue, will not, perhaps, find

much increase of knowledge, or much novelty of instruction; but he is to

remember that critical principles were then in the hands of a few, who

had gathered them partly from the ancients, and partly from the Italians

and French. The structure of dramatick poems was not then generally

understood. Audiences applauded by instinct, and poets, perhaps, often

pleased by chance.

A writer who obtains his full purpose loses himself in his own lustre.

Of an opinion which is no longer doubted, the evidence ceases to

be examined. Of an art universally practised, the first teacher is

forgotten. Learning once made popular is no longer learning; it has the

appearance of something which we have bestowed upon ourselves, as the dew

appears to rise from the field which it refreshes.

To judge rightly of an author, we must transport ourselves to his time,

and examine what were the wants of his contemporaries, and what were his

means of supplying them. That which is easy at one time was difficult at

another. Dryden at least imported his science, and gave his country

what it wanted before; or rather, he imported only the materials and

manufactured them by his own skill.

The Dialogue on the Drama was one of his first essays of criticism,

written when he was yet a timorous candidate for reputation, and,

therefore, laboured with that diligence which he might allow himself

somewhat to remit, when his name gave sanction to his positions, and his

awe of the publick was abated, partly by custom, and partly by success.

It will not be easy to find, in all the opulence of our language, a

treatise so artfully variegated with successive representations of

opposite probabilities, so enlivened with imagery, so brightened with

illustrations. His portraits of the English dramatists are wrought with

great spirit and diligence. The account of Shakespeare may stand as a

perpetual model of encomiastick criticism; exact without minuteness,

and lofty without exaggeration. The praise lavished by Longinus, on the

attestation of the heroes of Marathon by Demosthenes, fades away before

it. In a few lines is exhibited a character, so extensive in its

comprehension, and so curious in its limitations, that nothing can be

added, diminished, or reformed; nor can the editors and admirers of

Shakespeare, in all their emulation of reverence, 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.

In this, and in all his other essays on the same subject, the criticism

of Dryden is the criticism of a poet; not a dull collection of theorems,

nor a rude detection of faults, which, perhaps, the censor was not able

to have committed; but a gay and vigorous dissertation, where delight

is mingled with instruction, and where the author proves his right of

judgment by his power of performance.

The different manner and effect with which critical knowledge may be

conveyed, was, perhaps, never more clearly exemplified than in the

performances of Rymer and Dryden. It was said of a dispute between two

mathematicians, "malim cum Scaligero errare, quam cum Clavio recte

sapere;" that "it was more eligible to go wrong with one, than right

with the other." A tendency of the same kind every mind must feel at the

perusal of Dryden's prefaces and Rymer's discourses. With Dryden we are

wandering in quest of truth; whom we find, if we find her at all, drest

in the graces of elegance; and, if we miss her, the labour of the pursuit

rewards itself; we are led only through fragrance and flowers. Rymer,

without taking a nearer, takes a rougher way; every step is to be made

through thorns and brambles; and truth, if we meet her, appears repulsive

by her mien, and ungraceful by her habit. Dryden's criticism has the

majesty of a queen; Rymer's has the ferocity of a tyrant.

As he had studied with great diligence the art of poetry, and enlarged or

rectified his notions, by experience perpetually increasing, he had his

mind stored with principles and observations; he poured out his knowledge

with little labour; for of labour, notwithstanding the multiplicity of

his productions, there is sufficient reason to suspect that he was not

a lover. To write _con amore_, with fondness for the employment, with

perpetual touches and retouches, with unwillingness to take leave of his

own idea, and an unwearied pursuit of unattainable perfection, was, I

think, no part of his character.

His criticism may be considered as general or occasional. In his general

precepts, which depend upon the nature of things, and the structure

of the human mind, he may, doubtless, be safely recommended to the

confidence of the reader; but his occasional and particular positions

were sometimes interested, sometimes negligent, and sometimes capricious.

It is not without reason that Trapp, speaking of the praises which he

bestows on Palamon and Arcite, says, "Novimus judicium Drydeni de poemate

quodam Chauceri, pulchro sane illo, et admodum laudando, nimirum quod non

modo vere epicum sit, sed Iliada etiam atque 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."

He is, therefore, by no means constant to himself. His defence and

desertion of dramatick rhyme is generally known. Spence, in his remarks

on Pope's Odyssey, produces what he thinks an unconquerable quotation

from Dryden's preface to the Aeneid, in favour of translating an epick

poem into blank verse; but he forgets that when his author attempted the

Iliad, some years afterwards, he departed from his own decision, and

translated into rhyme.

When he has any objection to obviate, or any license to defend, he is not

very scrupulous about what he asserts, nor very cautious, if the present

purpose be served, not to entangle himself in his own sophistries. But,

when all arts are exhausted, like other hunted animals, he sometimes

stands at bay; when he cannot disown the grossness of one of his plays,

he declares that he knows not any law that prescribes morality to a

comick poet.

His remarks on ancient or modern writers are not always to be trusted.

His parallel of the versification of Ovid with that of Claudian has been

very justly censured by Sewel[120]. His comparison of the first line of

Virgil with the first of Statius is not happier. Virgil, he says, is

soft and gentle, and would have thought Statius mad, if he had heard him

thundering out:

Quae superimposito moles geminata colosso.

Statius, perhaps, heats himself, as he proceeds, to exaggerations

somewhat hyperbolical; but undoubtedly Virgil would have been too hasty,

if he had condemned him to straw for one sounding line. Dryden wanted an

instance, and the first that occurred was imprest into the service.

What he wishes to say, he says at hazard; he cited Gorbuduc, which he

had never seen; gives a false account of Chapman's versification; and

discovers, in the preface to his Fables, that he translated the first

book of the Iliad without knowing what was in the second.

It will be difficult to prove that Dryden ever made any great advances

in literature. As, having distinguished himself at Westminster under the

tuition of Busby, who advanced his scholars to a height of knowledge very

rarely attained in grammar-schools, he resided afterwards at Cambridge,

it is not to be supposed, that his skill in the ancient languages was

deficient, compared with that of common students; but his scholastick

acquisitions seem not proportionate to his opportunities and abilities.

He could not, like Milton or Cowley, have made his name illustrious

merely by his learning. He mentions but few books, and those such as lie

in the beaten track of regular study; from which, if ever he departs, he

is in danger of losing himself in unknown regions.

In his Dialogue on the Drama, he pronounces, with great confidence, that

the Latin tragedy of Medea is not Ovid's, because it is not sufficiently

interesting and pathetick. He might have determined the question upon

surer evidence; for it is quoted by Quintilian as the work of Seneca; and

the only line which remains of Ovid's play, for one line is left us, is

not there to be found. There was, therefore, no need of the gravity of

conjecture, or the discussion of plot or sentiment, to find what was

already known upon higher authority than such discussions can ever reach.

His literature, though not always free from ostentation, will be commonly

found either obvious, and made his own by the art of dressing it; or

superficial, which, by what he gives, shows what he wanted; or erroneous,

hastily collected, and negligently scattered.

Yet it cannot be said that his genius is ever unprovided of matter, or

that his fancy languishes in penury of ideas. His works abound with

knowledge, and sparkle with illustrations. There is scarcely any science

or faculty that does not supply him with occasional images and lucky

similitudes; every page discovers a mind very widely acquainted both with

art and nature, and in full possession of great stores of intellectual

wealth. Of him that knows much, it is natural to suppose that he has read

with diligence; yet I rather believe that the knowledge of Dryden was

gleaned from accidental intelligence and various conversation, by a quick

apprehension, a judicious selection, and a happy memory, a keen appetite

of knowledge, and a powerful digestion; by vigilance that permitted

nothing to pass without notice, and a habit of reflection that suffered

nothing useful to be lost. A mind like Dryden's, always curious, always

active, to which every understanding was proud to be associated, and of

which every one solicited the regard, by an ambitious display of himself,

had a more pleasant, perhaps a nearer way to knowledge than by the silent

progress of solitary reading. I do not suppose that he despised books,

or intentionally neglected them; but that he was carried out, by the

impetuosity of his genius, to more vivid and speedy instructors; and

that his studies were rather desultory and fortuitous than constant and

systematical.

It must be confessed, that he scarcely ever appears to want

book-learning, but when he mentions books; and to him may be transferred

the praise which he gives his master Charles:

His conversation, wit, and parts,

His knowledge in the noblest useful arts,

Were such, dead authors could not give,

But habitudes of those that live,

Who, lighting him, did greater lights receive:

He drained from all, and all they knew,

His apprehensions quick, his judgment true:

That the most learn'd with shame confess,

His knowledge more, his reading only less.

Of all this, however, if the proof be demanded, I will not undertake to

give it; the atoms of probability, of which my opinion has been formed,

lie scattered over all his works; and by him who thinks the question

worth his notice, his works must be perused with very close attention.

Criticism, either didactick or defensive, occupies almost all his prose,

except those pages which he has devoted to his patrons; but none of his

prefaces were ever thought tedious. 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 fe 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. Every thing 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.

From his prose, however, Dryden derives only his accidental and secondary

praise; the veneration with which his name is pronounced by every

cultivator of English literature, is paid to him as he refined the

language, improved the sentiments, and tuned the numbers of English

poetry.

After about half a century of forced thoughts, and rugged metre, some

advances towards nature and harmony had been already made by Waller and

Denham; they had shown that long discourses in rhyme grew more pleasing

when they were broken into couplets, and that verse consisted not only in

the number but the arrangement of syllables.

But though they did much, who can deny that they left much to do? Their

works were not many, nor were their minds of very ample comprehension.

More examples of more modes of composition were necessary for the

establishment of regularity, and the introduction of propriety in word

and thought.

Every language of a learned nation necessarily divides itself into

diction scholastick and popular, grave and familiar, elegant and gross:

and from a nice distinction of these different parts arises a great part

of the beauty of style. But if we except a few minds, the favourites of

nature, to whom their own original rectitude was in the place of rules,

this delicacy of selection was little known to our authors; our speech

lay before them in a heap of confusion, and every man took for every

purpose, what chance might offer him.

There was, therefore, before the time of Dryden no poetical diction, no

system of words at once refined from the grossness of domestick use, and

free from the harshness of terms appropriated to particular arts. Words

too familiar, or too remote, defeat the purpose of a poet. From those

sounds which we hear on small or on coarse occasions, we do not easily

receive strong impressions, or delightful images; and words to which

we are nearly strangers, whenever they occur, draw that attention on

themselves which they should transmit to things.

Those happy combinations of words which distinguish poetry from prose had

been rarely attempted; we had few elegancies or flowers of speech; the

roses had not yet been plucked from the bramble; or different colours had

not been joined to enliven one another.

It may be doubted whether Waller and Denham could have overborne the

prejudices which had long prevailed, fend which even then were sheltered

by the protection of Cowley. The new versification, as it was called, may

be considered as owing its establishment to Dryden; from whose time it is

apparent that English poetry has had no tendency to relapse to its former

savageness.

The affluence and comprehension of our language is very illustriously

displayed in our poetical translations of ancient writers; a work which

the French seem to relinquish in despair, and which we were long unable

to perform with dexterity. Ben Jonson thought it necessary to copy Horace

almost word by word; Feltham, his contemporary and adversary, considers

it as indispensably requisite in a translation to give line for line. It

is said that Sandys, whom Dryden calls the best versifier of the

last age, has struggled hard to comprise every book of his English

Metamorphoses in the same number of verses with the original. Holyday had

nothing in view but to show that he understood his author, with so little

regard to the grandeur of his diction, or the volubility of his numbers,

that his metres can hardly be called verses; they cannot be read without

reluctance, nor will the labour always be rewarded by understanding

them. Cowley saw that such copyers were a servile race; he asserted his

liberty, and spread his wings so boldly that he left his authors. It was

reserved for Dryden to fix the limits of poetical liberty, and give us

just rules and examples of translation.

When languages are formed upon different principles, it is impossible

that the same modes of expression should always be elegant in both. While

they run on together, the closest translation may be considered as the

best; but when they divaricate, each must take its natural course. Where

correspondence cannot be obtained, it is necessary to be content with

something equivalent. "Translation, therefore," says Dryden, "is not so

loose as paraphrase, nor so close as metaphrase."

All polished languages have different styles; the concise, the diffuse,

the lofty, and the humble. In the proper choice of style consists the

resemblance which Dryden principally exacts from the translator. He is to

exhibit his author's thoughts in such a dress of diction as the author

would have given them, had his language been English; rugged magnificence

is not to be softened; hyperbolical ostentation is not to be repressed;

nor sententious affectation to have its point blunted. A translator is to

be like his author; it is not his business to excel him.

The reasonableness of these rules seems sufficient for their vindication;

and the effects produced by observing them were so happy, that I know not

whether they were ever opposed, but by sir Edward Sherburne, a man whose

learning was greater than his powers of poetry, and who, being better

qualified to give the meaning than the spirit of Seneca, has introduced

his version of three tragedies by a defence of close translation. The

authority of Horace, which the new translators cited in defence of their

practice, he has, by a judicious explanation, taken fairly from them; but

reason wants not Horace to support it.

It seldom happens that all the necessary causes concur to any great

effect: will is wanting to power, or power to will, or both are impeded

by external obstructions. The exigencies in which Dryden was condemned

to pass his life, are reasonably supposed to have blasted his genius,

to have driven out his works in a state of immaturity, and to have

intercepted the full-blown elegance, which longer growth would have

supplied.

Poverty, like other rigid powers, is sometimes too hastily accused. If

the excellence of Dryden's works was lessened by his indigence, their

number was increased; and I know not how it will be proved, that if he

had written less he would have written better; or that, indeed, he would

have undergone the toil of an author, if he had not been solicited by

something more pressing than the love of praise.

But, as is said by his Sebastian,

What had been is unknown; what is, appears.

We know that Dryden's several productions were so many successive

expedients for his support; his plays were, therefore, often borrowed;

and his poems were almost all occasional.

In an occasional performance no height of excellence can be expected

from any mind, however fertile in itself, and however stored with

acquisitions. He whose work is general and arbitrary has the choice of

his matter, and takes that which his inclination and his studies have

best qualified him to display and decorate. He is at liberty to delay his

publication till he has satisfied his friends and himself, till he has

reformed his first thoughts by subsequent examination, and polished away

those faults which the precipitance of ardent composition is likely to

leave behind it. Virgil is related to have poured out a great number of

lines in the morning, and to have passed the day in reducing them to

fewer.

The occasional poet is circumscribed by the narrowness of his subject.

Whatever can happen to man has happened so often, that little remains

for fancy or invention. We have been all born; we have most of us been

married; and so many have died before us, that our deaths can supply

but few materials for a poet. In the fate of princes the publick has an

interest; and what happens to them of good or evil, the poets have always

considered as business for the muse. But after so many inauguratory

gratulations, nuptial hymns, and funeral dirges, he must be highly

favoured by nature, or by fortune, who says any thing not said before.

Even war and conquest, however splendid, suggest no new images; the

triumphal chariot of a victorious monarch can be decked only with those

ornaments that have graced his predecessors.

Not only matter but time is wanting. The poem must not be delayed till

the occasion is forgotten. The lucky moments of animated imagination

cannot be attended; elegancies and illustrations cannot be multiplied

by gradual accumulation; the composition must be despatched, while

conversation is yet busy, and admiration fresh; and haste is to be

made, lest some other event should lay hold upon mankind. Occasional

compositions may, however, secure to a writer the praise both of learning

and facility; for they cannot be the effect of long study, and must be

furnished immediately from the treasures of the mind.

The death of Cromwell was the first publick event which called forth

Dryden's poetical powers. His heroick stanzas have beauties and defects;

the thoughts are vigorous, and, though not always proper, show a mind

replete with ideas; the numbers are smooth; and the diction, if not

altogether correct, is elegant and easy.

Davenant was, perhaps, at this time, his favourite author, though

Gondibert never appears to have been popular; and from Davenant he

learned to please his ear with the stanza of four lines alternately

rhymed.

Dryden very early formed his versification; there are in this early

production no traces of Donne's or Jonson's ruggedness; but he did not so

soon free his mind from the ambition of forced conceits. In his verses on

the restoration, he says of the king's exile:

He, toss'd by fate,

Could taste no sweets of youth's desir'd age,

But found his life too true a pilgrimage.

And afterwards, to show how virtue and wisdom are increased by adversity,

he makes this remark:

Well might the ancient poets then confer

On night the honour'd name of counsellor:

Since, struck with rays of prosperous fortune blind,

We light alone in dark afflictions find.

His praise of Monk's dexterity comprises such a cluster of thoughts

unallied to one another, as will not elsewhere be easily found:

'Twas Monk, whom providence design'd to loose

Those real bonds false freedom did impose.

The blessed saints that watch'd this turning scene

Did from their stars with joyful wonder lean,

To see small clues draw vastest weights along,

Not in their bulk, but in their order strong.

Thus pencils can by one slight touch restore

Smiles to that changed face that wept before.

With ease such fond chimeras we pursue.

As fancy frames for fancy to subdue;

But, when ourselves to action we betake,

It shuns the mint like gold that chymists make:

How hard was then his task, at once to be

What in the body natural we see!

Man's architect distinctly did ordain

The charge of muscles, nerves, and of the brain,

Through viewless conduits spirits to dispense

The springs of motion from the seat of sense:

'Twas not the hasty product of a day,

But the well-ripen'd fruit of wise delay.

He, like a patient angler, ere he strook,

Would let them play awhile upon the hook.

Our healthful food the stomach labours thus,

At first embracing what it straight doth crush.

Wise leeches will not vain receipts obtrude,

While growing pains pronounce the humours crude;

Deaf to complaints, they wait upon the ill,

Till some safe crisis authorize their skill.

He had not yet learned, indeed he never learned well, to forbear the

improper use of mythology. After having rewarded the heathen deities for

their care,

With Alga who the sacred altar strows?

To all the seagods Charles an offering owes;

A bull to thee, Portunus, shall be slain;

A ram to you, ye tempests of the main.

He tells us, in the language of religion,

Pray'r storm'd the skies, and ravish'd Charles from thence,

As heav'n itself is took by violence.

And afterwards mentions one of the most awful passages of sacred history.

Other conceits there are, too curious to be quite omitted; as,

For by example most we sinn'd before,

And, glass-like, clearness mix'd with frailty bore.

How far he was yet from thinking it necessary to found his sentiments on

nature, appears from the extravagance of his fictions and hyperboles:

The winds, that never moderation knew,

Afraid to blow too much, too faintly blew;

Or, out of breath with joy, could not enlarge

Their straiten'd lungs.

It is no longer motion cheats your view;

As you meet it, the land approacheth you;

The land returns, and in the white it wears

The marks of penitence and sorrow bears.

I know not whether this fancy, however little be its value, was not

borrowed. A French poet read to Malherbe some verses, in which he

represents France as moving out of its place to receive the king: "Though

this," said Malherbe, "was in my time, I do not remember it."

His poem on the Coronation has a more even tenour of thought. Some lines

deserve to be quoted:

You have already quench'd sedition's brand;

And zeal, that burnt it, only warms the land;

The jealous sects that durst not trust their cause

So far from their own will as to the laws,

Him for their umpire and their synod take,

And their appeal alone to Caesar make.

Here may be found one particle of that old versification, of which, I

believe, in all his works, there is not another:

Nor is it duty, or our hope alone,

Creates that joy, but full _fruition_.

In the verses to the lord chancellor Clarendon, two years afterwards, is

a conceit so hopeless at the first view, that few would have attempted

it; and so successfully laboured, that though, at last, it gives the

reader more perplexity than pleasure, and seems hardly worth the study

that it costs, yet it must be valued as a proof of a mind at once subtile

and comprehensive:

In open prospect nothing bounds our eye,

Until the earth seems join'd unto the sky;

So in this hemisphere our utmost view

Is only bounded by our king and you:

Our sight is limited where you are join'd,

And beyond that no farther heaven can find.

So well your virtues do with his agree,

That, though your orbs of different greatness be,

Yet both are for each other's use dispos'd,

His to enclose, and yours to be enclos'd.

Nor could another in your room have been,

Except an emptiness had come between.

The comparison of the chancellor to the Indies leaves all resemblance too

far behind it:

And as the Indies were not found before

Those rich perfumes which from the happy shore

The winds upon their balmy wings convey'd,

Whose guilty sweetness first their world betray'd;

So by your counsels we are brought to view

A new and undiscover'd world in you.

There is another comparison, for there is little else in the poem, of

which, though, perhaps, it cannot be explained into plain prosaick

meaning, the mind perceives enough to be delighted, and readily forgives

its obscurity, for its magnificence:

How strangely active are the arts of peace,

Whose restless motions less than wars do cease:

Peace is not freed from labour, but from noise;

And war more force, but not more pains employs.

Such is the mighty swiftness of your mind,

That, like the earth's, it leaves our sense behind,

While you so smoothly turn and roll our sphere,

That rapid motion does but rest appear.

For as in nature's swiftness, with the throng

Of flying orbs while ours is borne along,

All seems at rest to the deluded eye,

Mov'd by the soul of the same harmony:

So, carry'd on by your unwearied care,

We rest in peace, and yet in motion share.

To this succeed four lines, which, perhaps, afford Dryden's first attempt

at those penetrating remarks on human nature, for which he seems to have

been peculiarly formed:

Let envy then those crimes within you see,

From which the happy never must be free;

Envy that does with misery reside,

The joy and the revenge of ruin'd pride.

Into this poem he seems to have collected all his powers; and after this

he did not often bring upon his anvil such stubborn and unmalleable

thoughts; but, as a specimen of his abilities to unite the most

unsociable matter, he has concluded with lines, of which I think not

myself obliged to tell the meaning:

Yet unimpair'd with labours, or with time,

Your age but seems to a new youth to climb.

Thus heav'nly bodies do our time beget,

And measure change, but share no part of it:

And still it shall without a weight increase,

Like this new year, whose motions never cease.

For since the glorious course you have begun

Is led by Charles, as that is by the sun,

It must both weightless and immortal prove,

Because the centre of it is above.

In the Annus Mirabilis he returned to the quatrain, which from that time

he totally quitted, perhaps from experience of its inconvenience, for he

complains of its difficulty. This is one of his greatest attempts. He

had subjects equal to his abilities, a great naval war, and the fire

of London. Battles have always been described in heroick poetry; but a

seafight and artillery had yet something of novelty. New arts are long in

the world before poets describe them; for they borrow every thing from

their predecessors, and commonly derive very little from nature, or from

life. Boileau was the first French writer that had ever hazarded in verse

the mention of modern war, or the effects of gunpowder. We, who are less

afraid of novelty, had already possession of those dreadful images:

Waller had described a seafight. Milton had not yet transferred the

invention of firearms to the rebellious angels.

This poem is written with great diligence, yet does not fully answer the

expectation raised by such subjects and such a writer. With the stanza

of Davenant, he has sometimes his vein of parenthesis, and incidental

disquisition, and stops his narrative for a wise remark.

The general fault is, that he affords more sentiment than description,

and does not so much impress scenes upon the fancy, as deduce

consequences and make comparisons.

The initial stanzas have rather too much resemblance to the first lines

of Waller's poem on the War with Spain; perhaps such a beginning is

natural, and could not be avoided without affectation. Both Waller and

Dryden might take their hint from the poem on the civil war of Rome:

"Orbem jam totum," &c.

Of the king collecting his navy, he says,

It seems, as ev'ry ship their sov'reign knows,

His awful summons they so soon obey:

So hear the scaly herds when Proteus blows,

And so to pasture follow through the sea.

It would not be hard to believe that Dryden had written the two first

lines seriously, and that some wag had added the two latter in burlesque.

Who would expect the lines that immediately follow, which are, indeed,

perhaps indecently hyperbolical, but certainly in a mode totally

different:

To see this fleet upon the ocean move,

Angels drew wide the curtains of the skies;

And heav'n, as if there wanted lights above,

For tapers made two glaring comets rise.

The description of the attempt at Bergen will afford a very complete

specimen of the descriptions in this poem:

And now approach'd their fleet from India, fraught

With all the riches of the rising sun:

And precious sand from southern climates brought,

The fatal regions where the war begun.

Like hunted castors, conscious of their store,

Their waylaid wealth to Norway's coast they bring:

Then first the north's cold bosom spices bore,

And winter brooded on the eastern spring.

By the rich scent we found our perfum'd prey,

Which, flank'd with rocks, did close in covert lie;

And round about their murd'ring cannon lay,

At once to threaten and invite the eye.

Fiercer than cannon, and than rocks more hard,

The English undertake th' unequal war;

Sev'n ships alone, by which the port is barr'd,

Besiege the Indies, and all Denmark dare.

These fight like husbands, but like lovers those;

These fain would keep, and those more fain enjoy;

And to such height their frantick passion grows,

That what both love, both hazard to destroy:

Amidst whole heaps of spices lights a ball,

And now their odours arm'd against them fly:

Some preciously by shatter'd porc'lain fall,

And some by aromatick splinters die.

And though by tempests of the prize bereft,

In heav'n's inclemency some ease we find;

Our foes we vanquish'd by our valour left,

And only yielded to the seas and wind.

In this manner is the sublime too often mingled with the ridiculous.

The Dutch seek a shelter for a wealthy fleet: this, surely, needed no

illustration; yet they must fly, not like all the rest of mankind on the

same occasion, but "like hunted castors;" and they might with strict

propriety be hunted; for we winded them by our noses--their _perfumes_

betrayed them. The _husband_ and the _lover_, though of more dignity than

the castor, are images too domestick to mingle properly with the horrours

of war. The two quatrains that follow are worthy of the author. The

account of the different sensations with which the two fleets retired,

when the night parted them, is one of the fairest flowers of English

poetry:

The night comes on, we eager to pursue

The combat still, and they asham'd to leave:

Till the last streaks of dying day withdrew,

And doubtful moonlight did our rage deceive.

In th' English fleet each ship resounds with joy,

And loud applause of their great leader's fame:

In fiery dreams the Dutch they still destroy,

And, slumb'ring, smile at the imagin'd flame.

Not so the Holland fleet, who, tir'd and done,

Stretch'd on their decks like weary oxen lie;

Faint sweats all down their mighty members run,

(Vast bulks, which little souls but ill supply.)

In dreams they fearful precipices tread,

Or, shipwreck'd, labour to some distant shore;

Or, in dark churches, walk among the dead:

They wake with horrour, and dare sleep no more.

It is a general rule in poetry, that all appropriated terms of art should

be sunk in general expressions, because poetry is to speak an universal

language. This rule is still stronger with regard to arts not liberal, or

confined to few, and, therefore, far removed from common knowledge; and

of this kind, certainly, is technical navigation. Yet Dryden was of

opinion, that a seafight ought to be described in the nautical language;

"and certainly," says he, "as those, who in a logical disputation keep to

general terms, would hide a fallacy, so those who do it in any poetical

description would veil their ignorance."