noble wit of Scotland,” as he terms Sir George Mackenzie, the issue of which, in his apprehension, pointed out further room for improving upon the epic of Milton. This was an inquiry into the “turn of words and thoughts” requisite in heroic poetry. These “turns,” according to the definition and examples which Dryden has given us, differ from the points of wit, and quirks of epigram, common in the metaphysical poets, and consist in a happy, and at the same time a natural, recurrence of the same form of expression, melodiously varied. Having failed in his search after these beauties in Cowley, the darling of his youth, “I consulted,” says Dryden, “a greater genius (without offence to the manes of that noble author), I mean–Milton; but as he endeavours everywhere to express Homer, whose age had not arrived to that fineness, I found in him a true sublimity, lofty thoughts, which were clothed with admirable Grecisms, and ancient words, which he had been digging from the mines of Chaucer and Spenser, and which, with all their rusticity, had somewhat of venerable in them. But I found not there neither that for which I looked.” This judgment Addison has proved to be erroneous, by quoting from Milton the most beautiful example of a turn of words which can be found in English poetry.[31] But Dryden, holding it for just, conceived, doubtless, that in his “State of Innocence” he might exert his skill successfully, by supplying the supposed deficiency, and for relieving those “flats of thought” which he complains of, where Milton, for a hundred lines together, runs on in a “track of scripture;” but which Dennis more justly ascribes to the humble nature of his subject in those passages. The graces, also, which Dryden ventured to interweave with the lofty theme of Milton, were rather those of Ovid than of Virgil, rather turns of verbal expression than of thought. Such is that conceit which met with censure at the time:
“Seraph and cherub, careless of their charge, And wanton, in full ease now live at large; Unguarded leave the passes of the sky,
And all dissolved in hallelujahs lie.”
“I have heard,” said a petulant critic, “of anchovies dissolved in sauce; but never of an angel dissolved in hallelujahs.” But this raillery Dryden rebuffs with a quotation from Virgil:
“_Invadunt urbem, somno vinoque sepultam_.”
It might have been replied, that Virgil’s analogy was familiar and simple, and that of Dryden was far-fetched, and startling by its novelty. The majesty of Milton’s verse is strangely degraded in the following speeches, which precede the rising of Pandaemonium. Some of the couplets are utterly flat and bald, and, in others, the balance of point and antithesis is substituted for the simple sublimity of the original:
_Moloch_. Changed as we are, we’re yet from homage free; We have, by hell, at least gained liberty: That’s worth our fall; thus low though we are driven. Better to rule in hell, than serve in heaven.
_Lucifer_. There spoke the better half of Lucifer!
_Asmoday_. ‘Tis fit in frequent senate we confer, And then determine how to steer our course; To wage new war by fraud, or open force. The doom’s now past, submission were in vain.
_Mol_. And were it not, such baseness I disdain; I would not stoop, to purchase all above, And should contemn a power, whom prayer could move, As one unworthy to have conquered me.
_Beelzebub_. Moloch, in that all are resolved, like thee The means are unproposed; but ’tis not fit Our dark divan in public view should sit; Or what we plot against the Thunderer,
The ignoble crowd of vulgar devils hear.
_Lucif._ A golden palace let be raised on high; To imitate? No, to outshine the sky!
All mines are ours, and gold above the rest: Let this be done; and quick as ’twas exprest.
I fancy the reader is now nearly satisfied with Dryden’s improvements on Milton. Yet some of his alterations have such peculiar reference to the taste and manners of his age, that I cannot avoid pointing them out. Eve is somewhat of a coquette even in the state of innocence. She exclaims:
“from each tree
The feathered kind press down to look on me; The beasts, with up-cast eyes, forsake their shade, And gaze, as if I were to be obeyed.
Sure, I am somewhat which they wish to be, And cannot,–I myself am proud of me.”
Upon receiving Adam’s addresses, she expresses, rather unreasonably in the circumstances, some apprehensions of his infidelity; and, upon the whole, she is considerably too knowing for the primitive state. The same may be said of Adam, whose knowledge in school divinity, and use of syllogistic argument, Dryden, though he found it in the original, was under no necessity to have retained.
The “State of Innocence,” as it could not be designed for the stage, seems to have been originally intended as a mere poetical prolusion; for Dryden, who was above affecting such a circumstance, tells us, that it was only made public, because, in consequence of several hundred copies, every one gathering new faults, having been dispersed without his knowledge, it became at length a libel on the author, who was forced to print a correct edition in his own defence. As the incidents and language were ready composed by Milton, we are not surprised when informed, that the composition and revision were completed in a single month. The critics having assailed the poem even before publication, the author has prefixed an “Essay upon Heroic Poetry and Poetic Licence;” in which he treats chiefly of the use of metaphors, and of the legitimacy of machinery.
The Dedication of the “State of Innocence,” addressed to Mary of Este, Duchess of York, is a singular specimen of what has been since termed the _celestial_ style of inscription. It is a strain of flattery in the language of adoration; and the elated station of the princess is declared so suited to her excellence, that Providence has only done justice to its own works in placing the most perfect work of heaven where it may be admired by all beholders. Even this flight is surpassed by the following:–“Tis true, you are above all mortal wishes; no man desires impossibilities, because they are beyond the reach of nature. To hope to be a god is folly exalted into madness; but, by the laws of our creation, we are obliged to adore him, and are permitted to love him too at human distance. ‘Tis the nature of perfection to be attractive; but the excellency of the object refines the nature of the love. It strikes an impression of awful reverence; ’tis indeed that love which is more properly a zeal than passion. ‘Tis the rapture which anchorites find in prayer, when a beam of the divinity shines upon them; that which makes them despise all worldly objects; and yet ’tis all but contemplation. They are seldom visited from above; but a single vision so transports them, that it makes up the happiness of their lives. Mortality cannot bear it often: it finds them in the eagerness and height of their devotion; they are speechless for the time that it continues, and prostrate and dead when it departs.” Such eulogy was the taste of the days of Charles, when ladies were deified in dedications and painted as Venus or Diana upon canvas. In our time, the elegance of the language would be scarcely held to counterbalance the absurdity of the compliments.
Lee, the dramatic writer, an excellent poet, though unfortunate in his health and circumstances evinced his friendship for Dryden, rather than his judgment, by prefixing to the “State of Innocence” a copy of verses, in which he compliments the author with having refined the ore of Milton. Dryden repaid this favour by an epistle, in which he beautifully apologises for the extravagancies of his friend’s poetry, and consoles him for the censure of those cold judges, whose blame became praise when they accused the warmth which they were incapable of feeling.[32]
Having thus brought the account of our author’s productions down to 1674, from which period we date a perceptible change in his taste and mode of composition, I have only to add, that his private situation was probably altered to the worse, by the burning of the King’s Theatre, and the debts contracted in rebuilding it. The value of his share in that company must consequently have fallen far short of what it was originally. In other respects, he was probably nearly in the same condition as in 1672. The critics, who assailed his literary reputation, had hitherto spared his private character; and, excepting Rochester, whose malignity towards Dryden now began to display itself, he probably had not lost one person whom he had thought worthy to be called a friend. Lee, who seems first to have distinguished himself about 1672, was probably then added to the number of his intimates. Milton died shortly before the publication of the “State of Innocence;” and we may wish in vain to know his opinion of that piece; but if tradition can be trusted, he said, perhaps on that undertaking, that Dryden was a good rhymer, but no poet. Blount, who had signalised himself in Dryden’s defence, was now added to the number of his friends. This gentleman dedicated his “_Religio Laici_” to Dryden in 1683, as his much-honoured friend; and the poet speaks of him with kindness and respect in 1696, three years after his unfortunate and violent catastrophe.
Dryden was, however, soon to experience the mutability of the friendship of wits and courtiers. A period was speedily approaching, when the violence of political faction was to effect a breach between our author and many of those with whom he was now intimately connected; indeed, he was already entangled in the quarrels of the great, and sustained a severe personal outrage, in consequence of a quarrel with which he had little individual concern.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] In “Repartees between Cat and Puss at a caterwauling, in the modern heroic way:”
“_Cat_. Forbear, foul ravisher, this rude address; Canst thou at once both injure and caress?
_Puss_. Thou hast bewitched me with thy powerful charms, And I, by drawing blood, would cure my harms.
_C_. He that does love would set his heart a tilt, Ere one drop of his lady’s should be spilt.
_P_. Your wounds are but without, and mine within: You wound my heart, and I but prick your skin; And while your eyes pierce deeper than my claws, You blame the effect of which you are the cause.
_C_. How could my guiltless eyes your heart invade, Had it not first been by your own betrayed? Hence ’tis, my greatest crime has only been (Not in mine eyes, but yours) in being seen.
_P_. I hurt to love, but do not love to hurt.
_C_. That’s worse than making cruelty a sport.
_P_. Pain is the foil of pleasure and delight, That sets it off to a more noble height.
_C_. He buys his pleasure at a rate too vain, That takes it up beforehand of his pain.
_P_. Pain is more dear than pleasure when ’tis past.
_C_. But grows intolerable if it last,” etc.
[2] Life of Lope de Vega, p. 208.
[3] Dryden was severely censured by the critics for his supernatural persons, and ironically described as the “man, nature seemed to make choice of to enlarge the poet’s empire and to complete those discoveries others had begun to shadow. That Shakespeare and Fletcher (as some think) erected the pillars of poetry, is a grosse errour; this Zany of Columbus has discovered a poeticall world of greater extent than the naturall, peopled with Atlantick colonies of notionall creatures, astrall spirits, ghosts, and idols, more various than ever the Indians worshipt, and heroes more lawless than their savages.”–_Censure of the Rota_.
[4] His mistress having fallen in love with a disguised barber, a less polished rival exclaims,–
“_Sir Hum_. Nay, for my part, madam, if you must love a cudgelled barber, and take him for a valiant count, make much of him; I shall desist: there are more ladies, heaven be thanked.
“_Trim_. Yes, sir, there are more ladies; but if any man affirms that my fair Dorinda has an equal, I thus fling down my glove, and do demand the combat for her honour.–This is a nice point of honour I have hit.”–_Bury Fair_.
[5] The author of the “Friendly Vindication of Mr. Dryden from the Censure of the Rota” (Cambridge, 1673) mentions, “his humble and supplicant addresses to men and ladies of honour, to whom he presented the most of his plays to be read, and so passing through their families, to comply with their censures before-hand; confessing ingenuously, that had he ventured his wits upon the tenter-hooks of Fortune (like other poets who depended more upon the merits of their pens), he had been more severely entangled in his own lines long ago.”–Page 7.
[6] Of this want of talent the reader may find sufficient proof in the extracts from his Grace’s reflections upon “Absalom and Achitophel.”
[7] See “Key to the Rehearsal.” “Our most noble author, to manifest his just indignation and hatred of this fulsome new way of writing, used his utmost interest and endeavours to stifle it at its first appearance on the stage, by engaging all his friends to explode and run down these plays; especially the ‘United Kingdoms,’ which had like to have brought his life into danger.
“The author of it being nobly born, of an ancient and numerous family, had many of his relations and friends in the cock-pit during the acting of it. Some of them perceiving his Grace to head a party, who were very active in damning the play, by hissing and laughing immoderately at the strange conduct thereof, there were persons laid wait for him as he came out; but there being a great tumult and uproar in the house and the passages near it, he escaped; but he was threatened hard. However, the business was composed in a short time, though by what means I have not been informed.” The trade of criticism was not uniformly safe in these days. In the Preface to the “Reformation,” a beau is only directed to venture to abuse a new play, _if he knows, the author is no fighter._
[8] [Scott has Dryden’s authority (in the letter to Hyde already referred to) for this word, but it is pretty certainly rhetorical. See article on “Butler,” by the present writer, in the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_, ninth edition.–ED.]
[9] [It may be well to mention that the editions of the “Rehearsal” are very numerous, and that fresh parodies of fresh plays as they appeared were incorporated in them. Scott does not seem to have been fully aware of this.–ED.]
[10] Preface to “An Evening’s Love.”
[11] Mr. Malone inclines to think there is no allusion to “Marriage a la Mode” in the “Rehearsal.” But surely the whimsical distress of Prince Prettyman, “sometimes a fisher’s son, sometimes a prince,” is precisely that of Leonidas, who is first introduced as the son of a shepherd; secondly, discovered to be the son of an unlawful king called Polydamas; thirdly, proved anew to be the son of the shepherd, and finally proved to be the son of neither of them, but of the lawful king, Theogenes. Besides, the author of the “Key to the Rehearsal” points out a parallel between the revolution of state in the farce, and that by which Leonidas, after being carried off to execution, on a sudden snatches a sword from one of the guards, proclaims himself rightful king, and, without more ceremony, deposes the powerful and jealous usurper, who had sentenced him to death.
[12] Spence’s “Anecdotes,” quoted by Mr. Malone, vol. i. p. 106.
[13] “I answered not the ‘Rehearsal,’ because I knew the author sat to himself when he drew the picture, and was the very Bayes of his own farce; because also I knew, that my betters were more concerned than I was in that satire; and, lastly, because Mr. Smith and Mr. Johnson, the main pillars of it, were two such languishing gentlemen in their conversation, that I could liken them to nothing but to their own relations, those noble characters of men of wit and pleasure about the town.”–_Dedication to Juvenal_.
[14] The pains which Dryden bestowed on the character of Zimri, and the esteem in which he held it, is evident from his quoting it as the master-piece of his own satire. “The character of Zimri in my ‘Absalom’ is, in my opinion, worth the whole poem: it is not bloody, but it is ridiculous enough; and he, for him it was intended, was too witty to resent it as an injury. If I had railed, I might have suffered for it justly; but I managed my own work more happily, perhaps more dexterously. I avoided the mention of great crimes, and applied myself to the representing of blind-sides, and little extravagancies; to which, the wittier a man is, he is generally the more obnoxious. It succeeded as I wished; the jest went round, and he was laughed at in his turn who began the frolic.”
[15] In one of Cibber’s moods of alteration, he combined the comic scenes of these two plays into a comedy entitled, “The Comical Lovers.”
[16]
“You are changed too, and your pretence to see Is but a nobler name for charity;
Your own provisions furnish out our feasts, While you, the founders, make yourselves the guests.”–Vol. x.
[17]
“Some have expected, from our bills to-day, To find a satire in our poet’s ploy.
The zealous route from Coleman street did run. To see the story of the Friar and Nun;
Or tales yet more ridiculous to hear, Vouched by their vicar often pounds a-year,– Nuns who did against temptation pray,
And discipline laid on the pleasant way: Or that, to please the malice of the town, Our poet should in some close cell have shown Some sister, playing at content alone.
This they did hope; the other side did fear; And both, you see, alike are cozened here.”
[18]
“_Bayes._ I remember once, in a play of mine, I set off a scene, i’gad, beyond expectation, only with a petticoat and the belly-ache.
_Smith_. Pray, how was that, sir?
_Bayes_. Why, sir, I contrived a petticoat to be brought in upon a chair (nobody knew how), into a prince’s chamber, whose father was now to see it, that came in by chance.
_Johns_. God’s-my-life, that was a notable contrivance indeed!
_Smith_. Ay, but, Mr. Bayes, how could you contrive the belly-ache?
_Bayes._ The easiest i’ the world, i’gad: I’ll tell you how; I made the prince sit down upon the petticoat, no more than so, and pretended to his father that he had just then got the belly-ache; whereupon his father went out to call a physician, and his man ran away with the petticoat.”–_Rehearsal_.
[19] Not Matthew, but Martin, as it is correctly printed before.–Ed.
[20] “To begin with your character of Almanzor, which you avow to have taken from the Achilles in Homer; pray hear what Famianus Strada says of such talkers as Mr. Dryden: _Ridere soleo, cum video homines ab Homeri virtibus strenue declinates, si quid vero irrepsi vitii, id avide arripientes._ But I might have spared this quotation, and you your avowing; for this character might as well have been borrowed from some of the stalls in Bedlam, or any of your own hair-brained cox-combs which you call heroes, and persons of honour. I remember just such another fuming Achilles in Shakespeare, one ancient Pistol, whom he avows to be a man of so fiery a temper, and so impatient of an injury, even from Sir John Falstaff his captain, and a knight, that he not only disobeyed his commands about carrying a letter to Mrs. Page, but returned him an answer as full of contumely, and in as opprobrious terms, as he could imagine:
‘Let vultures gripe thy guts, for gourd and Fullam holds, And high and low beguiles the rich and poor. Tester I’ll have in pouch, when thou shalt lack, Base Phrygian Turk,’ etc.
“Let’s see e’er an Abencerrago fly a higher pitch. Take him at another turn, quarrelling with corporal Nym and old Zegri: The difference arose about mine hostess Quickly (for I would not give a rush for a man unless he be particular in matters of this moment); they both aimed at her body, but Abencerrago Pistol defies his rival in these words:
‘Fetch from the powdering-tub of infamy That lazar-kite of Cressid’s kind,
Doll Tearsheet, she by name, and her espouse: I have, and I will hold,
The quondam Quickly for the only she. And _pauca_.’
There’s enough. Does not quotation sound as well as I[20a]?
“But the four sons of Aminon, the three bold Beachams, the four London Prentices, Tamerlain, the Scythian Shepherd, Muleasses, Amurath, and Bajazet, or any raging Turk at the Red-bull and Fortune, might as well have been urged by you as a pattern of your Almanzor, as the Achilles in Homer; but then our laureate had not passed for so learned a man as he desires his unlearned admirers should esteem him.
“But I am strangely mistaken, if I have not seen this very Almanzor of your’s in some disguise about this town, and passing under another name. Prithee tell me true, was not this huff-cap once the Indian Emperor, and, at another time, did not he call himself Maximme? Was not Lyndaraxa once called Almeria, I mean under Montezuma the Indian Emperor? I protest and vow they are either the same, or so alike, that I can’t for my heart distinguish one from the other. You are, therefore, a strange unconscionable thief, that art not content to steal from others, but do’st rob thy poor wretched self too.”
[20a] [There is no I in the original where Clifford quotes:
[Greek: Oinobares, kunos ommat echon kradiaen d elaphoio. Daemoboros basileus.]
I owe my copy of this curious monument of belated spite to the kindness of Mr. Austin Dobson.–ED.]
[21] “Amongst several other late exercises of the Athenian virtuosi in the Coffee-academy, instituted by Apollo for the advancement of Gazette Philosophy, Mercury’s, Diurnalli, etc., this day was wholly taken up in the examination of the ‘Conquest of Granada.’ A gentleman on the reading of the First Part, and there in the description of the bull-baiting, said, that Almanzor’s playing at the bull was according to the standard of the Greek heroes, who, as Mr. Dryden had learnedly observed (Essay of Dramatic Poesy), were great beef-eaters. And why might not Almanzor as well as Ajax, or Don Quixote, worry mutton, or take a bull by the throat, since the author had elsewhere explained himself, by telling us the heroes were more noble beasts of prey, in his Epistle to his ‘Conquest of Granada,’ distinguishing them into wild and tame; and in his play we have Almanzor shaking his chains, and frighting his keeper, broke loose, and tearing those that would reclaim his rage. To this he added, that his bulls excelled other heroes, as far as his own heroes surpassed his gods; that the champion bull was divested of flesh and blood, and made immortal by the poet, and bellowed after death; that the fantastic bull seemed fiercer than the true, and the dead bellowings in verse were louder than the living; concluding with a wish, that Mr. Dryden had the good luck to have varied that old verse quoted in his dramatic essay:
‘_Atque Ursum, el Pugiles media inter carmina poscunt Tauros, et Pugiles pruna inter carmina posco_;’
and prefixed it to the front of his play, instead of
‘_Major rerum mihi nascitur ordo,
Majus ojius moveo_.'”
–_Censure of the Rota_, p. 1.
[22] “But however, if he were taken for no good comic poet, or satirist, he had found a way of much easier licence (though more remarkable in the sense of some), which was, not only to libel men’s persons, but to represent them on the stage too. That to this purpose he made his observations of men, their words, and actions, with so little disguise, that many beheld themselves acted for their half-crown; yet, after all, was unwilling to believe, that this was not both good comedy, and no less good manners.”–_Friendly Vindication of Mr. Dryden_, p. 8.
[23] Dedication to the “Assignation.”
[24] Dryden either confines himself to two pamphlets, or, more probably, speaks of the three as written by only two authors. Leigh is, I presume, the contemptible pedant, and the Sir Fastidious Brisk of Oxford. The Cambridge author, who imitated his style, is the Fungoso of the Dedication:–“As for the errors they pretend to find in me, I could easily show them that the greatest part of them are beauties; and for the rest, I could recriminate upon the best poets of our nation, if I could resolve to accuse another of little faults, whom at the same time I admire for greater excellencies. But I have neither concernment enough upon me to write any thing in my own defence, neither will I gratify the ambition of two wretched scribblers, who desire nothing more than to be answered. I have not wanted friends, even amongst strangers, who have defended me more strongly than my contemptible pedant could attack me; for the other, he is only like Fungoso in the play, who follows the fashion at a distance, and adores the Fastidious Brisk of Oxford. You can bear me witness, that I have not consideration enough for either of them to be angry: let Maevius and Bavius admire each other; I wish to be hated by them and their fellows, by the same reason for which I desire to be loved by you.”–_Dedication to the Assignation_, vol. iv.
[25] A student of law in the Temple, and author of that notable alteration of “Titus Andronicus” mentioned in the commentaries on Shakespeare. Besides the “Citizen turned Gentleman,” he wrote the “Careless Lovers,” “Scaramouch, a Philosopher,” the “Wrangling Lovers,” “Edgar and Alfreda,” the “English Lawyer,” the “London Cuckolds,” distinguished by Cibber as the grossest play that ever succeeded, “Dame Dobson,” the said alteration of “Titus Andronicus,” the “Canterbury Guests,” and the “Italian Husband,”–in all twelve plays, not one of which has the least merit.
[26]
“An author did, to please you, let his wit run, Of late, much on a serving-man and cittern; And yet, you would not like the serenade,– Nay, and you damned his nuns in masquerade; You did his Spanish sing-song too abhor; _Ah! que locura con tanto rigor!_
In fine, the whole by you so much was blamed, To act their parts, the players were ashamed. Ah, how severe your malice was that day! To damn, at once, the poet and his play: But why was your rage just at that time shown, When what the author writ was all his own? Till then, he borrowed from romance, and did translate; And those plays found a mere indulgent fate.”
[27] “For my own part, I, who am the least among the poets, have yet the fortune to be honoured with the _best patron_, and the best friend; for (to omit some great persons of our court, to whom I am many ways obliged, and who have taken care of me during the exigencies of a war.) I have found a better Maecenas in the person of my Lord Treasurer Clifford, and a more elegant Tibullus in that of Sir Charles Sedley.”– _Dedication to the Assignation_.
[28] In his Dedication of the Pastorals of Virgil to Hugh Lord Clifford, he says: “I have no reason to complain of fortune, since, in the midst of that abundance, I could not have chosen better than the worthy son of so illustrious a father. He was the patron of my manhood, when I flourished in the opinion of the world, though with small advantage to my fortune, till he awakened the remembrance of my royal master. He was that Pollio, or that Varus, _who introduced me to Augustus_.”
[29] The elder Richardson has told a story, that Lord Buckhurst, afterwards Earl of Dorset, was the first who introduced the “Paradise Lost,” then lying like waste paper in the bookseller’s hands, to the notice of Dryden. But this tradition has been justly exploded by Mr. Malone, _Life of Dryden_, vol. i. p. 114. Indeed it is by no means likely that Dryden could be a stranger to the very existence of a large poem, written by a man of such political as well as literary eminence, even if he had not happened, as was the case, to be personally known to the author. [The various legends as to Dryden and “Paradise Lost,” Dorset and “Paradise Lost,” etc., are well handled by Professor Masson, _Life of Milton_, vol. vi. pp. 628-635.–ED.]
[30] Dennis’s Letters, quoted by Malone.
[31]
“With thee conversing, I forget all time, All seasons, and their change; all please alike: Sweet is the breath of morn, her rising sweet, With charm of earliest birds: pleasant the sun, When first on this delightful land he spreads His orient beams, on herb, tree, fruit, and flower, Glist’ning with dew: fragrant the fertile earth After soft showers, and sweet the coming on Of grateful evening mild: then, silent night, With this her solemn bird, and this fair moon, And these the gems of heaven, her starry train: But neither breath of morn, when she ascends With charm of earliest birds; nor rising sun On this delightful land; nor herb, fruit, flower, Glist’ning with dew; nor fragrance after showers; Nor grateful evening mild; nor silent night, With this her solemn bird; nor walk by moon; Or glittering star-light, without thee is sweet.”
“The variety of images in this passage is infinitely pleasing, and the recapitulation of each particular image, with a little varying of the expression, makes one of the finest turns of words that I have ever seen; which I rather mention, because Mr. Dryden has said, in his Preface to Juvenal, that he could meet with no turn of words in Milton.”–_Tatler_, No. 114.
[32] See this Epistle. It was prefixed to “Alexander the Great;” a play, the merits and faults of which are both in extreme.
SECTION IV.
_Dryden’s Controversy with Settle–with Rochester–He is assaulted in Rose-street–Aureng-Zebe–Dryden meditates an Epic Poem–All for Love– Limberham–Oedipus–Troilus and Cressida–The Spanish Friar–Dryden supposed to be in opposition to the Court._
“The State of Innocence” was published in 1674, and “Aureng-Zebe,” Dryden’s next tragedy, appeared in 1675. In the interval, he informs us, his ardour for rhyming plays had considerably abated. The course of study which he imposed on himself doubtless led him to this conclusion. But it is also possible, that he found the peculiar facilities of that drama had excited the emulation of very inferior poets, who, by dint of show, rant, and clamorous hexameters, were likely to divide with him the public favour. Before proceeding, therefore, to state the gradual alteration in Dryden’s own taste, we must perform the task of detailing the literary quarrels in which he was at this period engaged. The chief of his rivals was Elkanah Settle, a person afterwards utterly contemptible; but who, first by the strength of a party at court, and afterwards by a faction in the state, was, for a time, buoyed up in opposition to Dryden. It is impossible to detail the progress of the contest for public favour between these two ill-matched rivals, without noticing at the same time Dryden’s quarrel with Rochester, who appears to have played off Settle in opposition to him, as absolutely, and nearly as successfully, as Settle ever played off the literary [literal?] puppets, for which, in the ebb of his fortune, he wrote dramas.
In the year 1673, Dryden and Rochester were on such friendly terms, that our poet inscribed to his lordship his favourite play of “Marriage a la Mode;” not without acknowledgment of the deepest gratitude for favours done to his fortune and reputation. The dedication, we have seen, was so favourably accepted by Rochester, that the reception called forth a second tribute of thanks from the poet to the patron. But at this point, the interchange of kindness and of civility received a sudden and irrecoverable check. This was partly owing to Rochester’s fickle and jealous temper, which induced him alternately to raise and depress the men of parts whom he loved to patronise; so that no one should ever become independent of his favour, or so rooted in the public opinion as to be beyond the reach of his satire; but it may also in part be attributed to Dryden’s attachment to Sheffield, Earl of Mulgrave, afterwards Duke of Buckingham, then Rochester’s rival in wit and court-favour, and from whom he had sustained a deadly affront, on an occasion, which, as the remote cause of a curious incident in Dryden’s life, I have elsewhere detailed in the words of Sheffield himself. Rochester, who was branded as a coward in consequence of this transaction, must be reasonably supposed to entertain a sincere hatred against Mulgrave; with whom he had once lived on such friendly terms as to inscribe to him an Epistle on their mutual poems. But, as his nerves had proved unequal to a personal conflict with his brother peer, his malice prompted the discharge of his spleen upon those men of literature whom his antagonist cherished and patronised. Among these Dryden held a distinguished situation; for about 1675 he was, as we shall presently see, sufficiently in Sheffield’s confidence to correct and revise that nobleman’s poetry;[1] and in 1676 dedicated to him the tragedy of “Aureng-Zebe,” as one who enjoyed not only his favour, but his love and conversation. Thus Dryden was obnoxious to Rochester, both as holding a station among the authors of the period, grievous to the vanity of one who aimed, by a levelling and dividing system, to be the tyrant, or at least the dictator, of wit; and also as the friend, and even the confidant, of Mulgrave, by whom the witty profligate had been baffled and humiliated. Dryden was therefore to be lowered in the public opinion; and for this purpose, Rochester made use of Elkanah Settle, whom, though he gratified his malice by placing him in opposition to Dryden, he must, in his heart, have thoroughly despised.[2]
This playwright, whom the jealous spleen of a favourite courtier, and the misjudging taste of a promiscuous audience, placed for some time in so high a station, came into notice in 1671, on the representation of his first play, “Cambyses, King of Persia,” which was played six nights successively. This run of public favour gave Rochester some pretence to bring Settle to the notice of the king; and, through the efforts of this mischievous wit, joined to the natural disposition of the people to be carried by show, rant, and tumult, Settle’s second play, “The Empress of Morocco,” was acted with unanimous and overpowering applause for a month together. To add to Dryden’s mortification, Rochester had interest enough to have this tragedy of one whom he had elevated into the rank of his rival, first acted at Whitehall by the lords and ladies of the court; an honour which had never been paid to any of Dryden’s compositions, however more justly entitled to it, both from intrinsic merit, and by the author’s situation as poet-laureate. Rochester contributed a prologue upon this brilliant occasion to add still more grace to Settle’s triumph; but what seems yet more extraordinary, and has, I think, been unnoticed in all accounts of the controversy, Mulgrave,[3] Rochester’s rival and the friend of Dryden, did the same homage to “The Empress of Morocco.” From the king’s private theatre, “The Empress of Morocco” was transferred, in all its honours, to the public stage in Dorset Gardens, and received with applause corresponding to the expectation excited by its favour at Whitehall. While the court and city were thus worshipping the idol which Rochester had set up, it could hardly be expected of poor Settle, that he should be first to discern his own want of desert. On the contrary, he grew presumptuous on success; and when he printed his performance, the dedication to the Earl of Norwich was directly levelled against the poet-laureate who termed it the “most arrogant, calumniatory, ill-mannered, and senseless preface he ever saw.”[4] And, to add gall to bitterness, the bookseller thought “The Empress of Morocco” worthy of being decorated with engravings, and sold at the advanced price of two shillings; being the first drama advanced to such honourable distinction.[5] Moreover, the play is ostentatiously stated in the title to be written by Elkanah Settle, _Servant to His Majesty_;[6] an addition which the laureate had assumed with greater propriety.
If we are asked the merit of a performance which made such an impression at the time, we may borrow an expression applied to a certain orator,[7] and say, that “The Empress of Morocco” must have acted _to the tune_ of a good heroic play. It had all the outward and visible requisites of splendid scenery, prisons, palaces, fleets, combats of desperate duration and uncertain issue,[8] assassinations, a dancing tree, a rainbow, a shower of hail, a criminal executed,[9] and hell itself opening upon the stage. The rhyming dialogue too, in which the play was written, had an imperative and tyrannical sound; and to a foreigner, ignorant of the language, might have appeared as magnificent as that of Dryden. But it must raise our admiration, that the witty court of Charles could patiently listen to a “tale told by an idiot, full of noise and fury, signifying nothing,” and give it a preference over the poetry of Dryden. The following description of a hail-storm will vindicate our wonder:
“This morning, as our eyes we upward cast, The desert regions of the air lay waste. But straight, as if it had some penance bore, A mourning garb of thick black clouds it wore. But on the sudden,
Some aery demon changed its form, and now That which looked black above looked white below; The clouds dishevelled from their crusted locks, Something like gems coined out of crystal rocks. The ground was with this strange bright issue spread, As if heaven in affront to nature had
Designed some new-found tillage of its own, And on the earth these unknown seeds had sown. Of these I reached a grain, which to my sense Appeared as cool as virgin-innocence;
And like that too (which chiefly I admired), Its ravished whiteness with a touch expired. At the approach of heat, this candid rain Dissolved to its first element again.
_Muly-H._ Though showers of hail Morocco never see, Dull priest, what does all this portend to me?
_Ham_. It does portend–
_Muly._ What?
_Ham_. That the fates design–
_Muly_. To tire me with impertinence like thine.”
Such were the strains once preferred to the magnificent verses of Dryden; whose very worst bombast is sublimity compared to them. To prove which, the reader need only peruse the Indian’s account of the Spanish fleet in the “Indian Emperor,” to which the above lines are a parallel; each being the description of an object familiar to the audience, but new to the describer. The poet felt the disgraceful preference more deeply than was altogether becoming; but he had levelled his powers, says Johnson, when he levelled his desires to those of Settle, and placed his happiness in the claps of multitudes. The moral may be carried yet further; for had not Dryden stooped to call to the aid of his poetry the auxiliaries of scenery, gilded truncheons, and verse of more noise than meaning, it is impossible his plays could have been drawn into comparison with those of Settle. But the meretricious ornaments which he himself had introduced were within the reach of the meanest capacity; and, having been among the first to debauch the taste of the public, it was retributive justice that he should experience their inconstancy. Indeed Dryden seems himself to admit, that the principal difference between his heroic plays and “The Empress of Morocco,” was, that the former were good sense, that looked like nonsense, and the latter nonsense, which yet looked very like sense. A nice distinction, and which argued some regret at having opened the way to such a rival.
The feelings of contempt ought to have suppressed those of anger; but Dryden, who professedly lived to please his own age, had not temper to wait till time should do him justice. Angry he was; and unfortunately he determined to shew the world that he did well in being so. With this view, in conjunction with Shadwell and Crowne, two brother-dramatists, equally jealous of Settle’s success, he composed a pamphlet, entitled “Remarks upon the Empress of Morocco.” This piece is written in the same tone of boisterous and vulgar raillery with which Clifford and Leigh had assailed Dryden himself; and little resembles our poet’s general style of controversy. He seems to have exchanged his satirical scourge for the clumsy flail of Shadwell, when he stooped to use such raillery as the following description of Settle: “In short, he is an animal of a most deplored understanding, without reading and conversation: his being is in a twilight of sense, and some glimmering of thought, which he can never fashion either into wit or English. His style is boisterous and rough-hewn; his rhyme incorrigibly lewd, and his numbers perpetually harsh and ill-sounding.”
Settle, nothing dismayed with this vehement attack, manfully retorted the abuse which had been thrown upon him, and answered the insulting clamour of his three antagonists with clamorous insult.[10] It was obvious that the weaker poet must be the winner by this contest in abuse; and Dryden gained no more by his dispute with Settle, than a well-dressed man who should condescend to wrestle with a chimney-sweeper. The feud between them was carried no further, until, after the publication of “Absalom and Achitophel,” party animosity added spurs to literary rivalry.
We must now return to Rochester, who, observing Settle’s rise to his unmerited elevation in the public opinion, became as anxious to lower his presumption as he had formerly been to diminish the reputation of Dryden. With this view, that tyrannical person of honour availed himself of his credit to recommend Crowne to write the masque of “Calisto,” which was acted by the lords and ladies of the court of Charles in 1675. Nothing could be more galling towards Dryden, a part of whose duty as poet-laureate was to compose the pieces designed for such occasions. Crowne, though he was a tolerable comic writer,[11] had no turn whatever for tragedy, or indeed for poetry of any kind. But the splendour of the scenery and dresses, the quality of the performers, selected from the first nobility, and the favour of the sovereign, gave “Calisto” a run of nearly thirty nights. Dryden, though mortified, tendered his services in the shape of an epilogue, to be spoken by Lady Henrietta Maria Wentworth.[12] But the influence of his enemy, Rochester, was still predominant, and the epilogue of the laureate was rejected.[13]
The author of “Calisto” also lost his credit with Rochester, so soon as he became generally popular; and shortly after the representation of that piece, its fickle patron seems to have recommended to the royal protection, a rival more formidable to Dryden than either Settle or “starch Johnny Crowne.”[14] This was no other than Otway, whose “Don Carlos” appeared in 1676, and was hailed as one of the best heroic plays which had been written. The author avows in his preface the obligations he owed to Rochester, who had recommended him to the king and the duke, to whose favour he owed his good success, and on whose indulgence he reckoned as insuring that of his next attempt.[15] These effusions of gratitude did not, as Mr. Malone observes, withhold Rochester, shortly after, from lampooning Otway, with circumstances of gross insult, in the “Session of the Poets.”[16] In the same preface, Otway, in very intelligible language, bade defiance to Dryden whom he charges with having spoken slightly of his play.[17] But although Dryden did not admire the general structure of Otway’s poetry, he is said, even at this time, to have borne witness to his power of moving the passions; an acknowledgment which he long afterwards solemnly repeated. Thus Otway, like many others, mistook the character of a pretended friend, and did injustice to that of a liberal rival. Dryden and he indeed never appear to have been personal friends, even when they both wrote in the Tory interest. It was probably about this time that Otway challenged Settle, whose courage appears to have failed him upon the occasion.
Rochester was not content with exciting rivals against Dryden in the public opinion, but assailed him personally in an imitation of Horace, which he quaintly entitled, “An Allusion to the Tenth Satire.” It came out anonymously about 1678, but the town was at no loss to guess that Rochester was the patron or author. Much of the satire was bestowed on Dryden, whom Rochester for the first time distinguishes by a ridiculous nickname, which was afterwards echoed by imitating dunces in all their lampoons. The lines are more cutting, because mingled with as much praise as the writer probably thought necessary to gain the credit of a candid critic.[18] Dryden, on his part, did not view with indifference these repeated direct and indirect attacks on his literary reputation by Rochester. In the preface to “All for Love,” published in 1678, he gives a severe rebuke to those men of rank, who, having acquired the credit of wit, either by virtue of their quality, or by common fame, and finding themselves possessed of some smattering of Latin, become ambitious to distinguish themselves by their poetry from the herd of gentlemen. “And is not this,” he exclaims, “a wretched affectation, not to be contented with what fortune has done for them, and sit down quietly with their estates, but they must call their wits in question, and needlessly expose their nakedness to public view? Not considering that they are not to expect the same approbation from sober men, which they have found from their flatterers after the third bottle. If a little glittering in discourse has passed them on us for witty men, where was the necessity of undeceiving the world? Would a man who has an ill title to an estate, but yet is in possession of it; would he bring it of his own accord to be tried at Westminster? We who write, if we want the talent, yet have the excuse, that we do it for a poor subsistence; but what can be urged in their defence, who, not having the vocation of poverty to scribble out of mere wantonness, take pains to make themselves ridiculous? Horace was certainly in the right, where he said, ‘That no man is satisfied with his own condition.’ A poet is not pleased, because he is not rich; and the rich are discontented, because the poets will not admit them of their number. Thus the case is hard with writers: if they succeed not, they must starve; and if they do, some malicious satire is prepared to level them, for daring to please without their leave. But while they are so eager to destroy the fame of others, their ambition is manifest in their concernment; some poem of their own is to be produced, and the slaves are to be laid flat with their faces on the ground, that the monarch may appear in the greater majesty.” This general censure of the persons of wit and honour about town, is fixed on Rochester in particular not only by the marked allusion in the last sentence, to the despotic tyranny which he claimed over the authors of his time, but also by a direct attack upon such imitators of Horace, who make doggrel of his Latin, misapply his censures, and often contradict their own. It is remarkable, however, that he ascribes this imitation rather to some zany of the great, than to one of their number; and seems to have thought Rochester rather the patron than the author.
At the expense of anticipating the order of events, and that we may bring Dryden’s dispute with Rochester to a conclusion, we must recall to the reader’s recollection our author’s friendship with Mulgrave. This appears to have been so intimate, that, in 1675, that nobleman intrusted him with the task of revising his “Essay upon Satire:” a poem which contained dishonourable mention of many courtiers of the time, and was particularly severe on Sir Car Scrope and Rochester. The last of these is taxed with cowardice, and a thousand odious and mean vices; upbraided with the grossness and scurrility of his writings, and with the infamous profligacy of his life.[19] The versification of the poem is as flat and inharmonious, as the plan is careless and ill-arranged; and though the imputation was to cost Dryden dear, I cannot think that any part of the “Essay on Satire” received additions from his pen. Probably he might contribute a few hints for revision; but the author of “Absalom and Achitophel” could never completely disguise the powers which were shortly to produce that brilliant satire. Dryden’s verses must have shone among Mulgrave’s as gold beside copper. The whole Essay is a mere stagnant level, no one part of it so far rising above the rest as to bespeak the work of a superior hand. The thoughts, even when conceived with some spirit, are clumsily and unhappily brought out; a fault never to be traced in the beautiful language of Dryden, whose powers of expression were at least equal to his force of conception. Besides, as Mr. Malone has observed, he had now brought to the highest excellence his system of versification; and is it possible he could neglect it so far as to write the rugged lines in the note, where all manner of elliptical barbarisms are resorted to, for squeezing the words into a measure “lame and o’erburdened, and screaming its wretchedness”? The “Essay on Satire” was finally subjected by the noble author to the criticism of Pope, who, less scrupulous than Dryden, appears to have made large improvements; but after having undergone the revision of two of the first names in English poetry, it continues to be a very indifferent performance.
In another point of view, it seems inconsistent with Dryden’s situation to suppose he had any active share in the “Essay on Satire.” The character of Charles is treated with great severity, as well as those of the Duchesses of Portsmouth and Cleveland, the royal mistresses. This was quite consistent with Mulgrave’s disposition, who was at this time discontented with the ministry; but certainly would not have beseemed Dryden, who held an office at court. Sedley also, with whom Dryden always seems to have lived on friendly terms, is harshly treated in the “Essay on Satire.” It may be owned, however, that these reasons were not held powerful at the time, since they must, in that case, have saved Dryden from the inconvenient suspicion which, we will presently see, attached to him. The public were accustomed to see the friendship of wits end in mutual satire; and the good-natured Charles was so generally the subject of the ridicule which he loved, that no one seems to have thought there was improbability in a libel being composed on him by his own laureate.
The “Essay on Satire,” though written, as appears from the title-page of the last edition, in 1675, was not made public until 1679, when several copies were handed about in manuscript. Rochester sends one of these to his friend Henry Saville, on the 21st of November 1679, with this observation:–“I have sent you herewith a libel, in which my own share is not the least. The king, having perused it, is no way dissatisfied with his. The author is apparently Mr. Dr[yden], his patron, Lord M[ulgrave,] having a panegyric in the midst.” From hence it is evident, that Dryden obtained the reputation of being the author; in consequence of which, Rochester meditated the base and cowardly revenge which he afterwards executed; and he thus coolly expressed his intention in another of his letters:–“You write me word, that I’m out of favour with a certain poet, whom I have admired for the disproportion of him and his attributes. He is a rarity which I cannot but be fond of, as one would be of a hog that could fiddle, or a singing owl. If he falls on me at the blunt, which is his very good weapon in wit, I will forgive him if you please; and _leave the repartee to black Will with a cudgel_.”
In pursuance of this infamous resolution, Dryden, upon the night of the 18th December 1679, was waylaid by hired ruffians, and severely beaten, as he passed through Rose-street, Covent-garden returning from Will’s Coffee-house to his own house in Gerrard-street. A reward of L50 was in vain offered, in the London Gazette and other newspapers, for the discovery of the perpetrators of this outrage.[20] The town was, however, at no loss to pitch upon Rochester as the employer of the bravoes, with whom the public suspicion joined the Duchess of Portsmouth, equally concerned in the supposed affront thus avenged. In our time, were a nobleman to have recourse to hired bravoes to avenge his personal quarrel against any one, more especially a person holding the rank of a gentleman, he might lay his account with being hunted out of society. But in the age of Charles, the ancient high and chivalrous sense of honour was esteemed Quixotic, and the civil war had left traces of ferocity in the manners and sentiments of the people. Rencounters, where the assailants took all advantages of number and weapons, were as frequent, and held as honourable, as regular duels. Some of these approached closely to assassination; as in the famous case of Sir John Coventry, who was waylaid, and had his nose slit by some young men of high rank, for a reflection upon the king’s theatrical amours. This occasioned the famous statute against maiming and wounding, called the Coventry Act; an Act highly necessary, since so far did our ancestors’ ideas of manly forbearance differ from ours, that Killigrew introduces the hero of one of his comedies, a cavalier, and the fine gentleman of the piece, lying in wait for, and slashing the face of a poor courtezan, who had cheated him.[21] It will certainly be admitted, that a man, surprised in the dark and beaten by ruffians, loses no honour by such a misfortune. But, if Dryden had received the same discipline from Rochester’s own hand without resenting it, his drubbing could not have been more frequently made a matter of reproach to him;–a sign surely of the penury of subjects for satire in his life and character, since an accident, which might have happened to the greatest hero who ever lived, was resorted to as an imputation on his honour. The Rose-alley ambuscade became almost proverbial;[22] and even Mulgrave, the real author of the satire, and upon whose shoulders the blows ought in justice to have descended, mentions the circumstance in his “Art of Poetry;” with a cold and self-sufficient complacent sneer:
“Though praised and punished for another’s rhymes, His own deserve as great applause _sometimes_.”
To which is added in a note, “A libel for which he was both applauded and wounded, though entirely ignorant of the whole matter.” This flat and conceited couplet, and note, the noble author judged it proper to omit in the corrected edition of his poem. Otway alone, no longer the friend of Rochester, and perhaps no longer the enemy of Dryden, has spoken of the author of this dastardly outrage with the contempt his cowardly malice deserved:
“Poets in honour of the truth should write, With the same spirit brave men for it fight; And though against him causeless hatreds rise, And daily where he goes, of late, he spies The scowls of sullen and revengeful eyes; ‘Tis what he knows with much contempt to bear, And serves a cause too good to let him fear: He fears no poison from incensed drab,
No ruffian’s five-foot sword, nor rascal’s stab; Nor any other snares of mischief laid,
_Not a Rose-alley cudgel ambuscade_; From any private cause where malice reigns, Or general pique all blockheads have to brains.”
It does not appear that Dryden ever thought it worth his while to take revenge on Rochester; and the only allusion to him in his writings may be found in the Essay prefixed to the translation of Juvenal, where he is mentioned as a man of quality, whose ashes our author was unwilling to disturb, and who had paid Dorset, to whom that piece is inscribed, the highest compliment which his self-sufficiency could afford to any one. Perhaps Dryden remembered Rochester among others, when, in the same piece, he takes credit for resisting opportunities and temptation to take revenge, even upon those by whom he had been notoriously and wantonly provoked.[23]
The detail of these quarrels has interrupted our account of Dryden’s writings, which we are now to resume.
“Aureng-Zebe” was his first performance after the failure of the “Assignation.” It was acted in 1675 with general applause. “Aureng-Zebe” is a heroic, or rhyming play, but not cast in a mould quite so romantic as the “Conquest of Granada.” There is a grave and moral turn in many of the speeches, which brings it nearer the style of a French tragedy. It is true, the character of Moral borders upon extravagance; but a certain licence has been always given to theatrical tyrants, and we excuse bombast in him more readily than in Almanzor. There is perhaps some reason for this indulgence. The possession of unlimited power, vested in active and mercurial characters, naturally drives them to an extravagant indulgence of passion, bordering upon insanity; and it follows, that their language must outstrip the modesty of nature. Propriety of diction in the drama is relative, and to be referred more to individual character than to general rules: to make a tyrant sober-minded is to make a madman rational. But this discretion must be used with great caution by the writer, lest he should confound the terrible with the burlesque. Two great actors, Kynaston and Booth, differed in their style of playing Morat.
The former, who was the original performer, and doubtless had his instructions from the author, gave full force to the sentiments of avowed and barbarous vainglory, which mark the character. When he is determined to spare Aureng-Zebe, and Nourmahal pleads,
“Twill not be safe to let him live an hour,”
Kynaston gave all the stern and haughty insolence of despotism to his answer,
“I’ll do’t to show my arbitrary power.”[24]
But Booth, with modest caution, avoided marking and pressing upon the audience a sentiment hovering between the comic and terrible, however consonant to the character by whom it was delivered. The principal incident in “Aureng-Zebe” was suggested by King Charles himself. The tragedy is dedicated to Mulgrave, whose patronage had been so effectual, as to introduce Dryden and his poetical schemes to the peculiar notice of the king and duke. The dedication and the prologue of this piece throw considerable light upon these plans, as well as upon the revolution which had gradually taken place in Dryden’s dramatic taste.
During the space which occurred between writing the “Conquest of Granada” and “Aureng-Zebe”, our author’s researches into the nature and causes of harmony of versification been unremitted, and he had probably already collected the materials of his intended English _Prosodia_. Besides this labour, he had been engaged in a closer and more critical examination of the ancient English poets, than he had before bestowed upon them. These studies seem to have led Dryden to two conclusions: first, that the drama ought to be emancipated from the fetters of rhyme; and secondly, that he ought to employ the system of versification, which he had now perfected, to the more legitimate purpose of epic poetry. Each of these opinions merits consideration.
However hardily Dryden stood forward in defence of the heroic plays, he confessed, even in the heat of argument, that Rhyme, though he was brave and generous, and his dominion pleasing, had still somewhat of the usurper in him. A more minute inquiry seems to have still further demonstrated the weakness of this usurped dominion; and our author’s good taste and practice speedily pointed out deficiencies and difficulties, which Sir Robert Howard, against whom he defended the use of rhyme, could not show, because he never aimed at the excellencies which they impeded. The perusal of Shakespeare, on whom Dryden had now turned his attention, led him to feel, that something further might be attained in tragedy than the expression of exaggerated sentiment in smooth verse, and that the scene ought to represent not a fanciful set of agents exerting their superhuman faculties in a fairy-land of the poet’s own creation, but human characters, acting from the direct and energetic influence of human passions, with whose emotions the audience might sympathise, because akin to the feelings of their own hearts. When Dryden had once discovered, that fear and pity were more likely to be excited by other causes than the logic of metaphysical love, or the dictates of fantastic honour, he must have found, that rhyme sounded as unnatural in the dialogue of characters drawn upon the usual scale of humanity, as the plate and mail of chivalry would have appeared on the persons of the actors. The following lines of the Prologue to “Aureng-Zebe,” although prefixed to a rhyming play, the last which he ever wrote, express Dryden’s change of sentiment on these points:
“Our author, by experience, finds it true, ‘Tis much more hard to please himself than you: And, out of no feigned modesty, this day Damns his laborious trifle of a play:
Not that it’s worse than what before he writ, But he has now another taste of wit;
And, to confess a truth, though out of time, Grows weary of his long-loved mistress, Rhyme. Passion’s too fierce to be in fetters bound, And Nature flies him like enchanted ground: What verse can do, he has performed in this, Which he presumes the most correct of his; But spite of all his pride, a secret shame Invades his breast at Shakespeare’s sacred name: Awed when he hears his godlike Romans rage, He, in a just despair, would quit the stage; And to an age less polished, more unskilled, Does, with disdain, the foremost honours yield.”
It is remarkable, as a trait of character, that, though our author admitted his change of opinion on this long disputed point, he would not consent that it should be imputed to any arguments which his opponents had the wit to bring against him. On this subject he enters a protest in the Preface to his revised edition of the “Essay of Dramatic Poesy” in 1684:–“I confess, I find many things in this discourse which I do not now approve; my judgment being not a little altered since the writing of it; but whether for the better or the worse, I know not: neither indeed is it much material, in an essay, where all I have said is problematical. For the way of writing plays in verse, which I have seemed to favour, I have, since that time, laid the practice of it aside, till I have more leisure, because I find it troublesome and slow: but I am no way altered from my opinion of it, _at least with any reasons which have opposed it_; for your lordship may easily observe, that none are very violent against it, but those who either have not attempted it, or who have succeeded ill in their attempt.”[25] Thus cautious was Dryden in not admitting a victory, even in a cause which, he had surrendered.
But although the poet had admitted, that, with powers of versification superior to those possessed by any earlier English author, and a taste corrected by the laborious study both of the language and those who had used it, he found rhyme unfit for the use of the drama, he at the same time discovered a province where it might be employed in all its splendour. We have the mortification to learn, from the Dedication of “Aureng-Zebe,” that Dryden only wanted encouragement to enter upon the composition of an epic poem, and to abandon the thriftless task of writing for the promiscuous audience of the theatre,–a task which, rivalled as he had lately been by Crowne and Settle, he most justly compares to the labour of Sisyphus. His plot, he elsewhere explains, was to be founded either upon the story of Arthur, or of Edward the Black Prince; and he mentions it to Mulgrave in the following remarkable passage, which argues great dissatisfaction with dramatic labour, arising perhaps from a combined feeling of the bad taste of rhyming plays, the degrading dispute with Settle, and the failure of the “Assignation,” his last theatrical attempt:–“If I must be condemned to rhyme, I should find some ease in my change of punishment. I desire to be no longer the Sisyphus of the stage; to roll up a stone with endless labour, which, to follow the proverb, _gathers no moss_; and which is perpetually falling down again. I never thought myself very fit for an employment, where many of my predecessors have excelled me in all kinds; and some of my contemporaries, even in my own partial judgment, have outdone me in comedy. Some little hopes I have yet remaining (and those too, considering my abilities, may be vain), that I may make the world some part of amends for my ill plays, by an heroic poem. Your lordship has been long acquainted with my design; the subject of which you know is great, the story English, and neither too far distant from the present age, nor too near approaching it. Such it is in my opinion, that I could not have wished a nobler occasion to do honour by it to my king, my country, and my friends; most of our ancient nobility being concerned in the action. And your lordship has one particular reason to promote this undertaking because you were the first who gave me the opportunity of discoursing it to his majesty, and his royal highness; they were then pleased both to commend the design, and to encourage it by their commands; but the unsettledness of my condition has hitherto put a stop to my thoughts concerning it. As I am no successor to Homer in his wit, so neither do I desire to be in his poverty. I can make no rhapsodies, nor go a begging at the Grecian doors, while I sing the praises of their ancestors. The times of Virgil please me better, because he had an Augustus for his patron; and, to draw the allegory nearer you, I am sure I shall not want a Maecenas with him. It is for your lordship to stir up that remembrance in his majesty, which his many avocations of business have caused him, I fear, to lay aside; and, as himself and his royal brother are the heroes of the poem, to represent to them the images of their warlike predecessors; as Achilles is said to be roused to glory with the sight of the combat before the ships. For my own part, I am satisfied to have offered the design; and it may be to the advantage of my reputation to have it refused me.”[26]
Dr. Johnson and Mr. Malone remark, that Dryden observes a mystery concerning the subject of his intended epic, to prevent the risk of being anticipated, as he finally was by Sir Richard Blackmore on the topic of Arthur. This, as well as other passages in Dryden’s life, allows us the pleasing indulgence of praising the decency of our own time. Were an author of distinguished merit to announce his having made choice of a subject for a large poem, the writer would have more than common confidence who should venture to forestall his labours. But, in the seventeenth century, such an intimation would, it seems, have been an instant signal for the herd of scribblers to souse upon it, like the harpies on the feast of the Trojans, and leave its mangled relics too polluted for the use of genius:–
“_Turba sonans praedam pedibus circumvolat uncis; Polluit ore dopes_.
_Semesam praedam et vestigia foeda relinquunt._”
“Aureng-Zebe” was followed, in 1678, by “All for Love,” the only play Dryden ever wrote for himself; the rest, he says, were given to the people. The habitual study of Shakespeare, which seems lately to have occasioned, at least greatly aided, the revolution in his taste, induced him, among a crowd of emulous shooters, to try his strength in this bow of Ulysses. I have, in some preliminary remarks to the play, endeavoured to point out the difference between the manner of these great artists in treating the misfortunes of Antony and Cleopatra.[27] If these are just, we must allow Dryden the praise of greater regularity of plot, and a happier combination of scene; but in sketching the character of Antony, he loses the majestic and heroic tone which Shakespeare has assigned him. There is too much of the love-lorn knight-errant, and too little of the Roman warrior, in Dryden’s hero. The love of Antony, however overpowering and destructive in its effects, ought not to have resembled the love of a sighing swain of Arcadia. This error in the original conception of the character must doubtless be ascribed to Dryden’s habit of romantic composition. Montezuma and Almanzor were, like the prophet’s image, formed of a mixture of iron and clay; of stern and rigid demeanour to all the universe, but unbounded devotion to the ladies of their affections. In Antony, the first class of attributes are discarded: he has none of that tumid and outrageous dignity which characterised the heroes of the rhyming plays, and in its stead is gifted with even more than an usual share of devoted attachment to his mistress.[28] In the preface, Dryden piques himself upon venturing to introduce the quarrelling scene between Octavia and Cleopatra, which a French writer would have rejected, as contrary to the decorum of the theatre. But our author’s idea of female character was at all times low; and the coarse, indecent violence, which he has thrown into the expressions of a queen and a Roman matron, is misplaced and disgusting, and contradicts the general and well-founded observation on the address and self-command with which even women of ordinary dispositions can veil mutual dislike and hatred, and the extreme keenness with which they can arm their satire, while preserving all the external forms of civil demeanour. But Dryden more than redeemed this error in the scene between Antony and Ventidius, which he himself preferred to any that he ever wrote, and perhaps with justice, if we except that between Dorax and Sebastian: both are avowedly written in imitation of the quarrel between Brutus and Cassius. “All for Love” was received by the public with universal applause. Its success, with that of “Aureng-Zebe,” gave fresh lustre to the author’s reputation, which had been somewhat tarnished by the failure of the “Assignation,” and the rise of so many rival dramatists. We learn from the Players’ petition to the Lord Chamberlain, that “All for Love” was of service to the author’s fortune as well as to his fame, as he was permitted the benefit of a third night, in addition to his profits as a sharer with the company.[29] The play was dedicated to the Earl of Danby, then a minister in high power, but who, in the course of a few months, was disgraced and imprisoned at the suit of the Commons. As Danby was a great advocate for prerogative, Dryden fails not to approach him with an encomium on monarchical government, as regulated and circumscribed by law. In reprobating the schemes of those innovators, who, surfeiting on happiness, endeavoured to persuade their fellow-subjects to risk a change, he has a pointed allusion to the Earl of Shaftesbury, who, having left the royal councils in disgrace, was now at the head of the popular faction.
In 1678 Dryden’s next play, a comedy, entitled “Limberham,” was acted at Dorset-garden theatre, but was endured for three nights only. It was designed, the author informs us, as a satire on “the crying sin of keeping;” and the crime for which it suffered was, that “it expressed too much of the vice which it decried.” Grossly indelicate as this play still is, it would seem, from the Dedication to Lord Vaughan, that much which offended on the stage was altered, or omitted, in the press;[30] yet more than enough remains to justify the sentence pronounced against it by the public. Mr. Malone seems to suppose Shaftesbury’s party had some share in its fate, supposing that the character of Limberham had reference to their leader. Yet surely, although Shaftesbury was ridiculous for aiming at gallantry, from which his age and personal infirmity should have deterred him, Dryden would never have drawn the witty, artful politician, as a silly, henpecked cully. Besides, Dryden was about this time supposed even himself to have some leaning to the popular cause; a supposition irreconcilable with his caricaturing the foibles of Shaftesbury.
The tragedy of “Oedipus” was written by Dryden in conjunction with Lee; the entire first and third acts were the work of our author, who also arranged the general plan, and corrected the whole piece. Having offered some observations[31] elsewhere upon this play, and the mode in which its celebrated theme has been treated by the dramatists of different nations, I need not here resume the subject. The time of the first representation is fixed to the beginning of the playing season, in winter 1678-9, although it was not printed until 1679.[32] Both “Limberham” and “Oedipus” were acted at the Duke’s theatre; so that it would seem that our author was relieved from his contract with the King’s house, probably because the shares were so much diminished in value, that his appointment was now no adequate compensation for his labour. The managers of the King’s company complained to the Lord Chamberlain, and endeavoured, as we have seen, by pleading upon the contract, to assert their right to the play of “Oedipus.”[33] But their claim to reclaim the poet and the play appears to have been set aside, and Dryden continued to give his performances to the Duke’s theatre until the union of the two companies.
Dryden was now to do a new homage to Shakespeare, by refitting for the stage the play of “Troilus and Cressida,” which the author left in a state of strange imperfection, resembling more a chronicle, or legend, than a dramatic piece. Yet it may be disputed whether Dryden has greatly improved it even in the particulars which he censures in his original. His plot, though more artificial, is at the same time more trite than that of Shakespeare. The device by which Troilus is led to doubt the constancy of Cressida is much less natural than that she should have been actually inconstant; her vindication by suicide is a clumsy, as well as a hackneyed expedient; and there is too much drum and trumpet in the grand _finale_, where “Troilus and Diomede fight, and both parties engage at the same time. The Trojans make the Greeks retire, and Troilus makes Diomede give ground, and hurts him. Trumpets sound. Achilles enters with his Myrmidons, on the backs of the Trojans, who fight in a ring, encompassed round. Troilus, singling Diomede, gets him down, and kills him; and Achilles kills Troilus upon him. All the Trojans die upon the place, Troilus last.” Such a _bellum internecinum_ can never be waged to advantage upon the stage. One extravagant passage in this play serves strongly to evince Dryden’s rooted dislike to the clergy. Troilus exclaims,–
“That I should trust the daughter of a priest! Priesthood, that makes a merchandise of heaven! Priesthood, that sells even to their prayers and blessings, And forces us to pay for our own cozenage!
_Thersites_. Nay, cheats heaven too with entrails and with offals; Gives it the garbage of a sacrifice,
And keeps the best for private luxury.
Troilus_. Thou hast deserved thy life for cursing priests. Let me embrace thee; thou art beautiful: That back, that nose, those eyes are beautiful: Live; thou art honest, for thou hat’st a priest.”
Dryden prefixed to “Troilus and Cressida” his excellent remarks on the Grounds of Criticism in Tragedy, giving up, with dignified indifference the faults even of his own pieces, when they contradict the rules his later judgment had adopted. How much his taste had altered since his “Essay of Dramatic Poesy,” or at least since his “Remarks on Heroic Plays,” will appear from the following abridgment of his new maxims. The plot, according to these remarks, ought to be simply and naturally detailed from its commencement to its conclusion,–a rule which excluded the crowded incidents of the Spanish drama; and the personages ought to be dignified and virtuous, that their misfortunes might at once excite pity and terror. The plots of Shakespeare and Fletcher are meted by this rule, and pronounced inferior in mechanic regularity to those of Ben Jonson. The character of the agents, or persons, are next to be considered; and it is required that their manner shall be at once marked, dramatic, consistent, and natural. And here the supereminent power of Shakespeare, in displaying the manners, bent, and inclination of his characters, is pointed out to the reader’s admiration. The copiousness of his invention, and his judgment in sustaining the ideas which he started, are illustrated by referring to Caliban, a creature of the fancy, begot by an incubus upon a witch, and furnished with a person, language, and character befitting his pedigree on both sides. The passions are then considered as included in the manners; and Dryden, at once and peremptorily, condemns both the extravagance of language, which substitutes noise for feeling, and those points and turns of wit, which misbecome one actuated by real and deep emotion. He candidly gives an example of the last error from his own Montezuma who, pursued by his enemies, and excluded from the fort, describes his situation in a long simile, taken besides from the sea, which he had only heard of for the first time in the first act. As a description of natural passion, the famous procession of King Richard in the train of the fortunate usurper is quoted, in justice to the divine author. From these just and liberal rules of criticism, it is easy to discover that Dryden had already adopted a better taste, and was disgusted with comedies, where the entertainment arose from bustling incident, and tragedies, where sounding verse was substituted for the delineation of manners and expression of feeling. These opinions he pointedly expresses in the Prologue to “Troilus and Cressida,” which was spoken by Betterton, representing the ghost of Shakespeare:
“See, my loved Britons, see your Shakespeare rise, An awful ghost confessed to human eyes! Unnamed, methinks, distinguished I had been, From other shades, by this eternal green, About whose wreaths the vulgar poets strive, And, with a touch, their withered bays revive. Untaught, unpractised, in a barbarous age, I found not, but created first the stage. And if I drained no Greek or Latin store, ‘Twas that my own abundance gave me more. On foreign trade I needed not rely,
Like fruitful Britain, rich without supply. In this, my rough-drawn play, you shall behold Some master-strokes, so manly and so bold, That he who meant to alter, found ’em such; He shook, and thought it sacrilege to touch. Now, where are the successors to my name? What bring they to fill out a poet’s fame? Weak, short-lived issues of a feeble age; Scarce living to be christened on the stage! For humour _farce_, for love they _rhyme_ dispense, That tolls the knell for their departed sense.”
It is impossible to read these lines, remembering Dryden’s earlier opinions, without acknowledging the truth of the ancient proverb, _Magna est veritas, et praevalebit_.
The “Spanish Friar,” our author’s most successful comedy, succeeded “Troilus and Cressida.” Without repeating the remarks which are prefixed to the play in the present edition,[34] we may briefly notice, that in the tragic scenes our author has attained that better strain of dramatic poetry which he afterwards evinced in “Sebastian.” In the comic part, the well-known character of Father Dominic, though the conception only embodies the abstract idea which the ignorant and prejudiced fanatics of the day formed to themselves of a Romish priest, is brought out and illustrated with peculiar spirit. The gluttony, avarice, debauchery, and meanness of Dominic are qualified with the talent and wit necessary to save him from being utterly detestable; and, from the beginning to the end of the piece, these qualities are so happily tinged with insolence hypocrisy, and irritability, that they cannot be mistaken for the avarice, debauchery, gluttony, and meanness of any other profession than that of a bad churchman. In the tragic plot, we principally admire the general management of the opening, and chiefly censure the cold-blooded barbarity and perfidy of the young queen, in instigating the murder of the deposed sovereign, and then attempting to turn the guilt on her accomplice. I fear Dryden here forgot his own general rule, that the tragic hero and heroine should have so much virtue as to entitle their distress to the tribute of compassion. Altogether, however, the “Spanish Friar,” in both its parts, is an interesting, and almost a fascinating play; although the tendency, even of the tragic scenes, is not laudable, and the comedy, though more decent in language, is not less immoral in tendency than was usual in that loose age.
Dryden attached considerable importance to the art with which the comic and tragic scenes of the “Spanish Friar” are combined; and in doing so he has received the sanction of Dr. Johnson. Indeed, as the ardour of his mind ever led him to prize that task most highly, on which he had most lately employed his energy, he has affirmed, in the dedication to the “Spanish Friar,” that there was an absolute necessity for combining two actions in tragedy, for the sake of variety. “The truth is,” he adds, “the audience are grown weary of continued melancholy scenes; and I dare venture to prophesy, that few tragedies, except those in verse, shall succeed in this age, if they are not lightened with a course of mirth; for the feast is too dull and solemn without the fiddles.” The necessity of the relief alluded to may be admitted, without allowing that we must substitute either the misplaced charms of versification, or a secondary comic plot, to relieve the solemn weight and monotony of tragedy. It is no doubt true, that a highly-buskined tragedy, in which all the personages maintain the funereal pomp usually required from the victims of Melpomene, is apt to be intolerably tiresome, after all the pains which a skilful and elegant poet can bestow upon finishing it. But it is chiefly tiresome, because it is unnatural; and, in respect of propriety, ought no more to be relieved by the introduction of a set of comic scenes, independent of those of a mournful complexion, than the _sombre_ air of a funeral should be enlivened by a concert of fiddles. There appear to be two legitimate modes of interweaving tragedy with something like comedy. The first and most easy, which has often been resorted to, is to make the lower or less marked characters of the drama, like the porter in “Macbeth,” or the fool in “King Lear,” speak the language appropriated to their station, even in the midst of the distresses of the piece; nay, they may be permitted to have some slight under-intrigue of their own. This, however, requires the exertion of much taste and discrimination; for if we are once seriously and deeply interested in the distress of the play, the intervention of anything like buffoonery may unloosen the hold which the author has gained on the feelings of the audience. If such subordinate comic characters are of a rank to intermix in the tragic dialogue, their mirth ought to be chastened, till their language bears a relation to that of the higher persons. For example, nothing can be more absurd than in “Don Sebastian,” and some of Southerne’s tragedies, to hear the comic character answer in prose, and with a would-be witticism, to the solemn, unrelaxed blank verse of his tragic companion.[35] Mercutio is, I think, one of the best instances of such a comic person as may be reasonably and with propriety admitted into tragedy: from which, however, I do not exclude those lower characters, whose conversation appears absurd if much elevated above their rank. There is, however, another mode, yet more difficult to be used with address, but much more fortunate in effect when it has been successfully employed. This is, when the principal personages themselves do not always remain in the buckram of tragedy, but reserve, as in common life, lofty expressions for great occasions, and at other times evince themselves capable of feeling the lighter, as well as the more violent or more deep, affections of the mind. The shades of comic humour in Hamlet, in Hotspur, and in Falconbridge, are so far from injuring, that they greatly aid the effect of the tragic scenes, in which these same persons take a deep and tragical share. We grieve with them, when grieved, still more because we have rejoiced with them when they rejoiced; and, on the whole, we acknowledge a deeper _frater feeling_, as Burns has termed it, in men who are actuated by the usual changes of human temperament, than in those who, contrary to the nature of humanity, are eternally actuated by an unvaried strain of tragic feeling. But whether the poet diversifies his melancholy scenes by the passing gaiety of subordinate characters; or whether he qualifies the tragic state of his heroes by occasionally assigning lighter tasks to them; or whether he chooses to employ both modes of relieving the weight of misery through live long acts; it is obviously unnecessary that he should distract the attention of his audience, and destroy the regularity of his play, by introducing a comic plot with personages and interest altogether distinct, and intrigue but slightly connected with that of the tragedy. Dryden himself afterwards acknowledged that though he was fond of the “Spanish Friar,” he could not defend it from the imputation of Gothic and unnatural irregularity; “for mirth and gravity destroy each other, and are no more to be allowed for decent, than a gay widow laughing in a mourning habit.”[36]
The “Spanish Friar” was brought out in 1681-2, when the nation was in a ferment against the Catholics on account of the supposed plot. It is dedicated to John, Lord Haughton, as _protestant play_ inscribed to a _protestant patron_. It was also the last dramatic work, excepting the political play of the “Duke of Guise,” and the masque of “Albion and Albanius,” brought out by our author before the Revolution. And in political tendency, the “Spanish Friar” has so different colouring from these last pieces, that it is worth while to pause to examine the private relations of the author when he composed it.
Previous to 1678, Lord Mulgrave, our author’s constant and probably effectual patron, had given him an opportunity of discoursing over his plan of an epic poem to the king and Duke of York; and in the preface to “Aureng-Zebe” in that year, the poet intimates an indirect complaint that the royal brothers had neglected his plan.[37] About two years afterwards, Mulgrave seems himself to have fallen into disgrace, and was considered as in opposition to the court.[38] Dryden was deprived of his intercession, and seems in some degree to have shared his disgrace. The “Essay on Satire” became public in November 1679, and being generally imputed to Dryden, it is said distinctly by one libeller, that his pension was for a time interrupted.[39] This does not seem likely; it is more probable, that Dryden shared the general fate of the household of Charles II., whose appointments were but irregularly paid; but perhaps his supposed delinquency made it more difficult for him than others to obtain redress. At this period broke out the pretended discovery of the Popish Plot, in which Dryden, even in “Absalom and Achitophel,” evinces a partial belief.[40] Not encouraged, if not actually discountenanced, at court; sharing in some degree the discontent of his patron Mulgrave; above all, obliged by his situation to please the age in which he lived, Dryden did not probably hold the reverence of the Duke of York so sacred, as to prevent his making the ridicule of the Catholic religion the means of recommending his play to the passions of the audience. Neither was his situation at court in any danger from his closing on this occasion with the popular tide. Charles, during the heat of the Popish plot, was so far from being in a situation to incur odium by dismissing a laureate for having written a _Protestant play_, that he was obliged for a time to throw the reins of government into the hands of those very persons to whom the Papists were most obnoxious. The inference drawn from Dryden’s performance was that he had deserted the court; and the Duke of York was so much displeased with the tenor of the play, that it was the only one of which, on acceding to the crown, he prohibited the representation. The “Spanish Friar” was often objected to the author by his opponents, after he had embraced the religion there satirised. Nor was the idea of his apostasy from the court an invention of his enemies after his conversion, for it prevailed at the commencement of the party-disputes; and the name of Dryden is, by a partisan of royalty, ranked with that of his bitter foe Shadwell, as followers of Shaftesbury in 1680.[41] But whatever cause of coolness or disgust our author had received from Charles or his brother, was removed, as usual, so soon as his services became necessary; and thus the supposed author of a libel on the king became the ablest defender of the cause of monarchy, and the author of the “Spanish Friar” the advocate and convert of the Catholic religion.
In his private circumstances Dryden must have been even worse situated than at the close of the last Section. His contract with the King’s Company was now ended, and long before seems to have produced him little profit. If Southerne’s biographer can be trusted, Dryden never made by a single play more than one hundred pounds; so that, with all his fertility, he could not, at his utmost exertion, make more than two hundred a year by his theatrical labours.[42] At the same time, they so totally engrossed his leisure, that he produced no other work of consequence after the “_Annus Mirabilis._”[43] If, therefore, the payment of his pension was withheld, whether from the resentment of the court, or the poverty of the exchequer, he might well complain of the “unsettled state” which doomed him to continue these irksome and ill-paid labours.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Malone, vol. i. p. 124.
[2] Dennis’s account of these feuds, though not strictly accurate is lively, and too curious to be suppressed. “Nothing,” says Dennis, “is more certain, than that Mr. Settle, who is now (1717) the city poet, was formerly a poet of the court. And at what time was he so? Why, in the reign of King Charles the Second, when that court was more gallant and more polite than ever the English court perhaps had been before; when there was at court the present and the late Duke of Buckingham, the late Earl of Dorset, Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, famous for his wit and poetry, Sir Charles Sedley, Mr. Saville, Mr. Buckley, and several others.
“Mr. Settle’s first tragedy, ‘Cambyses, King of Persia,’ was acted for three weeks together. The second, which was ‘The Empress of Morocco,’ was acted for a month together; and was in such high esteem both with the court and town that it was acted at Whitehall before the king by the gentlemen and ladies of the court; and the prologue, which was spoken by the Lady Betty Howard, was writ by the famous Lord Rochester. The bookseller who printed it, depending upon the prepossession of the town, ventured to distinguish it from all the plays that had been ever published before; for it was the first play that ever was sold in England for two shillings, and the first that ever was printed with cuts. The booksellers at that time of day had not discovered so much of the weakness of their gentle readers as they have done since, nor so plainly discovered that fools, like children, are to be drawn in by gewgaws.–Well; but what was the event of this great success? Mr. Settle began to grow insolent, as any one may see, who reads the epistle dedicatory to ‘The Empress of Morocco.’ Mr. Dryden, Mr. Shadwell, and Mr. Crowne, began to grow jealous; and they three in confederacy wrote ‘Remarks on the Empress of Morocco.’ Mr. Settle answered them; and, according to the opinion which the town then had of the matter (for I have utterly forgot the controversy), had by much the better of them all. In short, Mr. Settle was then a formidable rival to Mr. Dryden; and I remember very well, that not only the town, but the university of Cambridge, was very much divided in their opinions about the preference that ought to be given to them; and in both places the younger fry inclined to Elkanah.”
[3] Lord Mulgrave wrote the prologue when Settle’s play was first acted at court; Lord Rochester’s was written for the second occasion; both were spoken by the beautiful Lady Elizabeth Howard.
[4] See this offensive dedication in the account of Settle’s controversy with Dryden.
[5] A copy of this rare edition (the gift of my learned friend, the Rev. Henry White of Lichfield) is now before me. The engravings are sufficiently paltry; and had the play been published even in the present day, it would have been accounted dear at two shillings. The name of the publisher is William Cademan, the date 1673. [See H. Morley, “English Plays,” pp. 351, 352.–ED.]
[6] This title is omitted in subsequent editions.
[7] Of whom it was said, that he spoke “to the tune of a good speech.”
[8] As, for example, this stage-direction: “Here a company of villains in ambush from behind the scenes discharge their guns at Muly-Hamet; at which Muly-Hamet starting and turning, Hametalhaz from under his priest’s habit draws a sword and passes at Muly-H., which pass is intercepted by Abdeleader. They engage in a very fierce fight with the villains, who also draw and assist Hametalhaz, and go off several ways fighting; after the discharge of other guns heard from within, and the clashing of swords, enter again Muly-Hamet, driving in some of the former villains, which he kills.”
[9] In the fifth act the scene draws and discovers Crimalhaz cast down on the _guanches_, i.e. hung on a wall set with spikes, scythe-blades, and hooks of iron; which scene (to judge from the engraving) exhibited the mangled limbs and wasted bones of former sufferers, suspended in agreeable confusion. With this pleasing display the piece concluded.
[10] Settle’s pamphlet was contumaciously entitled, “Notes and Observations on the Empress of Morocco revised, with some few erratas; to be printed instead of the Postscript with the next Edition of the Conquest of Granada, 1674.” See some quotations from this piece, vol. xv.
[11] His comedy of “Sir Courtly Nice” exhibits marks of comic power. [The condemnation of his other work is a little too sweeping.–ED.]
[12] See vol. x.
[13] [As is the case with many other circumstances of the life of Dryden, this business of _Calisto_ has been much exaggerated. The amount of positive evidence of Rochester’s interference is exceedingly small, and of his ill offices in regard to the epilogue there is no proof whatever.–ED.]
[14] So called, according to the communicative old correspondent of the Gentleman’s Magazine in 1745, from the unalterable stiffness of his long cravat.
[15] “I am well satisfied I had the greatest party of men of wit and sense on my side: amongst which I can never enough acknowledge the unspeakable obligations I received from the Earl of R., who, far above what I am ever able to deserve from him, seemed almost to make it his business to establish it in the good opinion of the king and his royal highness; from both of which I have since received confirmations of their good-liking of it, and encouragement to proceed. And it is to him, I must, in all gratitude, confess, I owe the greatest part of my good success in this and on whose indulgency I extremely build my hopes of a next.” Accordingly, next year, Otway’s play of “Titus and Berenice” is inscribed to Rochester, “his good and generous patron.”
[16]
“Tom Otway came next, Tom Shailwell’s dear zany, And swears for heroics he writes best of any; ‘Don Carlos’ his pockets so amply had filled, That his mange was quite cured, and his lice were all killed. But Apollo had seen his face on the stage, And prudently did not think fit to engage The scum of a playhouse for the prop of an age.”
[17] “Though a certain writer, that shall be nameless (but you may guess at him by what follows), being ask’d his opinion of this play, very gravely cock’t, and cry’d, _I’gad_ he knew not a line in it he would be authour of. But he is a fine facetious witty person, as my friend Sir Formal has it; and to be even with him, I know a comedy of his, that has not so much as a quibble in it which I would be authour of. And so, reader, I bid him and thee farewell.” The use of Dryden’s interjection, well known through Bayes’s employing it, ascertains him to be the poet meant.
[18]
“Well, sir, ’tis granted; I said Dryden’s rhymes Were stolen, unequal, nay dull many times; What foolish patron is there found of his, So blindly partial to deny me this?
But that his plays, embroidered up and down With learning, justly pleased the town, In the same paper I as freely own.
Yet, having this allowed, the heavy mass, That stuffs up his loose volumes, must not pass; For by that rule I might as well admit
Crowne’s tedious scenes for poetry and wit. ‘Tis therefore not enough when your false sense Hits the false judgment of an audience
Of clapping fools assembling, a vast crowd, Till the thronged playhouse cracked with the dull load; Though even that talent merits, in some sort, That can divert the rabble and the court; Which blundering Settle never could obtain, And puzzling Otway labours at in vain.”
He afterwards mentions Etherege’s seductive poetry, and adds:
“Dryden in vain tried this nice way of wit; For he, to be a tearing blade, thought fit To give the ladies a dry bawdy bob;
And thus he got the name of _Poet Squab_. But to be just, ’twill to his praise be found, His excellencies more than faults abound; Nor dare I from his sacred temples tear The laurel, which he best deserves to wear. But does not Dryden find even Jonson dull? Beaumont and Fletcher uncorrect, and full Of lewd lines, as he calls them? Shakespeare’s style Stiff and affected? To his own the while Allowing all the justice that his pride So arrogantly had to these denied?
And may not I have leave impartially To search and censure Dryden’s works, and try If those gross faults his choice pen doth commit, Proceed from want of judgment, or of wit? Or if his lumpish fancy does refuse
Spirit and grace, to his loose slattern muse? Five hundred verses every morning writ, Prove him no more a poet than a wit.”
[19]
“Rochester I despise for’s mere want of wit, Though thought to have a tail and cloven feet; For while he mischief means to all mankind, Himself alone the ill effects does find; And so, like witches, justly suffers shame, Whose harmless malice is so much the same. False are his words, affected is his wit, So often does he aim, so seldom hit.
To every face he cringes while he speaks, But when the back is turned, the head he breaks. Mean in each action, lewd in every limb, Manners themselves are mischievous in him; A proof that chance alone makes every creature,– A very Killigrew, without good-nature.
For what a [Transcriber’s note: “Bessus?” Print unclear] has he always lived,
And his own kickings notably contrived; For (there’s the folly that’s still mixed with fear) Cowards more blows than any hero bear.
Of fighting sparks Fame may her pleasure say, But ’tis a bolder thing to run away.
The world may well forgive him all his ill, For every fault does prove his penance still. Falsely he lulls into some dangerous noose, And then as meanly labours to get loose. A life so infamous is better quitting;
Spent in base injury and low submitting.– I’d like to have left out his poetry,
Forgot by all almost as well as me. Sometimes he has some humour, never wit, And if it rarely, very rarely hit,
‘Tis under such a nasty rubbish laid, To find it out’s the cinder-woman’s trade; Who for the wretched remnants of a fire, Must toil all day in ashes and in mire. So lewdly dull his idle works appear,
The wretched text deserves no comments here; Where one poor thought sometime’s left all alone, For a whole page of dulness to atone:
‘Mongst forty bad, one tolerable line, Without expression, fancy, or design.”
[20] “Whereas John Dryden, Esq., was on Monday the 18th instant, at night, barbarously assaulted, and wounded in Rose-street, in Covent-garden, by divers men unknown; if any person shall make discovery of the said offenders to the said Mr. Dryden, or to any justice of the peace, he shall not only receive fifty pounds, which is deposited in the hands of Mr. Blanchard, goldsmith, next door to Temple-bar, for the said purpose; but if he be a principal, or an accessory, in the said fact, his Majesty is graciously pleased to promise him his pardon for the same.”–_London Gazette_, from December 18th to December 22d, 1679. Mr. Malone mentions the same advertisement in a newspaper, entitled, “Domestic Intelligence or News from City and Country.”
[21] I might also mention the sentiment of Count Conigsmarck, who allowed, that the barbarous assassination of Mr. Thynne by his bravoes was a slain on his blood, but such a one as a good action in the wars, or a lodging on a counterscarp, would easily wash out. See his Trial, “State Trials,” vol. iv. But Conigsmarck was a foreigner.
[22] For example, a rare broadside in ridicule of Benjamin Harris the Whig publisher, entitled, “The Saint turned Courtezan, or a new Plot discovered by a precious Zealot of an Assault and Battery designed upon the Body of a sanctified Sister,
“Who, in her husband’s absence, with a brother Did often use to comfort one another,
Till wide-mouthed Crop, who is an old Italian, Took his mare nappy, and surprised her stallion, Who, steal of entertainment from his mistress, Did meet a cudgelling not matched in histories.”
“Who’s there?” quoth watchful Argus. “Tis I, in longing passion,
Give me a kiss.”
Quoth Ben, “Take this,
_A Dryden salutation_.”
“Help Care, Vile, Smith, and Curtes, Each zealous covenanter!
What wonder the atheist
L’Estrange should turn papist,
When a zealot turns a ranter.”
[23] Vol. xiii.
[24] Cibber’s Apology, 4to, p. 74.
[25] Vol. xv.
[26] Vol. v.
[27] Vol. v.
[28] This distinction our author himself points out in the Prologue. The poet there says,
“His hero, whom you wits his bully call, Bates of his mettle, and scarce rants at all; He’s somewhat lewd, but a well-meaning mind, Weeps much, fights little, but is wondrous kind.”–Vol. v.
[29] See Footnote 26, Section II, this volume.
[30] Mr. Malone has seen a MS. copy of “Limberham” in its original state, found by Bolingbroke in the sweepings of Pope’s study. It contained several exceptionable passages, afterwards erased or altered.
[31] Vol. vi.
[32] By allusion to the act for burying in woollen.
[33] [Transcriber’s note: “See their Petition, page 88” in original. This is to be found in Footnote 26, Section II.]
[34] Vol. vi.
[35] This is ridiculed in “Chrononhotonthologos.”
[36] Parallel of Poetry and Painting, vol. xvii.
[37] [Transcriber’s note: “See page 181” in original. This approximates to paragraphs preceding reference [26] in text, Section IV.]
[38] He is said to have cast the eyes of ambitious affection on the Lady Anne (afterwards queen), daughter of the Duke of York; at which presumption Charles was so much offended, that when Mulgrave went to relieve Tangier in 1680, he is said to have been appointed to a leaky and frail vessel, in hopes that he might perish; an injury which he resented so highly, as not to permit the king’s health to be drunk at his table till the voyage was over. On his return from Tangier he was refused the regiment of the Earl of Plymouth; and, considering his services as neglected, for a time joined those who were discontented with the government. He was probably reclaimed by receiving the government of Hull and lieutenancy of Yorkshire. See vol. ix.
[39] In a poem called “The Laureat,” the satirist is so ill informed, as still to make Dryden the author of the “Essay on Satire.” Surely it is unlikely to suppose, that he should have submitted to the loss of a pension, which he so much needed, rather than justify himself, where justification was so easy. Yet his resentment is said to have been
“For Pension lost, and justly, without doubt: When servants snarl we ought to kick them out. * * * * *
That lost, the visor changed, you turn about, And straight a true-blue Protestant crept out. The _Friar_ now was wrote; and some will say, They smell a malcontent through all the play.”
See the whole passage, vol. vi.
[40] See, for this point also, the volume last quoted.
[41] In “A Modest Vindication of Antony, Earl of Shaftesbury, in a Letter to a Friend concerning his having been elected King of Poland,” Dryden is named poet-laureate to the supposed king-elect, and Shadwell his deputy. See vol. ix.
[42] “Dryden being very desirous of knowing how much Southerne had made by the profits of one of his plays, the other, conscious of the little success Dryden had met with in theatrical compositions, declined the question, and answered, he was really ashamed to acquaint him. Dryden continuing to be solicitous to be informed, Southerne owned he had cleared by his last play L700; which appeared astonishing to Dryden, who was perhaps ashamed to confess, that he had never been able to acquire, by any of his most successful pieces, more than L100.”–_Life of Southerne_ prefixed to his Plays.
[43] There was published, 1679, a translation of Appian, printed for John Amery at the Peacock, against St. Dunstan’s Church, Fleet-street. It is inscribed by the translator, J.D., to the Earl of Ossory; and seems to have been undertaken by his command. This work is usually termed in catalogues, Dryden’s Appian. I presume it may be the work of that Jonathan Dryden who is mentioned in p 26.
SECTION V.
_Dryden engages in Politics–Absalom and Achitophel, Part First–The Medal–MacFlecknoe–Absalom and Achitophel, Part Second–The Duke of Guise._
The controversies, in which Dryden had hitherto been engaged, were of a private complexion, arising out of literary disputes and rivalry. But the country was now deeply agitated by political faction; and so powerful an auxiliary was not permitted by his party to remain in a state of inactivity. The religion of the Duke of York rendered him obnoxious to a large proportion of the people, still agitated by the terrors of the Popish Plot. The Duke of Monmouth, handsome, young, brave, and courteous, had all the external requisites for a popular idol; and what he wanted in mental qualities was amply supplied by the Machiavel subtlety of Shaftesbury. The life of Charles was the only isthmus between these contending tides, “which, mounting, viewed each other from afar, and strove in vain to meet.” It was already obvious, that the king’s death was to be the signal of civil war. His situation was doubly embarrassing, because, in all probability, Monmouth, whose claims were both unjust in themselves and highly derogatory to the authority of the crown, was personally amiable, and more beloved by Charles than was his inflexible and bigoted brother. But to consent to the bill for excluding the lawful heir from the crown, would have been at the same time putting himself in a state of pupillage for the rest of his reign, and evincing to his subjects, that they had nothing to expect from attachment to his person, or defence of his interest. This was a sacrifice not to be thought of so long as the dreadful recollection of the wars in the preceding reign determined a large party to support the monarch, while he continued willing to accept of their assistance. Charles accordingly adopted a determined course; and, to the rage rather than confusion of his partisans, Monmouth was banished to Holland, from whence he boldly returned without the king’s licence, and openly assumed the character of the leader of a party. Estranged from court, he made various progresses through the country, and employed every art which the genius of Shaftesbury could suggest, to stimulate the courage, and to increase the number, of his partisans. The press, that awful power, so often and so rashly misused, was not left idle. Numbers of the booksellers were distinguished as Protestant or fanatical publishers; and their shops teemed with the furious declamations of Ferguson, the inflammatory sermons of Hickeringill, the political disquisitions of Hunt, and the party plays and libellous poems of Settle and Shadwell. An host of rhymers, inferior even to those last named, attacked the king, the Duke of York, and the ministry, in songs and libels, which, however paltry, were read, sung, rehearsed, and applauded. It was time that some champion should appear in behalf of the crown, before the public should have been irrecoverably alienated by the incessant and slanderous clamour of its opponents. Dryden’s place, talents, and mode of thinking, qualified him for this task. He was the poet-laureate and household servant of the king thus tumultuously assailed. His vein of satire was keen, terse, and powerful, beyond any that has since been displayed. From the time of the Restoration, he had been a favourer of monarchy, perhaps more so, because the opinion divided him from his own family. If he had been for a time neglected, the smiles of a sovereign soon make his coldness forgotten; and if his narrow fortune was not increased, or even rendered stable, he had promises of provision, which inclined him to look to the future with hope, and endure the present with patience. If he had shared in the discontent which for a time severed Mulgrave from the royal party, that cause ceased to operate when his patron was reconciled to the court, and received a share of the spoils of the disgraced Monmouth.[1] If there wanted further impulse to induce Dryden, conscious of his strength, to mingle in an affray where it might be displayed to advantage, he had the stimulus of personal attachment and personal enmity, to sharpen his political animosity. Ormond, Halifax, and Hyde, Earl of Rochester, among the nobles, were his patrons; Lee and Southerne, among the poets, were his friends. These were partisans of royalty. The Duke of York, whom the “Spanish Friar” probably had offended, was conciliated by a prologue on his visiting the theatre at his return from Scotland,[2] and it is said, by the omission of certain peculiarly offensive passages, so soon as the play was reprinted.[3] The opposite ranks contained Buckingham, author of the “Rehearsal;” Shadwell, with whom our poet now urged open war; and Settle, the insolence of whose rivalry was neither forgotten nor duly avenged. The respect due to Monmouth was probably the only consideration to be overcome: but his character was to be handled with peculiar lenity; and his duchess, who, rather than himself, had patronised Dryden, was so dissatisfied with the politics, as well as the other irregularities, of her husband, that there was no danger of her taking a gentle correction of his ambition as any affront to herself. Thus stimulated by every motive, and withheld by none, Dryden composed, and on the 17th November 1681 published, the satire of “Absalom and Achitophel.”
The plan of the satire was not new to the public. A Catholic poet had, in 1679, paraphrased the scriptural story of Naboth’s vine-yard and applied it to the condemnation of Lord Stafford, on account of the Popish Plot.[4] This poem is written in the style of a scriptural allusion; the names and situations of personages in the holy text being applied to those contemporaries, to whom the author assigned a place in