CIHM Microfiche Series (Monographs) ICMH Collection de microfiches (monographies) Canadian institute for Historical Microreproductions / Institut canadien de microreproductions historiques I ^^^^\J Technical and Bibliographic Notes / Notes techniques et bibliographiques The Institute has attempted to obtain the best original copy available for filming. Features of this copy which may be bibliographically unique, which may alter any of the images in the reproduction, or which may significantly change the usual method of filming are checked below. D D D D n D -T\ Coloured covers / Couverture de couleur Covers damaged / Couverture endommagee Covers restored and/or laminated / Couverture restauree ec'ou pelliculee Cover title missing / Le titre de couverture manque Coloured maps / Cartes geographiques en couleur Coloured ink (i.e. other than blue or black) / Encre de couleur (i.e. autre que bleue ou noire) Coloured plates and/or illustrations / Planches et/ou illustrations en couleur Bound with other material / Relie avec d'autres documents Only edition available / Seule edition disponible Tight binding may cause shadows or distortion along interior margin / La reliure serree peut causer de I'ombre ou de la distorsion le long de la marge interieure. Blank leaves added during restorations may appear within the text. Whenever possible, these have been omitted from filming / Use peut que certaines pages blanches ajoutees lors d'une restauration apparaissent dans le texte, mais, lorsque ceia etait possible, ces pages n'ont pas ete filmees. Additional comments / Various pagings. Commentaires supplementaires: L'Institut a microfilme le meilleur exemplaire qu'il lui a ete possible de se procurer. Les details de cet exem- plaire qui sont peut-etre uniques du point de vue bibli- ographique, qui peuvent modifier une image reproduite, ou qui peuvent exiger une modification dans la metho- de normale de filmage sont indiques ci-dessous. I I Coloured pages / Pages de couleur I I Pages damaged / Pages endommag ees D Pages restored and/or laminated / Pages restaurees et/ou pelliculees Q Pages discoloured, stained or foxed / Pages decolorees, tachetees ou piquees L/j Pages detached / Pages detachees [ ^'\ Shovi^hrough / Transparence I A Quality of print varies / D D D Qualite inegale de I'impression Includes supplementary material / Comprend du materiel supplementaire Pages wholly or partially obscured by errata slips, tissues, etc., have been refilmed to ensure the best possible image / Les pages totalement ou partiellement obscurcies par un feuillet d'errata, une pelure, etc., ont ete filmees a nouveau de fagon a obtenir la meilleure image possible. Opposing pages with varying colouration or discolourations are filmed twice to ensure the best possible image / Les pages s'opposant ayant des colorations variables ou des decolorations sont filmees ueux fois afin d'obtenir la meilleure image possible. This item is filmed at the reduction ratio checked below / Ce document est tilme au taux de reduction indique ci-dessous. lOx 14x 18x 22x 26x 30x 12x 16x 20x 24 X 28x 32x The copy filmed here has been reproduced thanks to the generosity of: L'exemplaire film^ fut reproduit grice h la gdndrositd de: Universite de Sherbrooke University de Sherbrooke The images appearing here are the best quality possible considering the condition and legibility of the original copy and in keeping with the filming contract specifications. Original copies in printed paper covers are filmed beginning with the front cover and ending on the last page with a printed or illustrated impres- sion, or the back cover when appropriate. All other original copies are filmed beginning on the first page with a printed or illustrated impres- sion, and ending on the last page with a printed or illustrated impression. The last recorded frame on each microfiche shall contain the symbol —*■ (meaning "CON- TINUED"), or the symbol V (meaning "END"), whichever applies. Maps, plates, charts, etc., may be filmed at different reduction ratios. Those too large to be entirely included in one exposure are filmed beginning in the upper left hand corner, left to right and top to bottom, as many frames as required. The following diagrams illustrate the method: Les images suivantes ont 6x6 reproduites avec le plus grand soin, compte tenu de la condition et de la nettetd de l'exemplaire film^, et en conformity avec les conditions du contrat de filmage. Les exemplaires originaux dont la couverture en papier est imprimde sont film^s en commenpant par le premier plat et en terminant soit par la dernidre page qui comporte une empreinte d'impression ou d'illustration, soit par le second plat, selon le cas. Tous les autres exemplaires originaux sont filmds en commenpant par la premidre page qui comporte une empreinte d'impression ou d'illustration et en terminant par la dernidre page qui comporte une telle empreinte. Un des symboles suivants apparaitra sur la dernidre image de chaque microfiche, selon le cas: le symbole — ^ signifie 'A SUIVRE", le symbole V siqnifie "FIN". Les cartes, planches, tableaux, etc., peuvent §tre film^s d des taux de reduction diffdrents. Lorsque le document est trop grand pour etre reproduit en un seul cliche, il est filmd d partir de Tangle supdrieur gauche, de gauche d droite, et de haut en bas, en prenant le nombre d'images n^cessaire. Les diagrammes suivants illustrent la mdthode. 1 2 3 1 2 3 4 5 6 .*pr-^ MICROCOPY RESOLUTION TEST CHART (ANSI and oO TEST CHART No. 2) 1.0 I.I 1.25 II 50 13.2 ill "" inn T A !^ 114.0 1.4 2.5 zo i.8 1.6 ^ APPLIED IM/1GE Inc I65i tasi Main Street Rochester, Ne« York Ueog USA (716) 482 - 0300 - Phone (716) 288- 5989 - Fa). Eno portrait Edition Eno^isli Men of Letters JOHN MOIILEY III. DRYDEN. Bv G. Saintsbuky POPE. By Leslie Steimiun SIDNEY. By Joun Aduington Symonds FACULTE DES ARTS COLLEGE UMVERSITAIRE SHERBROOKE GEOROE N. MORANG & COMPANY (Limited) TouOiNTo, Canada 1900 / ENCiLlSlI xMEN OF LETTEKS. EuiTEU uv John .Muklky. I. Mll.TON. (IlllltON. SiiKi.i.Ky. II. SOITTIIKV. HvRilN. Ukkok. III. DitYDKN. I'OI-K, SjlllNEY. fftovtrait JEMtlon. IV. VII. X. Bknti.ky. SoOTT. Coi.KUlOOK. CoWI'KU. DiOKKN!*. WoKDHWOKXy Lanuob. Spknci.k. BuRNii. V. VIII. XI BtBKK. Stkhnb. Lo(!KK. Maoaui.ay. Sw ii-r. (ioi.DSMITII. KlKI.IllNO. HUMK. (iKAY. VI. IX. XII. nilNVAN. ('IIAVOKK. Tha<;kkkay. Johnson. La.mu. Al'lllKON. Baoon. ■ I)k (^l l.NOKY. SlIKKIHAN. pel ^K. KAT8. Haw Til OKNK. t'AKI.Yl.lC. Copyright, 1894, by IIaupkk <^ Rrotiikhs. D E Y DEN BY G. SAINTSBT^RY FREFATOKY NOTE. A WRITER on Drydcn is more especially bound to acknowl- edge his iiulebtedncss to his predecessors, because, so far as matters of fact are concerned, that indebtedness must necessarily be greater than in most other cases. There is now little chance ut fresh information being obtained about the noct, unless it be in a few letters hitherto undiscovered or withheld from publication. I have, therefore, to ac- knowledge my debt to Johnson, Malone, Scott, Mitford, Bell, Christie, the Rev. 11. Hooper, and the writer of an ar- ticle in the Quarterly Review for 1878. Murray's "Guide to Northamptonshire " has been of much use to me in the visits I have made to Drydcn's birthplace, and the numer- ous other places associated with his memory in his native county. To Mr. J. Churton Collins I owe thanks for pointing out to me a Dryden house which, so far as he and I know, has escaped the notice of previous biogra- phers. ISIr. W. Noel Sainsbury, of the Record Office, has supplied me with some valuable information. IMy *riend Mr. Edmund W. Gossc has not only read the proof-sheets of this book with the greatest care, suggesting many things of value, but has also kindly allowed me the use of origi- nal editions of many late seventeenth -century works, in- cluding most of the rare pamphlets against the poet in reply to his satires. vi rUEFATORY NOTE. Except Scott's oxocllont Imt costly and bulky edition, tlicM'c is, to tla- disijracc of Kninflish boolvsollors or hook- bnyers, no complete edition of Dryden. The first issue of this in 1808 was reproduced in 1821 with no material al- terations, but both are very expensive, especially tiie sec- ond. A tolerably complete and not unsatisfactory Dryden may, however, be tjot together without much outlay by any one who waits till he can pick up at the ()o()ksliops copies of Malone's edition of the prose works, and of ( 'on- jjreve's original edition (duodecimo or folio) of the plays. By addini;' to these }ih. Christie's admirable Globe edition of th(! poems, very little, except the translations, will be left out, and not too much obtained in duplicate. This, of course, deprives the reader of Scott's life and notes, wliicb are very valuable. The life, however, has been re- printed, and is easily accessible. Tn the following pages a few passages from a course of lectures on " Dryden and his I'eriod,'' delivered by me at the Royal Institution in the spring of 1880, have been incorporated. % CONTENTS. CHArTER I. PAOP. Befork thk Rkstoration 1 CIIAl'lER II. Early Literary Work -^3 CHAPTER III. I'kuiou (»f Dramatic Activity 3^ CHAPTER IV. Satirical and Didactic Poems. 71 CHAPTER V. Life from IGSO to 1G88 99 CHAPTER VL Later Dramas and Prose Works 113 CHAPTER Vn. PicRioD OF Translation 13.'> CHAPTER VIIL The Fables 153 CHAPTER IX. Conclusion 1"7 « / D R Y D E N . CHAPTER I. BEFORE THE RESTORATION. John Dkyden was born on the 9th of August, 1631, at the Vicarage of Aldwinkle All Saints, between Thrapston andOundle. Like other small Northamptonsliire villages, Aldwinkle is divided into two parishes, All Saints and St. Peter's, the churches and parsonage -houses being within bowshot of each other, and some little confusion has arisen from this. It has, however, been cleared up by the indus- trious researches of various persons, and there is now no doubt about the facts. The house in whicli the poet was born (and which still exists, though altered to some extent internally) belonged at the time to his maternal grandfa- ther, the Rev. Henry Pickering. The Drydcns and the Pickerings were both families of some distinction in the county, and both of decided Puritan principles ; but they were not, properly speaking, neighbours. The Drydens originally came from the neighbourhood of the border, and a certain John Dryden, about the middle of the sixteenth century, married the daughter and heiress of Sir John Cope, of Canons Ashby, in the county of Northampton. 1* DllYDEN. [chap, Erasmus, tlie son of this John Dryden — tlie name is spelt as usual at the time in half-a-dozen different ways, and there is no reason for supposing that the poet invented the y, tliou2,h before him it seems to liavc been usually Driden — was created a baronet, and liis tliird son, also au Erasmus, was the poet's father. Before this Erasmus married Mary Pickering tlie families had already been connected, but they lived on opposite sides of the county. Canons Ashby being in the hilly district which extends to the borders of Oxfordshire on the south-west, while Tichmarsh, the headquarters of the Pickerings, lies on the extreme east on high ground, overlooking the flats of Huntingdon. The poet's father is described as " of Tich- marsh," and seems to have usually resided in that neighbour- hood. His property, however, which descended to our poet, lay in the neighbourhood of Canons Ashby at the village of Blakcsley, which is not, as the biograpliers persistently repeat after one another, " near Tichmarsh," but some for- ty miles distant to the straightest flying crow. Indeed, the conr.exion of the poet with the seat of his ancestors, and of his own property, appears to have been very slight. There is no positive evidence that he was ever at Canons Ashby at all, and this is a pity. For the house— still in the possession of his collateral descendants in the female line — is a very delightful one, looking like a miniature college quadrangle set down by the side of a country lane, with a background of park in which the deer wander, and a fringe of formal garden, full of the trimmest of yew- trees. All this was there in Dryden's youtli, and, more- over, the place was tiie scene of some stirring events. Sir John Driden was a staunch parliamentarian, and his house lay obnoxious to the royalist garrisons of Towcestcr on the one side, and Banbury on the other. On at least one '•] BEFORE THE RESTORATION. occasion a i^reat fight took place, the parliainentariaiii bar- ricading thenisolves in the church of Canons Ashby, with- in stone's throw of the house, and defending it and its tower for several hours before the royalists forced the place and carried them off prisoners. This was in Dry- den's thirtcentli year, and a boy of thirteen would have rejoiced not a little in such a state of things, But, as has been said, the actual associatioua of the poet lie elsewhere. They are all collected in the valley of the Nene, and a well-girt man can survey the whole in a day's walk. It is remarkable that Dry den's name is connected with fewer places than is the case with almost any other English poet, except, perhaps, Cowper. If we leave out of sight a few visits to his fatlier-in-law's seat at Charlton, iu Wiltshire, and elsewhere, London and twenty miles of the Nene valley exhaust the list of his residences. This val- ley is not an inappropriate locale for the poet who in his faults, as well as his merits, was perhaps the most English of all English writers. It is not grand, or epic, or tragical ; but, on the other hand, it is sufficiently varied, free from the monotony of the adjacent fens, and full of historical and architectural memories. The river in which Dryden acquired, beyond doubt, that love of fishing which is his only trait in the sporting way known to us, is always pres- ent in long, slow reaches, thick with water plants. The remnants of the great woods which once made Northamp- tonshire the rival of Nottingham and Hampshire are close at hand, and luckily the ironstone workings which have recently added to the wealth, and detracted from the beauty of the central district of the county, have not yet invaded Dryden's region. Tichmarsh and Aldwinkle, the places of his birth and education, lie on opposite sides of the river, about two miles from Thrapston. Aldwinkle is ^ Wi DRYDEN. [chap. sheltered and low, and looks across to the rising ground on the summit of which Tichmarsh church rises, flanked hard by with a huge cedar- tree on the rectory lawn, a cedar-tree certainly coeval with Dryden, since it was plant- ed two years before his birth. A little beyond Aldwinkle, following the course of the river, is the small church of I'ilton, where Erasmus Dryden and Mary Pickering were married on October 21, 1630. All these villages are em- bowered in trees of all kinds, elms and walnuts especially, and the river banks slope in places with a pleasant abrupt- ness, jrivinor crood views of the magnificent woods of Lil- ford, which, however, are new-comers, comparatively speak- ing. Another mile or two beyond Pilton brings the walk- er to Oundle, which has some traditional claim to the credit of teaching Dryden his earliest humanities; and the same distance beyond Oundle is Cotterstock, where a house, still standing, but altered, was the poet's favourite sojourn in his later years. Long stretches of meadows lead thence across the river into Huntingdonshire, and there, just short of the great north road, lies the village of Chesterton, the residence, in the late days of the seventeenth century, of Dryden's favourite cousins, and frequently his own. All these places are intimately connected with his memory, and the last named is not more than twenty miles from the first. Between Cotterstock and Chesterton, where lay the two houses of his kinsfolk which we know him to have most frequented, lies, as it lay then, the grim and shapeless mound studded with ancient thorn -trees, and looking down upon the silent Nene, which is all that re- mains or the castle of Fotheringhay. Now, as then, the great lantern of the church, with its flying buttresses and tormented tracery, looks out over the valley. There is no allusion that I know of to Fotheringhay in Dryden's !•] bp:fore the iiesto ration. works, and, indeed, there seems to have been a very natu- ral feeling among all seventeenth century writers on the court side that the less said about Mary Stuart the better. Fothcringhay waits until Mr. Swinburne shall complete the trilogy begun in Chastclard and continued in Boihwell, for an English dramatic poet to tread worthily in the steps of Montchrestien, of Vondel, and of Schiller. But Drydeu must have passed it constantly ; when he was at Cotter- stock he must have had it almost under his eyes, and we know that lie was always brooding over fit historical subjects in English history for the higher poetry. Nor is it, I think, an unpardonable conceit to note the domi- nance in the haunts of this intellectually greatest among the partisans of the Stuarts, of the scene of the great- est trajredv, save one, that befell even that house of the furies. There is exceedingly little information obtainable about Dryden's youth. The inscription in Tichmarsh Church, the work of his cousin Mis. Creed, an excellent person whose needle and pencil decorated half the churches and half the manor-houses in that part of the country, boasts that he had his early education in that village, while Oun- dle, as has been said, has some traditional claims to a simi- lar distinction. From the date of his birth to his entry at Wesiaiinster School we have no positive information whatever about him, and even the precise date of the hit- ter is unknown, lie was a king's scholai, and it seems that the redoubtable Busby took pains with him — doubt- less in the well-known Busbeian manner — and liked his verse translations. From Westminster he went to Cam- bridge, where he was entered at Trinity on May 18tli, 1650, matriculated on July 16th, and on October 2nd was elected to a Westminster scholarship. He was then nine- DRYDEX. [CIIAP. teen, an instance, be it observeJ, anionj,' many, of the com- plete mistake of siipposiiiu; that very early entratice into the universities was the rule before our own clays. Of Dryden's Cambridge sojourn we know little more than of his sojourn at Westminster, lie was in trouble on July lOtli, 1052, when he was discommonsed and gated for tx fortnight for disobedience and contumacy. Shadwell also says that while at Cambridge he " scurrilously traduced a nobleman," and was "rebuked on the head" therefor, liut Shad well's uusui)ported assertions about J)ryden are unworthy of the slightest credence. He took his degree in 1054, and though he gained no fellowship, seems to have resided for nearly seven years at the university. There has been a good deal of controversy about the feel- ings with which Dryden regarded his alma mater. It is certainly curious that, except a formal acknowledgment of having received his education from Trinity, there is to be found in his works no kind of affectionate reference to Cambridge, while there is to be found an extremely un- kind reference to her in liis very best manner. In one of ■ his numerous prologues to the University of Oxford— the University of Cambridge seems to have given him no oc- casion of writing a prologue — occur the famous lines, " Oxford to him a dearer name shall be Than his own mother university; Thebes did his green unknowing youth engage, He ehooses Athens in his riper age." It has been sought to diminish the force of this very left- handed compliment to Cambridge by quoting a phrase of Dryden's concerning the "gross flattery that universities will endure." But I am inclined to think that most uni- versity men will agree with me that this is probably a [t'liAr. , of the com- ntrance into II days. Of iiore than of able on July gated for a iliadwell also sly traduced d" therefor. Dryden are ik his degree ii[), seems to e university. jout the fecl- matcr. It is vledu'uient of hero is to be reference to ixtremely un- •. In one of Oxford — the n him no oc- )us lines, ;age, this very left- g a phrase of it universities hat most unl- is probably a 'J BEFORE THE RESTORATION. unique instance of a member of the one university going .)ut of his way to flatter the other at the expense of his own. Dryden was one of the most accomplished flatter- ers that ever lived, and certainly had no need save of do- liberate choice to resort to the vulgar expedient of insult- ino- one person or body by way of praising another. What his cause of dissatisfaction was it is impossible to say, but the trivial occurrence already mentioned certainly will not account for it. If, however, during these years we have little testimo- ny about Dryden, we have three documents from his own hand which are of no little interest. Although Dryden was one of the most late-writing of English poets, he had got into print before he left Westminster. A promising pupil of that school, Lord Hastings, had died of small-pox, and, according to the fashion of the time, a tombeau, as it would have been called in France, was published, containing elegies by a very large number of authors, ranging from Westminster boys to the already famous names of Waller and Dcnham. Somewhat later an epistle commendatory was contributed by Dryden to a volume of religious verse by his friend John Iloddesdon. Later still, and probably after he had taken his degree, he wrote a letter to his cousin. Honor Driden, daughter of the reigning baronet of Canons Ashby, which the young lady liad the grace to keep. All these juvenile productions have been very severely judged. As to the poems, the latest writer on the subject, a writer in the Quarterly Review, whom I cer- tainly do not name otherwise than honoris causa, pro- nounces the one execrable, and the other inferior to the juvenile ])roductions of that miserable poetaster, Kirke White. It seems to this reviewer that Dryden had at this time " no ear for verse, no command of poetic diction, 8 DKYDEN. [chap. no sense of poetic taste." As to the letter, even Scott describes it as " alternately coarse and pedantic." I am in hopeless discord with these authorities, both of whom I respect. Certainly neither the elegy on Lord Hastings, nor the complimentary poem to lloddcsdon, nor the letter to Honor Driden, is a masterpiece. But all three show, as it seems to me, a considerable literary faculty, a remark- able feeling after poetic style, and above all the peculiar virtue which was to be Dryden's own. They are all sat- urated with conceits, and the conceit was the reigning delicacy of the time. Now, if there is one thing more characteristic and more honourably characteristic of Dry- den than another, it is that he was emphatically of his time. No one ever adopted more thoroughly and more unconsciously the motto as to Spartam nactus es. lie tried every fashion, and where the fashion was capable of being brought suh specie ceternitatis he never failed so to bring it. Where it was not so capable he never failed to abandon it and to substitute something better. A man of this tem- perament (which it may be observed is a mingling of the • critical and the poetical temperaments) is not likely to find his way early or to find it at all without a good many preliminary wanderings. But the two poeujs so severely condemned, though they are certainly not good poems, are beyond all doubt possessed of the elements of goodness. I doubt myself whether any one can fairly judge them who has not passed through a novitiate of careful study of the minor poets of his own day. By doing this one acquires a certain faculty of distinguishing, as Theophile Gautier once put it in his own case, " the sheep of Hugo from the goats of Scribe." T do not hesitate to say that an intelligent reviewer in the year 1650 would have rank- ed Dryden, though perhaps with some misgivings, among '■] BEFORE THE llESTORATIOX. the sheep. Tlic faults are simply an exaggeration of the prevailing style, the merits arc different. As for the epistle to Honor Driden, Scott must surely have I'oen thinking of the evil counsellors who wished him to be vdlerisc glorious John, when he called it "coarse." Tlierc is nothing in it but the outspoken gallantry of an age which was not afraid of speaking out, and the prose style is already of no inconsiderable merit. It should be observed, however, that a most unsubstantial romance has been built up on this letter, and that Miss Honor's father. Sir John Driden, has had all sorts of anathcnuis launched at him, in the Locksley Hall style, for damming the course of true love. There is no evidence whatever to prove this crime against Sir John. It is in the nature of mankind almost invariably to fall in love with its cousins, and— fortunately according to some pliysiologists — by no means invariably to marry them. That Drydcn seriously aspired to his cousin's hand there is no proof, and none that her father refused to sanction the marriage. On the contrary, his foes accuse him of being a dreadful flirt, and of mak- ing- " the young blushing virgins die " for him in a miscel- laneous, but probably harmless manner. All that is posi- tively known on the subject is that Honor never married, that the cousins were on excellent terms some half-century after this fervent epistle, and that Miss Driden is said to have treasured the letter and shown it with pride, which is much more reconcilable with the idea of a harmless flirta- tion than of a great passion tragically cut short. At the time of the writing of this epistle Dryden was, indeed, not exactly an eligible suitor. His father had just died— 1G54— and had left him two-thirds of the Blakesley estates, with a reversion to the other third at the death of his mother. The land extended to a couple of hundred B 2 10 DRYDEN. [cnAP. acres or thereabouts, and the rent, which witli cliaractcris- tic generosity Dryden never increased, tlioiigh rents went fj|) in his time enormously, amounted to 60/. a year. Dry- den'fc tw;^cs may, perhaps, be quoted against me here. I have only to remark : first, that, bail as they are, they form an infinitesimal portion of Dryden's work, and arc in glar- ing contrast with the sentiments pervading that work as a whole ; secondly, that they were written at a time of political excitement un- paralleled in history, save once at Athens and once or twice at Paris. But I cannot help adding that their denouncers usually seem to mo to be at least partially animated by the notion that Drydeu wished the wrong people to be hanged. I I-l BEFORE THE RESTORATIOX. proof can be afforded than the small salary at wliioli the lirst man of letters then living was hired by a government which, AvLatcvcr faults it had, certainly did not sin by re- warding its other servants too meagrely. That Dryden at this time had any deep-set theological or political preju- dices is very improbable. He certainly had not, like But- ler, noted for years the faults and weaknesses of the domi- nant party, so as to enshrine them in inmiortal ridicule when the time should come. But he was evidently an ardent devotee of literature ; he was not averse to the pleasures of the town, which if not so actively interfered with by the Commonwealth as is sometimes thought, Avere certainly not encouraged by it ; and liis friends and asso- ciates must have been royalists almost to a man. So he threw himself at once un that side when the chance came, and had probably thrown himself there in spirit some time before. The state of the literature in which he thus took service must be described before we go any farther. The most convenient division of literature is into poetry, drama, and prose. AVith regard to poetry, the reigning style at the advent of Dryden was, as everybody knows, the peculiar style unfortunately baptized as " metaphysi- cal." The more catholic criticism of the last 100 years has disembarrassed this poetry of much of the odium which once hung round it, without, liowcver, doing full justice to its merits. In Donne, especially, the king of the school, the conceits and laboured fancies which distinguish it frequently reach a hardly surpassed height of poetical beauty. AVhen Donne speculates as to the finding on the body of his dead lover "A bracelet of bright liah' about the bone," when lie tells us how — 16 DRYDPLV. [CHA>. " I long to tiilk with some old lovev's ghost, Who died before the god of love was born ;" the effect is that of summer lightning on a dark night suddenly exposing unsuspected realms of fantastic and poetical suo-gestion. But at its worst the school was cer- tainly bad enough, and its badnesses had already been ex- hibited by Dryden with considerable felicity iu his poem on Lord Hastings and the small -pox. I really do not know that iu all Johnson's carefully picked specimens in his life of Cowley, a happier absurdity is to be found than "Each little pimple had a tear in it, To wail the fault its rising did commit." Of such a school as this, though it lent itself more direct- ly than is generally thought to the unequalled oddities of Butler, little good in the way of serious poetry could come. On the other hand, the great romantic school was practically over, and Milton, its last survivor, was, as has been said, in a state of poetical eclipse. There was, there- fore growing up a kind of school of good sense in poetry, of which Waller, Denham, Cowley, and Davenant were the chiefs. Waller derives most of his fame from his lyrics, inferior as these are to those of Ilerrick and Carew. Cow- ley was a metaphysician with a strong hankering after something different. Denham, having achieved one ad- mirable piece of versification, had devoted himself chicfiy to doggrel ; but Davenant, though perhaps not so good a poet as any of the three, was a more living intiuence. His early works, especially his dirge on Shakspeare and his exquisite lines to the Queen, are of the best stamp of the older school. His GomUhcrt. little as it is now read, and imsuccessful as the quatrain in which it is written must al- ways be for a very long work, is better than any long uar- [CHA. lark night tastic and ol was cer- ly been ex- 1 his poem illy do not eciniens in found than !•] BEFORE THE RESTORATION. n lore direct- id oddities )etry could school was kvas, as has was, thcrc- > in poetry, tit were the I liis lyrics, rew. Cow- ;ering after cd one ad- iself chiefly : so good a Licnce. Ilis ire and his amp of the w read, and ten must al- ly long nar- rative poem, for many a year before and after. Both his po'etical and his dramatic activity (of which more anon) were incessant, and were almost always exerted in the di- rection of innovation. But the real importance of these four writers was the help they gave to the development of the heroic cou^ilet, the predestined common form of poetry of the more important kind for a century and a half to come. The heroic couphit was, of course, no novelty ii* English; but it had hitherto be.n only fitfully patronizec^ for poems of length, and had not been adapted for general use. The whole structure of the decasyllabic line before the middle of the seventeenth century was ill calculated for the perfecting of the couplet. Accustomed either to the stately plainness of blank verse, or to the elaborate in- tr'-^acies of the stanza, writers had got into the habit of communicating to their verse a slow and somewhat lan- guid movement. The satiric poems in which the couplet had been most used were, cither by accident or design, couched in the roughest possible verse, so rough that in the hands of Marston and Donne it almost ceased to be capable of scansion. In general, the couplet had two drawbacks. Either it was turned by means of cvjambe- ments into something very like rhythmic prose, with rhymes straying about at apparently indefinite intervals, or it was broken np into a staccato motion by the neglect to support and carry on the rhythm at the termination of the distichs. All the four poets mentioned, especially the three first, did much to fit the couplet for miscellane- ous work. All of them together, it is hardly nt^cdful to say, did not do so much as the young Cambridge man who, while doing bookseller's work for llerringman the publisher, hanging about the coffee-houses, and ])lanning plays with Davcnant and Sir Robert Howard, was wait- 2 i 18 DRYDEX. [chap. ing for opportunity and inipulso to lielp liim to mate his wav. The drama was in an even more critical state than poetiy pure and simple, and here Davenant was the im- portant person. All the giant race except Shirley were dead, and Shirley liad substituted a kind of trar/eclie bour- (/coii^e for the work of his masters. Other practitioners chiefly favoured the example of one of the least imitable of those masters, and out -forded Ford in horrors of all kinds, while the comedians clung still more tightly to the humour-comedy of Jonson. Davenant himself had made abundant experiments — experinients, let it be added, some- times of no small merit — in both these styles. But the occupations of tragedy and comedy were gone, and the question was how to find a new one for them. Davenant succeeded in procuring permission from the l*rotector, who, like most Englishmen of the time, was fond of music, to give what would now be called entertainments; and the entertainments soon developed into somethinfr like ret^u- lar stage plays. But Slmkspeare's godson, with his keen manager's appreciation of the taste of the public, and his travelled experience, did not content himself with deviating cautiously into the old paths. He it 'vas who, in the Sier/e of Rhodes, introduced at once into England the opera, and a less long-lived but, in a literary point of view, more im- portant variety, the heroic play, the latter of which always retained some tinge of the former. There are not many subjects on which, to put it l)lainly, more rubbish has been talked than the origin of the heroic play. Very few Eng- lishmen have ever cared to examine accurately the connex- ion between this singular growth and the classical ti'agedy already flourishing in France ; still fewer have ever cared to investigate the origins of that classical tragedy itself. I] BEFORE THE RESTORATION. 19 Tlie blundering attribution of Drydcn and his rivals to Corncillc and Kacine, the more blunderini^ attribution of Corneille and Racine to the Scudery romance (as if some- body should father Shelley on Monk Lewis), has been gen- erally accepted without much iiesitation, though Dryden himself has pointed out that there is but little connexion between the French and the English drama; and though the history of the French drama itself is perfectly intelligi- ble, and by no means difficult to trace. The French clas- sical drama is the direct descendant of the drama of Sen- eca, first imitated by Jodelle and Garnier in the days of the Plciude ; nor did it ever quit that model, though in the first thirty years of the seventeenth century something was borrowed from Spanish sources. The P^nglish heroic drama, on the other hand, which Davcnant invented, which Sir Robert Howard and Lord Orrery made fashionable, and for which Dryden achieved a popularity of nearly twenty years, was one of the most cosmopolitan — I had almost said the most mongrel — of literary productions. It adopt- ed the English freedom of action, multiplicity of character, and licence of stirring scenes acted coram pojndo. It bor- rowed lyrical admixture from Italy ; exaggerated and bom- bastic language came to it from Spain ; and to France it owed little more than its rhymed dialogue, and perhaps something of its sighs and flames. The disadvantages of rhyme in dramatic writing seem to modern Englishmen so great, that they sometimes find it difficult to understand how any rational being could exciiange the blank verse of Sliakspeare for the rhymes of Dryden, much more for the rhymes of his contemporaries and predecessors. But this omits the important consideration that it was not the blank verse of Sliakspeare or of Fletcher that was thus exchanged. In the three-quarters of a century, or there- 20 DRYDEN. [CIIAP. abonts, which elapsed between the beginning of the great dramatic era and the Restoration, the chief vehicle of the drama had degenerated full as much as the drama itself; and the blank verse of the plays subsequent to Ford is of anything but Shakspearian quality — is, indeed, in many cases such as is hardly to be recognised for verse at all. Between this awkward and inharmonious stuft" and the comparatively polished and elegant couplets of the inno- vators there could be little comparison, especially when Dryden had taken up the couplet himself. Lastly, in prose the time was pretty obviously calling for a reform. There were great masters of English prose living when Dryden joined the literary world of London, but there was no generall;' accepted style for the journey- wo''k of literature. Milton and laylor could arrange the most elaborate symphonies; Ilobbes could write with a crabbed clearness as lucid almost as the flowing sweetness of Berkeley ; but these were exceptions. The endless sen- tences out of which Clarendon is wont just to save him- self, when his readers are wondering whether breath and brain will last out their involution ; the hopeless coils of parenthesis and afterthought in which Cromwell's speech lay involved, till Mr. Carlyle was sent on a special mission to disentangle them, show the dangers and difficulties of the ordinary prose style of the day. It was terribly cum- bered about quotations, which it introduced with merciless frequency. It had no notion of a unit of style in the sen- tence. It indulged, without the slightest hesitation, in ev- ery detour and involution of second thoughts and by-the- way qualifications. So far as any models were observed, those models were chiefly taken from the inflected lan- guages of Greece and Rome, where the structural altera- tions of the words according to their grammatical con- [chap. of the groat eliiclc of the h-aiiia itself; to Ford is of !ed, ill many verse at all. tuff and the of the inno- ecially when ously callini; '^nti'lish prose I of London, the journcy- [ arrange the write with a ng sweetness 3 endless scn- to save him- r breatli and ."less coils of well's speech ccial missioji Llifficulties of terribly cum- ith merciless le in the sen- sation, in ev- 5 and by-the- erc observed, inflected lan- ctural altera- imatical con- '•] BEFORE THE RESTORATIOX. 21 ne.\ion are for tlie most part sufficient to make the mean- ing tolerably clear. Nothing so much as the lack of in- flexions .saved our prose at this time from sharing the fate of German, and involving itself almo.st beyond the reach of extrication. The co?nmon people, when not bent upon tine language, could speak and write clearly and straight- forwardly, as Banyan's W(n'ks show to this day to all who care to read. But scholars and divines deserved much less well of their mother tongue. It may, indeed, be said that prose was infinitely worse off than poetry. In the hitter there had been an excellent style, if not one perfectly suited for all ends, and it had degenerated. In the former, notli- ing like a general prose style had ever yet been elaborated at all ; what had been done had been done chiefly in the big-bow-wow manner, as Dryden's editor might have called it. For light miscellaneous work, neither fantastic nor solemn, the demand was only just being created. Cowley, indeed, wrote well, and, comparatively speaking, elcuuntly, but his prose work was small in extent and little read in comparison to his verse. Tillotson was Dryden's own contemporary, and hardly preceded him in the task of reform. From this short notice it will be obvious that the gen- eral view, according to which a considerable change took place and was called for at the liestoration, is correct, not- withstanding the attempts recently made to prove the con- trary by a learned writer. Professor Masson's lists of men of letters and ot the dates of their publication of their works prove, if he will pardon my saying so, nothing. The actual spirit of the time is to be judged not from the production of works of writers who, as *l'oy one by one dropi)ed off, left no successors, but from luose who struck root downwards and blossomed upwards in the general 22 DRYDEN. [riiAP. I. literary soil. Milton is not a writer of the Restoration, though his greatest works appeared after it, and though he survived it nearly fifteen years. Nor was Taylor, nor Claren- don, nor Cowley : hardly even Davenant, or Waller, or But- ler, or Denhani. The writers of the Restoration arc those whose works had the seeds of life in them ; who divined or formed the popular tastes of the period, who satisfied that taste, and who trained up successors to prosecute and modify their own work. The interval between the prose and the poetry of Dryden and the prose and the poetry of Milton is that of an entire generation, notwithstanding the manner in which, chronologically speaking, they overlap. The objects which the reformer, consciously or uncon- sciously, set before him ha^-e been sufficiently indicated. It must be the task of the following chapters to show how and to what extent he effected a reform ; what the nature of that reform was ; what was the value of the work which in effecting it he contributed to the lit>3rature of his country. [chap. I. Restoration, id though he r, nor Chircn- aller, or But- ion are those who divined who satisfied )rosecute and en the prose the poetry of istandinof the they overhvp. ly or uncon- tly indicated, ters to show m ; what the c of the work orature of his CHAPTER IT. EARLY LITERAKV WORK. The forci^oinf^ chapter will have already shown the chief difficulty of writinf>- a life of Dryden — the almost entire absence of materials. At the Restoration the poet was nearly thirty years old; and of positive information as to his life during these thirty years we have half-a-dozen dates, the isolated fact of his mishap at Trinity, a single letter and three poems, not amounting in all to three hun- dred lines. Nor can it be said that even subsequently, during his forty years of fame and literary activity, posi- tive information as to his life is plentiful. Ilis works are still the best life of him, and in so far as a biography of Dryden is tilled with any matter not purely literary, it must for the most part be filled with controversy as to his political and religions opinions and conduct rather than with accounts of his actnal life and conversation. Omit- ting for the present literary work, the next fact that we have to record after the Restoration is one of some impor- tance, though as before the positive information obtaina- ble in connexion with it is but scanty. On the 1st of De- cember, 1GG3, Dryden was married at St. Swithin's Cimrch to Lady Elizabeth Howard, eldest daughter of the Earl of Berkshire. This marriage, like most of the scanty events of Dry- 24 DKYDEX. [ciup. dt'ii's life, lias been niiide the occasion of much and tinnec- essMiy conti-ovci-sy. The libellers of the l*opi.sh I'lot dis- turbances twenty years later declared that the eiiaracter of the bride was donbtful, and that her brothers had acted towards Drydeft in somewhat the same way as the Ilanul- tons ,li,l towards Granimont. A letter of hers to the Earl of Clicsterfield, which was published about half a century ago, has been used to support the first charge, besides abundant arguments as to the unlikelihood of an earl's daughter marrying a poor poet for love. It is one of the misfortunes of prominent men that when fact is silent about their lives fiction is always busy. If we brusii away the cobwebs of speculation, there is nothing in the least suspicious about this matter. Lord Berkshire had a large family and a small property. Dryden himself was, as we Ihave seen, well born and well connected. That some of his sisters had married tradesmen seems to Scott likely to have been shocking to the Howards; but he must surely have forgotten the famous story of the Earl of Bedford's objection to be raised a step in the peerage because it would make it awkward for the younger scions of the house of Russell to go into trade. The notion of an ab- solute severance between Court and City at that time is one of the many nnhistorical fictions which have somehow or other obtair urrency. Dryden was already an inti- mate friend of Sir Robert Howard, if not also of the other brother, Edward, and perhaps it is not unnoteworthy that Lady I-^lizaljeth was five-and-twenty, an age in those days somewhat mature, and one at which a young ladv would be thought wise by her family in accepting any creditable offer. As to the Chesterfield letter, the evidence it con- tains can only satisfy minds previously made up. It tes- tifies certainly to something liko a flirtation, and su'To-ests [chap. .icli and iiiinec- Dpisli IMot dis- tlie character hers liad acted as the Ilaiiiil- ers to the P]arl half a centiu'v 'hari^e, besides 1 of an earl's ; is one of the fact is silent ve brnsii away % in the least re had a larjre elf was, as we riiat some of 5cott likely to e imist surely of ] Bedford's [••e because it scions of the ion of an ab- that time is lave somehow ready an inti- 3 of the other ;ewortliy that n those days g lady would my creditable deuce it con- ! up. It tcs- .I.J EARLY LITERARY WORK. 25 an interview, but there is nothin^r in it at all compromis- \\\%. The libels already mentioned are perfectly vague and wholly untrustworthy. [t seems, though on no vc . .lofinite evidence, that the marriage was not altogether a happy one. Dryden ap- pears to have acquired some small property in Wiltshire; perhaps also a royal grant which was made to Lady Eliz- abeth in recognition of her father's services; and Lord Berkshire's Wiltshire house of Charlton became a country retreat for the poet. But his wife was, it is said, ill-tem- pered and not overburdened with brains, and he himself was probably no more a model of conjugal propriety tlian most of his associates. I say probably, for here, too, it is astonishing how the evidence breaks down when it is ex- amin- d, or rather how it vanishes altogether into air. Mr. J. R. Green has roundly informed the world that " Dryden's life was that of a libertine, and his marriage with a woman who was yet more dissolute than himself only gave a new spur to his debaucheries." We have seen what'foundation there is for this gross charge against Lady Elizabeth ; now let us see what ground there is for the charge against Dry- den. There are the libels of Shadwell and the rest of the crew, to which not even Mr. Christie, a very severe judge of Dryden's moral character, assigns the slightest weiglU ; there is the immorality ascribed to Bayes in the Rehearsal, a very pretty piece of evidence indeed, seeing that Bayes is a confused medley of half-a-dozen persons; there is a general association by tradition of Dryden's name with that of Mrs. Reeve, a beautiful actress of the day ; and finally there is a tremendous piece of scandal which is the battle-horse of the devil's advocates. A curious letter ap- peared in the Gentleman's Magazine for 17-15, the author of which is unknown, though conjectures, as to which C 2* a 4 I DRYDEN. [chap. there are difficulties, identify him with Dryden's youthful friend Southern. " I remember," says this person, " plain John Dryden, before he paid his court with success to the great, in one uniform clotliing of Norwich drugget. I have ate tarts with him and Madam Reeve at the Mul- berry Garden, when our author advanced to a sword and a Chedreux wig." Perhaps tliere is no more curious in- stance of the infinitesimal foundation on which scandal builds than this matter of Dryden's immorality. Putting aside mere vague libellous declamation, the one piece of positive information on the subject that we have is anon- ymous, was made at least seventy years after date, and avers that John Dryden, a dramatic author, once ate tarts with an actress and a third person. This translated into the language of Mr. Green becomes the dissoluteness of a libertine, spurred up to new debaucheries. It is immediately after the marriage that we have almost our first introduction to Dryden as a live man seen by live human beings. And the circumstances of this introduc- tion are characteristic enougli. On the 3rd of February, 1664, Pepys tells us that he stopped, as he was going to fetch his wife, at the great coffee-house in Covent Garden, and there he found " Dryden, tlic poet I knew at Cam- bridge," and all the wits of the town. Tlie company pleased Pepys, and he made a note to tlie effect that " it will be good coming thither." But the most interesting thing is this glimpse, first, of the associates of Dryden at the university ; secondly, of his installation at Will's, the famous house of call, where he was later to reign as undis- puted monarch ; and, tliirdly, of the fact that lie was al- ready recognised as " Dryden the poet." The remainder of the present chapter will best be occupied by pointing out what he had done, and in brief space afterwards did n.J EARLY LITERARY WORK. 2V do, to earn that title, reserving the important snbjedt of his dramatic activity, which also began about this time, for separate treatment. The lines on the death of Lord Hastings, and the lines to Iloddesdon, have, it has been said, a certain promise about them to experienced eyes, but it is of that kind of promise which, as the same experience teaches, is at least as often followed by little performance as by much. The lines on Cromwell deserve less faint praise. The following stanzas exhibit at once the masculine strength and origi- nality wliich were to be the poet's great sources of power, and the habit of conceited and pedantic allusion which he had caught from the fashions of the time : " Swift aud resistless through the land he passed, Like that bold Greek wiio did the East subdue, And made to battle such heroic haste As if on wings of victory he flew. " He fought secure of fortune as of fame, Till by new maps the island might be shown Of conquests, which he strewed where'er he came. Thick as the galaxy with stars is sown. " His palms, though under weights they did not stand. Still thrived ; no winter did his laurels fade. Heaven in his portrait showed a workman's hand, And drew it perfect, yet without a shade. " Peace was the prize of all his toil and care, Which war had banished, and did now restore: Bologna's walls so mounted in the air To scat themselves more surely than before." An impartial contemporary critic, if he could have an- ticipated the methods of a later school of criticism, might have had some difficulty in deciding whether the masterly plainness, directness, and vigour of the best lines here ought nil f- 28 URYDEX. [chap. or ought not to excuse the conceit about the palms and the weights, and the fearfully far-fetched piece of fancy histo- ry about Bologna. Such a critic, if he had had the better part of discretion, would have decided in the affirmative. There wore not three poets then living who could have written the best lines of the Heroic Stanzas, and tvhat is more, those lines were not in the particular manner of cither of the poets who, as far as general poetical merit goes, might have written them. But the Restoration, which for reasons given already I must hold to have been genuinely welcome to Dryden, and not a mere occasion of profitable coat-turning, brought forth some much less am- biguous utterances. Astnta Redux (1660), a panegyric on the coronation (1061), a poem to Lord Clarendon (1662), a few still shorter pieces of the complimentary kind to Dr. Charleton (1663), to the Duchess of York (1065), and to Lady Castlemaine (166-?), lead up to An- nus Mirah'dis at the beginning of 1667, the crowning ef- fort of Dryden's first poetical period, and his last before the long absorption in purely dramatic occupations which lasted till the Popish Plot and its controversies evoked from him the expression of hitherto unsuspected powers. These various pieces do not amount in all to more than two thousand lines, of which nearly two-thirds belong to Annus Mirabilis. But they were fully sufficient to show that a new poetical power had arisen in the land, and their qualities, good and bad, might have justified the antii-ioa- tion that the writer would do better and better work as he grew older. All the pieces enumerated, with the exception of Annus Mirabilis, are in the heroic couplet, and their versification is of such a kind that the relapse into the quatrain in the longer poem is not a little surprising. But nothing is more characteristic of Dryden than the- extreme- [chap. lalms and the f fancy histo- ad the bottei' e affirmative. 3 could have , and what is r manner of loctical merit Restoration, to liave been •e occasion of inch less am- , a panegyric rd Clarendon )niplimentary less of York ad up to ^-In- crowning ef- is last before )ations which ersies evoked ;ted powers, to more than fds belong to iient to sliow md, and their the anti'-ioa- 3r work as he the exception let, and their ipso into the prising. But the extreme- II.] EARLY LITERARY WORK. 29 ly tentative character of hi work, and he liad doubtless not yet satisfied himself that tuo couplet was suitable for nar- rative poems of any length, notwithstanding the mastery over it which he must have known himself to have attain- ed in his short pieces. The very first lines of Astr(£a Re- dux show this mastery clearly enough. " Now with a general peace the world was blest, While ours, a world divided from the rest, A dreadful quiet felt, and worser far Than arms, a sullen interval of war." Here is already the energy divine for which the author was to be famed, and, in the last line at least, an instance of the varied cadence and subtly - disposed music wliich were, in his hands, to free the couplet from all charges of monotony and tamencss. But almost immediately there is a falling off. The poet goes off into an unnecessary simile preceded by the hackneyed and clumsy " thus," a simile quite out of place at the opening of a poem, and disfigured by the too famous, " an horrid stillness first in- vades the ear," which if it has been extravagantly blamed — and it seems to me that it has — certainly will go near to be thought a conceit. But we have not long to wait for another chord that announces Dryden : " For his long absence Chu'ch and State did groan, Madness the pulpit, faction seized the throne. Experienced age in deep despair was lost To see the rebel thrive, the loyal crost. Youth, that with joys had unacquainted been. Envied grey hairs that once good days had seen. We thought our sires, not v, ith their own content, Had, ere we came to age, our portion spent." Whether the matter of this is suitable for poetry or not la ^^ ^-..w 30 DRYDEN. [chap. one of those questions on which doctors will doubtless disagree to the end of the chapter. But even when we look back through the long rows of practitioners of the couplet who have succeeded Dryden, we shall, I think, hardly find one who is capable of such masterly treatment of the form, of giving to the phrase a turn at once so clear and so individual, of weighting the verse with such dignity, and at the same time winging it with such lightly Hying speed. The poem is injured by numerous passages in- troduced by the usual " as " and " thus " and " like," which were intended for ornaments, and which in fact simply disfigure. It is here and there charged, after the manner of the day, with inappropriate and clumsy learning, and with doubtful Latinisms of expression. But it is redeemed by such lines as — " When to be God's anointed was his crime ;" as the characteristic gibe at the Covenant insinuated by the description of the Guisean League — "As lioly and as Catholic as oursj" as the hit at the " Polluted nest Whence legion twice before was dispossest ;" as the splendid couplet on the British Amphitrite — " Proud her returning prince to entertain :- With the submitted fasces of the main." Such lines as these must have had for tlie readers of 1660 the attraction of a novelty which only very careful stu- dents of the literature of the time can understand now. The merits of Astrcea Redux must of course not be judged by the reader's acquiescence in its sentiments. But Itt "•] EARLY LITERARY WORK. 31 any one read the following passage without thinking of the treaty of Dover and the closed exchequer, of Madam Carwell's twelve tiiousand a year, and Lord Russell's scaf- fold, and he assuredly will not fail to recognise their beauty : " Methinks I see those crowds on Dover's strand, Who in their haste to welcome you to land Choked up the beach with their still-growing store, And made a wilder torrent on the shore : While, spurred with eager thoughts of past delight. Those who had seen you court a second sight, Preventing still your steps, and making haste To meet you often wheresoe'er you past. How shall I speak of that triumphant day When you renewed the expiring pomp of May ? A month that owns an interest in your name ; You and the flowers arc its peculiar claim. That star, that at your birth shone out so bright It stained the duller sun's meridian light. Did once again its potent fires renew, Guiding our eyes to find and worship you." The extraordinary art with which the recurrences of the you and your — in the circumstances naturally recited with a little stress of the voice — are varied in position so as to give a corresponding variety to the cadence of the verse, is perhaps the chief thing to be noted here. But a compari- son with even the best couplet verse of the time will show many other excellences in it. I am aware that this style of minute criticism has gone out of fashion, and that the variations of the position of a pronoun have terribly little to do with " criticism of life ;" but as I am dealing with a great English author whose main distinction is to have reformed the whole formal part of English prose and Eng- glish poetry, I must, once for all, take leave to follow the only road open to me to show what he actually did. 82 DRY DEN. [chap. The other smaller couplet-poems whicli have been men- tioned are less important than Astrcea Redux, not merely in point of size, but because they are later in date. The piece on the coronation, however, contains lines and pas- sages equal to any in the longer poem, and it shows very happily the modified form of conceit which Dryden, throughout his life, was fond of employing, and which, employed with his judgment and taste, fairly escapes the charges usually brought against "Clevelandisms," while it helps to give to the heroic the colour and picturesqueness which after the days of Pope it too often lacked. Such is the fancy about the postponement of the ceremony — "Had greater haste these sacred rites prepared, Some guilty months had in our triumph shared. But this untainted year is all your own, Your glories may without our crimes be shown." And such an exceedingly fine passage in the poem to Clarendon, which is one of the most finished pieces of Dryden's early versification — ' Our setting sun from his declining seat Shot beams of kindness on you, not of heat : And, when his love was bounded in a few That were unhappy that they might he true, Made you the favourite of his last sad times ; That is, a sufferer in his subjects' crimes : Thus those first favours you received were sent, Like Heaven's rewards, in earthly punishment. Y^ct Fortune, conscious of your destiny, Even then took care to lay you softly by, And wrapt your fate among her precious things, Kept fresh to be unfolded with your King's. Shown all at once, you dazzled so our eyes As new-born Pallas did the god's surprise ; II.] EARLY LITERARY WORK. 33 When, springing forth from Jove's new-closing wound, She strufli tiie warliiie spear into the ground ; Which sprouting leaves did suddenly enclose, And peaceful olives shfided as they rose." For once the mania for simile and classical allusion has not led the author astray liere, but has furnished him with a very happy and legitimate ornament. The only fault in the piece is the use of " did,'' which Dryden never wholly discarded, and which is perhaps occasionally allow- able enouQ;h. The remaininnf poems require no very special remark, though all contain evidence of the same novel and un- matched mastery over the couplet and its cadence. The author, however, was giving himself more and more to the dramatic studies which will form the subject of the next chapter, and to the prose criticisms which almost from the first he associated with those studies. But the events of the year 1666 tempted him once more to indulge in non- dramatic work, and the poem of Annus Mirabilis was the result. It seems to have been written, in part at least, at Lord Berkshire's seat of Charlton, close to Malinesbury, and was prefaced by a letter to Sir Robert Howard. Dry- den appears to have lived at Charlton during the greater part of 1665 and 1666, the plague and fire years. He had been driven from London, not merely by dread of the pestilence, but by the fact that his ordinary occupation was gone, owing to the closing of the play-houses, and he evidently occupied himself at Charlton with a good deal of literary work, including his essay on draniatic poetry, his play of the Maiden Queen, and Annus Mirahilis itself. This last was published very early in 166V, and seems to have been successful. Pepys bought it on the 2nd of Feb- ruary, and was fortunately able to like it better than he did : r .1 ,' ■\ 1 1 s w ILI 34 DRYDEN. [chap. :l ^ Hudibras. " A very good poem," the Clerk of the Acts of the Navy writes it down. It may be mentioned in passing that dining tliis same stay at Charlton Dryden's eldest son Charles was born. Annus MirahiUs consists of 304 quatrains on the Gon- dibert model, reasons for the adoption of which Dryden gives (not so forcibly, perhaps, as is usual with him) in the before-mentioned letter to hi?; brother-in-law. He speaks of rhyme generally with less respect than he was soon to show, and declares that he has adopted the quatrain because he judges it " more noble and full of dignity " than any other form he knows. The truth seems to be that he was still to a great extent under the influence of Davenant, and that Gondibert as yet retained sufficient prestige to make its stanza act as a not unfavourable advertisement of poems written in it. With regard to the nobility and dignity of this stanza, it may safely be said that Annus Mira- bilis itself, the best poem ever written therein, killed it by exposing its faults. It Is, indeed, at least when the rhymes of the stanzas are unconnected, a very bad metre for the purpose; for it is chargeable with more than the disjoint- edness of the couplet, without the possibility of relief; while, on the other hand, the quatrains have not, like the Spenserian stave or the ottava ri.na, suflicietit bulk to form units in themselves, and to include within them varieties of harmony. Despite these drawbacks, however, Dryden produced a very fine poem in Annus Mirabilis, though I am not certain that even its best passages equal those cited from the couplet pieces. At any rate, in this poem the characteristics of the master in what may be called his poetical adolescence are displayed to the fullest extent. The weight and variety of his line, his abundance of illus- tration and fancy, his happy turns of separate phrase, and II.] EARLY LITERARY WORK. 86 his sincvular faculty of bendino- to poetical uses the most refractory names and things, all make themselves fully felt here. On the other hand, there is still an undue tendency to conceit a .d exuberance of simile. The famous lines— "Tiiese fight like husbands, but like lovers those; These fain would keep, and thosr more fain enjoy ;" are followed in the next stanza by a most indubitably " metaphysical " statement that " Some preciously by shattered porcelain fall, And some by aromatic splinters die." This cannot be considered the happiest possible means of informing us that the Dutch fleet was laden with spices and maijlts. Sucl puerile fancies are certainly unworthy of a poet who could tell how " The mighty ghosts of our great Harrys rose And armed Edwards looked with anxious eyes ;" and who, in the beautiful simile of the eagle, has equalled the Elizabethans at their own weapons. I cannot think, however, admirable as the poem is in its best passages (the description of the fire, for instance), that it is technically the equal of Astnm Redux. The monotonous recurrence of the same identical cadence in each stanza— a recurrence which even Dryden's art was unable to prevent, and which can only be prevented by some such incements of rhymes and enjambements of sense as those which Mr. Swinburne has successfully adopted in Laus Veneris— in- jures the best passages. The best of all is undoubtedly the following : " III tliis deep quiet, from what source unknown, Those seeds of fire their fatal birth disclose ; And first few scattering sparks about were blown, Big with the flames that to our ruin rose. m V^: i .> DRYDEN. "Then in some close-pent room it crept along, And, smouldering as it went, in silence fed ; Till the infant monster, with devouring strong. Walked boldly upright with exalted head. " Now, like some rich and mighty murderer, Too great for prison which he breaks with gold, Who fresher for new mischiefs docs appear. And dares the world to tax him with the old. [chap. " So 'scapes the insulting fire his narrow jail, And makes small outlets into open air; There the fierce winds his tender force assail. And beat him downward to his first repair. " The winds, like crafty courtesans, w ithheld His flames from burning but to blow thvm more; And, every fresh attempt, he is repelled With faint denials, weaker than before. " And now, no longer letted of his prey, He leaps up at it with enraged desire, O'erlooks the neighbours with a wide survey, And nods at every house his threatening fire. " The ghosts of traitors from the Bridge descend. With bold fanatic spectres to rejoice ; About the fire into a dance they bend And sing their sabbath r'^^es with feeble voice." The last stanza, indeed, contains a fine image finely ex- pressed, but I cannot but be glad that Dryden tried no more experiments with the recalcitrant quatrain. Annus Mirahilis closes the series of early poems, and for fourteen years from the date of its publication Dryden was known, with insignificant exceptions, as a dramatic writer only. But his efforts in poetry proper, though they had not as yet resulted in any masterpiece, had, as I have [chap. ,1.] EARLY LITERARY WORK. 37 Id, lore ; ice. ! finely ex- !n tried no endeavoured to point out, amply entitled him to the posi- tion of a great and original master of the formal part of poetry, if not of a poet who had distinctly found liis way. He hud carried out a conception of the couplet which was almoiit entirely new, having been anticipated" only by some isolated and ill- sustained efforts, lie had manifested an ccjual originality in the turn of his phrase, an extraordina- ry comujand of poetic imagery, and, above all, a faculty of handling by no means promising subjects in a indispu- tably poetical manner. Circumstances wl ich I shall now proceed to describe called him away from the practice of pure poetry, leaving to him, however, a reputation, amply deserved and acknowledged even by his enemies, of pos- sessintr unmatched skill in versification. Nor were the studies upon which he now entered wholly alien to his proper function, though they were in some sort a bye- work. They strengthened his command over the lan- guage, increased his skill in verse, and, above all, tended bv degrees to reduce and purify what was corrupt in his phraseology and system of ornamentation. Fourteen years of dramatic practice did more than turn out some admira- ble scenes and some even more admirable criticism. They acted as a filtering reservoir for his poetical powers, so that the stream which, when it ran into them, was the turbid and rubbish -ladeu current of Annus MiraUUs, flowed out as impetuous, as strong, but clear and with- out base admixture, in the splendid verse of Absalom and AcJdtophel. i • 11!' . )!:! K poems, and ion Drydcn a dramatic hough they i, as I have J ^. Jii,Wik«S«i ' CHAPTER III. w PEKIOD OF DRAMATIC ACTIVITV. There are not many portions of English literature which have been treated with greater severity by critics than the Restoration drama, and of the Restoration dramatists few have met with less favour, in proportion to their general literary eminence, than Drydcn. Of his comedies, in par- ticular, few have been found to say a good word. His sturdiest champion, Scott, dismisses them as "heavy ;" Haz- litt, a defender of the Restoration comedy in general, finds little in them but " ribaldry and extravagance ;" and I have lately seen them spoken of with a shudder as "horrible." The tragedies have fared better, but not much better; and thus the remarkable spectacle is presented of a general condemnation, varied only by the faintest praise, of the work to which an admitted master of English devoted, almost exclusively, twenty years of the llosver of his man- hood. So complete is the oblivion into which these dramas have fallen, that it has buried in its folds the always charm- ing and sometimes exquisite songs which they contain. Except in Congreve's two editions, and in the bulky edi- tion of Scott, Dryden's theatre is unattainable, and thus the majority of readers have but little opportiinity of correct- ino-, from individual studv, the unfavourable impressions derived from the verdicts of the critics. For myself, I am CHAP. III. J PERIOD OF DRAMATIC AtTIVITV. 89 aturc which ics than the unatists few heir general (lies, in par- word. His eavy ." Ilaz- reneral, finds ' and 1 have " horrible." better; and af a general raise, of the ish devoted, of his nian- these dramas wavs charm- hey contain, e bulky edi- and thus the ;y of correct- impressions mvself, I am W very far from considering Dryden's dramatic work as on a level with his purely poetical work. But, as nearly always happens, and as happened, by a curious coincidence, in the case of his editor, the fact that ho did something else much better has obscured the fact that he did this thing in not a few instances very well. Scott's poems as poems are far inferior to his novels as novels ; Dryden's plays are far in- ferior as plays to his satires and his fables as poems. But both the poems of Scott and the plays of Dryden are a great deal better than the average critic admits. That dramatic work went somewhat against the grain with J)ryden, is frequently asserted on his own authority, and is perhaps true. He began it, however, tolerably early, and had finished at least the scheme of a play (on a sub- ject which he afterwards resumed) shortly after the Resto- ration. As soon as that event happened, a double in- centive to play-writing began to work upon him. It was much the most fashionable of literary occupations, and also much the most lucrative. Dryden was certainly not indif- ferent to fame, and, though he was by no means a covetous man, he seems to have possessed at all times the perfect readiness to spend whatever could be honestly got which frequently distinguishes men of letters. He set t' work accordingly, and produced in 1063 the Wild Galla We do not possess this play in the form in which it was first acted and damned. Afterward^ Lady Castlemaine gave it her protection; the anti luu. i certain attractions ac- cording to the taste of tl»e time, and it was both acted and published. It certainly cannot be said to be a great suc- cess even as it is. Dryden had, like most of his fellows, attempted the Comedy of Humours, as it was called at the time, and as it continued to be, and to be crJled, till the more polished comedy of manners, or artificial comedy, ! fl i I 40 DRYDEN. * [chap. succeeded it, owing to the success of Wycherley, and still more of Congreve. The number of comedies of this kind written after 1620 is very large, while the fantastic and poetical comedy of which Shakspeare and Fletcher had al- most alone the secret had almost entirely died out. The merit of the Comedy of Humours is the observation of actual life which it requires in order to be done well, and the consequent fidelity with which it holds up the muses' looking-glass (to use the title of one of Randolph's plays) to nature. Its defects are its proneness to descend into farce, and the temptation which it gives to the writer to aim rather at mere fragmentary and sketchy delineations than at finished composition. At the Restoration this school of drama was vigorously cnougl. represented by Davenant himself, by Sir Aston Cokain, and by Wilson, a writer of great merit who rather unaccountably abandoned the stage very soon, while in a year or two Shadwell, the actor Lacy, aJid several others were to take it up and carry it on. It had frequently been combined with the embroil- ed and complicated plots of the Spanish comedy of intrigue, the adapters usually allowing these plots to conduct them- selves much more irregularly than was the case in the originals, while the deficiencies were made up, or supposed to be made up, by a liberal allowance of " humours." The danger of this sort of work was perhaps never better illus- trated than by Shadwell, when he boasted in one of his prefaces that " four of the humours were entirely new," and appeared to consider this a sufficient claim to respect- ful reception. Dryden in his first play fell to the fullest extent into the blunder of this combined Spanish-English style, though on no subsequent occasion did he repeat the mistake. By degrees the example and influence of Moliere sent complicated plots and "humours" alike out [chap. !y, and still •f this kind atastic and her had al- out. The crvation of e well, and the muses' pli's plays) iscend into 3 writer to lelineations ration this isented by ' Wilson, a abandoned adwell, the > and carry le embroil- jf intrigue, duct them- ase in the r supposed urs." The )etter illus- one of his rely new," to respect- tlio fullest sh-English he repeat ifluencc of ' alike out in.] PERIOD OF DRAMATIC ACTIVITY. 41 of fashion, though the national taste and temperament were too strongly in favour of the latter to allow them to be totally banished. In our very best plays of the so-call- ed artificial style, such as Love for Love, and the master- pieces of Sheridan, character sketches to wliich Ben Jonson himself would certainly not refuse the title of humours appear, and contribute a large portion of the interest. Drydcn, however, was not likely to anticipate this better time, or even to distinguish himself in the older form of the humour-comedy. He had little aptitude for the odd and quaint, nor had he any faculty of devising or picking up strokes of extravagance, such as those which his enemy Shadwell could command, though he could make no very good use of them. The humours of Trice and Bibber and Lord Nonsuch in the Wild Gallant arc forced and too often feeble, though there arc flashes here and there, especially in the part of Sir Timorous, a weakling of the tribe of Aguecheek; but in this first attempt, the one situation and the one pair of characters which Dryden was to treat with tolerable success are already faintly sketched. In Constance and Loveby, the pair of light- hearted lovers who carry on a flirtation without too much modesty certainly, and with a remarkable absence of re- finement, but at the same time with some genuine aflEec- tion for one another, and in a hearty, natural manner, make their first appearance. It is to be noted in Dryden's favour that these lovers of his are for the most part free from the charge of brutal lieartlessness and cruelty, wliich has been justly brought against those of Etlicregc, of Wychcrley, and, at least in the case of the Old Bachelor, of Congreve. The men are rakes, and rather vulgar rakes, but they are nothing worse. The women have too many of the characteristics of Charles the Second's maids of D 3 4 %\\ 42 DRYDEN. I If iF .7 I ;f 'i [chap. honour; but they have at the same time a certain health- iness and sweetness of tlie older days, which bring them, if not close to Rosalind and Beatrice, at any rate pretty near to Fletcher's lieroines, such as Dorothea and Mary. Still, the Wild Gallant can by no possibility be called a good play. It was followed at no Iciig interval by the Hival Ladies, a tragicomedy, which is chiefly remarkable for containing some heroic scenes in rhyme, for imitating closely the tangled and improbable plot of its Spanish original, for being tolerably decent, and I fear it must be added, for being intolerably dull. The third venture was in every way more important. The Indian Emper- or (1665) was Dryden's first original play, his first heroic play, and indirectly formed part of a curious literary dis- pute, one of many in which he was engaged, but which in this case proved fertile in critical studies of his best brand. Sir Robert Howard, Dryden's brother-in-law, had, with the assistance of Dryden himself, produced a play called the Indian Queen, and to this the Indian Emper- or was nominally a sequel. But as Dryden remarks, with a quaintncss which may or may not be satirical, the con- clusion of the Indian Queen " left but little matter to build upon, there remaining but two of the considerable characters alive." The good Sir Robert had indeed heap- ed the stage with dead in his last act in a manner which must have confirmed any FrcMich critic who saw or read the play in his belief of the bloodthirstiness of the Eng- lish drama. The field was thus completely clear, an'cl Dryden, retaining only Montezuma as hi- hero, used his own fancy and invention without restraint in constructing the plot and arranging the characters. The play was ex- tremely popular, and it divides with Tyrannic Love and the Conquest of Oranada the merit of being the best of all m.] PERIOD OF DRAMATIC ACTIVITY. 43 English heroic plays. The origin of that singular growth has been already given, and there is no need to repeat the story, while the Conquest of Granada is so nmch more the model play of the style, that anything like an analysis of a heroic play had better be reserved for this. The Indian Emperor was followed, in 1607, by the Maiden Queen, a. tragicomedy. The tragic or heroic part is very inferior to its predecessor, but the comic part has merits which are by no means inconsiderable. Celadon and Florimel are the first finished specimens of that pair of practitioners of light o' love flirtation which was Dryden's sole contribu- tion of any value to the comic stage. Charles gave the play particular commendation, and called it " his play," as Dryden takes care to tell us. Still, in the same year came Sir Martin Marall, Dryden's second pure comedy. But it is in no sense an original play, and Dryden was not even the original adapter. The Duke of Newcastle, famous equally for his own gallantry in the civil war, and for the oddities of his second duchess, Margaret Lucas, translated VEtourdi, and gave it to Dryden, who perhaps combined with it some things taken from other French plays, added not a lit^' ■ liis own, and had it acted. It was for those day .. judingly successful, running more than thirty nights at its first appearance. It is very coarse in parts, but amusing enough. The English blunderer is a much more contemptible person than his French original. He is punished instead of being rewarded, and there is a great deal of broad farce brought in. Dryden was about this time frequently engaged in this doubtful sort of collabo- ration, and the very next play which he produced, also a result of it, has done his reputation more harm than any other. This was the disgusting burlesque of the Tempest, which, happily, there is much reason for thinking belongs ii 1:1 f. i! ;i M 44 DRYDEN. [chap. I 'I i I r i/ almost wholly to Davenant. Besides degrading in every way the poetical merit of the poem, Sir William, from whom better things might have been expected, got into his head what Dryden amiably calls the "excellent con- trivance " of giving Miranda a sister, and inventing a boy (Hippolito) who has never seen a woman. The excellent contrivance gives rise to a good deal of extremely charac- teristic wit. But here, too, there is little reason for giving Dr"den credit or discredit for anything more than a cer- tain amount of arrangement and revision. His next ap- pearance, in 1668, with the Mock Astrologer was a more independent one. lie was, indeed, as was very usual with him, indebted to others for the main points of his play, which comes partly from Thomas Cornoille's Feint Astro- logue, partly from the Dqnt Amoureux. But the play, with the usual reservations, may be better spoken of than any of Dryden's comedies, except Marriage a la Mode and Amphitryon. Wildblood and Jacintha, who play the parts of Celadon and Florimcl in the Maiden Queen, are a very lively pair. Much of tiie dialogue is smart, and the inci- dents are stirring, while the play contains no less than four of the admirable songs which Dryden now beffan to lavish on his audiences. In the same year, or perhaps in 1669, appeared the play of Tyrannic Love, or the Royal Martyr, a compound of exquisite beauties ^.nd absurdities of the most frantic description. The part of St. Catherine (very inappropriately allotted to Mrs. Eleanor Gwyn) is beauti- ful throughout, and that of Maximin is quite captivating in its outrageousness. The Astn.l spirits who appear gave occasion for some terrible parody in the Rehearsal, but their verses are in themselves rather attractive. An ac- count of the final scene of the play will perhaps show bet- ter than anything else the rant and folly in which authors [chap. H..] PERIOD OF DRAMATIC ACTIVITY. 45 no- in every 'illiam, from ed, got into :cellent con- nting a boy 'he excellent nely cliarac- n for giving than a cer- lis next ap- was a more ^ usual with of his play, Feint Astro- it the play, ken of than la Mode and ay the parts 1, are a very nd the inci- ss than four ;an to lavish ,ps in 1669, ijal Martyr, lities of the lerinc (very i) is bcauti- captivating appear gave hearsal, but i'c. An ac- )s show bet- lich authors m indulged, and which audiences applauded in these plays. The Emperor Maximin is dissatisfied with the conduct of the upper powers in reference to his domestic peace. He thus expresses his dissatisfaction : " What liad tlie gods to do with mc or mine ? Did I molest your heaven ? Wiiy should you then make Maximin your foe, Who paid you tribute, whieh he need not do ? Your altars I with smoke of rams did crown, For which you leaned your hungry nostrils down, All daily gaping for my incense there, More than your sun could draw you in a year. And you for this these plagues have on nie sent. But, by the gods (by Maximin, I meant), Henceforth I and my world Hostility witli you and yours declare. Look to it, gods ! for you the aggressors are. Keep you your rain and sunshine in your skies, And I'll keep back my flame and sacrifice. Your trade of lieaven shall soon be at a stand, And all your goods lie dead upon your hand." Thereupon an aggrieved and possibly shocked follower, of the name of Placidius, stabs him, but the Emperor wrests the dagger from him and returns the blow. Then follows this stage direction : " Placidius falls, and the Emperor staggers after him and sits down upon him." From this singular throne his guards offer to assist him. But he de- clines help, and, having risen once, sits down again upon Placidius, who, despite the stab and the weight of the Emperor, is able to address an irreproachable decasyllabic couplet to the audience. Thereupon Maximin again stabs the person upon whom he is sitting, and they both expire as follows : ! I m ■ ih ■ ¥ 46 DRYDE.V. [chap. I' il 1 " Flac. Oh ! I am gone. Max And after thee I go, Revenging still and following ev'n to the other world my blow, And shoving back tliib earth on which I sit, I'll mount and scatter all the gods I hit." [Slabs him affain.] Tyrannic Love was followed by the two parts of Al- manzor and Ahnahide, or the Conquest of Granada, the triumph and at the same time the reductio ad absurdum of the style. I cannot do better than give a full argument of this famous production, whicli nobody now reads, and which is full of lines that everybody habitually quotes. The kingdom of Granada under its last monarch, Boab- delin, is divided by the quarrels of factions, or rather fam- ilies — the Abenccrrages and the Zegrys. At a festival held in the capital this dissension breaks out. A stranf>-cr interferes on v/hat appears to be the weaker side, and kills a prominent leader of the opposite party, altogether dis- regarding the king's injunctions to desist. He is seized by the guards and ordered for execution, but is then dis- covered to be Almanzor, a valiant person lately arrived from Africa, who has rendered valuable assistance to the Moors in their combat with the Spaniards, The king thereupon apologizes, and Almanzor addresses much out- rageous language to the factions. This is successful, and harmony is apparently restored. Then there enters the Duke of Arcos, a Spanish envoy, who propounds hard con- ditions; but Almanzor remarks that 'the Moors have Heaven and me," and duke retires, Ahnahide, the king's betrothed, sends a messenger to invite him to a dance ; but Almanzor insists upon a sally first, and the first act ends with the acceptance of this order of amuse- ment. The second opens with the triumphant return of the Moors, the ever-victorious Almanzor having captured [chap. I go, rid my blow, I him again.^ parts of Al- iranada, the 'd absurd um ill argument w reads, and f quotes, narcli, Boab- ■ rather fam- Lt a festival A strano-er de, and kills ogether dis- le is seized is then dis- tely arrived ance to the The king i much out- jcessful, and t enters the is hard con- Moors have mahide, the e him to a rst, and the sr of amuse- it return of i\g captured in.] PERIOD OF DRAMATIC ACTIVITY. 47 the Duke of Arcos. Then is introduced the first female character of importance, Lyndaraxa, sister of Zulema, the Zegry chief, and representative throughout the drama of the less amiable qualities of womankind. Abdalla, the king's brother, makes love to her, and she very plainly tells him that if he were king she might have something to say to him, Zulema's factiousness strongly seconds liis sister's ambition and her jealousy of Al mahide, and the act ends by the formation of a conspiracy against Boabdelin, the conspirators resolving to attach the invin- cible Almanzor to their side. The third act borrows its opening from the incident of Hotspur's wrath, Almanzor being provoked with Boabdelin for the same cause as Harry Percy with Henry IV. Thus he is disposed to join Abdalla, while Abdelmelech, the chief of the x\bencerrages, is introduced in a scene full of " sighs and flames," as the prince's rival for the hand of Lyndaraxa. The promised dance takes place with one of Dryden's delightful, and, alas ! scarcely ever wholly quotable lyrics. The first two stanzas may however be given : " Beneath a myrtle's shade, Which love for nuiie but hai/py lovers made, I slept, and straight my love before me brought Phyllis, the object of my waking thought. Undressed s]>o came my flame to meet, While love strewed flowers beneath her feet, Flowers which, so pressed Vjy her, became more sweet. " From the bright vision's head A careless veil of lawn was loosely shed. From her white temples fell her shaded hair. Like cloudy sunshine, not too brown nor fair. Her hands, her lips, d' 1 love inspire. Her every grace my heart did fire. But most her eyes, which languished with desire." If AM il •I IJ: Jm\ i ! I '» (I II I I 48 DRYDEX. [chap. It is a thousand pities that the quotation cannot be con- tinued ; but it cannot, though the verse is more artfully beautiful even than Jierc. While, liowever, the king and his court are listening and looking, mischief is brewing. Aliiianzor, Abdalla, and the Zegrys are in arras. The king is driven in ; Ahnahide is captured. Then a scene takes place between Ahnanzor and Ahnahide in the full spirit of the style. Ahnanzor sues for Ahnahide as a prisoner that he may set her at liberty ; but a rival appears in the powerful Zulema. Al- manzor is disobliged by Abdalla, and at once makes his way to the citadel, whither Boabdelin has fled, and offers him his services. At the beginning of the fourth act they are of course accepted with joy, and equally of course ef- fectual. Almanzor renews his suit, but Ahnahide refers him to her father. The fifth a t is still fuller of extrava- gances. Lyndaraxa holds a fort which has been commit- ted to her against both parties, and they discourse with her from without the walls. The unlucky Almanzor pre- fers his suit to the king and to Almahide's father; has recourse to violence on being refused, and is overpowered —for a wonder— and bound. His life is, however, spared, and after a parting scene with Ahnahide he withdraws from the city. The second part opens in the Spanish camp, but soon shifts to Granada, where the unhappy Boabdelin has to face the mutinies provoked by the expulsion of Almanzor. The king has to stoop to entreat Ahnahide, now his queen, to use her influence with her lover to come back. An act of line confused fighting follows, in which Lynda- raxa's castle is stormed, the stormcrs in their turn driven out by the Duke of Arcos and Abdalla, who has joined the Spaniards, and a general imhrorflio created. But Almanzor f [chap. inot be con- acre artfully we listening Abdalla, and 1 ; Alinaliide 3n Almanzor Almanzor y set her at iulema. Al- e makes his i, and offers rth act they )f course ef- ahide refers ' of extrava- jcn commit- course with manzor pre- father; has )verpowered ;vcr, spared, ! withdraws p, but soon el in has to r Almanzor. c, now his come back, lich Lynda- turn driven 5 joined the t Almanzor ....] PERIOD OF DRAMATIC ACTIVITV. 49 obeys Alniahide's summons, with the result of more sighs and riauies. The conduct of Almahide is unexceptiona- ble; but Boabdolin's jealousy is inevitably aroused, and this in its turn mortally offends the queen, which again offends Almanzor. More inexplicable embroilment follows, and Lyndaraxa tries her charms vainly on the champion. The war once more centres round the Albayzin, Lynda- raxa's sometime fortress, and it is not flippant to say that every one fights with Cvcry one else; after which the hero sees the ghost of his mother, and addresses it more siio. Yet another love-scene follows, and then Zulema, who has not forgotten his passion for Almahide, brings a false ac- cusation against her, the assumed partner of her guilt be- ing, however, not Almanzor, but Abdelmelech. This leaves the hero free to undertake the wager of battle for his mis- tress, though he is distracted with jealous fear that Zule- ma's talc is true. The result of the ordeal is a foregone conclusion ; but Almahide, though her innocence is proved, is too angry with her husband for doubting her to forgive him, and solemnly forswears his society. She and Alman- zor meet once more, and by this time even the convention- alities of the heroic play allow him to kiss her hand. The king is on the watch, atid breaks in with fresh accusations; but the Spaniards at the gates cut short the discussion, and (at last) the embroilment and suffering of true love. The catastrophe is arrived at in the most approved manner. Boabdelin dies fighting; Lyndaraxa, who has given trai- torous help with her Zegrys, is proclaimed queen by Fer- dinand, but almost immediately stabbed by Abdelmclech. Almanzor turns out to be the long-lost son of the Duke of Arcos ; and Almahide, encouraged by Queen Isabella, owns that when her year of widowhood is up she may possibly be induced to crown his flames. 3* t il I 1 !i 1 f ! ; a- i j'.n 1 "t ii' I .l: 60 ! f I' I) DRYDEN. [chap. Such is the barest outline of this famous [Any, and I fear that as it is it is too ]ong,tliough much has' been omit- ted, inchidin.,^ the whole of a pleasing underplot of love between two very creditable lovers, Osinyn and Benzayda. Its preposterous " revolutions and discoveries," the wild bombast of Almanzor and others, the apparently purpose- less embroilment of the action in ever- new turns and twists arc absurd cnouoh ; but there is a kind of generous and noble spirit animating it which could not failto catch an audience blinded by fashion to its absurdities. There is a skilful sequence even in the most preposterous events, which must have kept up the interest unfalteringly ; and all over the dialogue are squandered and lavished flowers of splendid verse. Many of its separate lines are, as has been said, constantly quoted without the least idea on the quoter's par': of their origin, and many more are quotable. Everybody, for instance, knows the vigorous couplet : " Foif^'iveness to the injured does belong. But they ne'er pardon who have done the wron'^ •" but everybody does not know the preceding couplet, which is, perhaps, better still : " A blush remains in a forgiven face ; It wears the silent tokens of disgrace." Almanzor's tribute to Lyndaraxa's beautv, at the same time that he rejects her advances, is in little, perhaps, as good an instance as could be given of tlie merits of the poetry and of the stamp of its spirit, and with this I must be content : " Fair though vou are As summer mornings, and your eyes more bright Than stars that twinkle on a winter's night ; [chap. in.l PKKIOD OF DRAMATIC ACTIVITV. 51 !iy, and 1 fear s been oniit- ■plot of love id Benzayda. is," the wild itly pnrpose- V turns and of jrcnerous fail to catch ties. There srous events, sringly ; and shed flowers ? are, as has idea on the re quotable, uplet: iplet, which t the same perhaps, as srits rf the this r must •ight Though you have eloquence to warm and move Cold age and fasting hermits into love ; Thougli Almahide with scorn rewards my care, Yet than to ehiuige 'tis nobler to despair. My love's my soul, and that from fate is free — 'Tis that unchanged and deathless part of me." The audience that clieered this was not wholly vile. The Conquest of Granada appeared in 1670, and in the followintr vear the famous Rehearsal was brought out at the King's Theatre. The importance of this event in Dryden's life is considerable, but it has been somewhat exaggerated. In the first place, the satire, keen as much of it is, is only half directed against himself. The origi- nal Bayes was beyond all doubt Davenant, to whom some of the jokes directly apply, while they have no reference to Dryden. In tlie second place, the examples of heroic plays selected for parody and ridicule are by no means ex- clusively drawn from Dryden's theatre. His brothers-in- law, Edward and Robert Howard, and others, figure be- side him, and the central character is, on the wliole, as composite as might he expected from the number of au- thors whose plays are satirized. Although fathered by Buckingham, it seems likely mat not much of the play is actually his. His coadjutors are said to have been Butler, Sprat, and Martin Clifford, Master of the Charterhouse, au- thor of some singularly ill-tempered if not very pointed remarks on Dryden's plays, which were not published till long afterwards. Butler's hand is, indeed, traceable in many of the parodies of heroic diction, none of which are so good as liis acknowledged " Dialogue of Cat and Pass." The wit and, for the most part, the justice of the satire are indisputable ; and if it be true, as I am told, that the Re- hearsal does not now make a good acting play, the fact i! I I m '# n i i , ^H?' ^\iii Il 62 DRYDEN. [oiup. docs not bear favourable tostiinony to the (Miltiue and re- ceptive powers of modeni audiences. But tlierc were many ii'asons why Dryden should take the satire very coolly, as in fact he did. As he says, with his customary proud liu- inility, "liis bettors wore much more concerned than liim- self ;" and it seems inj,dily probable that JJuckingliam's co- adjutors, confidinor in jiis oood nature or his inability to detect tlie liberty, had actually introduced not a few traits of his own into this singularly composite portrait. In the second place, the farce was what would bo now called an advertisement, and a very good one. Nothing can be a -reatcr mistaki; than to say or to think that the Rehearsal killed heroic plays. It did nothing of the kind, Dryden himself going on writing them for some years until his own fancy made him cease, and others continuing still longer. There is a play of Crowne's, CalUjula, in which many of the scenes are rhymed, (biting as late as 1G98, and the general cliaracter of the heroic play, ii not the rhymed form, continued almost unaltered. Certainly Dr\ - den's equanimity was very little disturbed. Buckingbain he paid off in kind long afterwards, and his (irace im- mediately proceeded, by his answer, to show how little he can have liad to do witii the Rehearsal. To Sprat and Clifford no allusions that I know of arc to be found in his writings. As for Butler, an honourable mention in a letter to Lawrence Hyde shows how little acrimony lie felt towards him. Indeed, it may be said of Dryden that he was at no ti.ne toucliy about personal attacks. It was only when, as Shadwell subsequently did, the assailants be- came outrageous in their abuse, and outstepped the bounds of fair literary warfare or when, as in Blackmore's case there was some singular ineptitude in the fashion of the attack, that he condescended to reply. lU.] PERIOD OF DRAMATIC ACTIVITY. 68 It is all the more surprising that ho should, at no great distance of time, liavc engaged gratuitously in a contest which brought liim no honour, and in which his allies were quite unworthy of him. Elkunah Settle was one of Rochester's innumerable Icd-poets, and was too utterly be- neath contempt to deserve even Rochester's spite. The character of Docg, ten years later, did Settle complete justice, ric had a " blundering kind of melody " about him, but absolutely nothing else. However, a heroic play of his, the Empress of Morocco, had considerable vogue for some incomprehensible reason. Dryden allowed himself to be drawn by Crowne and Shadwcll into writing with them a pamphlet of criticisms on the piece. Settle re- plied by a study, as we should say nowadays, of the very vulnerable Conquest of Granada. This is the only in- stance in which JJrydcn went out f^l iV. way to attack any one; and even in this instanc Settle aad given some cause by an allusion of a contcm )tucus Id'.- in his preface. But as a rule the laureate showe.' himsc'/ proof against much more venomous criticisms th;; any that Elkanah was capable of. It is perhaps not uncharitable to suspr t that the preface of the Empress of Morocco bore to some ex- tent the blame of the Rehearsal, which it must be remem- bered was for years amplified and rc-edited with parodies of fresh plays of Dryden's as they appeared. If this were the case it would not be the only instance of such a trans- ference of irritation, iiiid it would explain Dryden's other- wise inexplicable conduct. His attack on Settle is, from a strictly literary point of view, one of his most unjustifia- ble acts. The pamphlet, it is true, is said to have been mainly "Starch .lohnny" Crowne's, and the character of its strictures is quite different from Dryden's broad and catholic manner of censuring. But the adage, " tell me % I ! III I . il:-l 64 DRYDEX. !l "i If', (' II [chap. with whom you live," is peculiarly applicable in such a case, and Dryden must be held responsible for the assault, whether its venom be really due to hiniself, to Crowne, or to the foul-mouthed libeller of whose virulence the laure- ate himself was in years to come to have but too familiar experience. A very different play in 16V2 gave Dryden almost as much credit in comedy as the Conquest of Granada in tragedy. There is, indeed, a tragic or serious underplot (and a very ridiculous one, too) in Marriaye a la Mode. But its main interest, and certainly its main value, is comic. It is Dryden's only original excursion into the realms of the higher comedy. For his favourite pair of lovers he here substitutes a quartette. Rhodophil and Doralicc arc a fashionable married pair, who, without having actually exhausted their mutual affection, are of opinion that their character is quite gone if they continue faithful to each other any longer. Rhodophil accordingly lays siege to Melantha, a young lady who is intended, though he does not know this, to marry his friend Palamede, while Pala- mede, deeply distressed at the idea of matrimony, devotes himself to Doralice. The cross purposes of this quartette are admirably related, and we are given to understand that no harm comes of it all. But in Doralice and Melantha Dryden has given studies of womankind quite out of his usual line. Melantha is, of course, far below Millamant, but it is not certain that that delightful creation of Con- greve's genius does not owe something to her. Doralicc, on the other hand, has ideas as to the philosophy of flirta- tion which do her no little credit. It is a thousand pities that the play is written in the language of the time, which makes it impossible to revive and difficult to read without disgust. I %■' i [chap. ni.] PERIOD OF DRAMATIC ACTIVITY. OS 3 in such a the assault, Crowne, or e the laure- too familiar 1 almost as Granada in 3 underplot a la Mode. 10, is comic. 3 realms of f lovers he )oralice arc ng actually 1 that their ful to each ^s siege to >h he does while Pala- ny, devotes s quartette rstand that 1 Melantha out of hia Millamant, m of Con- Doralice, y of ilirta- saiid pities line, which id without Nothinsf of this kind can or need be said about the play which followed, the Assignation. It is vulgar, coarse, and dull; it was damned, and deserved it; while its suc- cessor, Amboijna, is also deserving of the same epithets, though being a mere play of ephemeral interest, and serv- ing its turn, it was not damned. The old story of the Amboyna massacre — a bad enough story, certainly — was simply revived in order to excite the popular wrath against the Dutch. The dramatic production which immediately succeeded these is one of the most curious of Dryden's perform- ances. A disinclination to put himself to the trouble of designing a wholly original composition is among the most noteworthy of his literary characteristics. No man fol- lowed or copied in a more original manner, but it always seem& to have been a relief to him to have something to follow or to copy. Two at least of his very best produc- tions — All for Love and Palamon and Arcite — are spe- cially remarkable in this respect. We can hardly say ^hat the State of Innocence ranks with either of these ; yet it has considerable merits — merits of which very few of those who repeat the story about " tagging Milton's verses " are aware. As for that story itself, it is not particularly creditable to the good manners of the elder poet. " Ay, young man, you may tag my verses if you will," is the traditional reply which Milton is said to have made to Drydcii's request for pcrmissiou to write the opera. The question of Dryden's relationship to Milton and his early opinion of Paradise Lost is rather a question for a Life of Milton than for the present pages : it is sufficient to say that, with his unfailing recognition of good work, Dryden undoubtedly appreciated Milton to the full long before Addison, as it ie vulgarly held, taught the British public m M \n t H' 56 DRYDEN. \^CHAP. to admire him. As for the State of Innocence itself, the conception of such an opera has sometimes been derided as preposterous — a derision which seems to overlook the fact tliat Milton was himself, in some degree, indebted to an Italian dramatic original. The piece is not wholly in rhyme, but contains some very fine passages. The time was approaching, however, wlien Dryden was to quit his *' long-loved mistress Rhyme," as far as dra- matic writing was concerned. These words occur in the prologue to Aurengzche, which appeared in 16V5. It would appear, indeed, that at this time Dryden was thinking of deserting not merely rhymed plays, but play-writing alto- gether. The dedication to Mulgrave contains one of sev- eral allusions to his well-known plan of writing a great lieroic poem. Sir George Mackenzie had recently put him upon the plan of reading through most of the earlier English poets, and he had done so attentively, with the result of aspiring to the epic itself. But he still continued to write dramas, though yhirenffzche was his last in rhyme, at least wholly in rhyme. It is in some respects a very noble play, free from the rants, the preposterous bustle, and the still more preposterous length of the Conquest of Granada, while possessing most of the merits of that sin- gular work in an eminent degree. Even Dryden hardly ever went farther in cunning of verse than in some of the passages of Aiirengzchc, such as that well-known one which seems to take up an echo of Macbeth : " When I consider life, 'tis all a cheat. Yet, fooled with hope, iiioii favour the deceit, Trust on, and think to-morrow will repay. To-morrow's falser than the former liay, Lies worse, and while it says, we shall he blest With some new joys, cuts off what we possest. ce itself, the een derided verlook the indebted to »t wholly ia Dryden was far as dra- )ccur in the >. It would thinking of .riting alto- onc of sev- ing a great jcently put ' the earlier y, with the 1 continued t in rhyme, ects a very ous bustle, Jonqucst of of that sin- den hardly ome of the one which •fS St ;t. Ill,] PERIOD OF DRAMATIC ACTIVITY. 67 Strange cozenage ! none would live past years again, Yet all hope pleasure in what yet remain, And from the dregs of life think to reeeivo What the first sprightly running could not give. I'm tired with waiting for this cheniic gold Which fools us young and beggars us when old." There is a good deal of moralizing of this melancholy kind in the play, the characters of which are drawn with a serious completeness not previously attempted by the author. It is perhaps the only one of Dryder's which, with very little alteration, might be acted, at least as a curiusity, at the present day. It is remarkable that the structure of the verse in the play itself would have led to the conclusion that Dryden was about to abandon rhyme. There is in Aurcmjzehc a great tendency towards cnjambe- meut ; and as soon as this tendency gets the upper hand, a recurrence to blank vevse is, in English dramatic writing, tolerably certain. For the intonation of English is not, like the intonation of French, such that rhyn)e is an abso- lute necessity to distinguish verse from prose ; and where this necessity does not exist, rhyme must always appear to an intelligent critic a more or less impertinent intrusion in dramatic poetry. Indeed, the main thing which had for a time converted Dryden and others to the use of the couplet in drama was a ciu'ious notion that blank verso was too easy for long and dignified compositions. It was thought by others that the secret of it had been lost, and that the choice was practically between bad blank verse and good rhyme. In AU for Love Dryden very shortly showed, amhnlaudo, that this notion was wholly ground- less. From this time forward he was faithful to the model he had now ado{)ted, and — which was of the greatest im- povtance — he induced others to be faithful too. Had it E p ¥ ! i' : 1 ' 1 i 1 4fs m (f i} t ., /11 68 DRYDEX. [chap. not been for this, it is almost certain that Vctiice Preserved would liave been in rhyme ; that is to say, il^at it would have been spoilt. In this same year, 1675, a publisher, BeJitley (of whom Dry den afterwards spoke with consid- erable bitterness), brought out a play called The Mistaken I/iishand, which is stated to have been revised, and to have had a scene added to it by Dryden. Dryden, however, definitely disowned it, and I cannot think tlmt it is in any part his ; thouo;h it is fair to say that some good judges, notably Mr. Swinburne, think differently.' Nearly three years passed without anything of Dryden's appearing, and at hist, at the end of 1077, or the beginning of 1678, ap- peared a play as much better than Aurenr/zcbc as Aurenq- zcbe was better than its forerunnei's. This was All for Love,\n^ first drama, in blank verse, and his "only play written for himself." More will be said later on the cu- rious fancy which made him tread in the very steps of Shakspeare, It is sufficient to say now that the attempt, apparently foredoomed to hopeless failure, is, on the con^ trary, a great success. Antony ami Cleopatra and All for ' Tlie list of Dryden's spurious or doubtful works is not largo or important. IJut a note of Popys, mentioning a play of Dryden en- titled IauI'h's d la Mode, which was acted and damned in 1G08, has puzzled the conimontators. There is no trace of this Laillra u la Mode. IJiit Jfr. E. W. Gosse has in his collection a play entitled The Mall, or I'hc Modinh Lovcn, which he thinks may possibly be the very "mean thing" of Pepys' scornful mention. The difference of title is not fatal, for Sanniel was not over-accurate in such matters. The play is anonymous, but the preface is signed J. D. The date is 1 074, and the printing is oxccrablc, and evidently not revised by the author, whoever he was. Notwithstanding this, the prologue, the epilogue, and a song contain some vigorous verso and phrase sometimes not a little suggestive of Dryden. In the entire absence of external t.i- dence eonnccting him with it, the question, though one of much in- tercst, is perhaps not one to be dealt with at any length here. i-il [chap. e Preserved it it would publislier, itli consid- c Mh taken nd to liavc 1, liowcver, t is in any od judges, .'arly three \'U'iiifr, and 1678, ap- is Aurenff- is All for only play )n the cu- y steps of 3 attempt, I the con- lid All for lot liirgo or Drydfu cn- ti 1C68, lias ImiVivs u la 'iititled 77ic be the very lice of title tters. The iitois 1074, the author, e epilogue, times not a tterniil ni- •f much in- ere. n..] TERIOD OF DRAMATIC ACTIVITY. 69 Love, when tlioy arc contrasted, only sliow by the contrast the difference of kind, not the difference of degree, be- tween their Avriters. The heroic conception has here, in all probability, as favourable exposition given to it as it is capable of, and it must be admitted that it makes a not un- favourable show even without the "dull sweets of rhyme" to drug the audience into good humour with it. The fa- mous scene between Antony and Ventidius divides with the equally famous scene in Bon Scbasticm between Sebas- tian and Dorax the palm among Dryden's dramatic efforts. But as a whole the play is, I think, superior to Don Sebas- tian. The blank verse, too, is particularly interesting, be- cause it v;as almost its author's first attempt at that crux; and because, for at least thirty years, hardly any tolerable blank verse — omitting of course Milton's— had been writ- ten by any one. The model is excellent, and it speaks Dryden's unerring literary sense, that, fresh as he was from the study of Paradise Lost, and great a'i was his admira- tion for its author, he does not for a moment attempt to confuse the epic and the tragic modes of the style. All for Love was, and deserved to be, successful. The play which followed it, Limhcrham, was, and deserved to be, damned. It must be one of the most astonishing things to any one who has not fully grasped the weakness as well as the strength of Dryden's character, that the noble mat- ter and manner of Aurenr/zcbe and All for Love should have been followed by this filihy stuff. As a play, it is by no means Dryden's worst piece of work; but, in all other respects, the less said about it the better. During the time of its production the author collaborated with Lee in writ- ing the tragedy of CEdipus, in wliicli both the friends are to be seen almost at tl.jir best. On Dryden's part, the lyric incantation scenes are perhaps most noticeable, and % 1; fl) It I m DRYDEN. [chap. Lee miaglcs throughout liis usual bombast with his usual splcnlid poetry. If any one thinlcs this expression hy- perbolical, I shall only ask hiui to read CEdijms, instead of taking the traditioiial witticisms about Lee for gospel. T.'tc-re i.5 of course plenty of — " Let gods meet gods and jostle in the dark," and the other fantasljf follies, into which "metaphysical'' poetry and "heroic" plays had seduced men vi talent, and sometimes of genius; but these can be excused when they load to such a pasj>agc as that where G'^dipus ciies— " Tliou coward ! yet Art living? canst nof, wilt not ^Mv). Ou' road To the great paluci^ oi' -nagnifictMc death, Though thousand ways lead to his th.ousanl doors Which day and night ari still unbarred fur all." (E(Vtpu>' led to a quarrel with the i>layers of LJio Kiiint's TheaLr", <)f tho merits of which, as wo only have a one- sided iUatc)nei)t, it is not easy to judge. But Dryden seems to I:;?vf formed a connexion about this time with the other -^i '' luke's company, and by them (April, 1079) ft "potboiling" adaptation of Troilus and Cnmda was brought out, which might much better have bco;> left un- attemptcd. Two years afterwards appeared the iast play (leaving operas and the scenes contributed to the Duke of Gvi.-^e out of the question) that Dryden was to wiitc for many years. This was The Spanitsh Friar, a popular piece, possessed of a good deal of merit, from the technical point of view of the play-wright, but vhich I think has been somewhat over-rated, as far as literary excellence is con- cerned. The principal character is no doubt amusing, but ho is heavily indebted to Falstaff on the one hand, and to Fletcher's Lopez on the other ; and he reminds the reader % FACULTE DES ARTS COLLEGE UNIVERSITAIRE SHERBROOKE ^y-^" 1:*^' [CIUP. itli liis usual prcssion hy- i2)us, instead e for gospel. I- " ctaphysical'' 211 (if tfslcnt, xciised whoi) ipiis t'iics — ' Joon ill." f tlie Kiuii's liavo a one- nut Dryclen is time with April, 1G79) 7ress!da was >enn left un- hc last play tlic Duke of to write for opular piece, ;linical point ik lias been enco is con- imusing, but liantl, and to Is the reader I.I.] PERIOD OF DRAMATIC ACTIVITY. 61 of both his ancestors in a way whicli cannot but be un- favourable to himself. The play is to nie most interesting because of the light it throws on Dryden's grand charac- teristic, the consummate craftsmanship with which he could throw himself into the popular feeling of the hour. This "Protestant play" is perhaps his mc'^ notable achieve- ment of the kind in drama, and it may be admitted that some other achievements of the same kind are less cred- itable. Allusion has more than once been made to the very high quality, from the literary point of view, of the songs which appear in nearly all the plays of this long list. They con- stitute Dryden's chief title to a high rank as a composer of strictly lyrical poetry ; and there are indeed few things which better illustrate the range of his genius than these exquisite snatches. At first sight, it would not seem by any means likely that a poet whose greatest triumphs were won in the fields of satire and of argumentative verse should succeed in such things. Ordinary lyric, especially of the graver and more elaborate kind, might not surprise us from such a man. But the song-gift is somethino; dis- tinct from the faculty of ordinary lyrical composition ; and there is certainly nothing which necessarily infers it in the jiointed declamation and close-ranked argument with which the name of Dryden is oftenest associated. But the later seventeenth century had a singular gift for such perform- ance — a kind of swan-song, it might be thought, before the death-like slumber which, with few and brief intervals, was to rest upon the English lyric for a hundred years. Dorset, Rochester, even Mulgrave, wrote singularly fasci- nating songs, as smooth and easy as Moore's, and with far less of the commonidace and vulgar about them. Aphra Behn was an admirable, and Tom Durfey a far from des- , r i* f! f\ hi IP/:,] i DRYDEN. [chap '» I I Is picablc, songster. Even among the common rnn of play- wrights, who have left no lyrical and not much literary rr reputation, scraps and snatches which have the true sonj: stamp are not unfrcquently to be found. But Dryden excelled them all in the variety of his cadences and the ring of his lines. Nowhere do we feel more keenly the misfortune of his licence of language, which prevents too many of these charming songs from being now quoted or sunj;. Their abundance may be illustrated by the fact that a single play. The Mock Astrologer, contains no less than four songs of the very first lyrical merit. "You ciianned me not with that fair face," is an instance of the well-known common measure wliich is so specially Eng- lish, and which is poetry or doggrcl according to its ca- dence. "After the pangs of a desperate lover" is one of the rare examples of a real dactylic metre in English, were the dactyls are not, as usual, equally to be scanned as anap;osts. " Calm was the even, and clear was the sky," is a perfect instance of what may be called archness in song; and "Celimcna of my heart," though not much can be said for the matter of it, is at least as much a met- rical triumph as any of the others. Nor arc the other plays less rich in similar work. The song beginning " Farewell, ungrateful traitor," gives a perfect example of a metre which has been used more than once in our own daj's with great success; and "Long between Love and Fear Phyllis tormented," which occurs in The Assignation, gives yet another example of the singular fertility with which Dryden devised and managed measures suitable for song. His lyrical faculty impelled him Jilso — especially in his early plays — to luxuriate in incantation scenes, lyr- ical dialogues, and so forth. These have been ridiculed, not altogether unjustly, in The Rehearsal ; but the incau- m.] PERIOD OF DRAMATIC ACTIVITY. tation scene in (Edipus is very far above the average of such things ; and of not a few passages in King Arthur at h?ast as nuicli may be said. Dryden's energy vas so entirely occupied with play- writing during this period that he had hardly, it would appear, time or desire to undertake any other work. To- wards the middle of it, however, when he had, by poems and plays, already established himself as the greatest liv- ing poet— Milton being out of the question— he began to be asked for prologues and epilogues by other poets, or bv the actors on the occasion of the revival of old plays. These prologues and epilogues have often been comment- ed upon as one of the most curious literary phenomena of the time. The custom is still, on special occasions, spar- ingly kept up on the stage ; but the prologue, and still more the epilogue, to the Westminster play are the chief living representatives of it. It was usual to comment in these pieces on circumstances of the day, political and oth- er. It was also usual to make personal appeals to the au- dience for favour and support very much in the manner of the old Trouveres when they commended their wares. But more than all, and worst of all, it was usual to indulge in the extremest licence both of language and meaning. The famous epilogue— one of Dryden's own— to Tyran- nic Love, in which Mrs. Eleanor Gwyn, being left for dead on the stage, in the character of St. Catherine, and being: about to be carried out by the scene-shifters, exclaims — " Hold ! arc you mad ? you damned confounded dog, I am to rise and speak the epilogue," is only a very mild sample of these licences, upon which Macaulay has commented with a severity which is for once absolutely justifiable. There was, however, no poet v? »' I 64 DRYDEX. i ii i:i ! :» l\ I '.ir [chap. wlio liatl the knack of telling allusion to passinir events as DryJen had, and he was early engaged as a prologue writer. The first composition that we have of this kind written for a play not his own is the prologue to Alhuma- zar, a cnrious piece, believed, but not known, to liave been written by a certain Tonikis in James the First's reign, and r.Kiking among the many whicji have been attributed with more or Ics ;^ r ;mM., i,.ss) show of rea.son to Nuak- speare. Drylen's knowl dgc of the early I-:nglish drama was not exhaustive, and he here makes a charge of plagi- arism against IJcn Jonson, for wliich there is in ail proba- bility nut the least ground. The piece contains, however, as do most of these vigorous, f]; ' ncqual composi- tions, many fine linos. The next production or tlic kind not intended for a play of his own is tlic prologue t. the first performance of the king's servants, after tliey had been burnt out of their theatre, and this is followed by many others. In 107.3 a prologue to the University of Oxford, spoken when the iointment3 were conferred on Dryden, the salary was fixed in the patent at 200/. a year, besides the butt of sack which the economical James afterwards cut olT, and arrears since Davcnant's death were to be paid. In the same year, 1G70, the death of his mother increased his inci^me by the 20/. a year which had been payable to lier from the North- amptonshire property. From 1GG7, or thereabouts, Dry- den had been in possession of a valuable partnership with the players of the king's house, for wIkmu he contracted to write three plays a year in consideration of a share and a (juarter of the profits. Dryden's part of the contract was not performed, it seems ; but the actors declare that, at any rate for some years, their part was, and that the pox-t's receipts averaged from 300/. to 400/. a year, besides which he had (sometimes, at any rate) the third night, and (we ' The patent, given by Malone, is dated Aug. 18. Mr. W. Noel Sainsbury, of the Record OlFice, has pointed out to nie a preliminary warrant to " our Attorney or Solicitor Generall " to " prepare a Bill " for the purpose dated April 13. k f.1' 1:1 68 DRVDEX. [chap. I > % may suppose always) the bookseller's fee for tlic copyriirht of the printed play, which too-ether averaged 100/. a play or more. Lastly, at the extreme end of the peri(»d most probably, but certainly before 1G79, the king granted him an additional pension of 100/. u year. The ini[.ortance of this pension is more than merely pecuniary, for this is the grant, the eontirmation of which, after some delay, by James, was taken by Macanlay as the wages of a[)osta'sy. The pecuniary prosperity of this time was accompanied by a corresponding abundance of the good things whicli generally go with wealth. iJryden was familiar w^ith most of the literary nobles and gentlemen of Charles's court, and Dorset, Etherege, Mulgrave, Sedicy, and liochestcr were among his special intimates or patrons, whichever word may be preferred. The somewhat questionable boast which he made of this familiarity Nemesis was not long in punishing, and the instrument which Nemesis ciiosc was Rochester himself. It might be said of this famous per- son, whom Etherege has hit off so admirably in his Dorimant, that he was, except in intellect, the worst of all the courtiers of the time, because he was one of the most radically unamiable. It was truer of him even than of Pope, that he was sure to play some monkey trick or other on those who were unfortunate enough to be his in- timates. He liad relations with most of the literary men of Ins time, but those relations almost always ended badlv. Sometimes he sot them at each other like dogs, or procured for on(( some court favour certain to annoy a rival ; some- times ho satirized them coarsely in his foul-mouthed poems; sometimes, as we shall sec, he forestalled the Chevalier do Rohan in his method of repartee. As early as 1075 Rochester had disobliged Dryden, though the ex- act amount of the injury has certainly been exaggerated III.] PEKIOD OF DRAMATIC ACTIVITY, 69 by Malone, whom most bioofrapliers, cxee[)t Mr. Cliiistio, liavc followed. There is little doubt (thoH^'h Mr. Christie thinks otherwise) that one of the chief functions of the poet laureate was to compose masques and such like pieces to be acted by the court ; indeed, this appears to have been the main reo'ular duty of the office at least in the seventeenth century. That Crowne should have been charged with the cf>inposition of Calisfo was, therefore, a slight to Dryden. Crowne was not a bad play-wrioht. He mi^iit perhaps, by a planiarisui from Lamb's criticism on lleywood, be called a kind of prose Dryden, and a characteristic saying of Dryden's, which luis been handed down, seems to show that the latter recootiized the fact. But the addition to the charge against Ivoche>ter that ho afterwards interfered to prevent an epilogue, which Dryden wrote for Crowne's piece, from being recited, rests upon absolutely no authority, and it is not even certain that the epilogue referred to was actuallv written by Drvdeu. In the year 1()79, however, Dryden had a much more serious taste of llochester's malevolence. He had recently become very intimate with Lord Mulgrave, who liad quar- relled with Ilochester. IVrsonal courage was not lloches- ter's forte, and he had shown the white feather when challenged by Mulgrave. Shortly afterwards there was circulated in manuscri[)t an AW^// nn Satin; containino- virulent attacks on the king, on Uochester, and the Dncli- cssos of Cleveland and Portsmouth. How any one could over have suspected that the poem was Dryden's it is dif- ficult to understand. To begin with, hi; never at any time in his career lent himself as a If'ed literary bravo to any private person. In the second place, that ho should at- tack the king, from whom he derived the greatest part of his income, was inconceivable. Thirdly, uo literary iu.h>'o t ^1 F 'I i'l J, WM it' wm m 70 DRYDEX. [chap. ui. could for one moment connect liini with the shambling doggrcl lines which distinguish the Essay on Satire in its original form. A very few couplets liave some faint ring of Drydcii's verse, but not more tium is perceivable in the work of many other poets and poetasters of tlie time. Lastly, Mulgrave, who, with some bad qualities, was truth- ful and fearless enough, expressly absolves Dryden as be- ing not only innocent, but ignorant of the whole matter. However, Rochester chose to identify him as the author, and in letters still extant almost expressly states his belief in the fact, and threaten-; to " leave the repartee to Black Will with a cudgel." On the 18th December, as Dryden was going home at night, through Hose Alloy, Covent Garden, he was attacked and beaten by masked men. Fifty pounds reward (d'-posited at what is now called Childs' Bank) was offered for the discovery of the offend- ers, and afterwards a pardon was promised to the actual crim; als if they would divulge the name of tliiir employ- er, but nothing came of it. The intelligent critics of the time affected to consider the matter a disgrace to Dryden, and few of the subsequent attacks on him fail to notice it triumphantly. How frequent those attacks soon be- came the next chapter will show. 1- : i \ ' (' [chap. ui. shambling 'ath'C in its ! faint ring able in the the time, was truth- lion as bc- ole matter. :ho author, s his belief ;c to Black as Dryden Icy, Covont sked men. now called the olfend- thc actual iir cmploy- itics of the to DrydcTi, 1 to notice s soon be- m CHAPTER IV. SATIRICAL AND DIDACTIC POEMS. In the year 1G80 a remarkable change came ovcrtliw char- acter of Dryden's work. Had he died in this year (and lie had already reached an age at which many men's work is done) he would not at the present time rank very hiijh even among the second class of English poets. In pure poe- try he had published nothing of the slightest consc(iuenco for fourteen years, and though there was much admirable work in his dramas, they could as wholes only be praised by allowance. Of late years, too, he liad given np the style— -rhymed heroic drama — wliich he had speciallv made Ins own. lie had been for some time casting about for an opportunity of again taking up strictly poetical work ; and, as usually happens with the favourites of fort- une, a better opportunity than any he could have elaborated for himself was soon presented to him. The epic poem which, as lie tells us, lie intended to write would doubtless have contained many fine i)assages and much splendid versification ; but it almost certainly would not have been the best thing in its kind even in its own language. The scries of satirical and didactic poems which, in the space of less than seven years, ho was now to produce, occupies the position which the epic would almost to a certainty have failed to attain. Not only is there nothing better m m m itii 72 DRYDEX. [chap. II of their own kind in Eni;;lisli, hut it may almost bo s:iid that there .s notliitiij; better in an\ other literary laiiii'iiad-e. Satire, argument, and exposition may possibly 1)e lialf- spnrious kinds of poetry — that is a qiicstiou wliich need not 1)0 argued here, lint among satirical and didactic poems Absalom and Achitnphcl, The Medal, Macjlecknoe, JRelujio Ldii-i, The Hind and the Panther, hold the first place in c^ uijtany with vciv few rivals. In a certain kind of satire to be detined presently they have no rival at all ; and in a certain kind of argumentative exposition they have no rival except in Lucretius. It is probable that, until he was far advanced in middle life, Dryden had paid but little attention to political and religious controversies, though he was well enough versed in their terms, and had a logical and almost scholastic mind. 1 have already endeavoured to show the unlikeli- ness of his ever having been a very fervent lioundhead, and I do not thiidc that there is much more ])robability of his having been a very fem'cnt Royalist. His literary work, his few friendships, and the tavern-coffeehouso life which took up so much of the time of the men of that day, probably occupied him suiliciently in the days of his earlier manhood. He was loyal enough, no doubt, not merely in lip-loyalty, and was perfectly ready to furnish an Auihoyna or anything else that was wanted; but for the tlrst eighteen years of Charles the Second's reign, tho nation at large felt little interest, of the active kind, in po- litical questions. J)ryd(!n almost always reflected the sym- pathies of tho nation at large. The I'opish l*Iot, however, and the dangerous excitement which the misgoverninent of Charles, on the one hand, and the machinations of Shaftes- bury, on tho other, produced, fouml him at an age when serious subjects are at any rate, by courtesy, supposed U) i'' IV.] SATIRICAL AND DIDACTIC TOEMS. ,'. t1 73 possess greater attractions tlian tliey exert in youtb. Tra- (litiuii has it that he uas more or less directly encoiirat^eJ by Charles to write one, if not two, of the poems which in a few months made him the first satirist in Europe. It is possible, for Charles had a real if not a very lively interest in literature, was a sound enough critic in his way, and had anii»lo shrewdness to perceive the advantage to his own cause which he might gain by enlisting J)ryden. However this may be, Absalom and Achilupliel was pub- lished about the middle of November, 1G81, a week or so before the grand jury threw out the bill against Shaftes- bury on a charge of high treason. At no time before, and hardly at any time since, did party-spirit run higher; and thougii the immediate object of the poem was defeat- ed by the fidelity of the brisk boys of the city to their leader, there is no (jucstion that the poem worked power- fully among the infiuences which after the most desperate struggle, short of open warfare, in which any English sov- ereign has ever been engaged, fitially won for Charles the victory over the Exclusionists, by means at least ostensibly constitutional and legitimate. It is, however, with the lit- erary rather than with the political aspect of the matter that we are here concerned. The story of Absalom and Achitophel has obvious capac- ities for political adaptation, and it had been more than once so used in the course of the century, indeed (it would appear), in the course of the actual political strugut Drydcn was in no such case ; his native gifts and his enormous practice in play-writing had m: de the couplet an natural a vehicle to him f c i.iy form of discourse as blank verse or as plain prose. T'h' form of it, too, which he had most affected, was specially suited for satire. In the first place, this form had, as has already U:'M \: ■ y I ii I'^'ii 'i Hi W A li )■• % DllYDEX. [chap. ^/.I I !> heen noted, a remarkably varied cadence ; in the second, its strong antitheses and smart telling hits lent themselves to personal description and attack with consummate ease. There are passages of Dryden's satires in which every couplet has not only the force but the actual sound of a slap in the face. The rapidity of movement from one couplet to the other is another remarkable characteristic. V.wn Pope, master as ho was of verse, often fell into the fault of isolating his couplets too much, as if ho expected applause between each, and wished to give time for it. Dryden's verse, on the other hand, strides along with a careless Olympian motion, as if the writer were looking at his victims rather with a kind of good-humoured scorn than with any elaborate triumph. This last remark leads us naturally to the second head, the peculiar character of Dryden's satire itself. In this re- spect it is at least as much distinguished from its prede- cessors as in the former. There had been a continuous tradition among satirists that they must affect immense mural indignation at the evils they attacked. Juvenal and still more Persius are probably responsible for this; and even Dryden's example did not put an end to the practice, for in the next century it is found in persons upon whom it sits with singular awkwardness— such as Churchill and Lloyd. Now, this moral indignation, apt to be rather tire- some when the subject is purely ethical— Marston is a glar- ing example of this— becomes quite intolerable when the subject is political. It never does for the political satirist to lose his temper, and to rave and rant and denounce with the air of an inspired prophet. Dryden, and perhaps Dry- den alone, has observed this rule. As I have just observed, his manner towards his subjects is that of a cool and not ill-humoured scorn. They are great scoundrels certainly, (I [ciup. ic second, Lheinsclves mate case, licli every oiind of a from one racteristic. II into tlio ! expected nc for it, \g with a e lookinjr ired scorn ond head, [n this re- its prede- ontinuons ininiensc venal and this ; and i practice, •on wlioni I'chill and ither tirc- . is a glar- when tlic al satirist II nee with laps Dry- observed, 1 and not certainly, .v.] SATIKICAL AND DIDACTIC POEMS. 77 but tliey are probably even more contemptible than they arc vicious. Tiie well-known line — " They got a villain, and wc lost a fool," expresses this attitue replies, though containing evidences of its author's faculty for "rhyming and rattling." Of these and of sub- sequent replies Scott has given ample selections, ample, that is to say, for the general reader. But the student of Dryden can hardly appreciate his author fully, or estimate m % I 'I If 84 LRYDEX. [chap. tlic debt which the English language owes to him, unless ho has read at last some of them in full. The popularity of Absalom and Achitophd was immense, and its sale rapid; but the main object, the overthrowing of Shaftesbury, was not accomplished, and a certain iit umph was even gained for that turbulent leader by the fail- ure of the prosecution against him. This failure' was cele- brated by the striking of a medal with the legend Lacta- muK Thereupon Dryden wrote the 3fcdu}. A ve-y precise but probably apocryphal story is told by Spence of its origin. Charles, he says, was walking with Dryden in the Mall, and said to him, " If I were a poet, and I think I am poor enongh to be one, I would write a poem on such a subject in such a manner," giving him at the same time hints for the iVcdal, which, when finished, was rewarded with a hundred broad pieces. The last part of the story is not very credible, for th- king was not extravagant towards literature. The first is unlikely, because he was, in the first place, too much of a gentleman to reproach a man to whom he was speaking with the poverty of his profession ; and, in the second, too shrewd not to see that ho laid himself open to a damaging repartee. However, the storv is not impossible, and that is all that can be said of it. The Medal came out in March, 1GS2. It is a much shorter and a much graver poem than Absalom and Achitophd, extend- ing to little more than 300 lines, and containing none of the picturesque personalities which iiad adorned its pred- ecessor. Part of it is a bitter invective against Shaftes- bury, part an argument as to the unfitness of republican institutions for England, and the rest an "Address to the Whigs," as the prose preface is almost exclusively. The language of the poem is nervous, its versification less live- ly than that oi Absaloin and Achitophd, but not less care- IV.] SATIRICAL AND DIDACTIC TOEMS. 85 ful. It is noticeable, too, that the Medal contains a line of fourteen syllables, " Tliou leap'st o'er all eternal truths in thy Pindaric way." The Alexandrine was already a favourite device of Dryden's, but he has seldom elsewhere tried the seven-foot verse as a variation. Strange to say, it is far from inharmonious in its place, and has a certain connexion with the sense, though the example certainly cannot be recommended for univer- sal imitation. I cannot remember any instance in another poet of such a licence except the well-known three in the Revolt of Islam, which may be thought to be covered by Slielley's prefatory apology. The direct challenge to the AVhigs which the preface contained was not likely to go unanswered ; and, indeed, Dryden had described in it with exact irony the character of the replies he received. Pordage returned to the charge with the Medal Reversed ; the admirers of Somers hope that he did not write Drydeii's Satire to his Muse ; and there were many others. But one of them, the Medal of John Bayes,\9. of considerably greater importance. It was written by Thomas Shadwell, and is perhaps the most scur- rilous piece of ribaldry which has ever got itself quoted in English literature. The author gives a life of Dryden, ac- cusing him pell-mell of all sorts of disgraceful conduct and unfortunate experiences. His adulation of Oliver, his puri- tanic relations, his misfortunes at Cambridge, his marriage, his intrigues with Mrs. Reeve, ttc, (i:c., are all raked up or invented for the purpose of throwing obloquy on him. The attack passed all bounds of decency, especially as it had not been provoked by any personality towards Shad- well, and for once Dryden resolved to make an example of his assailant. >tii :i 1 d i '* . 80 DRYDEX. [CIIAP. I M (! Thomas Shadwcll was a Norfolk man, and about ten years Drydcn's junior. Ever since the year 1088 l)c had been writing plays (chiefly comedies) and hanging ab^it town, and Dryden and he had been in a manner friends. They had joined Crowne in the task of writing down the Emjmss of Morocco, and it does not appear that Dryden had ever given Shadwcll any direct cause of offence. Shad- well, however, who was exceedingly arrogant, and appar- ently jealous of Dryden's acknowledged position as leader of the English drama, took more than one occasion of sneer- ing at Dryden, and especially at his critical prefaces. Not long before the actual declaration of war Shadwcll had re- ceived a i)rologue from Dryden, and the outbreak itself was due to purely political causes, though no doubt Shadwcll, who was a sincere Whig and Protestant, was very glad to pour out his pent-up literary jealousy at the same time. The personality of his attack on Dryden was, however, in the last degree unwise ; for the liouse in which he lived was of glass almost all over. His manners are admitted to have been coarse and brutal, his conversation unclean, his appearance uninviting; nor was his literary personal- ity safer from attack. He had taken Ben Jonson for his model, and any reader of his comedies must admit that he had a happy knack of detecting or imagining the oddities wliich, after Ben's example, he called " humours." The Sullen Lovers is in this way a much more genuinely amus- ing play than any of Dryden's, and the Squire of Alsatia, Bury Fair, Epsom Wells, the Virtuoso, *fec., are comedies of manners by no means unimportant for the social history of the time. But whether it was owing to haste, as Roch- ester pretended, or, as Dryden would have it, to certain in- tellectual incapacities, there can be no doubt that nobody ever made less use of his faculties than Shadwell. His [chap. IV.] SATIRICAL AND DIDACTIC POEMS. 87 woirt. is always disgraceful as writing; he seems to have been totally destitute of any critical faculty, and he mixes up what is really funny with the dullest and most weari- some folly and ribaldry, lie was thus given over entirely into Dryden's hands, and the unmatched satire of Mac- Fiecknoe was the result, Flecknoc, whom but for this work no one would ever have inquired about, was, and had been for some time, a stock-subject for allusive satire. He was an Irish priest who had died not long before, after writing a little good verse and a great deal of bad. lie had paid compliments to Dryden, and there is no reason to suppose that Dryden had any enmity towards him ; his part, indeed, is simply representative, and the satire is reserved for Shadwell. Well as they are known, the first tv/enty or thirty lines of the poem must be quoted once more, for illustration of Dryden's satirical faculty is hardly possible without them : " All human things are subject to decay, And, when fate summons, monarchs must obey. This Flecknoo found, who, like Augustus, young Was called to empire, and had governed long; In prose and verse was owned without dispute, Through all the realms of Nonsense, absolute. This aged prince, now flourishing in peace. And blessed with issue of a large increase. Worn out with business, did at length debate To settle the succession of the state ; And, pondering which of all his sons was fit To reign, and wage immortal war with wit. Cried — ' 'Tis resolved ! for nature pleads, that he Should only rule, who most resembles me. Shadwell alone my perfect image bears. Mature in dulness from his tender years ; Shadwell alone, of all my sons, is he \\ ;f' «s DKYDEX. [CUAP. 1^.^ 1 !i f 1 ■ i ; 1 'l * Who stands coiifiniu-d in full stupidity. The rest to sonio fiiiut nieauir.j; inalvo pretence, But Shadwell never deviates into sense. Some beams of wit on other souls may fall, Strike through and make a lucid interval ; But Sliadwell's genuine night admits no ray, His rising fogs prevail upon the day. Besides, his goodly fabric fills the eye. And seems designed for tliought'ess majesty ; Thoughtless as monarch oaks, that shade the plain, And, spread in solemn state, supinely reign.' " MacFlecknoe was puhlislied in October, 1682, but Dry- den had not done witli Shadwell. A month later came out the second part of Absalom and Achitophel, in which Nahuni Tate took up the .story. Tate copied the versifi- cation of his master with a good deal of success, thouyh, as it is known that Dryden gave strokes almost all throu<-!i the poem, it is difficult exactly to apportion the other lau- reate's part. But the second part of Absalom and Achit- ophel would assuredly never be opened were it not for a long passage of about 200 lines, which is entirely Dry- den'.s, and which contains some of his very best work. Unluckily it contains also some of his greatest licences of expression, to which he was probably provoked by the un- paralleled language which, as has been said, Shadwell and others had used to him. The 200 lines which he gave Tate are one string of characters, each more savage and more masterly than the last. Ferguson, Forbes, and John- son are successively branded ; Pordage has his ten syllables of immortalizing contempt; and then come the famous characters of Doeg (Settle) and Og (Shadwell) — " Two fools that crutch their feeble sense on verse. Who by my muse to all succeeding times Siiall live, in spite of their own doggrel rhymes." [cJiAr. iv.l SATIRICAL AND DIDACTIC POEMS. f.n ilain, but Dry- iter caini- in wliidi he versiti- S though. 1 tlirouuh other hiii- nd Achit- not for a i'cly Dry- ;st work, ecnces of y the uii- IwcU and he gave vage and .nd John- syllables 3 famous The coarseness of speech before alluded to makes it inv- possible to quote these characters as a whole, but a cento is fortunately possible with little lo.ss of vigour. "Doej:;, tliougli without knowing how or why, Made still a blunduring kind of melody ; Spurred boldly on, and dashed through thick and thin, Through sense and nonsense, never out nor in ; Free from all meaning, whether good or bad. And, in one word, heroically mad, lie was too warm on picking-work to dwell. But fagoted his notions as they fell, And, if they rh^meu and rattled, all was well. Railing in other men may be a crime. But ought to pass for mere instinct in him ; Instinct he follows, and no farther knows, For, to write verse with him is to tramprosc; 'Twere pity treason at his door to lay. Who makes heaven's gate a lock to its oioi ke^i; Let him rail on, let his invective muse Have four-and-twenty letters to abuse. Which, if he jumbles to one line of sense, Indict him of a capital offence. In fire-works give him leave to vent his spite, Those are the only serpents he can write ; The height of his ambition is, we know, But to be master of a puppet-show ; On that one stage his works may yet appear. And a month's harvest keep him all the year. " Now stop your noses, readers, all and some, For here's a tun of midnight work to come, Og from a treason-tavern rolling home. Round as a globe, and liquored every chink, Goodly and great he sails behind his link. With all this bulk there's nothing lost in Og, For every inch, that is not foril >■ i-ogue. The midwife laid her hand on i!,, thick skull, With this prophetic blessing— Be thou dull ! G 5 '7 III 90 , DRYDEX. Drink, swear, and roar ; forbear no lewd delight Fit for thy 'iuli<, do imvfhiiig but write. Thou art ui lasting make, lilie thoughtless men, A strong nativity — but for the pen ; Eat opium, mingle arsenic in thy drink, Still thou niayest live, avoiding i)en and ink. I see, I see, 'tis counsel given in vain, For treason, botched in rhyme, will be thy banc; Rliyine i.s the rock on which thou art to wreck, 'Tis fatal to thy fame and to tiiy neck. Why should thy metre good King David blast ? A psalm of his will surely be thy last. A double noose thou on tliy neck dost pull For writing treason, and for writing dull; To die for faction is a common evil, . But to be hanged for nonsense is the devil. Iladst thou the glories of thy king exprest. Thy praises had been satire at the best ; But thou in clumsy verse, unlickt, unpointed, Ilast shamefully defied the Lord's anointed : I will not rake the dunghill of thy crimes, P'or who would read thy life that reads thy rhymes ? But of King David's foes, be this the doom, May all be like the young man Absalom ; And for my foes may tlii^ their blessing be, To talk like Doeg, and to write like thee." [chap. /If No one, I think, can fail to recognise here the qualities which have already been set forth as specially distinguish- ing Drydcn's satire, the fund of truth at the bottom of it, the skilful adjustment of the satire so as to make faults of the merits which are allowed, the magnificent force and variety of the verse, and the constant maintenance of a kind of superior contempt never degenerating into mere railing, or losing its superiority in petty spite. The last four versos in especial might almost bo taken as a model of satirical verse. ■ [cHAi«. IV.] SATIRICAL AND DIDACTIC rOEMS. 91 These verses were the last that Drydcu wrote in the dux'Ctly satirical w.y. Ilis four great poems — the two parts of Absalom and Achitophel, the Medal, and Mac- Flecknoe, had been produced in rather more than a year, and, high as was his literary position before, had exalted him infinitely higher. From this time forward there could be no doubt at all of his position, with no second at any moderate distance, at the head of living English men of letters. He was now to earn a new title to this position. Almost simultaneously witli the second part of Absalom and Achitophel ajipcared Religio Laid. Scott has described Religio Laid as one of the most admirable poems in the language, which in some respects it tmdoubtedly is ; but it is also one of the most singular. That a man who had never previously displayed any par- ticular interest in tlieological (picstions, and who had reach- ed the age of fifty -one, with a reputation derived, until quite recently, in the main from the)