which the relations had lived, since the opposition of the Whigs to King William’s government in some degree united that party in conduct, though not in motive, with the favourers of King James. Yet our author’s strain of politics, as at first expressed in the epistle, was too severe for his cousin’s digestion. Some reflections upon the Dutch allies, and their behaviour in the war, were omitted, as tending to reflect upon King William; and the whole piece, to avoid the least chance of giving offence, was subjected to the revision of Montague, with a deprecation of his displeasure, an entreaty of his patronage, and the humiliating offer, that, although repeated correction had already purged the spirit out of the poem, nothing should stand in it relating to public affairs. without Mr. Montague’s permission. What answer “full-blown Bufo” returned to Dryden’s petition, does not appear; but the author’s opposition principles were so deeply woven in with the piece, that they could not be obliterated without tearing it to pieces. His model of an English member of parliament votes in opposition, as his Good Parson is a nonjuror, and the Fox in the fable of Old Chaucer is translated into a puritan.[41] The epistle was highly acceptable to Mr. Driden of Chesterton, who acknowledged the immortality conferred on him, by “a noble present,” which family tradition states to have amounted to L500.[42] Neither did Dryden neglect so fair an opportunity to avenge himself on his personal, as well as his political adversaries. Milbourne and Blackmore receive in the epistle severe chastisement for their assaults upon his poetry and private character:
“What help from art’s endeavours can we have? Guibbons but guesses, nor is sure to save; But Maurus sweeps whole parishes, and peoples every grave, And no more mercy to mankind will use
Than when he robbed and murdered Maro’s muse. Wouldst thou be soon despatched, and perish whole, Trust Maurus with thy life, and Milbourne with thy soul”
Referring to another place, what occurs upon the style and execution of the Fables, I have only to add, that they were published early in spring 1700, in a large folio, and with the “Ode to Saint Cecilia.” The epistle to Driden of Chesterton, and a translation of the first Iliad, must have move than satisfied the mercantile calculations of Tonson, since they contained seventeen hundred verses above the quantity which Dryden had contracted to deliver. In the preface, the author vindicates himself with great spirit against his literary adversaries; makes his usual strong and forcible remarks on the genius of the authors whom he had imitated; and, in this his last critical work, shows all the acumen which had so long distinguished his powers. The Fables were dedicated to the last Duke of Ormond, the grandson of the Barzillai of “Absalom and Achitophel,” and the son of the heroic Earl of Ossory; friends both, and patrons of Dryden’s earlier essays. There is something affecting in a connection so honourably maintained; and the sentiment, as touched by Dryden, is simply pathetic. “I am not vain enough to boast, that I have deserved the value of so illustrious a line; but my fortune is the greater, that for three descents they have been pleased to distinguish my poems from those of other men; and have accordingly made me their peculiar care. May it be permitted me to say, that as your grandfather and father were cherished monarchs, so I have been esteemed and patronised by the grandfather, the father, and the son, descended from one of the most ancient, most conspicuous, and most deserving families in Europe.”
There were also prefixed to the “Fables,” those introductory verses addressed to the beautiful Duchess of Ormond,[43] which have all the easy, felicitous, and sprightly gallantry, demanded on such occasions. The incense, it is said, was acknowledged by a present of L500; a donation worthy of the splendid house of Ormond. The sale of the “Fables” was surprisingly slow: even the death of the author, which has often sped away a lingering impression, does not seem to have increased the demand; and the second edition was not printed till 1713, when, Dryden and all his immediate descendants being no more, the sum stipulated upon that event was paid by Tonson to Lady Sylvius, daughter of one of Lady Elizabeth Dryden’s brothers, for the benefit of his widow, then in a state of lunacy.–See Appendix, vol. xviii.
The end of Dryden’s labours was now fast approaching; and, as his career began upon the stage, it was in some degree doomed to terminate there. It is true, he never recalled his resolution to write no more plays; but Vanbrugh having about this time revised and altered for the Drury-lane theatre, Fletcher’s lively comedy of “The Pilgrim,” it was agreed that Dryden, or, as one account says, his son Charles,[44] should have the profits of a third night on condition of adding to the piece a Secular Masque, adapted to the supposed termination of the seventeenth century;[45] a Dialogue in the Madhouse between two Distracted Lovers; and a Prologue and Epilogue. The Secular Masque contains a beautiful and spirited delineation of the reigns of James I., Charles I., and Charles II., in which the influence of Diana, Mars, and Venus, are supposed to have respectively predominated. Our author did not venture to assign a patron to the last years of the century, though the expulsion of Saturn might have given a hint for it. The music of the Masque is said to have been good; at least it is admired by the eccentric author of John Buncle.[46] The Prologue and Epilogue to “The Pilgrim,” were written within twenty days of Dryden’s death; [47] and their spirit equals that of any of his satirical compositions. They afford us the less pleasing conviction, that even the last fortnight of Dryden’s life was occupied in repelling or retorting the venomed attacks of his literary foes. In the Prologue, he gives Blackmore a drubbing which would have annihilated any author of ordinary modesty; but the knight[48] was as remarkable for his powers of endurance, as some modern pugilists are said to be, for the quality technically called _bottom_. After having been “brayed in a mortar,” as Solomon expresses it, by every wit of his time, Sir Richard not only survived to commit new offences against ink and paper, but had his faction, his admirers, and his panegyrists, among that numerous and sober class of readers, who think that genius consists in good intention.[49] In the Epilogue, Dryden attacks Collier, but with more courteous weapons: it is rather a palliation than a defence of dramatic immorality, and contains nothing personally offensive to Collier. Thus so dearly was Dryden’s preeminent reputation purchased, that even his last hours were embittered with controversy; and nature, over-watched and worn out, was, like a besieged garrison, forced to obey the call to arms, and defend reputation even with the very last exertion of the vital spirit.
The approach of death was not, however, so gradual as might have been expected from the poet’s chronic diseases. He had long suffered both by the gout and gravel, and more lately the erysipelas seized one of his legs. To a shattered frame and a corpulent habit, the most trifling accident is often fatal. A slight inflammation in one of his toes, became, from neglect, a gangrene. Mr. Hobbes, an eminent surgeon, to prevent mortification, proposed to amputate the limb; but Dryden, who had no reason to be in love with life, refused the chance of prolonging it by a doubtful and painful operation.[50] After a short interval, the catastrophe expected by Mr. Hobbes took place, and, Dryden not long surviving the consequences, left life on Wednesday morning, 1st May 1700, at three o’clock. He seems to have been sensible till nearly his last moments, and died in the Roman Catholic faith, with submission and entire resignation to the divine will; “taking of his friends,” says Mrs. Creed, one of the sorrowful number, “so tender and obliging a farewell, as none but he himself could have expressed.”
The death of a man like Dryden, especially in narrow and neglected circumstances, is usually an alarum-bell to the public. Unavailing and mutual reproaches, for unthankful and pitiless negligence, waste themselves in newspaper paragraphs, elegies, and funeral processions; the debt to genius is then deemed discharged, and a new account of neglect and commemoration is opened between the public and the next who rises to supply his room. It was thus with Dryden: His family were preparing to bury him with the decency becoming their limited circumstances, when Charles Montague, Lord Jefferies, and other men of quality, made a subscription for a public funeral. The body of the poet was then removed to the Physicians’ Hall, where it was embalmed, and lay in state till the 13th day of May, twelve days after the decease. On that day, the celebrated Dr. Garth pronounced a Latin oration over the remains of his departed friend; which were then, with considerable state, preceded by a band of music, and attended by a numerous procession of carriages, transported to Westminster Abbey, and deposited between the graves of Chaucer and Cowley.
The malice of Dryden’s contemporaries, which he had experienced through life, attempted to turn into burlesque these funeral honours. Farquhar, the comic dramatist, wrote a letter containing a ludicrous account of the funeral;[51] in which, as Mr. Malone most justly remarks, he only sought to amuse his fair correspondent by an assemblage of ludicrous and antithetical expressions and ideas, which, when accurately examined, express little more than the bustle and confusion which attends every funeral procession of uncommon splendour. Upon this ground-work, Mrs. Thomas (the Corinna of Pope and Cromwell) raised, at the distance of thirty years, the marvellous structure of fable, which has been copied by all Dryden’s biographers, till the industry of Mr. Malone has sent it, with other figments of the same lady, to “the grave of all the Capulets.”[52] She appears to have been something assisted by a burlesque account of the funeral, imputed by Mr. Malone to Tom Brown, who certainly continued to insult Dryden’s memory whenever an opportunity offered.[53] Indeed, Mrs. Thomas herself quotes this last respectable authority. It must be a well-conducted and uncommon public ceremony, where the philosopher can find nothing to condemn, nor the satirist to ridicule; yet, to our imagination, what can be more striking, than the procession of talent and rank, which escorted the remains of DRYDEN to the tomb of CHAUCER!
The private character of the individual, his personal appearance, and rank in society, are the circumstances which generally interest the public most immediately upon his decease.
We are enabled, from the various paintings and engravings of Dryden, as well as from the less flattering delineations of the satirists of his time, to form a tolerable idea of his face and person. In youth, he appears to have been handsome,[54] and of a pleasing countenance: when his age was more advanced, he was corpulent and florid, which procured him the nickname attached to him by Rochester.[55] In his latter days, distress and disappointment probably chilled the fire of his eye, and the advance of age destroyed the animation of his countenance.[56] Still, however, his portraits bespeak the look and features of genius; especially that in which he is drawn with his waving grey hairs.
In disposition and moral character, Dryden is represented as most amiable, by all who had access to know him; and his works, as well as letters, bear evidence to the justice of their panegyric. Congreve’s character of the poet was drawn doubtless favourably, yet it contains points which demonstrate its fidelity.
“Whoever shall censure me, I dare be confident, you, my lord, will excuse me for anything that I shall say with due regard to a gentleman, for whose person I had as just an affection as I have an admiration of his writings. And indeed Mr. Dryden had personal qualities to challenge both love and esteem from all who were truly acquainted with him.
“He was of a nature exceedingly humane and compassionate; easily forgiving injuries, and capable of a prompt and sincere reconciliation with them who had offended him.
“Such a temperament is the only solid foundation of all moral virtues and sociable endowments. His friendship, where he professed it, went much beyond his professions; and I have been told of strong and generous instances of it by the persons themselves who received them, though his hereditary income was little more than a bare competency.
“As his reading had been very extensive, so was he very happy in a memory, tenacious of everything that he had read. He was not more possessed of knowledge, than he was communicative of it. But then his communication of it was by no means pedantic, or imposed upon the conversation; but just such, and went so far, as, by the natural turns of the discourse in which he was engaged, it was necessarily promoted or required. He was extreme ready and gentle in his correction of the errors of any writer, who thought fit to consult him: and full as ready and patient to admit of the reprehension of others, in respect of his own oversight or mistakes. He was of very easy, I may say, of very pleasing access; but something slow, and, as it were, diffident in his advances to others. He had something in his nature, that abhorred intrusion into any society whatsoever. Indeed, it is to be regretted, that he was rather blameable in the other extreme; for, by that means, he was personally less known, and, consequently, his character might become liable both to misapprehensions and misrepresentations.
“To the best of my knowledge and observation, he was, of all the men that I ever knew, one of the most modest, and the most easily to be discountenanced in his approaches either to his superiors or his equals.”
This portrait is from the pen of friendship; yet, if we consider all the circumstances of Dryden’s life, we cannot deem it much exaggerated. For about forty years, his character, personal and literary, was the object of assault by every subaltern scribbler, titled or untitled, laureated or pilloried. “My morals,” he himself has said, “have been sufficiently aspersed; that only sort of reputation, which ought to be dear to every honest man, and is to me.” In such an assault, no weapon would remain unhandled, no charge, true or false, unurged; and what qualities we do not there find excepted against, must surely be admitted to pass to the credit of Dryden. His change of political opinion, from the time he entered life under the protection of a favourite of Cromwell, might have argued instability, if he had changed a second time, when the current of power and popular opinion set against the doctrines of the Reformation. As it is, we must hold Dryden to have acted from conviction, since personal interest, had that been the ruling motive of his political conduct, would have operated as strongly in 1688 as in 1660. The change of his religion we have elsewhere discussed; and endeavoured to show that, although Dryden was unfortunate in adopting the more corrupted form of our religion, yet, considered relatively, it was a fortunate and laudable conviction which led him from the mazes of scepticism to become a catholic of the communion of Rome.[57] It would be vain to maintain, that in his early career he was free from the follies and vices of a dissolute period; but the absence of every positive charge, and the silence of numerous accusers, may be admitted to prove, that he partook in them more from general example than inclination, and with a moderate, rather than voracious or undistinguishing appetite. It must be admitted, that he sacrificed to the Belial or Asmodeus of the age, in his writings; and that he formed his taste upon the licentious and gay society with which he mingled. But we have the testimony of one who knew him well, that, however loose his comedies, the temper of the author was modest;[58] his indelicacy was like the forced impudence of a bashful man; and Rochester has accordingly upbraided him, that his licentiousness was neither natural nor seductive. Dryden had unfortunately conformed enough to the taste of his age, to attempt that “nice mode of wit,” as it is termed by the said noble author, whose name has become inseparably connected with it; but it sate awkwardly upon his natural modesty, and in general sounds impertinent, as well as disgusting. The clumsy phraseology of Burnet, in passing censure on the immorality of the stage, after the Restoration, terms “Dryden, the greatest master of dramatic poesy, a monster of immodesty and of impurity of all sorts.” The expression called forth the animated defence of Granville, Lord Lansdowne, our author’s noble friend. “All who knew him,” said Lansdowne, “can testify this was not his character. He was so much a stranger to immodesty, that modesty in too great a degree was his failing: he hurt his fortune by it, he complained of it, and never could overcome it. He was,” adds he, “esteemed, courted, and admired, by all the great men of the age in which he lived, who would certainly not have received into friendship a monster abandoned to all sorts of vice and impurity. His writings will do immortal honour to his name and country, and his poems last as long, if I may have leave to say it, as the Bishop’s sermons, supposing them to be equally excellent in their kind.”[59]
The Bishop’s youngest son, Thomas Burnet, in replying to Lord Lansdowne, explained his father’s last expressions as limited to Dryden’s plays, and showed, by doing so, that there was no foundation for fixing this gross and dubious charge upon his private moral character.
Dryden’s conduct as a father, husband, and master of a family, seems to have been affectionate, faithful, and, so far as his circumstances admitted, liberal and benevolent. The whole tenor of his correspondence bears witness to his paternal feelings; and even when he was obliged to have recourse to Tonson’s immediate assistance to pay for the presents he sent them, his affection vented itself in that manner. As a husband, if Lady Elizabeth’s peculiarities of temper precluded the idea of a warm attachment, he is not upbraided with neglect or infidelity by any of his thousand assailants. As a landlord, Mr. Malone has informed us, on the authority of Lady Dryden, that “his little estate at Blakesley is at this day occupied by one Harriots, grandson of the tenant who held it in Dryden’s time; and he relates, that his grandfather was used to take great pleasure in talking of our poet. He was, he said, the easiest and the kindest landlord in the world, and never raised the rent during the whole time he possessed the estate.”
Some circumstances, however, may seem to degrade so amiable a private, so sublime a poetical character. The licence of his comedy, as we have seen, had for it only the apology of universal example, and must be lamented, though not excused. Let us, however, remember, that if in the hey-day of the merry monarch’s reign, Dryden ventured to maintain, that, the prime end of poetry being pleasure, the muses ought not to be fettered by the chains of strict decorum; yet in his more advanced and sober mood, he evinced sincere repentance for his trespass, by patient and unresisting submission to the coarse and rigorous chastisement of Collier. If it is alleged, that, in the fury of his loyal satire, he was not always solicitous concerning its justice, let us make allowance for the prejudice of party, and consider at what advantage, after the laps of more than a century, and through the medium of impartial history, we now view characters, who were only known to their contemporaries as zealous partisans of an opposite and detested faction. The moderation of Dryden’s reprisals, when provoked by the grossest calumny and personal insult, ought also to plead in his favour. Of the hundreds who thus assailed, not only his literary, but his moral reputation, he has distinguished Settle and Shadwell alone by an elaborate retort. Those who look into Mr. Luttrell’s collections, will at once see the extent of Dryden’s sufferance, and the limited nature of his retaliation.
The extreme flattery of Dryden’s dedications has been objected to him, as a fault of an opposite description; and perhaps no writer has equalled him in the profusion and elegance of his adulation. “Of this kind of meanness,” says Johnson, “he never seems to decline the practice, or lament the necessity. He considers the great as entitled to encomiastic homage, and brings praise rather as a tribute than a gift; more delighted with the fertility of his invention than mortified by the prostitution of his judgment.” It may be noticed, in palliation of this heavy charge, that the form of address to superiors must be judged of by the manners of the times; and that the adulation contained in dedications was then as much a matter of course, as the words of submissive style which still precede the subscription Dryden considered his panegyrics as merely conforming with the fashion of the day, and rendering unto Caesar the things which were Caesar’s,–attended with no more degradation than the payment of any other tribute to the forms of politeness and usage of the world.
Of Dryden’s general habits of life we can form a distinct idea, from the evidence assembled by Mr. Malone. His mornings were spent in study; he dined with his family, probably about two o’clock. After dinner he went usually to Will’s Coffeehouse, the famous rendezvous of the wits of the time, where he had his established chair by the chimney in winter, and near the balcony in summer, whence he pronounced, _ex cathedra_, his opinion upon new publications, and, in general, upon all matters of dubious criticism.[60] Latterly, all who had occasion to ridicule or attack him, represent him as presiding in this little senate.[61] His opinions, however, were not maintained with dogmatism; and we have an instance, in a pleasing anecdote told by Dr. Lockier,[62] that Dryden readily listened to criticism, provided it was just, from whatever unexpected and undignified quarter it happened to come. In general, however, it may be supposed, that few ventured to dispute his opinion, or place themselves of his censure. He was most falsely accused of carrying literary jealousy to such a length, as feloniously to encourage Creech to venture on a translation of Horace, that he might lose the character he had gained by a version of Lucretius. But this is positively contradicted, upon the authority of Southerne.[63]
We have so often stopped in our narrative of Dryden’s life, to notice the respectability of his general society, that little need here be said on the subject. Although no enemy to conviviality, he is pronounced by Pope to have been regular in his hours in comparison with Addison, who otherwise lived the same coffee-house course of life. He has himself told us, that he was “saturnine and reserved, and not one of those who endeavour to entertain company by lively sallies of merriment and wit;” and an adversary has put into his mouth this couplet–
“Nor wine nor love could ever see me gay; To writing bred, I knew not what to say.”
_Dryden’s Satire to his Muse._
But the admission of the author, and the censure of the satirist, must be received with some limitation. Dryden was thirty years old before he was freed from the fetters of puritanism; and if the habits of lively expression in society are not acquired before that age, they are seldom gained afterward. But this applies only to the deficiency of repartee, in the sharp encounter of wit which was fashionable at the court of Charles, and cannot be understood to exclude Dryden’s possessing the more solid qualities of agreeable conversation, arising from a memory profoundly stocked with knowledge, and a fancy which supplied modes of illustration faster than the author could use them.[64] Some few sayings of Dryden have been, however, preserved; which, if not witty, are at least jocose. He is said to have been the original author of the repartee to the Duke of Buckingham, who, in bowling, offered to lay “his soul to a turnip,” or something still more vile. “Give me the odds,” said Dryden, “and I take the bet.” When his wife wished to be a book, that she might enjoy more of his company, “Be an almanac then, my dear,” said the poet, “that I may change you once a year.”[65] Another time, a friend expressing his astonishment that even D’Urfey could write such stuff as a play they had just witnessed, “Ah, sir,” replied Dryden, “you do not know my friend Tom so well as I do; I’ll answer for him, he can write worse yet.” None of these anecdotes intimate great brilliancy of repartee; but that Dryden, possessed of such a fund of imagination, and acquired learning, should be dull in conversation, is impossible. He is known frequently to have regaled his friends, by communicating to them a part of his labours; but his poetry suffered by his recitation. He read his productions very ill;[66] owing, perhaps, to the modest reserve of his temper, which prevented his showing an animation in which he feared his audience might not participate. The same circumstance may have repressed the liveliness of his conversation. I know not, however, whether we are, with Mr. Malone, to impute to diffidence his general habit of consulting his literary friends upon his poems, before they became public, since it might as well arise from a wish to anticipate and soften criticism.[67]
Of Dryden’s learning, his works form the best proof. He had read Polybius before he was ten years of age;[68] and was doubtless well acquainted with the Greek and Roman classics. But from these studies he could descend to read romances: and the present editor records with pride, that Dryden was a decided admirer of old ballads and popular tales.[69] His researches sometimes extended into the vain province of judicial astrology, in which he was a firm believer; and there is reason to think that he also credited divination by dreams. In the country, he delighted in the pastime of fishing, and used, says Mr. Malone, to spend some time with Mr. Jones of Ramsden, in Wiltshire. D’Urfey was sometimes of this party; but Dryden appears to have undervalued his skill in fishing, as much as his attempts at poetry. Hence Fenton, in his Epistle to Mr. Lambard:
“By long experience, D’Urfey may no doubt Ensnare a gudgeon, or sometimes a trout; Yet Dryden once exclaimed, in partial spite, ‘_He fish_!’–because the man attempts to write.”
I may conclude this notice of Dryden’s habits, which I have been enabled to give chiefly by the researches of Mr. Malone, with two notices of a minute nature. Dryden was a great taker of snuff, which he made himself. Moreover, as a preparation to a course of study, he usually took medicine, and observed a cooling diet.[70]
Dryden’s house, which he appears to have resided in from the period of his marriage till his death, was in Gerrard Street, the fifth on the left hand coming from Little Newport Street.[71] The back windows looked upon the gardens of Leicester House, of which circumstance our poet availed himself to pay a handsome compliment to the noble owner.[72] His excursions to the country seem to have been frequent; perhaps the more so, as Lady Elizabeth always remained in town. In his latter days, the friendship of his relations, John Driden of Chesterton, and Mrs. Steward of Cotterstock, rendered their houses agreeable places of abode to the aged poet. They appear also to have had a kind solicitude about his little comforts, of value infinitely beyond aiding them. And thus concludes all that we have learned of the private life of Dryden.
The fate of Dryden’s family must necessarily interest the admirers of English literature. It consisted of his wife, Lady Elizabeth Dryden, and three sons, John, Charles, and Erasmus Henry. Upon the poet’s death, it may be believed, they felt themselves slenderly provided for, since all his efforts, while alive, were necessary to secure them from the gripe of penury.
Yet their situation was not very distressing. John and Erasmus Henry were abroad; and each had an office at Rome, in which he was able to support himself. Charles had for some time been entirely dependent on his father, and administered to his effects, as he died without a will. The liberality of the Duchess of Ormond, and of Driden of Chesterton, had been lately received, and probably was not expended. There was, besides, the poet’s little patrimonial estate, and a small property in Wiltshire, which the Earl of Berkshire settled upon Lady Elizabeth at her marriage, and which yielded L50 or L60 annually. There was therefore an income of about L100 a year, to maintain the poet’s widow and children; enough in these times to support them in decent frugality.
Lady Elizabeth Dryden’s temper had long disturbed her husband’s domestic happiness. “His invectives,” says Mr. Malone, “against the married state are frequent and bitter, and were continued to the latest period of his life;” and he adds, from most respectable authority, that the family of the poet held no intimacy with his lady, confining their intercourse to mere visits of ceremony.[73] A similar alienation seems to have taken place between her and her own relations, Sir Robert Howard, perhaps, being excepted; for her brother, the Honourable Edward Howard, talks of Virgil, as a thing he had learned merely by common report.[74] Her wayward disposition was, however, the effect of a disordered imagination which, shortly after Dryden’s death, degenerated into absolute insanity, in which state she remained until her death in summer 1714, probably, says Mr. Malone, in the seventy-ninth year of her life.
Dryden’s three sons, says the inscription by Mrs. Creed, were ingenious and accomplished gentlemen. Charles, the eldest, and favourite son of the poet, was born at Charlton, Wiltshire, in 1666. He received a classical education under Dr. Busby, his father’s preceptor, and was chosen King’s Scholar in 1680. Being elected to Trinity College in Cambridge, he was admitted a member in 1683. It would have been difficult to conceive that the son of Dryden should not have attempted poetry; but though Charles Dryden escaped the fate of Icarus, he was very, very far from emulating his father’s soaring flight. Mr. Malone has furnished a list of his compositions in Latin and English.[75] About 1692, he went to Italy, and through the interest of Cardinal Howard, to whom he was related by the mother’s side, he became Chamberlain of the Household; not, as Corinna pretends, “to that _remarkably fine gentleman_, Pope Clement XI.,” but to Pope Innocent XII. His way to this preferment was smoothed by a pedigree drawn up in Latin by his father, of the families of Dryden and Howard, which is said to have been deposited in the Vatican. Dryden, whose turn for judicial astrology we have noticed, had calculated the nativity of his son Charles; and it would seem that a part of his predictions were fortuitously fulfilled. Charles, however, having suffered, while at Rome, by a fall, and his health, in consequence, being much injured, his father prognosticated he would begin to recover in the month of September 1697. The issue did no great credit to the prediction; for young Dryden returned to England in 1698 in the same indifferent state of health, as is obvious from the anxious solicitude with which his father always mentions Charles in his correspondence. Upon the poet’s death, Charles, we have seen, administered to his effects on 10th June 1700, Lady Elizabeth, his mother, renouncing the succession. In the next year, Granville conferred on him the profits arising from the author’s night of an alteration of Shakespeare’s “Merchant of Venice;” and his liberality to the son of one great bard may be admitted to balance his presumption in manufacturing a new drama out of the labours of another.[76] Upon the 20th August 1704, Charles Dryden was drowned, in an attempt to swim across the Thames, at Datchet, near Windsor. I have degraded into the Appendix, the romantic narrative of Corinna, concerning his father’s prediction, already mentioned. It contains, like her account of the funeral of the poet, much positive falsehood, and gross improbability, with some slight scantling of foundation in fact.
John Dryden, the poet’s second son, was born in 1667, or 1668, was admitted a King’s Scholar in Westminster in 1682, and elected to Oxford in 1685. Here he became a private pupil of the celebrated Obadiah Walker, Master of University College, a Roman Catholic. It seems probable that young Dryden became a convert to that faith before his father. His religion making it impossible for him to succeed in England, he followed his brother Charles to Rome, where he officiated as his deputy in the Pope’s household. John Dryden translated the fourteenth Satire of Juvenal, published in his father’s version, and wrote a comedy entitled, “The Husband his own Cuckold,” acted in Lincoln’s Inn Fields in 1696; Dryden, the father, furnishing a prologue, and Congreve an epilogue. In 1700-1, he made a tour through Sicily and Malta, and his journal was published in 1706. It seems odd, that in the whole course of his journal, he never mentions his father’s name, nor makes the least allusion to his very recent death. John Dryden, the younger, died at Rome soon after this excursion.
Erasmus Henry, Dryden’s third son, was born 2d May 1669, and educated in the Charterhouse, to which he was nominated by Charles II., shortly after the publication of “Absalom and Achitophel.”[77] He does not appear to have been at any university; probably his religion was the obstacle. Like his brothers, he went to Rome; and as both his father and mother request his prayers, we are to suppose he was originally destined for the Church. But he became a Captain in the Pope’s guards, and remained at Rome till John Dryden, his elder brother’s death. After this event, he seems to have returned to England, and in 1708 succeeded to the title of Baronet, as representative of Sir Erasmus Driden. the author’s grandfather. But the estate of Canons-Ashby, which should have accompanied the title, had been devised by Sir Robert Driden, the poet’s first cousin, to Edward Dryden, the eldest son of Erasmus, the younger brother of the poet. Thus, if the author had lived a few years longer, his pecuniary embarrassments would have been embittered by his succeeding to the honours of his family, without any means of sustaining the rank they gave him. With this Edward Dryden, Sir Erasmus Henry seems to have resided until his death, which took place at the family mansion of Canons-Ashby in 1710. Edward acted as a manager of his cousin’s affairs; and Mr. Malone sees reason to think, from their mode of accounting, that Sir Erasmus Henry had, like his mother, been visited with mental derangement before his death, and had resigned into Edward’s hands the whole management of his concerns. Thus ended the poet’s family, none of his sons surviving him above ten years. The estate of Canons-Ashby became again united to the title, in the person of John Dryden, the surviving brother.[78]
FOOTNOTES
[1] Such, I understand, is the general purport of some letters of Dryden’s, in possession of the Dorset family, which contain certain particulars rendering them unfit for publication. Our author himself commemorates Dorset’s generosity in the Essay on Satire, in the following affecting passage: “Though I must ever acknowledge to the honour of your lordship, and the eternal memory of your charity, that since this Revolution, wherein I have patiently suffered the ruin of my small fortune, and the loss of that poor subsistence which I had from two kings, whom I had served more faithfully than profitably to myself– then your lordship was pleased, out of no other motive but your own nobleness, without any desert of mine, or the least solicitation from me, to make me a most bountiful present, which at that time, when I was most in want of it, came most seasonably and unexpectedly to my relief. That favour, my lord, is of itself sufficient to bind any grateful man to a perpetual acknowledgment, and to all the future service which one of my mean condition can be ever able to perform. May the Almighty God return it for me, both in blessing you here, and rewarding you hereafter!”–_Essay on Satire_, vol. xiii.
[2] So says Ward, in the London Spy.
[3] “Dryden, though my near relation,” says Swift, “is one whom I have often blamed, as well as pitied.” Mr. Malone traces their consanguinity to Swift’s grandmother, Elizabeth Dryden, being the daughter of a brother of Sir Erasmus Driden, the poet’s grandfather; so that the Dean of St. Patrick’s was the son of Dryden’s second cousin, which, in Scotland, would even yet be deemed a near relation. The passages in prose and verse, in which Swift reflects on Dryden, are various. He mentions, in his best poem, “The Rhapsody,”
“The prefaces of Dryden,
For these our cities much confide in, Though merely writ at first for filling, To raise the volume’s price a shilling.”
He introduces Dryden in “The Battle of the Books,” with a most irreverent description; and many of the brilliant touches in the following assumed character of a hack author, are directed against our poet. The malignant allusions to merits, to sufferings, to changes of opinion, to political controversies, and a peaceful consciences, cannot be mistaken. The piece was probably composed _flagrante odio_, for it occurs in the Introduction to “The Tale of a Tub,” which was written about 1692. “These notices may serve to give the learned reader an idea, as well as taste, of what the whole work is likely to produce, wherein I have now altogether circumscribed my thoughts and my studies; and, if I can bring it to a perfection before I die, I shall reckon I have well employed the poor remains of an unfortunate life. This indeed is more than I can justly expect, from a quill worn to the pith in the service of the state, in _pros_ and _cons_ upon popish plots, and meal tubs, and exclusion bills, and passive obedience, and addresses of lives and fortunes, and prerogative, and property and liberty of conscience, and letters to a friend: from an understanding and a conscience, threadbare and ragged with perpetual turning; from a head broken in a hundred places by the malignants of the opposite factions; and from a body spent with poxes ill cured, by trusting to bawds and surgeons, who, as it afterwards appeared, were professed enemies to me and the government, and revenged their party’s quarrel upon my nose and shins. Fourscore and eleven pamphlets have I written under three reigns, and for the service of six and thirty factions. But finding the state has no farther occasion for me and my ink, I retire willingly to draw it out into speculations more becoming a philosopher; having, to my unspeakable comfort, passed a long life with a conscience void of offence.” [See Appendix, vol. xviii., art. “Dryden and Swift.”–ED.]
[4] [The exact sentence seems to have been “a Pindaric poet.” But as Swift had tried nothing but Pindarics, it was nearly if not quite as severe as the more usually quoted and more sweeping verdict.–ED.]
[5] Robert Gould, author of that scandalous lampoon against Dryden, entitled “The Laureat,” inscribes his collection of poems, printed 1688-9, to the Earl of Abingdon; and it contains some pieces addressed to him and to his lady. He survived also to compose, on the Earl’s death, in 1700, “The Mourning Swan,” an eclogue to his memory, in which a shepherd gives the following account of the proximate cause of that event:
“_Menaleus_. To tell you true (whoe’er it may displease), He died of the _Physician_–a disease
That long has reigned, and eager of renown, More than a plague depopulates the town. Inflamed with wine, and blasting at a breath, All its _prescriptions_ are receipts for death. Millions of mischiefs by its rage are wrought, Safe where ’tis fled, but barbarous where ’tis sought; A cursed ingrateful ill, that called to aid, Is still most fatal where it best is paid.”
[6] How far this was necessary, the reader may judge from Mirana, a funeral eclogue; sacred to the memory of that excellent lady, Eleonora, late Countess of Abingdon, 1691, 4th Aug., which concludes with the following singular _imprecation_:
“Hear, friend, my sacred imprecation hear, And let both of us kneel, and both be bare. Doom me (ye powers) to misery and shame, Let mine be the most ignominious name,
Let me, each day, be with new griefs perplext, Curst in this life, nor blessed in the next, If I believe the like of her survives,
Or if I think her not the best of mothers, and of wives.”
[7] 30th August 1693, Dryden writes to Tonson, “I am sure you thought my Lord Radclyffe would have done something; I guessed more truly, that he could not.”–Vol. xviii. The expression perhaps applies rather to his lordship’s want of ability than inclination; and Dryden says indeed, in the dedication, that it is in his nature to be an encourager of good poets, though fortune has not yet put into his hands the power of expressing it. In a letter to Mrs. Steward, Dryden speaks of Ratcliffe as a poet, “and none of the best.”–Vol. xviii.
[8] Vol. xviii.
[9] Copied from the Chandos picture. Kneller’s copy is now at Wentworth House, the seat of Earl Fitzwilliam.
[10] The antiquary may now search in vain for this frail memorial; for the house of Chesterton was, 1807, pulled down for the sake of the materials.
[11] The exact pecuniary arrangements for the Virgil are a matter of much dispute, almost every biographer taking a different view. It seems most probable that the payment was fifty pounds per two books, not fifty for each. The point will be more fully discussed on the letters dealing with the subject.–Ed.
[12] This gave rise to a good epigram:
“Old Jacob, by deep judgment swayed, To please the wise beholders,
Has placed old Nassau’s hook-nosed head On poor Aeneas’ shoulders.
To make the parallel hold tack,
Methinks there’s little lacking; One took his father pick-a-pack,
And t’other sent his packing.”
[13] “I am of your opinion,” says the poet to his son Charles, “that, by Tonson’s means, almost all our letters have miscarried for this last year. But, however, he has missed of his design in the dedication, though he had prepared the book for it; for, in every figure of Aeneas, he has caused him to be drawn, like King William, with a hooked nose.” Dryden hints to Tonson himself his suspicion of this unworthy device, desiring him to forward a letter to his son Charles, but not by post. “Being satisfied, that Ferrand will do by this as he did by two letters which I sent my sons, about my dedicating to the king, of which they received neither.”–Vol. xviii.
[14] Johnson’s “Life of Dryden.”
[15] [Professor Masson calculates, apparently on good grounds, that Simmons probably made about five or six times what he paid. This, in not much more than a year, cannot be considered a bad trade return; but the sale price of “Paradise Lost” seems to provoke unfounded commonplaces from even the most unexpected sources.–ED.]
[16] “I confess to have been somewhat liberal in the business of titles, having observed the humour of multiplying them, to bear great vogue among certain writers, whom I exceedingly reverence. And indeed it seems not unreasonable that books, the children of the brain, should have the honour to be christened with variety of names, as well as other infants of quality. Our famous Dryden has ventured to proceed a point farther, endeavouring to introduce also a multiplicity of godfathers; which is an improvement of much more advantage, upon a very obvious account. It is a pity this admirable invention has not been better cultivated, so as to grow by this time into general imitation, when such an authority serves it for a precedent. Nor have my endeavours been wanting to second so useful an example: but, it seems, there is an unhappy expense usually annexed to the calling of a godfather, which was clearly out of my head, as it is very reasonable to believe. Where the pinch lay, I cannot certainly affirm; but, having employed a world of thoughts and pains to split my treatise into forty sections, and having entreated forty lords of my acquaintance, that they would do me the honour to stand, they all made it a matter of conscience, and sent me their excuses.”
[17] Besides the notes on Virgil, he wrote many single sermons, and a metrical version of the psalms, and died in 1720.
[18] He is described as a rake in “The Pacificator,” a poem bought by Mr. Luttrell, 15th Feb. 1699-1700, which gives an account of a supposed battle between the men of wit and men of sense, as the poet calls them:
“M—-n, a renegade from wit, came on, And made a false attack, and next to none; The hypocrite, in sense, could not conceal What pride, and want of brains, obliged him to reveal. In him, the critic’s ruined by the poet, And Virgil gives his testimony to it.
The troops of wit were so enraged to see This priest invade his own fraternity,
They sent a party out, by silence led, And, without answer, shot the turn-coat dead. The priest, the rake, the wit, strove all in vain, For there, alas! he lies among the slain. _Memento mori_; see the consequence,
When rakes and wits set up for men of sense.”
[19] This, Mr. Malone has proved by the following extract from Motteux’s “Gentleman’s Journal.” “That best of poets (says Motteux) having so long continued a stranger to tolerable English, Mr. Milbourne pitied his hard fate; and seeing that several great men had undertaken some episodes of his Aeneis, without any design of Englishing the whole, he gave us the first book of it some years ago, with a design to go through the poem. It was the misfortune of that first attempt to appear just about the time of the late Revolution, when few had leisure to mind such books; yet, though by reason of his absence, it was printed with a world of faults, those that are sufficient judges have done it the justice to esteem it a very successful attempt, and cannot but wish that he would complete the entire translation.”–_Gent. Journ._ for August 1692.
[20] See the Preface to “A Funeral Idyll, sacred to the glorious Memory of King William III.,” by Mr. Oldmixon.
“In the Idyll on the peace, I made the first essay to throw off rhymes, and the kind reception that poem met with, has encouraged me to attempt it again. I have not been persuaded by my friends to change the Idyll into Idyllium; for having an English word set me by Mr. Dryden, which he uses indifferently with the Greek, I thought it might be as proper in an English poem. I shall not be solicitous to justify myself to those who except against his authority, till they produce me a better: I have heard him blamed for his innovations and coining of words, even by persons who have already been sufficiently guilty of the fault they lay to his charge; and shown us what we are to expect from them, were their names as well settled as his. If I had qualifications enough to do it successfully, I should advise them to write more naturally, delicately, and reasonably themselves, before they attack Mr. Dryden’s reputation; and to think there is something more necessary to make a man write well, than the favour of the great, or the success of a faction. We have every year seen how fickle Fortune has been to her declared favourites; and men of merit, as well as he who has none, have suffered by her inconstancy, as much as they got by her smiles. This should alarm such as are eminently indebted to her, and may be of use to them in their future reflections on others’ productions, not to assume too much to themselves from her partiality to them, lest, when they are left like their predecessor, it should only serve to render them the more ridiculous.”
[21] “Homer in a Nutshell,” (16th Feb.) 1700-9, by Samuel Parker, Gent.
“_Preface_.–Ever since I caught some termagant ones in a club, undervaluing our new translation of Virgil, I’ve known both what opinion I ought to harbour, and what use to make of them; and since the opportunity of a digression so luckily presents itself, I shall make bold to ask the gentlemen their sentiments of two or three lines (to pass over a thousand other instances) which they may meet with in that work. The fourth Aeneid says of Dido, after certain effects of her taking shelter with Aeneas in the cave appear,
_Conjuijium vocat, hoc proetexit lomine culpam,_ V. 172,
which Mr. Dryden renders thus:
She called it marriage, by that specious name To veil the crime, and sanctify the shame.
Nor had he before less happily rendered the 39th verse of the second Aeneid:
_Scinditur in certum studia in contraria vulgus._
The giddy vulgar, as their fancies guide, With noise, say nothing, and in parts divide.
“If these are the lines which they call flat and spiritless, I wish mine could be flat and spiritless too! And, therefore, to make short work, I shall only beg Mr. Dryden’s leave to congratulate him upon his admirable flatness, and dulness, in a rapture of poetical indignation:
Then dares the poring critic snarl? And dare The[21a] puny brats of Momus threaten war? And can’t the proud perverse Arachne’s fate Deter the[21a] mongrels e’er it prove too late? In vain, alas! we warn the[21a] hardened brood; In vain expect they’ll ever come to good. No: they’d conceive more venom if they could. But let each[21a] viper at his peril bite, While you defy the most ingenious spite. So Parian columns, raised with costly care, [21a] Vile snails and worms may daub, yet not impair, While the tough titles, and obdurate rhyme, Fatigue the busy grinders of old Time.
Not but your Maro justly may complain, Since your translation ends his ancient reign, And but by your officious muse outvied, That vast immortal name had never died.
“[21a] I desire these appellations may not seem to affect the parties concerned, any otherwise than as to their character of critics.”
[22] Preface to the Fables, vol. xi.
[23] See several extracts from these poems in the Appendix, vol. xviii., which I have thrown together to show how much Dryden was considered as sovereign among the poets of the time.
[24] This I learn from _Honori Sacellum_, a Funeral Poem, to the Memory of William, Duke of Devonshire, 1707:
“‘Twas so, when the destroyer’s dreadful dart Once pierced through ours, to fair Maria’s heart. From his state-helm then some short hours he stole, T’indulge his melting eyes, and bleeding soul: Whilst his bent knees, to those remains divine, Paid their last offering to that royal shrine.”
On which lines occurs this explanatory note:–“An Ode, composed by His Grace, on the death of the late Queen Mary, justly adjudged by the ingenious Mr. Dryden to have exceeded all that had been written on that occasion.”
[25] Dr. Birch refers to the authority of Richard Graham, junior; but no such letter has been recovered.
[26] The authority, however respectable, has a very long chain of links. Warton heard it from A, who heard it from B, who heard it from Pope, who heard it from Bolingbroke.–Ed.
[27] This discovery was made by the researches of Mr. Malone. Dr. Burney describes Clarke as excelling in the tender and plaintive, to which he was prompted by a temperament of natural melancholy. In the agonies which arose from an unfortunate attachment, he committed suicide in July 1707. See a full account of the catastrophe in Malone’s “Life of Dryden,” p. 299.
[28] It was first performed on February 19, 1735-6, at opera prices. “The public expectations and the effects of this representation (says Dr. Burney) seem to have been correspondent, for the next day we are told in the public papers [London Daily Post, and General Advertiser, Feb. 20,] that ‘there never was, upon the like occasion, so numerous and splendid an audience at any theatre in London, there being at least thirteen hundred persons present; and it is judged that the receipts of the house could not amount to less than L450. It met with general applause, though attended with the inconvenience of having the performers placed at too great a distance from the audience, which we hear will be rectified the next time of performance.”–_Hist. of Music_, iv. 391.
[29] See vol. xviii.
[30] “Thine be the laurel, then; thy blooming age Can best, if any can, support the stage, Which to declines, that shortly we may see Players and plays reduced to second infancy. Sharp to the world, but thoughtless of renown, They plot not on the stage, but on the town; And in despair their empty pit to fill, Set up some foreign monster in a bill:
Thus they jog on, still tricking, never thriving, And murth’ring plays, which they miscall–reviving. Our sense is nonsense, through their pipes conveyed; Scarce can a poet know the play he made, ‘Tis so disguised in death; nor thinks ’tis he That suffers in the mangled tragedy:
Thus Itys first was killed, and after dressed For his own sire, the chief invited guest.”
This gave great offence to the players; one of whom (Powell) made a petulant retort, which the reader will find in a note upon the Epistle itself, vol. xi.
[31] Milbourne, in a note on that passage in the dedication to the Aeneid–“_He who can write well in rhyme, may write better in blank verse_,” says,–“We shall know that, when we see how much better Dryden’s Homer will be than his Virgil.”
[32] “Much the same character he gave of it (_i.e._ Paradise Lost) to a north-country gentleman, to whom I mentioned the book, he being a great reader, but not in a right train, coming to town seldom, and keeping little company. Dryden amazed him with speaking so loftily of it. ‘Why, Mr. Dryden, says he (Sir W.L. told me the thing himself), ’tis not in rhyme.’ ‘No, [replied Dryden;] _nor would I have done_ Virgil _in rhyme, if I was to begin it again._'”–This conversation is supposed by Mr. Malone to have been held with Sir Wilfrid Lawson, of Isell in Cumberland.
[33] See a letter to Mrs. Thomas, vol. xviii.
[34] “Some of these poets, to excuse their guilt, allege for themselves, that the degeneracy of the age makes their lewd way of writing necessary: they pretend the auditors will not be pleased, unless they are thus entertained from the stage; and to please, they say, is the chief business of the poet. But this is by no means a just apology: it is not true, as was said before, that the poet’s chief business is to please. His chief business is to instruct, to make mankind wiser and better; and in order to this, his care should be to please and entertain the audience with all the wit and art he is master of. Aristotle and Horace, and all their critics and commentators all men of wit and sense agree, that this is the end of poetry. But they say, it is their profession to write for the stage; and that poets must starve, if they will not in this way humour the audience: the theatre will be as unfrequented as the churches, and the poet and the parson equally neglected. Let the poet then abandon his profession, and take up some honest lawful calling, where, joining industry to his great wit, he may soon get above the complaints of poverty, so common among these ingenious men, and lie under no necessity of prostituting his wit to any such vile purposes as are here censured. This will-be a course of life more profitable and honourable to himself, and more useful to others. And there are among these writers _some, who think they might have risen to the highest dignities in other professions, had they employed their wit in those ways._ It is a mighty dishonour and reproach to any man that is capable of being useful to the world in any _liberal and virtuous_ profession, _to lavish out his life and wit in propagating vice and corruption of manners_, and in battering from the stage the strongest entrenchments and best works of religion and virtue. Whoever makes this his choice, when the other was in his power, may he go off the stage unpitied, _complaining of neglect and poverty, the just punishments of his irreligion and folly!_”
[35] Mr. Malone conceives, that the Fables were published before the “Satire upon Wit;” but he had not this evidence of the contrary before him. It is therefore clear, that Dryden endured a second attack from Blackmore, before making any reply.
[36] Since Scott wrote, the Collier-Congreve controversy has been the subject of well-known essays by Lamb, Hazlitt, Leigh Hunt, and Macaulay. Very recently a fresh and excellent account of Collier’s book has appeared in M.A. Beljame’s _Le Public et les Hommes de Lettres en Angleterre au xviiieme siecle_ (Paris: Hachette, 1881), a remarkable volume, to which, and to its author, I owe much.–Ed.
[37] In his apology for “The Tale of a Tub,” he points out to the resentment of the clergy, “those heavy illiterate scribblers, prostitute in their reputations, vicious in their lives, and ruined in their fortunes, who, to the shame of good sense, as well as piety, are greedily read, merely upon the strength of bold, false, impious assertions, mixed with unmannerly reflections on the priesthood.” And, after no great interval, he mentions the passage quoted, p. 375 “in which Dryden, L’Estrange, and some others I shall not name, are levelled at; who, having spent their lives in faction, and apostasies, and all manner of vice, pretended to be sufferers for loyalty and religion. So Dryden tells us, in one of his prefaces, of his merits and sufferings, and thanks God that he possesses his soul in patience. In other places he talks at the same rate.”
[38] Vol. xviii.
[39] Thus in a lampoon already quoted (footnote 29, Section VI)
“Quitting my duller hopes, the poor renown Of Eton College, or a Dublin gown.”
Tom Brown makes the charge more directly. “But, prithee, why so severe always on the priesthood, Mr. Bayes? What have they merited to pull down your indignation? I thought the ridiculing men of that character upon the stage, was by this time a topic as much worn out with you, as love and honour in the play, or good fulsome flattery in the dedication. But you, I find, still continue your old humour, to date from the year of Hegira, the loss of Eton, or since orders were refused you. Whatever hangs out, either black or green colours is presently your prize: and you would, by your good will, be as mortifying a vexation to the whole tribe, as an unbegetting year, a concatenation of briefs, or a voracious visitor; so that I am of opinion, you had much better have written in your title-page,
Manet alta mente repostum Judicium _Cleri_, spretaeque injuria _Musoe_.”
The same reproach is urged by Settle. See vol. ix.
[40] Vol. xviii. [The _Diary_ had not been deciphered when Scott wrote. –ED.]
[41] There was, to be sure, in the provoking scruples of that rigid sect, something peculiarly tempting to a satirist. How is it possible to forgive Baxter, for the affectation with which he records the enormities of his childhood?
“Though my conscience,” says he, “would trouble me when I sinned, yet divers sins I was addicted to, and oft committed against my conscience, which, for the warning of others, I will here confess to my shame. I was much addicted to the _excessive gluttonous eating of apples and pears_, which I think laid the foundation of the imbecility and flatulency of my stomach, which caused the bodily calamities of my life. To this end, and to concur with naughty boys that gloried in evil, I have oft gone into other men’s orchards, and stolen the fruit, when I had enough at home.” There are six other retractions of similar enormities, when he concludes: “These were my sins in my childhood, as to which, conscience troubled me for a great while before they were overcome.” Baxter was a pious and worthy man; but can any one read this confession without thinking of Tartuffe, who subjected himself to penance for killing a flea, with too much anger?
[42] See vol. xviii. Mr. Malone thinks tradition has confounded a present made to the poet himself probably of L100, with a legacy bequeathed to his son Charles, which last did amount to L500, but which Charles lived not to receive.
[43] She is distinguished for beauty and virtue, by the author of “The Court at Kensington.” 1699-1700.
“So Ormond’s graceful mien attracts all eyes, And nature needs not ask from art supplies; An heir of grandeur shines through every part, And in her beauteous form is placed the noblest heart: In vain mankind adore, unless she were
By Heaven made less virtuous, or less fair.”
[44] Gildon, in his “Comparison between the Stages.”–“Nay then,” says the whole party at Drury-lane, “we’ll even put ‘The Pilgrim’ upon him.” “Ay, ‘faith, so we will,” says Dryden: “and if you’ll let my son have the profits of the third night, I’ll give you a Secular Masque.” “Done,” says the House; and so the bargain was struck.
[45] _i.e._ Upon the 25th March 1700; it being supposed (as by many in our own time) that the century was concluded so soon as the hundredth year commenced; as if a play was ended at the _beginning of the fifth act._
[46] It was again set by Dr. Boyce, and in 1749 performed in the Drury-lane theatre, with great success.
[47] By a letter to Mrs. Steward, dated the 11th April 1700, it appears they were then only in his contemplation, and the poet died upon the first of the succeeding month. Vol. xviii.
[48]
“Quick Maurus, though he never took degrees In either of our universities,
Yet to be shown by Rome kind wit he looks, Because he played the fool, and writ three books. But if he would be worth a poet’s pen,
He must be more a fool, and write again: For all the former fustian stuff he wrote Was dead-born doggrel, or is quite forgot; His man of Uz, stript of his Hebrew robe, Is just the proverb, and ‘As poor as Job.’ One would have thought he could no longer jog; But Arthur was a level, Job’s a bog.
_There_ though he crept, yet still he kept in sight; But _here_ he founders in, and sinks downright. Had he prepared us, and been dull by rule, Tobit had first been turned to ridicule; But our bold Briton, without fear or awe, O’erleaps at once the whole Apocrypha;
Invades the Psalms with rhymes, and leaves no room For any Vandal Hopkins yet to come.
But when, if, after all, this godly gear Is not so senseless as it would appear, Our mountebank has laid a deeper train; His cant, like Merry Andrew’s noble vein, Cat-calls the sects to draw them in again. At leisure hours in epic song he deals, Writes to the rumbling of his coach’s wheels; Prescribes in haste, and seldom kills by rule, But rides triumphant between stool and stool. Well, let him go,–’tis yet too early day To get himself a place in farce or play; We know not by what name we should arraign him, For no one category can contain him.
A pedant,–canting preacher,–and a quack, Are load enough to break an ass’s back. At last, grown wanton, he presumed to write, Traduced two kings, their kindness to requite; One made the doctor, and one dubbed the knight.”
[49] One of these well-meaning persons insulted the ashes of Dryden while they were still warm, in “An Epistle to Sir Richard Blackmore, occasioned by the New Session of the Poets.” Marked by Mr. Luttrell, 1st November 1700.
“His mighty Dryden to the shades is gone, And Congreve leaves successor of his throne: Though long before his final exit hence, He was himself an abdicated Prince;
Disrobed of all regalities of state, Drawn by a hind and panther from his seat. Heir to his plays, his fables, and his tales, Congreve is the poetic prince of Wales; Not at St. Germains, but at Will’s, his court, Whither the subjects of his dad resort; Where plots are hatched, and councils yet unknown, How young Ascanius may ascend the throne, That in despite of all the Muses’ laws, He may revenge his injured father’s cause, Go, nauseous rhymers, into darkness go, And view your monarch in the shades below, Who takes not now from Helicon his drink, But sips from Styx a liquor black as ink; Like Sisyphus a restless stone he turns, And in a pile of his own labours burns; Whose curling flames most ghastly fiends do raise, Supplied with fuel from his impious plays; And when he fain would puff away the flame, One stops his mouth with bawdy Limberham; There, to augment the terrors of the place, His Hind and Panther stare him in the face; They grin like devils at the cursed toad, Who made [them] draw on earth so vile a load. Could some infernal painter draw the sight, And once transmit it to the realms of light, It might our poets from their sins affright; Or could they hear, how there the sons of verse In dismal yells their tortures do express; How scorched with ballads on the Stygian shore, They horrors in a dismal chorus roar;
Or see how the laureate does his grandeur bear, Crowned with a wreath of flaming sulphur there. This, sir, ‘s your fate, cursed critics you oppose, The most tyrannical and cruel foes;
Dryden, their huntsman dead, no more he wounds, But now you must engage his pack of hounds.”
[50] According to Ward, his expressions were, “that he was an old man, and had not long to live by course of nature, and therefore did not care to part with one limb, at such an age, to preserve an uncomfortable life on the rest.”–_London Spy_, Part xviii.
[51] “I come now from Mr. Dryden’s funeral, where we had an Ode in Horace sung, instead of David’s Psalms; whence you may find, that we don’t think a poet worth Christian burial. The pomp of the ceremony was a kind of rhapsody, and fitter, I think, for Hudibras, than him; because the cavalcade was mostly burlesque: but he was an extraordinary man, and buried after an extraordinary fashion; for I do believe there was never such another burial seen. The oration, indeed, was great and ingenious, worthy the subject, and like the author; whose prescriptions can restore the living, and his pen embalm the dead. And so much for Mr. Dryden; whose burial was the same as his life,–variety, and not of a piece:– the quality and mob, farce and heroics; the sublime and ridicule mixed in a piece;–great Cleopatra in a hackney coach.”
[52] Those who wish to peruse this memorable romance may find it in vol. xviii. It was first published in Wilson’s “Life of Congreve,” 1730. Mr. Malone has successfully shown that it is false in almost all its parts; for, independently of the extreme improbability of the whole story, it is clear, from Ward’s account, written at the time, that Lord Jefferies, who it is pretended interrupted the funeral, did, in fact, largely contribute to it. This also appears from a paragraph, in a letter from Doctor afterwards Bishop Tanner, dated May 6th, 1700, and thus given by Mr. Malone:–“Mr. Dryden died a papist, if at all a Christian. Mr. Montague had given orders to bury him; but some lords (my Lord Dorset, Jefferies, etc.), thinking it would not be splendid enough, ordered him to be carried to Russel’s: there he was embalmed; and now lies in state at the Physicians’ College, and is to be buried with Chaucer, Cowley, etc., at Westminster Abbey, on Monday next.”–_MSS. Ballard. in Bibl. Bodl._ vol. iv. p. 29.
[53] The following lines are given by Mr. Malone as a specimen:–
“Before the hearse the mourning hautboys go, And screech a dismal sound of grief and woe: More dismal notes from bog-trotters may fall, More dismal plaints at Irish funeral;
But no such floods of tears e’er stopped our tide, Since Charles, the martyr and the monarch, died. The decency and order first describe,
Without regard to either sex or tribe. The sable coaches led the dismal van,
But by their side, I think, few footmen ran; Nor needed these; the rabble fill the streets, And mob with mob in great disorder meets. See next the coaches, how they are accouter’d, Both in the inside, eke and on the outward: One p—-y spark, one sound as any roach, One poet and two fiddlers in a coach:
The playhouse drab, that beats the beggar’s bush, * * * * *
By everybody kissed, good truth,–but such is Now her good fate, to ride with mistress Duchess. Was e’er immortal poet thus buffooned!
In a long line of coaches thus lampooned!”
[54] [Transcriber’s note: “Page 73” in original. See Footnote 14, Section II.]
[55] [Transcriber’s note: “‘Poet Squab,’ p. 215” in original. See Footnote 14, Section V.]
[56] From “Epigrams on the Paintings of the most eminent Masters,” by J.E. (John Elsum), Esq., 8vo, 1700, Mr. Malone gives the following lines:–
The Effigies of Mr. Dryden, by Closterman, _Epig_. clxiv.
“A sleepy eye he shows, and no sweet feature, Yet was indeed a favourite of nature:
Endowed and graced with an exalted mind, With store of wit, and that of every kind. Juvenal’s tartness, Horace’s sweet air, With Virgil’s force, in him concentered were. But though the painter’s art can never show it, That his exemplar was so great a poet,
Yet are the lines and tints so subtly wrought, You may perceive he was a man of thought. Closterman, ’tis confessed, has drawn him well, But short of Absalom and Achitophel.”
[57] [Transcriber’s note: “See pages 258-261” in original. This corresponds to the discussion on Dryden’s conversion to Catholicism, Section VI.]
[58] A correspondent of the Gentleman’s Magazine, in 1745, already quoted, says of him as a personal acquaintance: “Posterity is absolutely mistaken as to that great man: though forced to be a satirist, he was the mildest creature breathing, and the readiest to help the young and deserving. Though his comedies are horribly full of _double entendre_, yet ’twas owing to a false complaisance. He was, in company, the modestest man that ever conversed.”
[59] Letter to the author of “Reflections Historical and Political.” 4to, 1732.
[60] See vol. xi.; vol. xviii. From the poem in the passage last quoted, it seems that the original sign of Will’s Coffee-house had been a _cow._ It was changed however, to a _rose_, in Dryden’s time. This wit’s coffeehouse was situated at the end of Bow-street, on the north side of Russel-street, and frequented by all who made any pretence to literature, or criticism. Their company, it would seem, was attended with more honour than profit; for Dennis describes William Envin, or Urwin, who kept the house, as taking refuge in White-friars, then a place of asylum, to escape the clutches of his creditors. “For since the law,” says the critic, “thought it just to put Will out of its protection, Will thought it but prudent to put himself out of its power.”
[61] See Appendix, vol. xviii.; vol. xi.
[62] The Dean of Peterborough. “I was,” says he, “about seventeen, when I first came to town; an odd-looking boy, with short rough hair, and that sort of awkwardness which one always brings out of the country with one: however, in spite of my bashfulness and appearance, I used now and then to thrust myself into Will’s, to have the pleasure of seeing the most celebrated wits of that time, who used to resort thither. The second time that ever I was there, Mr. Dryden was speaking of his own things, as he frequently did, especially of such as had been lately published. If anything of mine is good (says he), ’tis my Mac-Flecknoe; and I value myself the more on it, because it is the first piece of ridicule written in heroics.’ Lockier overhearing this, plucked up his spirit so far, as to say, in a voice just loud enough to be heard, that Mac-Flecknoe was a very fine poem, but that he had not imagined it to be the first that ever was wrote that way. On this Dryden turned short upon him, as surprised at his interposing; asked him how long he had been a dealer in poetry; and added, with a smile,–‘But pray, sir, what is it, that you did imagine to have been writ so before?’ Lockier named Boileau’s Lutrin, and Tassoni’s Secchia Rapita; which he had read, and knew Dryden had borrowed some strokes from each. ”Tis true,’ says Dryden;–‘I had forgot them.’ A little after, Dryden went out, and in going spoke to Lockier again, and desired him to come to him the next day. Lockier was highly delighted with the invitation, and was well acquainted with him as long as he lived.”–MALONE, vol. i. p. 481.
[63] “I have often heard,” says Mr. George Russell, “that Mr. Dryden, dissatisfied and envious at the reputation Creech obtained by his translation of Lucretius, purposely advised him to undertake Horace, to which he knew him unequal, that he might by his ill performance lose the fame he had acquired. Mr. Southerne, author of ‘Oroonoko,’ set me right as to the conduct of Mr. Dryden in this affair; affirming that, being one evening at Mr. Dryden’s lodgings, in company with Mr. Creech, and some other ingenious men, Mr. Creech told the company of his design to translate Horace; from which Mr. Dryden, with many arguments, dissuaded him, as an attempt which his genius was not adapted to, and which would risk his losing the good opinion the world had of him, by his successful translation of Lucretius. I thought it proper to acquaint you with this circumstance, since it rescues the fame of one of our greatest poets from the imputation of envy and malevolence.” See also, upon this subject, a note in vol. viii. Yet Jacob Tonson told Spence, “that Dryden would compliment Crowne when a play of his failed, but was cold to him if he met with success. He used sometimes to say, that Crowne had some genius; but then he always added, that his father and Crowne’s mother were very well acquainted.”–MALONE, vol. i. p. 500.
[64] His conversation is thus characterised by a contemporary writer:
“O, Sir, there’s a medium in all things. Silence and chat are distant enough, to have a convenient discourse come between them; and thus far I agree with you, that the company of the author of ‘Absalom and Achitophel’ is more valuable, though not so talkative, than that of the modern men of _banter_; for what he says is like what he writes, much to the purpose, and full of mighty sense; and if the town were for anything desirable, it were for the conversation of him, and one or two more of the same character.”–_The Humours and Conversation of the Town exposed, in two Dialogues_, 1693, p. 73
[65] [This story is probably as old as the first married pair of whom the husband was studious. It certainly appears without names in the _Historiettes_ of Tallemant des Reaux, most of which were written five years before Dryden’s marriage.–ED]
[66] “When Dryden, our first great master of verse and harmony, brought his play of ‘Amphitryon’ to the stage, I heard him give it his first reading to the actors; in which, though it is true he delivered the plain sense of every period, yet the whole was in so cold, so flat, and unaffecting a manner, that I am afraid of not being believed, when I affirm it.”–_Cibber’s Apology_, 4to.
[67] [Transcriber’s note: “See page 112” in original. This is to be found in Section III.]
[68] Vol. xviii.
[69] “I find (says Gildon) Mr. Bayes, the younger [Rowe], has two qualities, like Mr. Bayes, the elder; his admiration of some odd books, as ‘Reynard the Fox,’ and the old ballads of ‘Jane Shore,’ etc.”– _Remarks on Mr. Rome’s Plays_. “Reynard the Fox” is also mentioned in “The Town and Country Mouse,” as a favourite book of Dryden. And Addison, in the 85th number of the Spectator, informs us, that Dorset and Dryden delighted in perusing the collection of old ballads which the latter possessed.
[70] Vol. xviii.
[71] It is now No. 43.
[72] Vol. vii.
[73] [The unfavourable accounts of Lady Elizabeth’s temper after marriage are not much better founded than those of her maidenly or unmaidenly conduct before it. Dryden’s supposed to almost all his contemporaries in _belles-lettres_. There is no sign in his letters of any conjugal unhappiness, and Malone’s “respectable authority” is family gossip a century after date.–ED.]
[74] [Transcriber’s note: “P. 85” in original. This is to be found in Section II.]
[75] These are–1. Latin verses prefixed to Lord Roscommon’s Essay on Translated Verse. 2. Latin verses on the Death of Charles II., published in the Cambridge collection of Elegies on that occasion. 3. A poem in the same language, upon Lord Arlington’s Gardens, published in the Second Miscellany. 4. A translation of the seventh Satire of Juvenal, mentioned in the text. 5. An English poem, on the Happiness of a Retired Life. 6. A pretty song, printed by Mr. Malone, to which Charles Dryden also composed music.
[76] The prologue was spoken by the ghosts of Shakespeare and Dryden; from which Mr. Malone selects the following curious quotation:–“Mr. Bevil Higgons, the writer of it, _ventured_ to make the representative of our great dramatic poet speak these lines!–
“These scenes in their rough native dress were mine; _But now, improved, with nobler lustre shine_ The first rude sketches Shakespeare’s pencil drew, _But all the shining master strokes are new._ This play, ye critics, shall your fury stand, Adorned and rescued by a faultless hand.”
To which our author replies,
“I long endeavoured to support the stage, With the faint copies of thy nobler rage, But toiled in vain for an ungenerous age. They starved me living, nay, denied me fame, And scarce, now dead, do justice to my name. Would you repent? Be to my ashes kind;
Indulge the pledges I have left behind.”–MALONE.
[77] [Transcriber’s note: “Page 206, and vol. ix.” in original. This is to be found in Section V.]
[78] Mr. Malone says, “Edward Dryden, the eldest son of the last Sir Erasmus Dryden, left by his wife, Elizabeth Allen, who died in London in 1761, five sons; the youngest of whom, Bevil, was father of the present Lady Dryden. Sir John, the eldest, survived all his brothers, and died without issue, at Canons-Ashby, March 20, 1770.” [The subsequent history of the family is as follows:–Elizabeth Dryden, the “present Lady Dryden” referred to by Scott, married Mr. John Turner, to whom she carried the estates. Mr. Turner assumed the name and arms of Dryden in 1791, and was created a baronet four years later. The title and property passed successively to his two sons, and then to the son of the younger, the present Sir Henry Dryden, a distinguished archaeologist.–ED.]
SECTION VIII.
_The State of Dryden’s Reputation at his Death, and afterwards–The General Character of his Mind–His Merit as a Dramatist–As a Lyrical Poet—As a Satirist–As a Narrative Poet–As a Philosophical and Miscellaneous Poet–As a Translator–As a Prose Author–As a Critic._
If Dryden received but a slender share of the gifts of fortune, it was amply made up to him in reputation. Even while a poet militant upon earth, he received no ordinary portion of that applause, which is too often reserved for the “dull cold ear of death.” He combated, it is true, but he conquered; and, in despite of faction, civil and religious, of penury, and the contempt which follows it, of degrading patronage, and rejected solicitation, from 1666 to the year of his death, the name of Dryden was first in English literature. Nor was his fame limited to Britain. Of the French literati, although Boileau,[1] with unworthy affectation, when he heard of the honours paid to the poet’s remains, pretended ignorance even of his name, yet Rapin, the famous critic, learned the English language on purpose to read the works of Dryden.[2] Sir John Shadwell, the son of our author’s ancient adversary, bore an honourable and manly testimony to the general regret among the men of letters at Paris for the death of Dryden. “The men of letters here lament the loss of Mr. Dryden very much. The honours paid to him have done our countrymen no small service; for, next to having so considerable a man of our own growth, ’tis a reputation to have known how to value him; as patrons very often pass for wits, by esteeming those that are so.” And from another authority we learn, that the engraved copies of Dryden’s portrait were bought up with avidity on the Continent.[3]
But it was in England where the loss of Dryden was chiefly to be felt. It is seldom the extent of such a deprivation is understood, till it has taken place; as the size of an object is best estimated, when we see the space void which it had long occupied. The men of literature, starting as it were from a dream, began to heap commemorations, panegyrics, and elegies: the great were as much astonished at their own neglect of such an object of bounty, as if the same had never been practised before; and expressed as much compunction, as it were never to occur again. The poets were not silent; but their strains only evinced their woful degeneracy from him whom they mourned. Henry Playford, a publisher of music, collected their effusions into a compilation, entitled, “Luctus Britannici, or the Tears of the British Muses, for the death of John Dryden;” which he published about two months after Dryden’s death.[4] Nine ladies, assuming each the character of a Muse, and clubbing a funeral ode, or elegy, produced “The Nine Muses;” of which very rare (and very worthless) collection, I have given a short account in the Appendix; where the reader will also find an ode on the same subject, by Oldys, which may serve for ample specimen of the poetical lamentations over Dryden.
The more costly, though equally unsubstantial, honour of a monument, was projected by Montague; and loud were the acclamations of the poets on his generous forgiveness of past discords with Dryden, and the munificence of this universal patron. But Montague never accomplished his purpose, if he seriously entertained it. Pelham, Duke of Newcastle, announced the same intention; received the panegyric of Congreve for having done so; and having thus pocketed the applause, proceeded no further than Montague had done. At length Pope, in some lines which were rather an epitaph on Dryden, who lay in the vicinity, than on Rowe, over whose tomb they were to be placed,[5] roused Dryden’s original patron, Sheffield, formerly Earl of Mulgrave, and now Duke of Buckingham, to erect over the grave of his friend the present simple monument which distinguishes it. The inscription was comprised in the following words:–_J. Dryden. Natus 1632. Mortuus I Maii 1700. Joannes Sheffield, Duxx Buckinghamiensis posuit, 1720_.[6]
In the school of reformed English poetry, of which Dryden must be acknowledged as the founder, there soon arose disciples not unwilling to be considered as the rivals of their muster. Addison had his partisans, who were desirous to hold him up in this point of view; and he himself is said to have taken pleasure, with the assistance of Steele, to depreciate Dryden, whose fame was defended by Pope and Congreve. No serious invasion of Dryden’s pre-eminence can be said, however, to have taken place, till Pope himself, refining upon that structure of versification which our author had first introduced, and attending with sedulous diligence to improve every passage to the highest pitch of point and harmony, exhibited a new style of composition, and claimed at least to share with Dryden the sovereignty of Parnassus. I will not attempt to concentrate what Johnson has said upon this interesting comparison:–
“In acquired knowledge, the superiority must be allowed to Dryden, whose education was more scholastic, and who, before he became an author, had been allowed more time for study, with better means of information. His mind has a larger range, and he collects his images and illustrations from a more extensive circumference of science. Dryden knew more of man in his general nature, and Pope in his local manners. The notions of Dryden were formed by comprehensive speculation, and those of Pope by minute attention. There is more dignity in the knowledge of Dryden, and more certainty in that of Pope.
“Poetry was not the sole praise of either; for both excelled likewise in prose; but Pope did not borrow his prose from his predecessor. The style of Dryden is capricious and varied, that of Pope is cautious and uniform. Dryden obeys the motions of his own mind, Pope constrains his mind to his own rules of composition. Dryden is sometimes vehement and rapid; Pope is always smooth, uniform, and gentle. Dryden’s page is a natural field, rising into inequalities, and diversified by the varied exuberance of abundant vegetation; Pope’s is a velvet lawn, shaven by the scythe, and levelled by the roller.
“Of genius, that power which constitutes a poet; that quality, without which judgment is cold, and knowledge is inert; that energy, which collects, combines, amplifies, and animates; the superiority must, with some hesitation, be allowed to Dryden. It is not to be inferred, that of this poetical vigour Pope had only a little, because Dryden had more; for every other writer, since Milton, must give place to Pope: and even of Dryden it must be said, that if he has brighter paragraphs, he has not better poems. Dryden’s performances were always hasty, either excited by some external occasion, or extorted by domestic necessity; he composed without consideration, and published without correction. What his mind could supply at call, or gather in one excursion, was all that he sought, and all that he gave. The dilatory caution of Pope enabled him to condense his sentiments, to multiply his images, and to accumulate all that study might produce, or chance might supply. If the flights of Dryden, therefore, are higher, Pope continues longer on the wing. If of Dryden’s fire the blaze is brighter, of Pope the heat is more regular and constant. Dryden often surpasses expectation, and Pope never falls below it. Dryden is read with frequent astonishment, and Pope with perpetual delight.”[7]
As the eighteenth century advanced, the difference between the styles of these celebrated authors became yet more manifest. It was then obvious, that though Pope’s felicity of expression, his beautiful polish of sentiment, and the occasional brilliancy of his wit, were not easily imitated, yet many authors, by dint of a good ear, and a fluent expression, learned to command the unaltered sweetness of his melody, which, like a favourite tune, when descended to hawkers and ballad-singers, became disgusting as it became common. The admirers of poetry then reverted to the brave negligence of Dryden’s versification, as, to use Johnson’s simile, the eye, fatigued with the uniformity of a lawn, seeks variety in the uncultivated glade or swelling mountain. The preference for which Dennis, asserting the cause of Dryden, had raved and thundered in vain, began, by degrees, to be assigned to the elder bard; and many a poet sheltered his harsh verses and inequalities under an assertion that he belonged to the school of Dryden. Churchill–
“Who, born for the universe, narrowed his mind, And to party gave up what was meant for mankind,”–
Churchill was one of the first to seek in the “Mac-Flecknoe,” the “Absalom,” and “The Hind and Panther,” authority for bitter and personal sarcasm, couched in masculine, though irregular versification, dashed from the pen without revision, and admitting occasional rude and flat passages, to afford the author a spring to comparative elevation. But imitation always approaches to caricature; and the powers of Churchill have been unable to protect him from the oblivion into which his poems are daily sinking, owing to the ephemeral interest of political subjects, and his indolent negligence of severe study and regularity. To imitate Dryden, it were well to study his merits, without venturing to adopt the negligences and harshness, which the hurry of his composition, and the comparative rudeness of his age, rendered in him excusable. At least, those who venture to sink as low, should be confident of the power of soaring as high; for surely it is a rash attempt to dive, unless in one conscious of ability to swim. While the beauties of Dryden may be fairly pointed out as an object of emulation, it is the less pleasing, but not less necessary, duty of his biographer and editor, to notice those deficiencies, which his high and venerable name may excuse, but cannot render proper objects of applause or imitation.
So much occasional criticism has been scattered in various places through these volumes, that, while attempting the consideration of one or two of his distinguishing and pre-eminent compositions, which have been intentionally reserved to illustrate a few pages of general criticism, I feel myself free from the difficult, and almost contradictory task, of drawing my maxims and examples from the extended course of his literary career.
My present task is limited to deducing his poetic character from those works which he formed on his last and most approved model. The general tone of his genius, however, influenced the whole course of his publications; and upon that, however his taste, a few preliminary notices may not be misplaced.
The distinguishing characteristic of Dryden’s genius seems to have been the power of reasoning, and of expressing the result in appropriate language.[8] This may seem slender praise; yet these were the talents that led Bacon into the recesses of philosophy, and conducted Newton to the cabinet of nature. The prose works of Dryden bear repeated evidence to his philosophical powers. His philosophy was not indeed of a formed and systematic character; for he is often contented to leave the path of argument which must have conducted him to the fountain of truth, and to resort with indolence or indifference to the leaky cisterns which had been hewn out by former critics. But where his pride or his taste are interested, he shows evidently, that it was not want of the power of systematising, but of the time and patience necessary to form a system, which occasions the discrepancy that we often notice in his critical and philological disquisitions. This power of ratiocination, of investigating, discovering, and appreciating that which is really excellent, if accompanied with the necessary command of fanciful illustration, and elegant expression, is the most interesting quality which can be possessed by a poet. It must indeed have a share in the composition of everything that is truly estimable in the fine arts, as well as in philosophy. Nothing is so easily attained as the power of presenting the extrinsic qualities of fine painting, fine music, or fine poetry; the beauty of colour and outline, the combination of notes, the melody of versification, may be imitated by artists of mediocrity; and many will view, hear, or peruse their performances, without being able positively to discover why they should not, since composed according to all the rules, afford pleasure equal to those of Raphael, Handel, or Dryden. The deficiency lies in the vivifying spirit, which, like _alcohol_, may be reduced to the same principle in all, though it assumes such varied qualities from the mode in which it is exerted or combined. Of this power of intellect, Dryden seems to have possessed almost an exuberant share, combined, as usual, with the faculty of correcting his own conceptions, by observing human nature, the practical and experimental philosophy as well of poetry as of ethics or physics. The early habits of Dryden’s education and poetical studies gave his researches somewhat too much of a metaphysical character; and it was a consequence of his mental acuteness, that his dramatic personages often philosophised or reasoned, when they ought only to have felt. The more lofty, the fiercer, the more ambitious feelings, seem also to have been his favourite studies. Perhaps the analytical mode in which he exercised his studies of human life tended to confine his observation to the more energetic feelings of pride, anger, ambition, and other high-toned passions. He that mixes in public life must see enough of these stormy convulsions; but the finer and more imperceptible operations of love, in its sentimental modifications, if the heart of the author does not supply an example from its own feelings, cannot easily be studied at the expense of others. Dryden’s bosom, it must be owned, seems to have afforded him no such means of information; the licence of his age, and perhaps the advanced period at which he commenced his literary career, had probably armed him against this more exalted strain of passion. The love of the senses he has in many places expressed, in as forcible and dignified colouring as the subject could admit; but of a mere moral and sentimental passion he seems to have had little idea, since he frequently substitutes in its place the absurd, unnatural, and fictitious refinements of romance. In short, his love is always in indecorous nakedness, or sheathed in the stiff panoply of chivalry. But if Dryden fails in expressing the milder and more tender passions, not only did the stronger feelings of the heart, in all its dark or violent workings, but the face of natural objects, and their operation upon the human mind, pass promptly in review at his command. External pictures, and their corresponding influence on the spectator, are equally ready at his summons; and though his poetry, from the nature of his subjects, is in general rather ethic and didactic, than narrative of composition, than his figures and his landscapes are presented to the mind with the same vivacity as the flow of his reasoning, or the acute metaphysical discrimination of his characters.
But the powers of observation and of deduction are not the only qualities essential to the poetical character. The philosopher may indeed prosecute his experimental researches into the _arcana_ of nature, and announce them to the public through the medium of a friendly _redacteur_, as the legislator of Israel obtained permission to speak to the people by the voice of Aaron; but the poet has no such privilege; nay, his doom is so far capricious, that, though he may be possessed of the primary quality of poetical conception to the highest possible extent, it is but like a lute without its strings, unless he has the subordinate, though equally essential, power of expressing what he feels and conceives, in appropriate and harmonious language. With this power Dryden’s poetry was gifted in a degree, surpassing in modulated harmony that of all who had preceded him, and inferior to none that has since written English verse. He first showed that the English language was capable of uniting smoothness and strength. The hobbling verses of his predecessors were abandoned even by the lowest versifiers; and by the force of his precept and example, the meanest lampooners of the year seventeen hundred wrote smoother lines than Donne and Cowley, the chief poets of the earlier half of the seventeenth century. What was said of Rome adorned by Augustus, has been, by Johnson, applied to English poetry improved by Dryden; that he found it of brick, and left it of marble. This reformation was not merely the effect of an excellent ear, and a superlative command of gratifying it by sounding language; it was, we have seen, the effect of close, accurate, and continued study of the power of the English tongue. Upon what principles he adopted and continued his system of versification, he long meditated to communicate in his projected prosody of English poetry. The work, however, might have been more curious than useful, as there would have been some danger of its diverting the attention, and misguiding the efforts of poetical adventurers; for as it is more easy to be masons than architects, we may deprecate an art which might teach the world to value those who can build rhymes, without attending to the more essential qualities of poetry. Strict attention might no doubt discover the principle of Dryden’s versification; but it seems no more essential to the analysing his poetry, than the principles of mathematics to understanding music, although the art necessarily depends on them. The extent in which Dryden reformed our poetry, is most readily proved by an appeal to the ear; and Dr. Johnson has forcibly stated, that “he knew how to choose the flowing and the sonorous words; to vary the pauses and adjust the accents; to diversify the cadence, and yet preserve the smoothness of the metre.” To vary the English hexameter, he established the use of the triplet and Alexandrine. Though ridiculed by Swift, who vainly thought he had exploded them for ever, their force is still acknowledged in classical poetry.
Of the various kinds of poetry which Dryden occasionally practised, the drama was that which, until the last six years of his life, he chiefly relied on for support. His style of tragedy, we have seen, varied with his improved taste, perhaps with the change of manners. Although the heroic drama, as we have described it at length in the preceding pages, presented the strongest temptation to the exercise of argumentative poetry in sounding rhyme, Dryden was at length contented to abandon it for the more pure and chaste style of tragedy, which professes rather the representation of human beings, than the creation of ideal perfection, or fantastic and anomalous characters. The best of Dryden’s performances in this latter style, are unquestionably “Don Sebastian,” and “All for Love.” Of these, the former is in the poet’s very best manner; exhibiting dramatic persons, consisting of such bold and impetuous characters as he delighted to draw, well contrasted, forcibly marked, and engaged in an interesting succession of events. To many tempers, the scene between Sebastian and Dorax must appear one of the most moving that ever adorned the British stage. Of “All for Love,” we may say, that it is successful in a softer style of painting; and that so far as sweet and beautiful versification, elegant language, and occasional tenderness, can make amends for Dryden’s deficiencies in describing the delicacies of sentimental passion, they are to be found in abundance in that piece. But on these, and on the poet’s other tragedies, we have enlarged in our preliminary notices prefixed to each piece.
Dryden’s comedies, besides being stained with the licence of the age (a licence which he seems to use as much from necessity as choice), have, generally speaking, a certain heaviness of character. There are many flashes of wit; but the author has beaten his flint hard ere he struck them out. It is almost essential to the success of a jest, that it should at least seem to be extemporaneous. If we espy the joke at a distance, nay, if without seeing it we have the least reason to suspect we are travelling towards one, it is astonishing how the perverse obstinacy of our nature delights to refuse it currency. When, therefore, as is often the case in Dryden’s comedies, two persons remain on the stage for no obvious purpose but to say good things, it is no wonder they receive but little thanks from an ungrateful audience. The incidents, therefore, and the characters, ought to be comic; but actual jests, or _bon mots_, should be rarely introduced, and then naturally, easily, without an appearance of premeditation, and bearing a strict conformity to the character of the person who utters them. Comic situation Dryden did not greatly study; indeed I hardly recollect any, unless in the closing scene of “The Spanish Friar,” which indicates any peculiar felicity of invention. For comic character, he is usually contented to paint a generic representative of a certain class of men or women; a Father Dominic, for example, or a Melantha, with all the attributes of their calling and manners, strongly and divertingly portrayed, but without any individuality of character. It is probable that, with these deficiencies, he felt the truth of his own acknowledgment, and that he was forced upon composing comedies to gratify the taste of the age, while the bent of his genius was otherwise directed.
In lyrical poetry, Dryden must be allowed to have no equal. “Alexander’s Feast” is sufficient to show his supremacy in that brilliant department. In this exquisite production, he flung from him all the trappings with which his contemporaries had embarrassed the ode. The language, lofty and striking as the ideas are, is equally simple and harmonious; without far-fetched allusions, or epithets, or metaphors, the story is told as intelligibly as if it had been in the most humble prose. The change of tone in the harp of Timotheus, regulates the measure and the melody, and the language of every stanza. The hearer, while he is led on by the successive changes, experiences almost the feelings of the Macedonian and his peers; nor is the splendid poem disgraced by one word or line unworthy of it, unless we join in the severe criticism of Dr. Johnson, on the concluding stanzas. It is true, that the praise of St. Cecilia is rather abruptly introduced as a conclusion to the account of the Feast of Alexander; and it is also true, that the comparison,
“He raised a mortal to the sky,
She drew an angel down,”
is inaccurate, since the feat of Timotheus was metaphorical, and that of Cecilia literal. But, while we stoop to such criticism, we seek for blots in the sun.
Of Dryden’s other pindarics, some, as the celebrated “Ode to the Memory of Mrs. Killigrew,” are mixed with the leaven of Cowley; others, like the “_Threnodia Augustalis_,” are occasionally flat and heavy. All contain passages of brilliancy, and all are thrown into a versification, melodious amidst its irregularity. We listen for the completion of Dryden’s stanza, as for the explication of a difficult passage in music; and wild and lost as the sound appears, the ear is proportionally gratified by the unexpected ease with which harmony is extracted from discord and confusion.
The satirical powers of Dryden were of the highest order. He draws his arrow to the head, and dismisses it straight upon his object of aim. In this walk he wrought almost as great a reformation as upon versification in general; as will plainly appear, if we consider, that the satire, before Dryden’s time, bore the same reference to “Absalom and Achitophel,” which an ode of Cowley bears to “Alexander’s Feast.” Butler and his imitators had adopted a metaphysical satire, as the poets in the earlier part of the century had created a metaphysical vein of serious poetry.[9] Both required store of learning to supply the perpetual expenditure of extraordinary and far-fetched illustration; the object of both was to combine and hunt down the strangest and most fanciful analogies; and both held the attention of the reader perpetually on the stretch, to keep up with the meaning of the author. There can be no doubt, that this metaphysical vein was much better fitted for the burlesque than the sublime. Yet the perpetual scintillation of Butler’s wit is too dazzling to be delightful; and we can seldom read far in “Hudibras” without feeling more fatigue than pleasure. His fancy is employed with the profusion of a spendthrift, by whose eternal round of banqueting his guests are at length rather wearied out than regaled. Dryden was destined to correct this, among other errors of his age; to show the difference between burlesque and satire; and to teach his successors in that species of assault, rather to thrust than to flourish with their weapon. For this purpose he avoided the unvaried and unrelieved style of grotesque description and combination, which had been fashionable since the satires of Cleveland and Butler. To render the objects of his satire hateful and contemptible, he thought it necessary to preserve the lighter shades of character, if not for the purpose of softening the portrait, at least for that of preserving the likeness. While Dryden seized, and dwelt upon, and aggravated, all the evil features of his subject, he carefully retained just as much of its laudable traits as preserved him from the charge of want of candour, and fixed down the resemblance upon the party. And thus, instead of unmeaning caricatures, he presents portraits which cannot be mistaken, however unfavourable ideas they may convey of the originals. The character of Shaftesbury, both as Achitophel, and as drawn in “The Medal,” bears peculiar witness to this assertion. While other court poets endeavoured to turn the obnoxious statesman into ridicule on account of his personal infirmities and extravagances, Dryden boldly confers upon him all the praise for talent and for genius that his friends could have claimed, and trusts to the force of his satirical expression for working up even these admirable attributes with such a mixture of evil propensities and dangerous qualities, that the whole character shall appear dreadful, and even hateful, but not contemptible. But where a character of less note, a Shadwell or a Settle, crossed his path, the satirist did not lay himself under these restraints, but wrote in the language of bitter irony and immeasurable contempt: even then, however, we are less called on to admire the wit of the author, than the force and energy of his poetical philippic. These are the verses which are made by indignation, and, no more than theatrical scenes of real passion, admit of refined and protracted turns of wit, or even the lighter sallies of humour. These last ornaments are proper in that Horatian satire, which rather ridicules the follies of the age, than stigmatises the vices of individuals; but in this style Dryden has made few essays. He entered the field as champion of a political party, or as defender of his own reputation; discriminated his antagonists, and applied the scourge with all the vehemence of Juvenal. As he has himself said of that satirist, “his provocations were great, and he has revenged them tragically.” This is the more worthy of notice, as, in the Essay on Satire, Dryden gives a decided preference to those nicer and more delicate touches of satire, which consist in fine raillery. But whatever was the opinion of his cooler moments, the poet’s practice was dictated by the furious party-spirit of the times, and the no less keen stimulative of personal resentment. It is perhaps to be regretted, that so much energy of thought, and so much force of expression, should have been wasted in anatomising such criminals as Shadwell and Settle; yet we cannot account the amber less precious, because they are grubs and flies that are enclosed within it.
The “Fables” of Dryden are the best examples of his talents as a narrative poet; those powers of composition, description, and narration, which must have been called into exercise by the Epic Muse, had his fate allowed him to enlist among her votaries. The “Knight’s Tale,” the longest and most laboured of Chaucer’s stories, possesses a degree of regularity which might satisfy the most severe critic. It is true, that the honour arising from thence must be assigned to the more ancient bard, who had himself drawn his subject from an Italian model; but the high and decided preference which Dryden has given to this story, although somewhat censured by Trapp, enables us to judge how much the poet held an accurate combination of parts, and coherence of narrative, essentials of epic poetry.[10] That a classic scholar like Trapp should think the plan of the “Knight’s Tale” equal to that of the Iliad, is a degree of candour not to be hoped for; but surely to an unprejudiced reader, a story which exhausts in its conclusion all the interest which it has excited in its progress, which, when terminated, leaves no question to be asked, no personage undisposed of, and no curiosity unsatisfied, is, abstractedly considered, more gratifying than the history of a few weeks of a ten years’ war, commencing long after the siege had begun, and ending long before the city was taken. Of the other tales, it can hardly be said that their texture is more ingenious or closely woven than that of ordinary novels or fables: but in each of them Dryden has displayed the superiority of his genius, in selecting for amplification and ornament those passages most susceptible of poetical description. The account of the procession of the Fairy Chivalry in the “Flower and the Leaf;” the splendid description of the champions who came to assist at the tournament in the “Knight’s Tale;” the account of the battle itself, its alternations and issue,–if they cannot be called improvements on Chaucer, are nevertheless so spirited a transfusion of his ideas into modern verse, as almost to claim the merit of originality. Many passages might be shown in which this praise may be carried still higher, and the merit of invention added to that of imitation. Such is the description of the commencement of the tourney, which is almost entirely original, and most of the ornaments in the translations from Boccacio, whose prose fictions demanded more additions from the poet than the exuberant imagery of Chaucer. To select instances would be endless; but every reader of poetry has by heart the description of Iphigenia asleep, nor are the lines in “Theodore and Honoria,”[11] which describe the approach of the apparition, and its effects upon animated and inanimated nature even before it becomes visible, less eminent for beauties of the terrific order:
“While listening to the murmuring leaves he stood, More than a mile immersed within the wood, At once the wind was laid; the whispering sound Was dumb; a rising earthquake rocked the ground; With deeper brown the grove was overspread, A sudden horror seized his giddy head,
And his ears tingled, and his colour fled, Nature was in alarm; some danger nigh
Seemed threatened, though unseen to mortal eye.”
It may be doubted, however, whether the simplicity of Boccacio’s narrative has not sometimes suffered by the additional decorations of Dryden. The retort of Guiscard to Tancred’s charge of ingratitude is more sublime in the Italian original,[12] than as diluted by the English poet into five hexameters. A worse fault occurs in the whole colouring of Sigismonda’s passion, to which Dryden has given a coarse and indelicate character, which he did not derive from Boccacio. In like manner, the plea used by Palamon in his prayer to Venus, is more nakedly expressed by Dryden than by Chaucer. The former, indeed, would probably have sheltered himself under the mantle of Lucretius; but he should have recollected, that Palamon speaks the language of chivalry, and ought not, to use an expression of Lord Herbert, to have spoken like a _paillard_, but a _cavalier_. Indeed, we have before noticed it as the most obvious and most degrading imperfection of Dryden’s poetical imagination, that he could not refine that passion, which, of all others, is susceptible either of the purest refinement, or of admitting the basest alloy. With Chaucer, Dryden’s task was more easy than with Boccacio. Barrenness was not the fault of the Father of English poetry; and amid the profusion of images which he presented, his imitator had only the task of rejecting or selecting. In the sublime description of the temple of Mars, painted around with all the misfortunes ascribed to the influence of his planet, it would be difficult to point out a single idea, which is not found in the older poem. But Dryden has judiciously omitted or softened some degrading and some disgusting circumstances; as the “cook scalded in spite of his long ladle,” the “swine devouring the cradled infant,” the “pickpurse,” and other circumstances too grotesque or ludicrous to harmonise with the dreadful group around them. Some points, also, of sublimity, have escaped the modern poet. Such is the appropriate and picturesque accompaniment of the statue of Mars:–
“A wolf stood before him at his feet, With eyen red, and of a man he eat.”[13]
In the dialogue, or argumentative parts of the poem, Dryden has frequently improved on his original, while he falls something short of him in simple description, or in pathetic effect. Thus, the quarrel between Arcite and Palamon is wrought up with greater energy by Dryden than Chaucer, particularly by the addition of the following lines, describing the enmity of the captives against each other:–
“Now friends no more, nor walking hand in hand, But when they met, they made a surly stand, And glared like angry lions as they passed, And wished that every look might be their last.”
But the modern must yield the palm, despite the beauty of his versification, to the description of Emily by Chaucer; and may be justly accused of loading the dying speech of Arcite with conceits for which his original gave no authority.[14]
When the story is of a light and ludicrous kind, as the Fable of the Cock and Fox, and the Wife of Bath’s Tale, Dryden displays all the humorous expression of his satirical poetry, without its personality. There is indeed a quaint Cervantic gravity in his mode of expressing himself, that often glances forth, and enlivens what otherwise would be mere dry narrative. Thus, he details certain things which passed,
“While Cynion was _endeavouring_ to be wise;”
the force of which single word contains both a ludicrous and appropriate picture of the revolution which the force of love was gradually creating in the mind of the poor clown. This tone of expression he perhaps borrowed from Ariosto, and other poets of Italian chivalry, who are wont, ever and anon, to raise the mask, and smile even at the romantic tale they are themselves telling.
Leaving these desultory reflections on Dryden’s powers of narrative, I cannot but notice, that, from haste or negligence, he has sometimes mistaken the sense of his author. Into the hands of the champions in “The Flower and the Leaf,” he has placed _bows_ instead of _boughs_, because the word is in the original spelled _bowes_; and, having made the error, he immediately devises an explanation of the device which he had mistaken:–
“For bows the strength of brawny arms imply, Emblems of valour, and of victory.”
He has, in like manner, accused Chaucer of introducing Gallicisms into the English language; not aware that French was the language of the court of England not long before Chaucer’s time, and, that, far from introducing French phrases into the English tongue, the ancient bard was successfully active in introducing the English as a fashionable dialect, instead of the French, which had, before his time, been the only