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 JHen of Ceiters 
 
 EDITED BY JOHN MORLEY
 
 X
 
 JOHN DRYDEN
 
 by 
 GEORGE SAINTSBURY, M.A. 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 
 " HISTORY OF ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE " " DRYDEN " 
 " MARLBOROUGH " ETC. 
 
 flDen of Xetters 
 
 EDITED BY 
 
 JOHN MORLEY 
 
 HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS 
 
 NEW YORK AND LONDON 
 
 1902
 
 PREFATORY NOTE. 
 
 A WRITER on Dryden is more especially bound to acknowl- 
 edge his indebtedness 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 oi fresh information being obtained about 
 the poet, 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. R. 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 Dryden'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. Mr. W. Noel Sainsbury, of the Record Office, has 
 supplied me with some valuable information. My friend 
 Mr. Edmund W. Gosse 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 PREFATORY NOTE. 
 
 Except Scott's excellent but costly and bulky edition, 
 there is, to the disgrace of English booksellers or book- 
 buyers, 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 the sec- 
 ond. A tolerably complete and not unsatisfactory Dryden 
 may, however, be got together without much outlay by 
 any one who waits till he can pick up at the bookshops 
 copies of Malone's edition of the prose works, and of Con- 
 greve's original edition (duodecimo or folio) of the plays. 
 By adding to these Mr. Christie's admirable Globe edition 
 of the 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, 
 which are very valuable. The life, however, has been re- 
 printed, and is easily accessible. 
 
 In the following pages a few passages from a course of 
 lectures on " Dryden and his Period," delivered by me at 
 the Royal Institution in the spring of 1880, have been 
 incorporated.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 BEFORE THB RESTORATION 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 EARLY LITBBART WORK ............ 23 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 PERIOD or DRAMATIC ACTIVITY .......... 38 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 SATIRICAL AND DIDACTIC POEMS .......... 71 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 LIFE FROM 1680 TO 1688 ............ 99 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 LATER DRAMAS AMD PROSE WORKS ........ 113 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 PERIOD OF TRANSLATION ............ 135 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 THE FABLES ................ 153 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 CONCLUSION . 177
 
 D R Y D E N. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 BEFORE THE RESTORATION. 
 
 JOHN DRTDEN was born on the 9th of August, 1631, at 
 the Vicarage of Aldwinkle All Saints, between Thrapston 
 and Oundle. Like other small Northamptonshire 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 which 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 Drydens 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*
 
 2 DRYDEN. [CHAP. 
 
 Erasmus, the son of this John Dryden the 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, though before him it seems to have been usually 
 Driden was created a baronet, and his third son, also an 
 Erasmus, was the poet's father. Before this Erasmus 
 married Mary Pickering the 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 Blakesley, which is not, as the biographers persistently 
 repeat after one another, " near Tichmarsh," but some for- 
 ty miles distant to the straightest flying crow. Indeed, 
 the connexion 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 youth, and, more- 
 over, the place was the scene of some stirring events. Sir 
 John Driden was a staunch parliamentarian, and his house 
 lay obnoxious to the royalist garrisons of Towcester on 
 the one side, and Banbury on the other. On at least one
 
 i.] BEFORE THE RESTORATION. 8 
 
 occasion a great fight took place, the parliamentarian*, bar- 
 ricading themselves 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 earned them off prisoners. This was in Dry- 
 den's thirteenth 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 associations 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 Dryden'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 father-in-law's seat at Charlton, in 
 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
 
 4 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 
 Pilton, 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, giving good views of the magnificent woods of Lil- 
 f ord, 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 of 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
 
 I.] BEFORE THE RESTORATION. 5 
 
 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. 
 Fotheringhay waits until Mr. Swinburne shall complete the 
 trilogy begun in Chastelard and continued in othwell, for 
 an English dramatic poet to tread worthily in the steps of 
 Montchrestien, of Vondel, and of Schiller. But Dryden 
 must have passed it constantly ; when he was at Cotter- 
 stock he must have had it almost under his eyes, and 
 we know that he 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 tragedy, 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 Mrs. 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 Westminster School we have no positive information 
 whatever about him, and even the precise date of the lat- 
 ter is unknown. He was a king's scholar, 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 18th, 
 1650, matriculated on July 16th, and on October 2nd was 
 elected to a Westminster scholarship. He was then nine-
 
 * DRYDEN. [CHAP. 
 
 teen, an instance, be it observed, among many, of the com- 
 plete mistake of supposing that very early entrance into 
 the universities was the rule before our own days. Of 
 Dryden's Cambridge sojourn we know little more than of 
 his sojourn at Westminster. He was in trouble on July 
 19th, 1652, when he was discommonsed and gated for a 
 fortnight for disobedience and contumacy. Shadwell also 
 says that while at Cambridge he " scurrilously traduced 
 a nobleman," and was " rebuked on the head " therefor. 
 But Shad well's unsupported assertions about Dry den are 
 unworthy of the slightest credence. He took his degree 
 in 1654, 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 his 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 chooses 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
 
 i.] BEFORE THE RESTORATION. 7 
 
 unique instance of a member of the one university going 
 out 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 de- 
 liberate choice to resort to the vulgar expedient of insult- 
 ing 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 Denham. Somewhat later an epistle commendatory 
 was contributed by Dryden to a volume of religious verse 
 by his friend John Hoddesdon. 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 had 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 causd, pro- 
 nounces the one execrable, and the other inferior to the 
 juvenile productions 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 DRYDEN. [CHAR 
 
 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 Hoddesdon, 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. He tried 
 every fashion, and where the fashion was capable of being 
 brought sub 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 poems 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 The'ophile 
 Gautier once put it in his own case, " the sheep of Hugo 
 from the goats of Scribe." I do not hesitate to say that 
 an intelligent reviewer in the year 1650 would have rank- 
 ed Dryden, though perhaps with some misgivings, among
 
 i.] BEFORE THE RESTORATION. 9 
 
 the sheep. The faults are simply an exaggeration of the 
 prevailing style, the merits are different. 
 
 As for the epistle to Honor Driden, Scott must surely 
 have been thinking of the evil counsellors who wished him 
 to bowdlerise glorious John, when he called it "coarse." 
 There 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 anathemas 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 physiologists by no means 
 invariably to marry them. That Dryden 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 1654 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 *
 
 10 DRYDEN. [CHAR 
 
 acres or thereabouts, and the rent, which with characteris. 
 tic generosity Dryden never increased, though rents went 
 up in his time enormously, amounted to 601. a year. Dry- 
 den's two-thirds were estimated by Malone at the end of 
 the last century to be worth about 1201. income of that 
 day, and this certainly equals at least 200?. to-day. With 
 this to fall back upon, and with the influence of the Dri- 
 den and Pickering families, any bachelor in those days 
 might be considered provided with prospects ; but exacting 
 parents might consider the total inadequate to the support 
 of a wife and family. Sir John Driden is said, though a 
 fanatical Puritan, to have been a man of no very strong 
 intellect, and he certainly did not feather his nest in the 
 way which was open to any defender of the liberties of 
 the people. Sir Gilbert Pickering, who, in consequence 
 of the intermarriages before alluded to, was doubly Dry- 
 den's cousin, was wiser in his generation. He was one of 
 the few members of the Long Parliament who judiciously 
 attached themselves to the fortunes of Cromwell, and was 
 plentifully rewarded with fines, booty, places, and honours, 
 by the Protector. When Dryden finally left Cambridge 
 in 1657, he is said to have attached himself to this kins- 
 man. And at the end of the next year he wrote his re- 
 markable Heroic Stanzas on Cromwell's death. This 
 poem must have at once put out of doubt his literary 
 merits. There was assuredly no English poet then living, 
 except Milton and Cowley, who could possibly have writ- 
 ten it, and it was sufficiently different from the style of 
 either of those masters. Taking the four -line stanza, 
 which Davenant had made popular, the poet starts with 
 a bold opening, in which the stately march of the verse is 
 not to be disguised by all the frippery of erudition which 
 loads it :
 
 i.] BEFORE THE RESTORATION. 11 
 
 " And now 'tis time ; for their officious haste, 
 
 Who would before have borne him to the sky, 
 Like eager Romans, ere all rites were past, 
 Did let too soon the sacred eagle fly." 
 
 The whole poem contains but thirty -seven of these 
 stanzas, but it is full of admirable lines and thoughts. No 
 doubt there are plenty of conceits as well, and Dryden 
 would not have been Dryden if there had not been. But 
 at the same time the singular justness which always marked 
 his praise, as well as his blame, is as remarkable in the 
 matter of the poem, as the force and vigour of the diction 
 and versification are in its manner. To this day no better 
 eulogy of the Protector has been written, and the poet 
 with a remarkable dexterity evades, without directly de- 
 nying, the more awkward points in his hero's career and 
 character. One thing which must strike all careful readers 
 of the poem is the entire absence of any attack on the 
 royalist party. To attempt, as Shadwell and other libellers 
 attempted a quarter of a century later, to construe a fa- 
 mous couplet 
 
 " He fought to end our fighting, and essayed 
 To staunch the blood by breathing of the vein " 
 
 into an approval of the execution of Charles L, is to wrest 
 the sense of the original hopelessly and unpardonably. 
 Cromwell's conduct is contrasted with that of those who 
 " the quarrel loved, but did the cause abhor," who " first 
 sought to inflame the parties, then to poise," &c., i. e., with 
 Essex, Manchester, and their likes ; and it need hardly be 
 said that this contrast was ended years before there was 
 any question of the king's death. Indeed, to a careful 
 reader nowadays the Heroic Stanzas read much more like 
 an elaborate attempt to hedge between the parties than
 
 12 DRYDEN. [CHAP. 
 
 like an attempt to gain favour from the roundheads by 
 uncompromising advocacy of their cause. The author is 
 one of those " sticklers of the war " that he himself de- 
 scribes. 
 
 It is possible that a certain half-heartedness may have 
 been observed in Dryden by those of his cousin's party. 
 It is possible, too, that Sir Gilbert Pickering, like Thack- 
 eray's Mr. Scully, was a good deal more bent on making 
 use of his young kinsman than on rewarding him in any 
 permanent manner. At any rate, no kind of preferment 
 fell to his lot, and the anarchy of the " foolish Ishbosheth " 
 soon made any such preferment extremely improbable. 
 Before long it would appear that Dryden had definitely 
 given up whatever position he held in Sir Gilbert Pick- 
 ering's household, and had betaken himself to literature. 
 The fact of his so betaking himself almost implied adhe- 
 rence to the royalist party. In the later years of the Com- 
 monwealth, English letters had rallied to a certain extent 
 from the disarray into which they were thrown by the 
 civil war, but the centres of the rally belonged almost ex- 
 clusively to the royalist party. Milton had long forsworn 
 pure literature, to devote himself to official duties with an 
 occasional personal polemic as a relief. Marvell and 
 Wither, the two other chief lights of the Puritan party, 
 could hardly be regarded by any one as men of light and 
 leading, despite the really charming lyrics which both of 
 them had produced. All the other great literary names 
 of the time were, without exception, on the side of the 
 exile. Hobbes was a royalist, though a somewhat singular 
 one ; Cowley was a royalist ; Herrick was a royalist, so was 
 Denham ; so was, as far as he was anything, the unstable 
 Waller. Moreover, the most practically active author of 
 the day, the one man of letters who combined the power
 
 L] BEFORE THE RESTORATION. 13 
 
 of organizing literary effort with the power of himself 
 producing literary work of merit, was one of the staunchest 
 of the king's friends. Sir William Davenant, without any 
 political concession, had somehow obtained leave from the 
 republican government to reintroduce theatrical entertain- 
 ments of a kind, and moderate royalists, like Evelyn, with 
 an interest in literature and the arts and sciences, were re- 
 turning to their homes and looking out for the good time 
 coming. That Dryden, under these circumstances, having 
 at the time a much more vivid interest in literature than 
 in politics, and belonging as he did rather to the Presby- 
 terian faction, who were everywhere returning to the roy- 
 alist political faith, than to the Independent republicans, 
 should become royalist in principle, was nothing surprising. 
 Those who reproach him with the change (if change it 
 was) forget that he shared it with the immense majority 
 of the nation. For the last half-century the literary cur- 
 rent has been so entirely on the Puritan side that we are 
 probably in danger of doing at least as much injustice to 
 the royalists as was at one time done to their opponents. 
 One thing in particular I have never seen fairly put as ac- 
 counting for the complete royalization of nearly the whole 
 people, and it is a thing which has a special bearing on 
 Dryden. It has been said that his temperament was 
 specially and exceptionally English. Now one of the most 
 respectable, if not the most purely rational features of the 
 English character, is its objection to wanton bloodshed 
 for political causes, without form of law. It was this, be- 
 yond all question, that alienated the English from James 
 the Second ; it was this that in the heyday of Hanoverian 
 power made them turn a cold shoulder on the Duke of 
 Cumberland; it was this which enlisted them almost as 
 one man against the French revolutionists; it was this
 
 14 DRYDEN. [CHAP. 
 
 which brought about in our own days a political move- 
 ment to which there is no need to refer more particular- 
 ly. Now, it must be remembered that, either as the losing 
 party or for other reasons, the royalists were in the great 
 civil war almost free from the charge of reckless blood- 
 shedding. Their troops were disorderly, and given to 
 plunder, but not to cruelty. No legend even charges 
 against Astley or Goring, against Rupert or Lunsford, any- 
 thing like the Drogheda massacre the effect of which on 
 the general mind Defoe, an unexceptionable witness, has 
 preserved by a chance phrase in Robinson Crusoe or the 
 hideous bloodbath of the Irishwomen after Naseby, or the 
 brutal butchery of Dr. Hudson at Woodcroft, in Dryden's 
 own county, where the soldiers chopped off the priest's 
 fingers as he clung to the gargoyles of the tower, and 
 thrust him back with pikes into the moat which, mutilated 
 as he was, he had managed to swim. A certain humanity 
 and absence of bloodthirstiness are among Dryden's most 
 creditable characteristics, 1 and these excesses of fanaticism 
 are not at all unlikely to have had their share in determin- 
 ing him to adopt the winning side when at last it won. 
 But it is perhaps more to the purpose that his literary lean- 
 ings must of themselves have inevitably inclined him in the 
 same direction. There was absolutely no opening for lit- 
 erature on the republican side, a fact of which no better 
 
 1 The too famous Political Prologues may, perhaps, be quoted 
 against me here. I have only to remark : first, that, bad as they are, 
 they form an infinitesimal portion of Dryden's work, and are 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 me 
 to be at least partially animated by the notion that Dryden wished 
 the wrong people to be hanged.
 
 i.] BEFORE THE RESTORATION. 15 
 
 proof can be afforded than the small salary at which the 
 first man of letters then living was hired by a government 
 which, whatever faults it had, certainly did not sin by re- 
 warding its other servants too meagrely. That Dry den 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 immortal 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, were 
 certainly not encouraged by it ; and his friends and asso- 
 ciates must have been royalists almost to a man. So he 
 threw himself at once on 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. With 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, however, 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. When Donne speculates as to the finding on the 
 body of his dead lover 
 
 " A bracelet of bright hair about the bone," 
 when he tells us how
 
 16 DRYDEN. [CHAP. 
 
 " I long to talk with some old lover'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 suggestion. But at its worst the school was cer- 
 tainly bad enough, and its badnesses had already been ex- 
 hibited by Dryden with considerable felicity in his poem 
 on Lord Hastings and the small -pox. I really do not 
 know that in 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 Herrick 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 chiefly 
 to doggrel ; but Davenant, though perhaps not so good a 
 poet as any of the three, was a more living influence. 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 Gondibert, little as it is now read, and 
 unsuccessful as the quatrain in which it is written must al- 
 ways be for a very long work, is better than any long nar-
 
 t] BEFORE THE RESTORATION. 17 
 
 rative poem, for many a year before and after. Both his 
 poetical 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 couplet, the predestined common form of poetry 
 of the more important kind for a century and a half to 
 come. The heroic couplet was, of course, no novelty io 
 English ; but it had hitherto been only fitfully patronized 
 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- 
 tricacies 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, either 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 enjambe- 
 ments into something very like rhythmic prose, with 
 rhymes straying about at apparently indefinite intervals, 
 or it was broken up 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 needful to 
 say, did not do so much as the young Cambridge man 
 who, while doing bookseller's work for Herringman the 
 publisher, hanging about the coffee-houses, and planning 
 plays with Davenant and Sir Robert Howard, was wait- 
 2
 
 18 DRYDEN. [CHAP. 
 
 ing for opportunity and impulse to help him to make 
 his way. 
 
 The drama was in an even more critical state than 
 poetry pure and simple, and here Davenant was the im- 
 portant person. All the giant race except Shirley were 
 dead, and Shirley had substituted a kind of tragedie hour- 
 geoise 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 experiments, 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 Protector, 
 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 something like regu- 
 lar stage plays. But Shakspeare'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 was who, in the Siege 
 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 plainly, 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 tragedy 
 already flourishing in France ; still fewer have ever cared 
 to investigate the origins of that classical tragedy itself.
 
 i.] BEFORE THE RESTORATION. 19 
 
 The blundering attribution of Dryden and his rivals to 
 Corneille and Racine, the more blundering 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 hesitation, 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 Gamier in the days of 
 the Pleiade ; nor did it ever quit that model, though in 
 the first thirty years of the seventeenth century something 
 was borrowed from Spanish sources. The English heroic 
 drama, on the other hand, which Davenant 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 populo. 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 exchange the blank verse 
 of Shakspeare 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 Shakspeare or of Fletcher that was thus 
 exchanged. In the three-quarters of a century, or there-
 
 20 DRYDEN. [CHAP. 
 
 abouts, 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 stuff and the 
 comparatively polished and elegant couplets of the inno- 
 vators there could be little comparison, especially when 
 Dry den 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 generally accepted style for the journey- 
 work of literature. Milton and Taylor could arrange the 
 most elaborate symphonies; Hobbes 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-
 
 i.] BEFORE THE RESTORATION. 21 
 
 nexion are for the 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 almost beyond the reach 
 of extrication. The common people, when not bent upon 
 fine language, could speak and write clearly and straight- 
 forwardly, as Bunyan's works 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 latter 
 there had been an excellent style, if not one perfectly suited 
 for all ends, and it had degenerated. In the former, noth- 
 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, elegantly, 
 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 Restoration, 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 of 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 they one by one 
 dropped off, left no successors, but from those who struck 
 root downwards and blossomed upwards in the genera)
 
 22 DRYDEN. [CHAP. 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 Denham. The writers of the Restoration are 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 have 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 literature of his 
 country.
 
 CHAPTER IL 
 
 EARLY LITERARY WORK. 
 
 THE foregoing chapter will have already shown the chief 
 difficulty of writing 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. His works are 
 still the best life of him, and in so far as a biography of 
 Dryden is filled with any matter not purely literary, it 
 must for the most part be filled with controversy as to his 
 political and religious opinions and conduct rather than 
 with accounts of his actual 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, 1663, Dryden was married at St. Swithin's Church 
 to Lady Elizabeth Howard, eldest daughter of the Earl of 
 Berkshire. 
 This marriage, like most of the scanty events of Dry-
 
 24 DRYDEN. [CHAP. 
 
 den's life, has been made the occasion of much and unnec- 
 essary controversy. The libellers of the Popish Plot dis- 
 turbances twenty years later declared that the character 
 of the bride was doubtful, and that her brothers had acted 
 towards Dryden in somewhat the same way as the Hamil- 
 tons did towards Grammont. A letter of hers to the Earl 
 of Chesterfield, 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 brush 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 
 have 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 unhistorical fictions which have somehow 
 or other obtained currency. 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 Elizabeth was five-and-twenty, an age in those days 
 somewhat mature, and one at which a young lady 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 like a flirtation, and suggests
 
 n.] EARLY LITERARY WORK. 25 
 
 an interview, but there is nothing in it at all compromis- 
 ing. The libels already mentioned are perfectly vague and 
 wholly untrustworthy. 
 
 It seems, though on no very definite 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 than 
 most of his associates. I say probably, for here, too, it is 
 astonishing how the evidence breaks down when it is ex- 
 amined, 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 weight ; 
 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 1745, the author 
 of which is unknown, though conjectures, as to which 
 C 2* 3
 
 2fi 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 clothing 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 there 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 enough. 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, the poet I knew at Cam- 
 bridge," and all the wits of the town. The company 
 pleased Pepys, and he made a note to the 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, thirdly, of the fact that he 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
 
 U.J EARLY LITERARY WORK. 2") 
 
 do, to earn that title, reserving the important subject of 
 his dramatic activity, which also began about this time, 
 for separate treatment. 
 
 The lines on the death of Lord Hastings, and the linea 
 to Hoddesdon, 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 which 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 and resistless through the land he passed, 
 
 Like that bold Greek who 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 seat 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
 
 28 DRYDEN. [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 were not three poets then living who could have 
 written the best lines of the Heroic Stanzas, and what is 
 more, those lines were not in the particular manner of 
 either 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. Astrcea Redux (1660), a panegyric 
 on the coronation (1661), a poem to Lord Clarendon 
 (1662), a few still shorter pieces of the complimentary 
 kind to Dr. Charleton (1663), to the Duchess of York 
 (1665), and to Lady Castlemaine (166-?), lead up to An- 
 nus Mirabilis 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 anticipa- 
 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-
 
 ii.] EARLY LITERARY WORK. 29 
 
 ly tentative character of his work, and he had doubtless not 
 yet satisfied himself that the 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 Astrcea 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 which 
 were, in his hands, to free the couplet from all charges of 
 monotony and tameness. 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 Church 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 with their own content, 
 Had, ere we came to age, our portion spent." 
 
 Whether the matter of this is suitable for poetry or not is
 
 SO 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 Dry den, 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 flying 
 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 holy and as Catholic as ours ;" 
 
 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 the 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 let
 
 ii.] 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 thousand 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 are 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.
 
 32 DRYDEN. [CHAP. 
 
 The other smaller couplet-poems which 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 be true, 
 Made you the favourite of his last sad tunes ; 
 That is, a sufferer in his subjects' crimes : 
 Thus those first favours you received were sent, 
 Like Heaven's rewards, in earthly punishment. 
 Yet 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 ;
 
 n.] EARLY LITERARY WORK. 33 
 
 When, springing forth from Jove's new-closing wound, 
 She struck the warlike spear into the ground ; 
 Which sprouting leaves did suddenly enclose, 
 And peaceful olives shaded as they rose." 
 
 For once the mania for simile and classical allusion has 
 not led the author astray here, 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 enough. 
 
 The remaining 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 Malmesbury, 
 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 dramatic poetry, 
 his play of the Maiden Queen, and Annus Mirabilis itself. 
 This last was published very early in 1667, 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
 
 34 DRYDEN. [CHAP. 
 
 Hudibras. " A very good poem," the Clerk of the Acts 
 of the Navy writes it down. It may be mentioned in 
 passing that during this same stay at Charlton Dryden's 
 eldest son Charles was born. 
 
 Annus Mirabilis 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 his 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 rima, sufficient 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
 
 n.] EARLY LITERARY WORK. 35 
 
 his singular faculty of bending 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 and exuberance of simile. The famous lines 
 
 " These fight like husbands, but like lovers those ; 
 These fain would keep, and those 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 magots. Such 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 Astrcea 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 interlacements 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 : 
 
 " In this 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.
 
 36 DRYDEN. [CHAR. 
 
 " 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 does appear, 
 And dares the world to tax him with the old. 
 
 " 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, withheld 
 
 His flames from burning but to blow them 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 notes 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 Mirabilis 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
 
 n.] EARLY LITERARY WORK. 37 
 
 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 his way. 
 He had carried out a conception of the couplet which was 
 almost entirely new, having been anticipated only by some 
 isolated and ill - sustained efforts. He had manifested an 
 equal originality in the turn of his phrase, an extraordina- 
 ry command of poetic imagery, and, above all, a faculty of 
 handling by no means promising subjects in an indispu- 
 tably poetical manner. Circumstances which 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- 
 sessing 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 
 by 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 - laden current of Annus Mirabilis, 
 flowed out as impetuous, as strong, but clear and with- 
 out base admixture, in the splendid verse of Absalom and 
 Achitophel.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 PERIOD OF DRAMATIC ACTIVITY. 
 
 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 Dryden. 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 flower 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 opportunity of correct- 
 ing, from individual study, the unfavourable impressions 
 derived from the verdicts of the critics. For myself, I am
 
 CHAP, ni.] PERIOD OF DRAMATIC ACTIVITY. 39 
 
 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 he 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 bis 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 Dryden, 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 to work 
 accordingly, and produced in 1663 the Wild Gallant. We 
 do not possess this play in the form in which it was first 
 acted and damned. Afterwards Lady Castlemaine gave it 
 her protection; the author added certain attractions ac- 
 cording to the taste of the 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 called, till 
 the more polished comedy of manners, or artificial comedy,
 
 40 DRTDEN. [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 enough 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 Shad well, the 
 actor Lacy, and 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
 
 m.] 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 which Ben Jonson 
 himself would certainly not refuse the title of humours 
 appear, and contribute a large portion of the interest. 
 Dryden, 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 are forced and 
 too often feeble, though there are 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 affec- 
 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 heartlessness and cruelty, which 
 has been justly brought against those of Etherege, of 
 Wycherley, 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. [CHAP. 
 
 honour ; but they have at the same time a certain health- 
 iness and sweetness of the older days, which bring them, 
 if not close to Rosalind and Beatrice, at any rate pretty 
 near to Fletcher's heroines, such as Dorothea and Mary. 
 Still, the Wild Gallant can by no possibility be called a 
 good play. It was followed at no long interval by the 
 Rival 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, 
 wth 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 quaintness 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 French critic who saw or read 
 the play in his belief of the bloodthirstiness of the Eng- 
 lish drama. The field was thus completely clear, and 
 Dryden, retaining only Montezuma as his 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 Granada 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 much 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 1667, 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 
 FEtourdi, and gave it to Dryden, who perhaps combined 
 with it some things taken from other French plays, added 
 not a little of his own, and had it acted. It was for 
 those days exceedingly 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
 
 44 DRYDEN. [CHAP. 
 
 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 
 Dryden 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. He was, indeed, as was very usual with 
 him, indebted to others for the main points of his play, 
 which comes partly from Thomas Corneille's Feint Astro- 
 logue, partly from the Depit Amoureux. But the play, 
 with the usual reservations, may be better spoken of than 
 any of Dry den's comedies, except Marriage a la Mode and 
 Amphitryon. Wildblood and Jacintha, who play the parts 
 of Celadon and Florimel in the Maiden Queen, are a very 
 lively pair. Much of the dialogue is smart, and the inci- 
 dents are stirring, while the play contains no less than four 
 of the admirable songs which Dryden now began 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 and 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 Astral 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
 
 HI.] PERIOD OF DRAMATIC ACTIVITY. 45 
 
 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 bad the gods to do with me or mine ? 
 Did I molest your heaven ? 
 Why should you then make Maximin your foe, 
 Who paid you tribute, which 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 me sent. 
 But, by the gods (by Maximin, I meant), 
 Henceforth I and my world 
 Hostility with 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 heaven 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 :
 
 46 DRYDEN. [CHAP. 
 
 " Plac. 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 this earth on which I sit, 
 I'll mount and scatter all the gods I hit." 
 
 [Stabs him again.] 
 
 Tyrannic Love was followed by the two parts of Al- 
 manzor and Almahide, 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, which 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 Abencerrages and the Zegrys. At a festival 
 held in the capital this dissension breaks out. A stranger 
 interferes on what 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 the duke retires. Almahide, 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
 
 ill.] 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 
 his sister's ambition and her jealousy of Almahide, 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 Abencerrages, 
 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 none but happy lovers made, 
 I slept, and straight my love before me brought 
 Phyllis, the object of my waking thought. 
 Undressed she came my flame to meet, 
 While love strewed flowers beneath her feet, 
 Flowers which, so pressed by 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, did love inspire, 
 Her every grace my heart did fire, 
 But most her eyes, which languished with desire."
 
 48 DRYDEN. [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 here. 
 
 While, however, the king and his court are listening 
 and looking, mischief is brewing. Almanzor, Abdalla, and 
 the Zegrys are in arms. The king is driven in ; Almahide 
 is captured. Then a scene takes place between Almanzor 
 and Almahide in the full spirit of the style. Almanzor 
 sues for Almahide 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 Almahide refers 
 him to her father. The fifth act 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 Almahide 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 Almahide, now his 
 queen, to use her influence with her lover to come back 
 An act of fine confused fighting follows, in which Lynda- 
 raxa's castle is stormed, the stormers in their turn driven 
 out by the Duke of Arcos and Abdalla, who has joined the 
 Spaniards, and a general imbroglio created. But Almanzor
 
 ra.] PERIOD OF DRAMATIC ACTIVITY. 49 
 
 obeys Almahide's summons, with the result of more sighs 
 and flames. The conduct of Almahide is unexceptiona- 
 ble; but Boabdelin'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 every one else ; after which the hero 
 sees the ghost of his mother, and addresses it more suo. 
 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 tale 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, and 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 Abdelmelech. 
 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*
 
 60 DRYDEN. [CHAP. 
 
 Such is the barest outline of this famous play, and I fear 
 that as it is it is too long, though much has been omit- 
 ted, including the whole of a pleasing underplot of love 
 between two very creditable lovers, Osmyn 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 are absurd enough ; but there is a kind of generous 
 and noble spirit animating it which could not fail to 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 part of their origin, and many more are quotable. 
 Everybody, for instance, knows the vigorous couplet : 
 
 "Forgiveness to the injured does belong, 
 But they ne'er pardon who have done the wrong ;" 
 
 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 beauty, at the same 
 time that he rejects her advances, is in little, perhaps, as 
 good an instance as could be given of the merits of the 
 poetry and of the stamp of its spirit, and with this I must 
 be content : 
 
 " Fair though you are 
 
 As summer mornings, and your eyes more bright 
 Than stars that twinkle on a winter's night ;
 
 m.] PERIOD OF DRAMATIC ACTIVITY. ol 
 
 Though you have eloquence to warm and move 
 Cold age and fasting hermits into love ; 
 Though Almahide with scorn rewards my care, 
 Yet than to change '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 cheered this was not wholly vile. 
 
 The Conquest of Granada appeared in 1670, and in 
 the following year 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 Dry den. In the 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 whole, as 
 composite as might be expected from the number of au- 
 thors whose plays are satirized. Although fathered by 
 Buckingham, it seems likely that 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 his acknowledged " Dialogue of Cat and Puss." 
 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
 
 62 DRYDEN. [CHAP. 
 
 does not bear favourable testimony to the culture and re- 
 ceptive powers of modern audiences. But there were many 
 reasons why Dryden should take the satire very coolly, as 
 in fact he did. As he says, with his customary proud hu- 
 mility, " his betters were much more concerned than him- 
 self ;" and it seems highly probable that Buckingham's co- 
 adjutors, confiding in his good nature or his inability to 
 detect the 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 be now called an 
 advertisement, and a very good one. Nothing can be a 
 greater mistake 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, Caligula, in which 
 many of the scenes are rhymed, dating as late as 1698, 
 and the general character of the heroic play, if not the 
 rhymed form, continued almost unaltered. Certainly Dry- 
 den's equanimity was very little disturbed. Buckingham 
 he paid off in kind long afterwards, and his Grace im- 
 mediately proceeded, by his answer, to show how little he 
 can have had to do with the Rehearsal. To Sprat and 
 Clifford no allusions that I know of are to be found in 
 his writings. As for Butler, an honourable mention in a 
 letter to Lawrence Hyde shows how little acrimony he felt 
 towards him. Indeed, it may be said of Dryden that he 
 was at no time touchy 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.
 
 m.J PERIOD OF DRAMATIC ACTIVITY. 63 
 
 It is all the more surprising that he should, at no great 
 distance of time, have engaged gratuitously in a contest 
 which brought him no honour, and in which his allies 
 were quite unworthy of him. Elkanah Settle was one of 
 Rochester's innumerable led-poets, and was too utterly be- 
 neath contempt to deserve even Rochester's spite. The 
 character of Doeg, ten years later, did Settle complete 
 justice. He 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 Shadwell 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 Dryden went out of his way to attack any 
 one; and even in this instance Settle had given some 
 cause by an allusion of a contemptuous kind in his preface. 
 But as a rule the laureate showed himself proof against 
 much more venomous criticisms than any that Elkanah was 
 capable of. It is perhaps not uncharitable to suspect 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 re-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, and 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 Johnny " Crowne's, and the character of 
 its strictures is quite difEerent from Dryden's broad and 
 catholic manner of censuring. But the adage, "tell me
 
 64 DRYDEN. [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 himself, 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 1672 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 Marriage 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 Doralice are 
 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. Doralice, 
 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.
 
 in.] PERIOD OF DRAMATIC ACTIVITY. 65 
 
 Nothing 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, Amboyna, 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 
 seems 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 that 
 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 
 Dryden's request for permission 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 is vulgarly held, taught the British public
 
 66 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 that 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, when Dryden was 
 to quit his "long-loved mistress Rhyme," as far as dra- 
 matic writing was concerned. These words occur in the 
 prologue to Aurengzebe, which appeared in 1675. 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 
 heroic 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 Aurengzebe 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 Aurengzebe, 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, men favour the deceit, 
 Trust on, and think to-morrow will repay. 
 To-morrow's falser than the former day, 
 Lies worse, and while it says, we shall be blest 
 With some new joys, cuts off what we posseat.
 
 m.] 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 Me tbink to receive 
 What the first sprightly running could not give. 
 I'm tired with waiting for this chemic 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 Dryden's which, 
 with very little alteration, might be acted, at least as a 
 curiosity, 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 Aurengzebe a great tendency towards enjambe- 
 ment ; and as soon as this tendency gets the upper hand, 
 a recurrence to blank verse is, in English dramatic writing, 
 tolerably certain. For the intonation of English is not, 
 like the intonation of French, such that rhyme 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 curious notion that blank verse 
 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 All for Love Dryden very shortly 
 showed, ambulando, that this notion was wholly ground- 
 less. From this time forward he was faithful to the model 
 he had now adopted, and which was of the greatest im- 
 portance he induced others to be faithful too. Had it
 
 58 DRYDEN. [CHAP. 
 
 not been for this, it is almost certain that Venice Preserved 
 would have been in rhyme ; that is to say, that it would 
 have been spoilt. In this same year, 1675, a publisher, 
 Bentley (of whom Dryden afterwards spoke with consid- 
 erable bitterness), brought out a play called The Mistaken 
 Husband, 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 that it is in any 
 part his ; though it is fair to say that some good judges, 
 notably Mr. Swinburne, think differently. 1 Nearly three 
 years passed without anything of Dryden's appearing, and 
 at last, at the end of 1677, or the beginning of 1678, ap- 
 peared a play as much better than Aurengzebe as Aureng- 
 zebe was better than its forerunners. This was All for 
 Love, his 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 and Cleopatra and All for 
 
 1 The list of Dryden's spurious or doubtful works is not large or 
 important. But a note of Pepys, mentioning a play of Dryden en- 
 titled Ladies d la Mode, which was acted and damned in 1668, has 
 puzzled the commentators. There is no trace of this Ladies d la 
 Mode. But Mr. E. W. Gosse has in his collection a play entitled The 
 Mall, or The Modish Lovers, which he thinks may possibly be the very 
 " mean thing " of Pepys' scornful mention. The difference of title 
 is not fatal, for Samuel was not over-accurate in such matters. The 
 play is anonymous, but the preface is signed J. D. The date is 1674, 
 and the printing is execrable, and evidently not revised by the author, 
 whoever he was. Notwithstanding this, the prologue, the epilogue, 
 and a song contain some vigorous verse and phrase sometimes not a 
 little suggestive of Dryden. In the entire absence of external evi- 
 dence connecting him with it, the question, though one of much in- 
 terest, ia perhaps not one to be dealt with at any length here.
 
 in.] PERIOD OF DRAMATIC ACTIVITY. 59 
 
 Love, when they are contrasted, only show by the contrast 
 the difference of kind, not the difference of degree, be- 
 tween their writers. 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 Don Sebastian 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 was 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 as 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, Limberham, 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 Aurengzebe and All for Love should 
 have been followed by this filthy 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 (Edipus, in which both the friends are 
 to be seen almost at their best. On Dryden's part, the 
 lyric incantation scenes are perhaps most noticeable, and
 
 DRYDEN. 
 
 Lee mingles throughout his usual bombast with his usual 
 splendid poetry. If any one thinks this expression hy- 
 perbolical, I shall only ask him to read (Edipus, instead 
 of taking the traditional witticisms about Lee for gospel. 
 There is of course plenty of 
 
 " Let gods meet gods and jostle in the dark," 
 
 and the other fantastic follies, into which " metaphysical'* 
 poetry and "heroic" plays had seduced men of talent, 
 and sometimes of genius ; but these can be excused when 
 they lead to such a passage as that where (Edipus cries 
 
 " Thou coward ! yet 
 
 Art li ving ? canst not, wilt not find the road 
 To the great palace of magnificent death, 
 Though thousand ways lead to his thousand doors 
 Which day and night are still unbarred for alL" 
 
 (Edipus led to a quarrel with the players of the King's 
 Theatre, of the merits of which, as we only have a one- 
 sided statement, it is not easy to judge. But Dryden 
 seems to have formed a connexion about this time with 
 the other or Duke's company, and by them (April, 1679) 
 a "potboiling" adaptation of Troilus and Cressida was 
 brought out, which might much better have been left un- 
 attempted. Two years afterwards appeared the last play 
 (leaving operas and the scenes contributed to the Duke of 
 Guise out of the question) that Dryden was to write for 
 many years. This was The Spanish friar, a popular piece, 
 possessed of a good deal of merit, from the technical point 
 of view of the play-wright, but which I think has been 
 somewhat over-rated, as far as literary excellence is con- 
 cerned. The principal character is no doubt amusing, but 
 he is heavily indebted to Falstaff on the one hand, and to 
 Fletcher's Lopez on the other ; and he reminds the reader
 
 in.] PERIOD OF DRAMATIC ACTIVITY. 61 
 
 of both his ancestors in a way which cannot but be un- 
 favourable to himself. The play is to me 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 most 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 something dis- 
 tinct from the faculty of ordinary lyrical composition ; and 
 there is certainly nothing which necessarily infers it in the 
 pointed 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 commonplace and vulgar about them. Aphra 
 Behn was an admirable, and Tom Durfey a far from des-
 
 62 DRYDEN. [CHAP 
 
 picable, songster. Even among the common run of play- 
 wrights, who have left no lyrical and not much literary 
 reputation, scraps and snatches which have the true song 
 stamp are not unfrequently 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 
 sung. 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 
 charmed me not with that fair face," is an instance of the 
 well-known common measure which is so specially Eng^ 
 lish, and which is poetry or doggrel 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 anapaests. " Calm was the even, and clear was the sky," 
 is a perfect instance of what may be called archness in 
 song; and "Celimena 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 are 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 
 days 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 also 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 incan-
 
 in.] PERIOD OF DRAMATIC ACTIVITY. 63 
 
 tation scene in (Edipus is very far above the average of 
 such things ; and of not a few passages in King Arthur 
 at leas* as much may be said. 
 
 Dryden's energy was 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 
 by 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 ! are 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
 
 4 DRYDEN. [our. 
 
 who had the knack of telling allusion to passing events 
 as Dryden 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 Albuma- 
 zar, a curious piece, believed, but not known, to have been 
 written by a certain Tomkis in James the First's reign, 
 and ranking among the many which have been attributed 
 with more or less (generally less) show of reason to Shak- 
 speare. Dryden's knowledge of the early English drama 
 was not exhaustive, and he here makes a charge of plagi- 
 arism against Ben Jonson, for which there is in all proba- 
 bility not the least ground. The piece contains, however,, 
 as do most of these vigorous, though unequal composi- 
 tions, many fine lines. The next production of the kind 
 not intended for a play of his own is the prologue to the 
 first performance of the king's servants, after they hatf 
 been burnt out of their theatre, and this is followed by 
 many others. In 1673 a prologue to the University of 
 Oxford, spoken when the Silent Woman was acted, is the 
 first of many of the same kind. It has been mentioned 
 that Dryden speaks slightingly of these University prol- 
 ogues, but they are among his best pieces of the class, and 
 are for the most part entirely free from the ribaldry with 
 which he was but too often wont to alloy them. In these 
 years pieces intended to accompany Carlell's Arviragus 
 and Philicia, Etherege's Man of Mode, Charles Davenant's 
 Circe, Lee's Mithridates, Shadwell's True Widow, Lee's 
 Ccesar Borgia, Tate's Loyal General, and not a few others 
 occur. A specimen of the style in which Dryden excelled 
 so remarkably, and which is in itself so utterly dead, may 
 fairly be given here, and nothing can be better for the 
 purpose than the most famous prologue to the University 
 of. Oxford. This is the prologue in which the poet at
 
 m.] PERIOD OF DRAMATIC ACTIVITY. 65 
 
 once displays his exquisite capacity for flattery, his com- 
 mand over versification, and his singular antipathy to his 
 own Alma Mater ; an antipathy which, it may be pointed 
 out, is confirmed by the fact of his seeking his master's 
 degree rather at Lambeth than at Cambridge. Whether 
 any solution to the enigma can be found in Dennis's re- 
 mark that the " younger fry " at Cambridge preferred Set- 
 tle to their own champion, it would be vain to attempt to 
 determine. The following piece, however, may be taken 
 as a fair specimen of the more decent prologue of the 
 later seventeenth century : 
 
 " Though actors cannot much of learning boast, 
 Of all who want it, we admire it most : 
 We love the praises of a learned pit, 
 As we remotely are allied to wit. 
 We speak our poet's wit, and trade in ore, 
 Like those who touch upon the golden shore ; 
 Betwixt our judges can distinction make, 
 Discern how much, and why, our poems take ; 
 Mark if the fools, or men of sense, rejoice ; 
 Whether the applause be only sound or voice. 
 When our fop gallants, or our city folly, 
 Clap over-loud, it makes us melancholy : 
 We doubt that scene which does their wonder raise, 
 And, for their ignorance, contemn their praise. 
 Judge, then, if we who act, and they who write, 
 Should not be proud of giving you delight. 
 London likes grossly ; but this nicer pit 
 Examines, fathoms all the depths of wit ; 
 The ready finger lays on every blot ; 
 Knows what should justly please, and what should not. 
 Nature herself lies open to your view, 
 You judge, by her, what draught of her is true, 
 Where outlines false, and colours seem too faint, 
 Where bunglers daub, and where true poets paint. 
 4
 
 66 DRYDEN. [CHAP. 
 
 But by the sacred genius of this place, 
 
 By every Muse, by each domestic grace, 
 
 Be kind to wit, which but endeavours well, 
 
 And, where you judge, presumes not to excel 
 
 Our poets hither for adoption come, 
 
 As nations sued to be made free of Rome ; 
 
 Not in the suffragating tribes to stand, 
 
 But in your utmost, last, provincial band. 
 
 If his ambition may those hopes pursue, 
 
 Who with religion loves your arts and you, 
 
 Oxford to him a dearer name shall be, 
 
 Than his own mother-university. 
 
 Thebes did his green, unknowing youth engage ; 
 
 He chooses Athens in his riper age." 
 
 During this busy period, Dryden's domestic life had 
 been comparatively uneventful. His eldest son had been 
 born either in 1665 or in 1666, it seems not clear which. 
 His second son, John, was born a year or two later ; and 
 the third, Erasmus Henry, in May, 1669. These three 
 sons were all the children Lady Elizabeth brought him. 
 The two eldest went, like their father, to Westminster, 
 and had their schoolboy troubles there, as letters of Dryden 
 still extant show. During the whole period, except in his 
 brief visits to friends and patrons in the country, he was 
 established in the house in Gerrard Street, which is identi- 
 fied with his name. 1 While the children were young, his 
 means must have been sufficient, and, for those days, con- 
 
 1 A house in Fetter Lane, now divided into two, bears a plate stating 
 that Dryden lived there. The plate, as I was informed by the pres- 
 ent occupiers, replaces a stone slab or inscription which was destroy- 
 ed in some alterations not very many years ago. I know of no ref- 
 erence to this house in any book, nor does Mr. J. C. Collins, who 
 called my attention to it. If Dryden ever lived here, it must have 
 been between his residence with Herringman and his marriage.
 
 m.] PERIOD OF DRAMATIC ACTIVITY. 67 
 
 siderable. With his patrimony included, Maloue has cal- 
 culated that for great part of the time his income must 
 have been fully 700/. a year, equal in purchasing power 
 to 2000/. a year in Malone's time, and probably to nearer 
 3000J. now. In June, 1668, the degree of Master of Arts, 
 to which, for some reason or other, Dryden had never pro- 
 ceeded at Cambridge, was, at the recommendation of the 
 king, conferred upon him by the Archbishop of Canter- 
 bury. Two years later, in the summer of 1670, he was 
 made poet laureate and historiographer royal. 1 Davenant, 
 the last holder of the laureateship, had died two years 
 previously, and Howell, the well-known author of the Epis- 
 tolce Ho-Elianae, and the late holder of the historiogra- 
 phership, four years before. When the two appointments 
 were conferred on Dryden, the salary was fixed in the 
 patent at 200J. a year, besides the butt of sack which the 
 economical James afterwards cut off, and arrears since 
 Davenant's death were to be paid. In the same year, 1670, 
 the death of his mother increased his income by the 20/. 
 a year which had been payable to her from the North- 
 amptonshire property. From 1667, or thereabouts, Dry- 
 den had been in possession of a valuable partnership with 
 the players of the king's house, for whom he contracted to 
 write three plays a year in consideration of a share and a 
 quarter 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 poet's 
 receipts averaged from 300?. to 4001, a year, besides which 
 he had (sometimes, at any rate) the third night, and (we 
 
 1 The patent, given by Malone, is dated Aug. 18. Mr. W. Noel 
 Sainsbury, of the Record Office, has pointed out to me a preliminary 
 warrant to " our Attorney or Solicitor Generall " to " prepare a Bill " 
 for the purpose dated April 13.
 
 68 DRYDEN. [CHAP. 
 
 may suppose always) the bookseller's fee for the copyright 
 of the printed play, which together averaged 1001. a play 
 or more. Lastly, at the extreme end of the period most 
 probably, but certainly before 1679, the king granted him 
 an additional pension of IQQl. a year. The importance 
 of this pension is more than merely pecuniary, for this is 
 the grant, the confirmation of which, after some delay, by 
 James, was taken by Macaulay as the wages of apostasy. 
 
 The pecuniary prosperity of this time was accompanied 
 by a corresponding abundance of the good things which 
 generally go with wealth. Dryden was familiar with most 
 of the literary nobles and gentlemen of Charles's court, 
 and Dorset, Etherege, Mulgrave, Sedley, and Rochester 
 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 chose 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 un amiable. 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 had relations with most of the literary men 
 of his time, but those relations almost always ended badly. 
 Sometimes he set them at each other like dogs, or procured 
 for one some court favour certain to annoy a rival ; some- 
 times he satirized them coarsely in his foul-mouthed 
 poems; sometimes, as we shall see, he forestalled the 
 Chevalier de Rohan in his method of repartee. As early 
 as 1675 Rochester had disobliged Dryden, though the ex- 
 act amount of the injury has certainly been exaggerated
 
 HI.] PERIOD OF DRAMATIC ACTIVITY. 69 
 
 by Malone, whom most biographers, except Mr. Christie, 
 have followed. There is little doubt (though Mr. Christie 
 thinks otherwise) that one of the chief functions of the 
 poet laureate was to compose masques and such like pieces 
 to 1 be acted by the court ; indeed, this appears to have 
 been the main regular duty of the office at least in the 
 seventeenth century. That Crowne should have been 
 charged with the composition of Calisto was, therefore, a 
 slight to Dryden. Crowne was not a bad play-wright. 
 He might perhaps, by a plagiarism from Lamb's criticism 
 on Heywood, be called a kind of prose Dryden, and a 
 characteristic saying of Dryden's, which has been handed 
 down, seems to show that the latter recognized the fact. 
 But the addition to the charge against Rochester that he 
 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 actually written by Dryden. 
 
 In the year 1679, however, Dryden had a much more 
 serious taste of Rochester's malevolence. He had recently 
 become very intimate with Lord Mulgrave, who had quar- 
 relled with Rochester. Personal courage was not Roches- 
 ter's forte, and he had shown the white feather when 
 challenged by Mulgrave. Shortly afterwards there was 
 circulated in manuscript an Essay on Satire, containing 
 virulent attacks on the king, on Rochester, and the Duch- 
 esses of Cleveland and Portsmouth. How any one could 
 ever have suspected that the poem was Dryden's it is dif- 
 ficult to understand. To begin with, he never at any time 
 in his career lent himself as a hired literary bravo to any 
 private person. In the second place, that he should at- 
 tack the king, from whom he derived the greatest part of 
 his income, was inconceivable. Thirdly, no literary judge
 
 70 DRYDEN. [CHAP. in. 
 
 could for one moment connect him with the shambling 
 doggrel lines which distinguish the Essay on Satire in its 
 original form. A very few couplets have some faint ring 
 of Dryden's verse, but not more than is perceivable in the 
 work of many other poets and poetasters of the 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 threatens to " leave the repartee to Black 
 Will with a cudgel." On the 18th December, as Dryden 
 was going home at night, through Rose Alley, Co vent 
 Garden, he was attacked and beaten by masked men. 
 Fifty pounds reward (deposited 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 
 criminals if they would divulge the name of their 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.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 SATIRICAL AND DIDACTIC POEMS. 
 
 IN the year 1680 a remarkable change came over the char- 
 acter of Dryden's work. Had he died in this year (and he 
 had already reached an age at which many men's work is 
 done) he would not at the present time rank very high even 
 among the second class of English poets. In pure poe- 
 try he had published nothing of the slightest consequence 
 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 had given up the 
 style rhymed heroic drama which he had specially 
 made his own. He 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 he tells us, he intended to write would doubtless 
 have contained many fine passages and much splendid 
 versification ; but it almost certainly would not have been 
 the best thing in its kind even in its own language. The 
 series of satirical and didactic poems which, in the space 
 of less than seven years, he 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
 
 72 DRYDEN. [CHAP. 
 
 of their own kind in English, but it may almost be said 
 that there is nothing better in any other literary language. 
 Satire, argument, and exposition may possibly be half- 
 spurious kinds of poetry that is a question which need 
 not be argued here. But among satirical and didactic 
 poems Absalom and Achitophel, The Medal, Macflecknoe, 
 Religio Laid, The Hind and the Panther, hold the first 
 place in company with very few rivals. In a certain kind 
 of satire to be defined 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. I have already endeavoured to show the unlikeli- 
 ness of his ever having been a very fervent Roundhead, 
 and I do not think that there is much more probability 
 of his having been a very fervent Royalist. His literary 
 work, his few friendships, and the tavern-coffeehouse life 
 which took up so much of the time of the men of that 
 day, probably occupied him sufficiently 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 Amboyna or anything else that was wanted ; but for 
 the first eighteen years of Charles the Second's reign, the 
 nation at large felt little interest, of the active kind, in po- 
 litical questions. Dryden almost always reflected the sym- 
 pathies of the nation at large. The Popish Plot, however, 
 and the dangerous excitement which the misgovernment of 
 Charles, on the one hand, and the machinations of Shaftes- 
 bury, on the other, produced, found him at an age when 
 serious subjects are at any rate, by courtesy, supposed to
 
 IT.] SATIRICAL AND DIDACTIC POEMS. 73 
 
 possess greater attractions than they exert in youth. Tra- 
 dition has it that he was more or less directly encouraged 
 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 ample shrewdness to perceive the advantage to his 
 own cause which he might gain by enlisting Dryden. 
 However this may be, Absalom and Achitophel was pub- 
 lished about the middle of November, 1681, 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 though 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 question that the poem worked power- 
 fully among the influences which after the most desperate 
 struggle, short of open warfare, in which any English sov- 
 ereign has ever been engaged, finally 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 struggle in 
 which Dryden now engaged. Like many other of the 
 greatest writers, Dryden was wont to carry out Moliere's 
 principle to the fullest, and to care very little for technical 
 originality of plan or main idea. The form which his 
 poem took was also in many ways suggested by the pre- 
 vailing literary tastes of the day. Both in France and in 
 P 4* 6
 
 M DRYDEN. [CHAP. 
 
 England the character or portrait, a set description of a 
 given person in prose or verse, had for some time been 
 fashionable. Clarendon in the one country, Saint Evre- 
 mond in the other, had in particular composed prose por- 
 traits which have never been surpassed. Dryden, accord- 
 ingly, made his poem little more than a string of such 
 portraits, connected together by the very slenderest thread 
 of narrative, and interspersed with occasional speeches in 
 which the arguments of his own side were put in a light 
 as favourable, and those of the other in a light as un- 
 favourable, as possible. He was always very careless of 
 anything like a regular plot for his poems a carelessness 
 rather surprising in a practised writer for the stage. But 
 he was probably right in neglecting this point. The sub- 
 jects with which he dealt were of too vital an interest to 
 his readers to allow them to stay and ask the question, 
 whether the poems had a beginning, a middle, and an end. 
 Sharp personal satire and biting political denunciation need- 
 ed no such setting as this a setting which to all appear- 
 ance Dryden was as unable as he was unwilling to give. 
 He could, however, and did, give other things of much 
 greater importance. The wonderful command over the 
 couplet of which he had displayed the beginnings in his 
 early poems, and which had in twenty years of play-writing 
 been exercised and developed till its owner was in as thor- 
 ough training as a professional athlete, was the first of 
 these. The second was a faculty of satire, properly so 
 called, which was entirely novel. The third was a faculty 
 of specious argument in verse, which, as has been said, no 
 one save Lucretius has ever equalled ; and which, if it falls 
 short of the great Roman's in logical exactitude, hardly 
 falls short of it in poetical ornament, and excels it in a 
 sort of triumphant vivacity which hurries the reader along,
 
 iv.] SATIRICAL AND DIDACTIC POEMS. 76 
 
 whether he will or no. All these three gifts are almost in- 
 differently exemplified in the series of poems now under 
 discussion, and each of them may deserve a little consid- 
 eration before we proceed to give account of the poems 
 themselves. 
 
 The versification of English satire before Dryden had 
 been almost without exception harsh and rugged. There 
 are whole passages of Marston and of Donne, as well as 
 more rarely of Hall, which can only be recognised for verse 
 by the rattle of the rhymes and by a diligent scansion with 
 the finger. Something the same, allowing for the influence 
 of Waller and his school, may be said of Marvell and even 
 of Oldham. Meanwhile, the octosyllabic satire of Cleve- 
 land, Butler, and others, though less violently uncouth than 
 the decasyllabics, was purposely grotesque. There is some 
 difference of opinion as to how far the heroic satirists them- 
 selves were intentionally rugged. Donne, when he chose, 
 could write with perfect sweetness, and Marston could be 
 smooth enough in blank verse. It has been thought that 
 some mistaken classical tradition made the early satirists 
 adopt their jaw -breaking style, and there may be some- 
 thing to be said for this; but I think that regard must, 
 in fairness, also be had to the very imperfect command of 
 the couplet which they possessed. The languid cadence 
 of its then ordinary form was unsuited for satire, and the 
 satirists had not the art of quickening and varying it. 
 Hence the only resource was to make it as like prose as 
 possible. But Dryden was in no such case ; his native 
 gifts and his enormous practice in play- writing had made 
 the couplet as natural a vehicle to him for any form of 
 discourse as blank verse or as plain prose. The form of 
 it, too, which he had most affected, was specially suited for 
 satire. In the first place, this form had, as has already
 
 76 DRYDEN. [CHAP. 
 
 been 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. 
 Even Pope, master as he was of verse, often fell into the 
 fault of isolating his couplets too much, as if he 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 
 moral 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,
 
 IT.] SATIRICAL AND DIDACTIC POEMS. 77 
 
 but they are probably even more contemptible than they 
 are vicious. The well-known line 
 
 " They got a villain, and we lost a fool," 
 
 expresses this attitude admirably, and the attitude in its 
 turn explains the frantic rage which Dryden's satire pro- 
 duced in his opponents. There is yet another peculiarity 
 of this satire in which it stands almost alone. Most satir- 
 ists are usually prone to the error of attacking either mere 
 types, or else individuals too definitely marked as individ- 
 uals. The first is the fault of Regnier and all the minor 
 French satirists ; the second is the fault of Pope. In the 
 first case the point and zest of the thing are apt to be lost, 
 and the satire becomes a declamation against vice and fol- 
 ly in the abstract ; in the second case a suspicion of per- 
 sonal pique comes in, and it is felt that the requirement of 
 art, the disengagement of the general law from the individ- 
 ual instance, is not sufficiently attended to. Regnier per- 
 haps only in Macette, Pope perhaps only in Atticus, escape 
 this Scylla and this Charybdis ; but Dryden rarely or nev- 
 er falls into cither's grasp. His figures are always at once 
 types and individuals. Zimri is at once Buckingham and 
 the idle grand seigneur who plays at politics and at learn- 
 ing; Achitophel at once Shaftesbury and the abstract in- 
 triguer; Shimei at once Bethel and the sectarian politician 
 of all days. It is to be noticed, also, that in drawing these 
 satirical portraits the poet has exercised a singular judgment 
 in selecting his traits. If Absalom and Achitophel be com- 
 pared with the replies it called forth, this is especially no- 
 ticeable. Shadwell, for instance, in the almost incredibly 
 scurrilous libel whicli he put forth in answer to the Medal, 
 accuses Dryden of certain definite misdoings and missay- 
 ings, most of which are unbelievable, while others are in-
 
 78 DRYDEN. [CHAP. 
 
 conclusive. Dryden, on the other hand, in the character 
 of Og, confines himself in the adroitest way to generalities. 
 These generalities are not only much more effective, but 
 also much more difficult of disproval. When, to recur to 
 the already quoted and typical line attacking the unlucky 
 Johnson, Dryden says 
 
 " They got a villain, and we lost a fool," 
 
 it is obviously useless for the person assailed to sit down 
 and write a rejoinder tending to prove that he is neither 
 one nor the other. He might clear himself from the 
 charge of villainy, but only at the inevitable cost of estab- 
 lishing that of folly. But when Shadwell, in unquotable 
 verses, says to Dryden, on this or that day you did such 
 and such a discreditable thing, the reply is obvious. In 
 the first place the charge can be disproved ; in the second 
 it can be disdained. When Dryden himself makes such 
 charges, it is always in a casual and allusive way, as if 
 there were no general dissent as to the truth of his alle- 
 gation, while he takes care to be specially happy in his 
 language. The disgraceful insinuation against Forbes, 
 the famous if irreverent dismissal of Lord Howard of 
 Escrick 
 
 " And canting Nadab let oblivion damn, 
 Who made new porridge for the paschal lamb," 
 
 justify themselves by their form if not by their matter. 
 It has also to be noted that Dryden's facts are rarely dis- 
 putable. The famous passage in which Settle and Shad- 
 well are yoked in a sentence of discriminating damnation 
 is an admirable example of this. It is absolutely true that 
 Settle had a certain faculty of writing, though the matter 
 of his verse was worthless ; and it is absolutely true that
 
 IT.] SATIRICAL AND DIDACTIC POEMS. 79 
 
 Shadwell wrote worse, and was in some respects a duller 
 man, than any person of equal talents placed among Eng- 
 lish men of letters. There could not possibly be a more 
 complete justification of Macflecknoe than the victim's 
 complaint that "he had been represented as an Irish- 
 man, though Dryden knew perfectly well that he had 
 only once been in Ireland, and that was but for a few 
 hours." 
 
 Lastly has to be noticed Dryden's singular faculty of 
 verse argument. He was, of course, by no means the first 
 didactic poet of talent in England. Sir John Davies is 
 usually mentioned specially as his forerunner, and there 
 were others who would deserve notice in a critical history 
 of English poetry. But Dryden's didactic poems are quite 
 unlike anything which came before them, and have never 
 been approached by anything that has come after them. 
 Doubtless they prove nothing ; indeed, the chief of them, 
 The Hind and the Panther, is so entirely desultory that it 
 could not prove anything ; but at the same time they have 
 a remarkable air of proving something. Dryden had, in 
 reality, a considerable touch of the scholastic in his mind. 
 He delights at all times in the formulas of the schools, 
 and his various literary criticisms are frequently very fair 
 specimens of deductive reasoning. The bent of his mind, 
 moreover, was of that peculiar kind which delights in ar- 
 guing a point. Something of this may be traced in the 
 singular variety, not to say inconsistency, even of his liter- 
 ary judgments. He sees, for the time being, only the point 
 which he has set himself to prove, and is quite careless of 
 the fact that he has proved something very different yes- 
 terday, and is very likely to prove something different still 
 to-morrow. But for the purposes of didactic poetry he 
 had special equipments unconnected with his merely logi-
 
 80 DEYDEN. [CHAI-. 
 
 cal power. He was at all times singularly happy and fer- 
 tile in the art of illustration, and of concealing the weak- 
 ness of an argument in the most convincing way, by a 
 happy simile or jest. He steered clear of the rock on 
 which Lucretius has more than once gone nigh to split 
 the repetition of dry formulas and professional terms. In 
 the Hind and Panther, indeed, the argument is, in great 
 part, composed of narrative and satirical portraiture. The 
 Fahle of the Pigeons, the Character of the Buzzard, and a 
 dozen more such things, certainly prove as little as the 
 most determined enemy of the belles lettres could wish. 
 But Religio Laid, which is our best English didactic 
 poem, is not open to this charge, and is really a very 
 good piece of argument. Weaknesses here and there are, 
 of course, adroitly patched over with ornament, but still 
 the whole possesses a very fair capacity of holding water. 
 Here, too, the peculiar character of Dryden's poetic style 
 served him well. He speaks with surely affected depre- 
 ciation of the style of the Religio as " unpolished and 
 rugged." In reality, it is a model of the plainer sort of 
 verse, and nearer to his own admirable prose than anything 
 else that can be cited. 
 
 One thing more, and a thing of the greatest importance, 
 has to be said about Dryden's satirical poems. There 
 never, perhaps, was a satirist who less abused his power for 
 personal ends. He only attacked Settle and Shadwell af- 
 ter both had assailed him in the most virulent and unpro- 
 voked fashion. Many of the minor assailants whom, as 
 we shall see, Absalom and Achitophel raised up against 
 him, he did not so much as notice. On the other hand, 
 no kind of personal grudge can be traced in many of his 
 most famous passages. The character of Zimri was not 
 only perfectly true and just, but was also a fair literary
 
 IT.] SATIRICAL AND DIDACTIC POEMS. 81 
 
 tit-for-tat in return for the Rehearsal ; nor did Bucking- 
 ham's foolish rejoinder provoke the poet to say another 
 word. Last of all, in no part of his satires is there the 
 slightest reflection on Rochester, notwithstanding the dis- 
 graceful conduct of which he had been guilty. Rochester 
 was dead, leaving no heirs and very few friends, so that at 
 any time during the twenty years which Dry den survived 
 him satirical allusion would have been safe and easy. But 
 Dryden was far too manly to war with the dead, and far 
 too manly even to indulge, as his great follower did, in 
 vicious flings at the living. 
 
 Absalom and Achitophel is perhaps, with the exception 
 of the St. Cecilia ode, the best known of all Dryden's 
 poems to modern readers, and there is no need to give any 
 very lengthy account of it, or of the extraordinary skill 
 with which Monmouth is treated. The sketch, even now 
 .about the best existing in prose or verse, of the Popish 
 Plot, the character and speeches of Achitophel, the unap- 
 proached portrait of Zimri, and the final harangue of 
 David, have for generations found their places in every 
 book of elegant extracts, either for general or school use. 
 But perhaps the most characteristic passage of the whole, 
 as indicating the kind of satire which Dryden now intro- 
 duced for the first time, is the passage descriptive of 
 Shimei Slingsby Bethel the Republican sheriff of the 
 city: 
 
 " But he, though bad, is followed by a worse, 
 The wretch, who heaven's anointed dared to curse ; 
 Shimei whose youth did early promise bring 
 Of zeal to God, and hatred to his King 
 Did wisely from expensive sins refrain, 
 And never broke the Sabbath but for gain : 
 Nor ever was he known an oath to vent, 
 Or curse, unless against the government.
 
 82 DRYDEN. [CHAP 
 
 Thus heaping wealth, by the most ready way 
 
 Among the Jews, which was to cheat and pray ; 
 
 The City, to reward his pious hate 
 
 Against his master, chose him magistrate. 
 
 His hand a vare of justice did uphold, 
 
 His neck was loaded with a chain of gold. 
 
 During his office treason was no crime, 
 
 The sons of Belial had a glorious time : 
 
 For Shimei, though not prodigal of pelf, 
 
 Yet loved his wicked neighbour as himself. 
 
 When two or three were gathered to declaim 
 
 Against the monarch of Jerusalem, 
 
 Shimei was always in the midst of them : 
 
 And, if they cursed the King when he was by, 
 
 Would rather curse than break good company. 
 
 If any durst his factious friends accuse, 
 
 He packed a jury of dissenting Jews, 
 
 Whose fellow-feeling in the godly cause 
 
 Would free the suffering saint from human laws: 
 
 For laws are only made to punish those 
 
 Who serve the King, and to protect his foes. 
 
 If any leisure time he had from power, 
 
 Because 'tis sin to misemploy an hour, 
 
 His business was, by writing to persuade, 
 
 That kings were useless, and a clog to trade : 
 
 And that his noble style he might refine, 
 
 No Rechabite more shunned the fumes of wine. 
 
 Chaste were his cellars, and his shrieval board 
 
 The grossness of a city feast abhorred : 
 
 His cooks with long disuse their trade forgot ; 
 
 Cool was his kitchen, though his brains were hot. 
 
 Such frugal virtue malice may accuse, 
 
 But sure 'twas necessary to the Jews : 
 
 For towns, once burnt, such magistrates require, 
 
 As dare not tempt God's providence by fire. 
 
 With spiritual food he fed his servants well, 
 
 But free from flesh, that made the Jews rebel : 
 
 And Moses' laws he held in more account, 
 
 For forty days of fasting in the mount."
 
 iv.] SATIRICAL AND DIDACTIC POEMS. S3 
 
 There had been nothing in the least like this before. 
 The prodigality of irony, the sting in the tail of every 
 couplet, the ingenuity by which the odious charges are 
 made against the victim in the very words almost of the 
 phrases which his party were accustomed to employ, and 
 above all the polish of the language and the verse, and the 
 tone of half -condescending banter, were things of which 
 that time had no experience. The satire was as bitter as 
 Butler's, but less grotesque and less laboured. 
 
 It was not likely that at a time when pamphlet-writing 
 was the chief employment of professional authors, and 
 when the public mind was in the hottest state of excite- 
 ment, such an onslaught as Absalom and Achitophel should 
 remain unanswered. In three weeks from its appearance 
 a parody, entitled Towser the Second, attacking Dryden, 
 was published, the author of which is said to have been 
 Henry Care. A few days later Buckingham proved, 
 with tolerable convincingness, how small had been his 
 own share in the Rehearsal, by putting forth some Po- 
 etical Reflections of the dreariest kind. Him followed an 
 anonymous Nonconformist with A Whip for the Fool's 
 Back, a performance which exposed his own back to a 
 much more serious flagellation in the preface to the 
 Medal. Next came Samuel. Pordage's Azaria and Hushai. 
 This work of " Lame Mephibosheth, the wizard's son," is 
 weak enough in other respects, but shows that Dryden had 
 already taught several of his enemies how to write. Last- 
 ly, Settle published Absalom Senior, perhaps the worst of 
 all the 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
 
 84 DRYDEN. [CHAP. 
 
 the debt which the English language owes to him, unless 
 he has read at last some of them in full. 
 
 The popularity of Absalom and Achitophel was immense, 
 and its sale rapid ; but the main object, the overthrowing 
 of Shaftesbury, was not accomplished, and a certain tri- 
 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 Laeta- 
 mur. Thereupon Dry den wrote the Medal. A very 
 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 enough 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 Medal, which, when finished, was rewarded 
 with a hundred broad pieces. The last part of the story is 
 not very credible, for the 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 he laid himself 
 open to a damaging repartee. However, the story is not 
 impossible, and that is all that can be said of it. The 
 Medal came out in March, 1682. It is a much shorter and 
 a much graver poem than Absalom and Achitophel, extend- 
 ing to little more than 300 lines, and containing none of 
 the picturesque personalities which had 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 of Absalom and Achitophel, but not less care-
 
 iv.] SATIRICAL AND DIDACTIC POEMS. 85 
 
 ful. It is noticeable, too, that the Medal contains a line 
 of fourteen syllables, 
 
 " Thou 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 
 Shelley's prefatory apology. 
 
 The direct challenge to the Whigs 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 Dryden's Satire to his Muse; and 
 there were many others. But one of them, the Medal of 
 John ayes, is 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, <fcc., <fec., 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.
 
 86 DRYDEN. [CHAP. 
 
 Thomas Shadwell was a Norfolk man, and about ten 
 years Dryden's junior. Ever since the year 1668 he had 
 been writing plays (chiefly comedies) and hanging about 
 town, and Dryden and he had been in a manner friends. 
 They had joined Crowne in the task of writing down the 
 Empress of Morocco, and it does not appear that Dryden 
 had ever given Shadwell 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 Shadwell had re- 
 ceived a prologue from Dryden, and the outbreak itself was 
 due to purely political causes, though no doubt Shadwell, 
 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 house 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 
 which, 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, &c., 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
 
 IT.] SATIRICAL AND DIDACTIC POEMS. 87 
 
 work 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. He was thus given over entirely 
 into Dryden's hands, and the unmatched satire of Mac- 
 Flecknoe was the result. 
 
 Flecknoe, 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. He 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 twenty 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 Flecknoe 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
 
 88 DRYDEN. [CHAT. 
 
 Who stands confirmed in full stupidity. 
 
 The rest to some faint meaning make pretence, 
 
 But Shadwell never deviates into sense. 
 
 Some beams of wit on other souls may fall, 
 
 Strike through and make a lucid interval ; 
 
 But Shadwell's genuine night admits no ray, 
 
 His rising fogs prevail upon the day. 
 
 Besides, his goodly fabric fills the eye, 
 
 And seems designed for thoughtless majesty ; 
 
 Thoughtless as monarch oaks, that shade the plain, 
 
 And, spread hi solemn state, supinely reign.' " 
 
 MacFlecknoe was published in October, 1682, but Dry- 
 den had not done with Shadwell. A month later came 
 out the second part of Absalom and Achitophel, in which 
 Nahum Tate took up the story. Tate copied the versifi- 
 cation of his master with a good deal of success, though, 
 as it is known that Dryden gave strokes almost all through 
 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 verae, 
 Who by my muse to all succeeding times 
 Shall live, in spite of their own doggrel rhymes."
 
 iv.l SATIRICAL AND DIDACTIC POEMS. 89 
 
 The coarseness of speech before alluded to makes it im- 
 possible to quote these characters as a whole, but a cento 
 is fortunately possible with little loss of vigour. 
 
 " Doeg, though without knowing how or why, 
 Made still a blundering 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, 
 He was too warm on picking-work to dwell, 
 But fagoted his notions as they fell, 
 And, if they rhymed 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 transprose; 
 'Twere pity treason at his door to lay, 
 Who makes heaven's gate a lock to its own key; 
 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 hi Og, 
 For every inch, that is not fool, is rogue. 
 The midwife laid her hand on his thick skull, 
 With this prophetic blessing Be thou dull ! 
 G 5 1
 
 90 DRYDEN. [CHAP. 
 
 Drink, swear, and roar ; forbear no lewd delight 
 
 Fit for thy bulk, do anything but write. 
 
 Thou art of lasting make, like thoughtless men, 
 
 A strong nativity but for the pen ; 
 
 Eat opium, mingle arsenic in thy drink, 
 
 Still thou mayest live, avoiding pen and ink. 
 
 I see, I see, 'tis counsel given in vain, 
 
 For treason, botched in rhyme, will be thy bane ; 
 
 Rhyme is the rock on which thou art to wreck, 
 
 'Tis fatal to thy fame and to thy neck. 
 
 Why should thy metre good King David blast ? 
 
 A psalm of his will surely be thy last. 
 
 A double noose thou on thy 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. 
 
 Hadst thou the glories of thy king exprest, 
 
 Thy praises had been satire at the best ; 
 
 But thou in clumsy verse, unlickt, unpointed, 
 
 Hast shamefully defied the Lord's anointed : 
 
 I will not rake the dunghill of thy crimes, 
 
 For 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 this their blessing be, 
 
 To talk like Doeg, and to write like thee." 
 
 No one, I think, can fail to recognise here the qualities 
 which have already been set forth as specially distinguish- 
 ing Dryden'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 verses in especial might almost be taken as a model 
 of satirical verse.
 
 IT.] SATIRICAL AND DIDACTIC POEMS. 91 
 
 These verses were the last that Dryden wrote in the 
 directly satirical way. His 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 with the second part of Absalom 
 and Achitophel appeared Religio Laid. 
 
 Scott has described Religio Laid as one of the most 
 admirable poems in the language, which in some respects 
 it undoubtedly is ; but it is also one of the most singular. 
 That a man who had never previously displayed any par- 
 ticular interest in theological questions, and who had reach- 
 ed the age of fifty - one, with a reputation derived, until 
 quite recently, in the main from the composition of loose 
 plays, should appear before his public of pleasure-seekers 
 with a serious argument in verse on the credibility of the 
 Christian religion, and the merits of the Anglican form 
 of doctrine and church government, would nowadays be 
 something more than a nine days' wonder. In Dryden's 
 time it was somewhat less surprising. The spirit of theo- 
 logical controversy was bred in the bone of the seventeenth 
 century. It will always remain an instance of the subor- 
 dination in Macaulay of the judicial to the advocating fac- 
 ulty, that he who knew the time so well should have ad- 
 duced the looseness of Dryden's plays as an argument 
 against the sincerity of his conversion. It is quite certain 
 that James the Second was both a man of loose life and 
 of thoroughly sincere religious belief ; it is by no means 
 certain that his still more profligate brother's unbelief was
 
 92 DRYDEN. [CHAP. 
 
 not a mere assumption, and generally it may be noted that 
 the biographies of the time never seem to infer any con- 
 nexion between irregularity of life and unsoundness of re- 
 ligious faith. I have already shown some cause for dis- 
 believing the stories, or rather the assertions, of Dryden's 
 profligacy, though even these would not be conclusive 
 against his sincerity ; but I believe that it would be diffi- 
 cult to trace any very active concern in him for things 
 religious before the Popish Plot. Various circumstances 
 already noticed may then have turned his mind to the sub- 
 ject, and that active and vigorous mind when it once at- 
 tacked a subject rarely deserted it. Consistency was in no 
 matter Dryden's great characteristic, and the arguments of 
 Religio Laid are not more inconsistent with the arguments 
 of The Hind and the Panther than the handling of the 
 question of rhymed plays in the Essay of Dramatic Poesy 
 is with the arguments against them in the prefaces and 
 dissertations subsequent to Aurengzebe. 
 
 It has sometimes been sought to give Religio Laici a 
 political as well as a religious sense, and to connect it in 
 this way with the series of political satires, with the Duke 
 of Guise, and with the subsequent Hind and Panther. The 
 connexion, however, seems to me to be faint. The strug- 
 gles of the Popish Plot had led to the contests on the Ex- 
 clusion Bill on the one hand, and they had reopened the 
 controversial question between the Churches of England 
 and Rome on the other. They had thus in different ways 
 given rise to Absalom and Achitophel and to Religio Laici, 
 but the two poems have no community but a community 
 of origin. Indeed, the suspicion of any political design 
 in Religio Laici is not only groundless but contradictory. 
 The views of James on the subject were known to every 
 one, and those of Charles himself are not likely to have
 
 IT.] SATIRICAL AND DIDACTIC POEMS. 93 
 
 been wholly hidden from an assiduous follower of the court, 
 and a friend of the king's greatest intimates, like Dryden. 
 Still less is it necessary to take account of the absurd sug- 
 gestion that Dryden wrote the poem as a stepping-stone to 
 orders and to ecclesiastical preferment. He has definitely 
 denied that he had at any time thoughts of entering the 
 church, and such thoughts are certainly not likely to have 
 occurred to him at the age of fifty. The poem, therefore, 
 as it seems to me, must be regarded as a genuine produc- 
 tion, expressing the author's first thoughts on a subject 
 which had just presented itself to him as interesting and 
 important. Such first thoughts in a mind like Dryden's, 
 which was by no means a revolutionary mind, and which 
 was disposed to accept the church as part and parcel of 
 the Tory system of principles, were pretty certain to take 
 the form of an apologetic harmonizing of difficulties and 
 doubts. The author must have been familiar with the 
 usual objections of the persons vaguely called Hobbists, 
 and with the counter - objections of the Romanists. He 
 takes them both, and he makes the best of them. 
 
 In its form and arrangement Religio Laid certainly de- 
 serves the praise which critics have given it. Dryden's 
 overtures are very generally among the happiest parts of 
 his poems, and the opening ten or twelve lines of this 
 poem are among his very best. The bold enjambement of 
 the first two couplets, with the striking novelty of cadence 
 given by the sharply cut caesura of the third line, is one 
 of his best metrical effects, and the actual picture of the 
 cloudy night-sky and the wandering traveller matches the 
 technical beauty of the verse. The rest of the poem is 
 studiously bare of ornament, and almost exclusively argu- 
 mentative. There is and could be nothing specially novel 
 or extraordinarily forcible in the arguments ; but they are
 
 4 DRYDEN. [CHAP. 
 
 put with that ease and apparent cogency which have been 
 already remarked upon as characterizing all Dryden's di- 
 dactic work. The poem is not without touches of humour, 
 and winds up with a characteristic but not ill-humoured 
 fling at the unhappy Shadwell. 
 
 Dryden's next productions of importance were two odes 
 of the so-called Pindaric kind. The example of Cowley 
 had made this style very popular ; but Dryden himself had 
 not practised it. The years 1685-6 gave him occasion to 
 do so. His Threnodia Augustalis, or funeral poem on 
 Charles the Second, may be taken as the chief official pro- 
 duction of his laureateship. The difficulties of such per- 
 formances are well known, and the reproaches brought 
 against their faults are pretty well stereotyped. Threno- 
 dia Augustalis is not exempt from the faults of its kind ; 
 but it has merits which for that kind are decidedly unu- 
 sual. The stanza which so adroitly at once praises and 
 satirizes Charles's patronage of literary men is perhaps the 
 best, and certainly the best known ; but the termination 
 is also fine. Of very different merit, however, is the Ode 
 to the Memory of Mm. Anne Killegrew. This elegy is 
 among the best of many noble funeral poems which Dry- 
 den wrote. The few lines on the Marquis of Winchester, 
 the incomparable address to Oldham " Farewell, too little 
 and too lately known " and at a later date the translated 
 epitaph on Claverhouse, are all remarkable ; but the Kil- 
 legrew elegy is of far greater importance. It is curious 
 that in these days of selections no one has attempted a 
 collection of the best regular and irregular odes in English. 
 There are not many of them, but a small anthology could 
 be made, reaching from Milton to Mr. Swinburne, which 
 would contain some remarkable poetry. Among these 
 the ode to Anne Killegrew would assuredly hold a high
 
 TV.] SATIRICAL AND DIDACTIC POEMS. 95 
 
 place. Johnson pronounced it the noblest in the language, 
 and in his time it certainly was, unless Lycidas be called 
 an ode. Since its time there has been Wordsworth's great 
 immortality ode, and certain beautiful but fragmentary 
 pieces of Shelley which might be so classed ; but till our 
 own days nothing else which can match this. The first 
 stanza may be pronounced absolutely faultless, and inca- 
 pable of improvement. As a piece of concerted music in 
 verse it has not a superior, and Warton's depreciation of it 
 is a curious instance of the lack of catholic taste which 
 has so often marred English criticism of poetry : 
 
 " Thou youngest virgin-daughter of the skies, 
 
 Made in the last promotion of the blessed ; 
 Whose palms, new plucked from Paradise, 
 In spreading branches more sublimely rise, 
 
 Rich with immortal green above the rest : 
 Whether, adopted to some neighbouring star, 
 Thou rollest above us, in thy wandering race, 
 
 Or, in procession fixed and regular, 
 
 Movest with the heaven's majestic pace ; 
 
 Or, called to more superior bliss, 
 Thou treadest with seraphims the vast abyss : 
 Whatever happy region is thy place, 
 Cease thy celestial song a little space ; 
 Thou wilt have time enough for hymns divine, 
 
 Since Heaven's eternal year is thine. 
 Hear, then, a mortal Muse thy praise rehearse, 
 
 In no ignoble verse ; 
 
 But such as thy own voice did practise here, 
 When thy first fruits of Poesy were given, 
 To make thyself a welcome inmate there ; 
 
 While yet a young probationer, 
 And candidate of heaven." 
 
 These smaller pieces were followed at some interval by 
 the remarkable poem which is Dryden's chief work, if
 
 96 DRYDEN. [CHAP. 
 
 bulk and originality of plan are taken into consideration. 
 There is a tradition as to the place of composition of The 
 Hind and the Panther, which in many respects deserves 
 to be true, though there is apparently no direct testimo- 
 ny to its truth. It is said to have been written at Rush- 
 ton not far from Kettering, in the poet's native county. 
 Rushton had been (though it had passed from them at 
 this time) the seat of the Treshams, one of the staunchest 
 families to the old faith which Dryden had just embraced. 
 They had held another seat in Northamptonshire Lyve- 
 den, within a few miles of Aldwinkle and of all the scenes 
 of the poet's youth ; and both at Lyveden and Rushton, 
 architectural evidences of their devotion to the cause sur- 
 vive in the shape of buildings covered with symbolical 
 carvings. The neighbourhood of Rushton, too, is singu- 
 larly consonant to the scenery of the poem. It lay just 
 on the southern fringe of the great forest of Rocking- 
 ham, and the neighbourhood is still wonderfully timbered, 
 though most of the actual wood owes its existence to the 
 planting energy of Duke John of Montagu, half a century 
 after Dryden's time. It would certainly not have been 
 easy to conceive a better place for the conception and ex- 
 ecution of this sylvan poem ; but, as a matter of fact, it 
 seems impossible to obtain any definite evidence of the 
 connexion between the two. 
 
 The Hind and the Panther is in plan a sort of combina- 
 tion of Absalom and Ackitophel, and of Religio Laid, but 
 its three parts are by no means homogeneous. The first 
 part, which is perhaps, on the whole, the best, contains the 
 well-known apportionment of the characters of different 
 beasts to the different churches and sects ; the second con- 
 tains the major part of the controversy between the Hind 
 and the Panther ; the third, which is as long as the other
 
 iv.] SATIRICAL AND DIDACTIC POEMS. 97 
 
 two put together, continues this controversy, but before 
 very long diverges into allegorical and personal satire. 
 The story of the Swallows, which the Panther tells, is one 
 of the liveliest of all Dryden's pieces of narration, and it 
 is not easy to give the palm between it and the Hind's 
 retort, the famous fable of the Doves, in which Burnet is 
 caricatured with hardly less vigour and not much less truth 
 than Buckingham and Shadwell in the satires proper. 
 This told, the poem ends abruptly. 
 
 The Hind and the Panther was certain to provoke con- 
 troversy, especially from the circumstances, presently to 
 be discussed, under which it was written. Dryden had 
 two points especially vulnerable, the one being personal, 
 the other literary. It was inevitable that his argument in 
 Religio Laid should be contrasted with his argument in 
 The Hind and the Panther. It was inevitable, on the 
 other hand, that the singularities of construction in the 
 latter poem should meet with animadversion. No de- 
 fender of The Hind and the Panther, indeed, has ever at- 
 tempted to defend it as a regular or classically proportion- 
 ed piece of work. Its main theme is, as always with Dry- 
 den, merely a canvas whereon to embroider all sorts of 
 episodes, digressions, and ornaments. Yet his adversaries, 
 in their blind animosity, went a great deal too far in the 
 matter of condemnation, and showed themselves entirely 
 ignorant of the history and requirements of allegory in 
 general, and the beast -fable in particular. Dryden, like 
 many other great men of letters, had an admiration for 
 the incomparable story of Reynard the fox. It is charac- 
 teristic, both of his enemies and of the age, that this was 
 made a serious argument against him. This is specially 
 done in a celebrated little pamphlet which has perhaps had 
 the honour of being more overpraised than anything else 
 5*
 
 98 DRYDEN. [CHAP. iv. 
 
 of its kind in English literature. If any one wishes to 
 appraise the value of the story that Dryden was serious- 
 ly vexed by The Hind and the Panther transversed to the 
 Story of the City and Country Mouse, he cannot do better 
 than read that production. It is difficult to say what was 
 or was not unworthy of Montague, whose published poems 
 certainly do not authorize us to say that he wrote below 
 himself on this occasion, but it assuredly is in the high- 
 est degree unworthy of Prior. Some tolerable parody of 
 Dryden's own work, a good deal of heavy joking closely 
 modelled on the Rehearsal, and assigning to Mr. Bayes 
 plenty of " i'gads " and the like catchwords, make up the 
 staple of this piece, in which Mr. Christie has discovered 
 "true wit," and the Quarterly Reviewer already cited, 
 "exquisite satire." Among the severest of Messrs. Mon- 
 tague and Prior's strictures is a sarcastic reference to Rey- 
 nard the fox. What was good enough for Dryden, for 
 Goethe, and for Mr. Carlyle was childish rubbish to these 
 brisk young critics. The story alluded to says that Dry- 
 den wept at the attack, and complained that two young 
 fellows to whom he had been civil should thus have treated 
 an old man. Now Dryden certainly did not consider him- 
 self an old man at this time, and he had " seen many others," 
 as an admirable Gallicism has it, in the matter of attacks. 
 
 One more poem, and one only, remains to be noticed in 
 this division. This was the luckless Britannia Rediviva, 
 written on the birth of the most ill-starred of all Princes 
 of Wales, born in the purple. It is in couplets, and as no 
 work of Dryden's written at this time could be worthless, 
 it contains some vigorous verse, but on the whole it is by 
 far the worst of his serious, poems ; and it was no mis- 
 fortune for his fame that the Revolution left it out of 
 print for the rest of the author's life.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 LIFE FROM 1680 TO 1688. 
 
 THAT portion of Dryden's life which extends from the 
 Popish Plot to the Revolution is of so much more impor- 
 tance for the estimate of his personal character, as well as 
 for that of his literary genius, than any other period of 
 equal length, that it has seemed well to devote a separate 
 chapter to the account and discussion of it. The question 
 of Dryden's conversion, its motives and its sincerity, has 
 of itself been more discussed than any other point in his 
 life, and on the opinions to be formed of it must depend 
 the opinion which, on the whole, we form of him as a 
 man. According to one view his conduct during these 
 years places him among the class which paradox delights 
 to describe as the "greatest and meanest of mankind," the 
 men who compensate for the admirable qualities of their 
 heads by the despicable infirmities of their hearts. Ac- 
 cording to another, his conduct, if not altogether wise, 
 contains nothing discreditable to him, and some things 
 which may be reasonably described as very much the con- 
 trary. Twenty years of play-writing had, in all probabil- 
 ity, somewhat disgusted Dryden with the stage, and his 
 Rose-Alley misfortune had shown him that even a scrupu- 
 lous abstinence from meddling in politics or in personal 
 satire would not save him from awkward consequences.
 
 100 DRYDEN. [CHAP. 
 
 His lucrative contract with the players had, beyond all 
 doubt, ceased, and his official salaries, as we shall see, were 
 paid with the usual irregularity. At the same time, as has 
 been already pointed out, his turn of thought probably led 
 him to take more interest in practical politics and in relig- 
 ious controversy than had been previously the case. The 
 additional pension, which as we have seen he had received, 
 made his nominal income sufficient, and instead of writing 
 plays invita Minerva he took to writing satires and argu- 
 mentative pieces to please himself. Other crumbs of royal 
 favour fell to his lot from time to time. The broad pieces 
 received for the Medal are very probably apocryphal, but 
 there is no doubt that his youngest son received, in Feb- 
 ruary, 1683, a presentation to the Charterhouse from the 
 king. This presentation it was which he was said to have 
 received from Shaftesbury, as the price of the mitigating 
 lines (" Yet fame deserved easy of access ") inserted in 
 the later edition of Absalom and Achitophel. He was 
 also indefatigable in undertaking and performing minor 
 literary work of various kinds, which will be noticed later. 
 Nor, indeed, could he afford to be idle ; his pensions were 
 often unpaid, and it is just after the great series of his 
 satires closed that we get a glimpse of this fact. A letter 
 is extant to Rochester Hyde, not Wilmot complaining 
 of long arrears, and entreating some compensation in the 
 shape of a place in the Customs, or the Excise, besides 
 an instalment at least of the debt. It is this letter which 
 contains the well-known phrase, " It is enough for one age 
 to have neglected Mr. Cowley and starved Mr. Butler." As 
 far as documentary evidence goes, the answer to the appeal 
 was a Treasury warrant for 75?., the arrears being over 
 1000Z., and an appointment to a collectorship of Customs 
 in the port of London, with unknown emoluments. The
 
 T.J LIFE FROM 1680 TO 1688. 101 
 
 only definite sum mentioned is a nominal one of 51. a year 
 as collector of duties on cloth. But it is not likely that 
 cloth was the only subject of Dryden's labours, and in 
 those days the system of fees and perquisites flourished. 
 This Customs appointment was given in 1683. 
 
 To the condition of Dryden's sentiments in the last 
 years of Charles' reign Religio Laid must be taken as the 
 surest, and, indeed, as the only clue. There is no proof 
 that this poem was composed to serve any political pur- 
 pose, and indeed it could not have served any, neither 
 James nor Charles being likely to be propitiated by a de- 
 fence, however moderate and rationalizing, of the Church 
 of England. It is not dedicated to any patron, and seems 
 to have been an altogether spontaneous expression of what 
 was passing in the poet's mind. A careful study of the 
 poem, instead of furnishing arguments against the sincer- 
 ity of his subsequent conduct, furnishes, I think, on the 
 contrary, arguments which are very strongly in its favour. 
 It could have, as has just been said, no purpose of pleasing 
 a lay patron, for there was none to be pleased by it. It is 
 not at all likely to have commended itself to a clerical pa- 
 tron, because of its rationalizing tone, its halting adop- 
 tion of the Anglican Church as a kind of makeshift, and its 
 heterodox yearnings after infallibility. These last, indeed, 
 are among the most strongly-marked features of the piece, 
 and point most clearly in the direction which the poet 
 afterwards took. 
 
 " Such an omniscient church we wish indeed, 
 'Twere worth both Testaments, cast in the Creed," 
 
 is an awkward phrase for a sound divine, or a dutifully 
 acquiescing layman; but it is exactly the phrase which 
 might be expected from a man who was on the slope from
 
 102 DRYDEN. [CHAT. 
 
 placid caring for none of these things to a more or less 
 fervent condition of membership of an infallible church. 
 The tenor of the whole poem, as it seems to me, is the 
 same. The author, in his character of high Tory and 
 orthodox Englishman, endeavours to stop himself at the 
 point which the Anglican Church marks with a thus far 
 and no farther ; but, in a phrase which has no exact Eng- 
 lish equivalent, nous le voyons venir. It is quite evident 
 that if he continues to feel anything like a lively interest 
 in the problems at stake, he will go farther still. He did 
 go farther, and has been accordingly railed against for 
 many generations. But I do not hesitate to put the ques- 
 tion to the present generation in a very concrete form. 
 Is Dry den's critic nowadays prepared to question the sin- 
 cerity of Cardinal Newman ? If he is, I have no objection 
 to his questioning the sincerity of Dryden. But what is 
 sauce for the nineteenth-century goose is surely sauce for 
 the seventeenth -century gander. The post - conversion 
 writings of the Cardinal are not less superficially incon- 
 sistent with the Tracts for the Times and the Oxford 
 Sermons, than the Hind and the Panther is with Religio 
 Laid. 
 
 A hyperbole has been in some sort necessary in order to 
 rebut the very unjust aspersions which two of the most 
 popular historians of the last thirty years have thrown on 
 Dryden. But I need hardly say, that though the glory of 
 Oxford in the first half of the nineteenth century is a fair 
 argumentative parallel to the glory of Cambridge in the 
 second half of the seventeenth, the comparison is not in- 
 tended to be forced. I believe Dryden to have been, in 
 the transactions of the years 1685 7, thoroughly sincere 
 as far as conscious sincerity went, but of a certain amount 
 of unconscious insincerity I am by no means disposed to
 
 v.] LIFE FROM 1680 TO 1688. 103 
 
 acquit him. If I judge his character aright, no English 
 man of letters was ever more thoroughly susceptible to 
 the spirit and influence of his time. Dryden was essen- 
 tially a literary man, and was disposed rather to throw 
 himself into the arms of any party than into those of one 
 so hopelessly unliterary as the ultra-Liberal and ultra-Prot- 
 estant party of the seventeenth century was. He was, 
 moreover, a professed servant of the public, or as we should 
 put it in these days, he had the journalist spirit. Fortu- 
 nately and it is for everybody who has to do with litera- 
 ture the most fortunate sign of the times it is not now 
 necessary for any one to do violence to a single opinion, 
 even to a single crotchet of his own, in order to make his 
 living by his pen. It was not so in Dryden's days, and 
 it is fully believable that a sense that he was about to be 
 on the winning side may have assisted his rapid determina- 
 tion from Hobbism or Halifaxism to Romanist orthodoxy. 
 I am the more disposed to this allowance because it seems 
 to me that Dryden's principal decrier was in need of a 
 similar charity. Lord Macaulay is at present a glory of 
 the Whigs. If there had been an equal opening when he 
 was a young man for distinction and profit as a Tory, for 
 early retirement on literary pursuits with a competence, 
 and for all the other things which he most desired, is it 
 quite so certain that he would not have been of the other 
 persuasion? I have heard persons much more qualified 
 than I am to decide on the characteristics of pure Lib- 
 eralism energetically repudiate Macaulay's claim to be an 
 apostle thereof. Yet I, for my part, have not the least 
 idea of challenging his sincerity. It seems to me that he 
 would have been at least wise if he had refrained, consid- 
 ering the insufficiency of his knowledge, from challenging 
 the sincerity of Dryden.
 
 104 DRYDEN. [CHAP. 
 
 - How insufficient the knowledge was the labours of sub- 
 sequent investigators have sufficiently shown. Mr. Bell 
 proved that the pension supposed to be conferred by 
 James as a reward for Dryden's apostasy was simply a re- 
 newal of the pension granted by Charles years before ; that 
 it preceded instead of following the conversion ; and that 
 the sole reason of its having to be renewed at all was 
 technical merely. As for the argument about Dryden's 
 being previously indifferent to religion, and having written 
 indecent plays, the arguer has himself demolished his argu- 
 ment in a famous passage about James's own morals, and 
 the conduct of the non-resistance doctors of the Anglican 
 Church. Burnet's exaggerated denunciations of Dryden 
 as a " monster of impurity of all sorts," <fcc., are sufficiently 
 traceable to Shadwell's shameless libels and to the Char- 
 acter of the Buzzard. It is true that the allegations of 
 Malone and Scott, to the effect that Lady Elizabeth had 
 been already converted, and Charles Dryden likewise, rest 
 on a very slender foundation ; but these are matters which 
 have very little to do with the question in any case. The 
 real problem can be very easily stated. Given a man to 
 the general rectitude of whose private conduct all quali- 
 fied witnesses testify, while it is only questioned by un- 
 scrupulous libellers who gained, as can be proved, not 
 one penny by his conversion, and though he subsequently 
 lost heavily by it, maintained it unswervingly who can 
 be shown, from the most unbiassed of his previous writ- 
 ings, to have been in exactly the state of mind which was 
 likely to result in such a proceeding, and of whose insin- 
 cerity there is no proof of the smallest value what rea- 
 son is there for suspecting him? The literary greatness 
 of the man has nothing to do with the question. The 
 fact is that he has been convicted, or rather sentenced, on
 
 v.] LIFE FROM 1680 TO 1688. 10 
 
 evidence which would not suffice to convict Elkanah Settle 
 or Samuel Pordage. 
 
 In particular, we have a right to insist upon the absolute 
 consistency of Dryden's subsequent conduct. Mr. Christie, 
 who, admirably as for the most part he judges Dryden's 
 literary work, was steeled against his personal character 
 by the fact that Dryden attacked his idol, Shaftesbury, 
 thinks that a recantation would have done him no good 
 had he tried it. The opinion is, to say the least, hasty. 
 Had Dryden proffered the oaths to William and Mary, as 
 poet laureate and historiographer, it is very hard to see 
 what power could have deprived him of his two hundred 
 a year. The extra hundred of pension might have been 
 forfeited, but the revenues of these places and of that in 
 the Customs must have been safe, unless the new Govern- 
 ment chose to incur what it was of all things desirous to 
 prevent, the charge of persecution and intolerance. When 
 the Whigs were so desperately hard up for literary talent 
 that Dorset, in presenting Shadwell for the laureateship, 
 had to pay him the very left-handed compliment of say- 
 ing that, if he was not the best poet, he was at least the 
 honestest i. e., the most orthodoxly Whiggish man, when 
 hardly a single distinguished man of letters save Locke, 
 who was nothing of a pamphleteer, was on their side, is 
 it to be supposed for a moment that Dryden would not 
 have been welcome ? The argument against him recalls a 
 curious and honourable story which Johnson tells of Smith, 
 the Bohemian author of Phaedra and Hippolytus. Addi- 
 son, who, as all the world knows, was a friend of Smith's, 
 and who was always ready to do his friends good turns, 
 procured for Smith, from some Whig magnates, a commis- 
 sion for a History of the Revolution. To the disgust of 
 
 the mediator, Smith demurred. " What," he said, " am I 
 H 8
 
 106 DRYDEN. [CHAP. 
 
 to do with the character of Lord Sunderland ?" Addison 
 is said to have replied, in deep but illogical wrath, " When 
 were you drunk last?" I feel extremely inclined to put 
 Smith's query to the persons who maintain that it would 
 have been impossible for Dryden to turn his coat at the 
 Revolution. What are they going to do with the charac- 
 ter of Lord Sunderland? In the age not merely of Sun- 
 derland, but of Marlborough, of Godolphin, of Russell, of 
 a hundred other treble-dyed traitors, it surely cannot be 
 contended that the first living writer of English would 
 have been rejected by those who had need of his services. 
 Now we know that, so far from making any overtures of 
 submission, Dryden was stiff in his Jacobitism and in his 
 faith. Nothing in his life is more celebrated than his per- 
 sistent refusal to give way to Tonson's entreaties to dedi- 
 cate the Virgil to William, and his whole post-Revolution 
 works may be searched in vain for a single stroke intended 
 to curry favour with the powers that were. If, as he puts 
 it in a letter still extant, they would take him on his lit- 
 erary merits, he would not refuse their offers ; but as to 
 yielding an inch of his principles, he would not. And his 
 works amply justify the brave words. It is surely hard 
 measure to go out of one's way to upbraid with wanton 
 or venal apostasy one to whose sincerity there is such 
 complete testimony, both a priori and a posteriori, as this. 
 Except the Hind and the Panther, no work inspired by 
 his new religious sentiments did Dryden much credit, or, 
 it would appear, brought him much profit. James was not 
 a particularly generous master, though it is probable that 
 the laureate -historiographer -collector received his dues 
 much more punctually under his orderly administration 
 than in the days of his spendthrift brother. The works 
 upon which the court put Dryden were not very happily
 
 Y.J LIFE FROM 1680 TO 1688. 107 
 
 chosen, nor in all cases very happily executed. His defence 
 of the reasons which had converted Anne Hyde is about 
 the worst of his prose works, and was handled (in the 
 rough controversial fashion of the day) very damagingly 
 by Stillingflcet. A translation of a work of Varillas' on 
 ecclesiastical history was announced but never published ; 
 and, considering the worthlessness of Varillas as a histori- 
 an, it is just as well. The Life of St. Francis Xavier, dedi- 
 cated to the queen, was better worth doing, and was well 
 done. It is curious that in this dedication occurs one of 
 those confident anticipations of the birth of the young 
 Pretender, which after the event were used by zealous 
 Protestants as arguments for the spuriousness of the child. 
 These and minor works show that Dryden, as indeed might 
 be expected, was in favour at court, and was made use of 
 by the economical and pious rulers of England. But of 
 any particular benefit reaped by him from his conversion 
 there is no hint whatever ; in some respects, indeed, it did 
 him harm. His two youngest sons, who had followed their 
 father's change of faith, were elected about this time to 
 scholarships at the universities, but were prevented, appar- 
 ently by their religion, from going into residence. 
 
 The mere loss of education and prospects for his children 
 was, however, a trifle to what Dryden had to undergo at 
 the Revolution. It is probable that this event was almost 
 as much a surprise to him as to James himself. But how- 
 ever severe the blow might be, it was steadily borne. The 
 period at which the oaths had to be taken to the new 
 Government came, and Dryden did not take them. This 
 vacated at once his literary posts and his place in the Cus- 
 toms, if, as there seems every reason to believe, he held it 
 up to the time. His position was now exceedingly serious. 
 He was nearly sixty years of age. His patrimony was
 
 108 DRYDEN. [CHAP. 
 
 but small, and such addition to it as he had received with 
 Lady Elizabeth did not exceed a few scores of pounds an- 
 nually. He had three sons grown to man's estate, and all 
 the more difficult to provide for that their religion inca- 
 pacitated them from almost every profitable pursuit in their 
 native country. He himself had long, save in one trifling 
 instance, broken his relation with the stage, the most lu- 
 crative opening for literary work. He was a marked man, 
 far more obnoxious personally to many of the ruling party 
 than Milton had been thirty years before, when he thought 
 it necessary to go into " abscondence." The very gains of 
 the theatre were not what they had been, unless they were 
 enhanced by assiduous visits to patrons and dedicatees, a 
 degrading performance to which Dryden never would con- 
 sent. Loss of fortune, of prospects, and of powerful friends 
 was accompanied in Dryden's case by the most galling an- 
 noyances to his self-love. His successor in the laureateship 
 was none other than Shadwell, whom he had so bitterly 
 satirized, whom he had justly enough declared able to do 
 anything but write, and who was certain to exult over 
 him with all the triumph of a coarse and vindictive nature. 
 Dryden, however, came out of the trial admirably. He had, 
 indeed, some staunch friends in both political parties the 
 Dorsets and the Leveson-Gowers being as true to him as 
 the Rochesters and the Ormonds. But his main resource 
 now, as all through his life, was his incomparable literary 
 faculty, his splendid capacity for work, and his dogged op- 
 position to the assaults of fortune. In the twelve years 
 of life which remained to him he built up his fortune and 
 maintained it anew, not merely by assiduous practice of 
 those forms of literature in which he had already won 
 renown, but by exercising yet again his marvellous talent 
 for guessing the taste of the time, and striking out new
 
 v.] LIFE FROM 1680 TO 1688. 109 
 
 lines to please it. Just as no one from Annus Mirabilis 
 and Aurengzebe could have divined Absalom and Achito- 
 phel and the Hind and the Panther, so no one, except on 
 the principle that all things were now possible to Dryden, 
 could have divined from Absalom and Achitophel and the 
 Hind and the Panther either Palamon and Arcite or the 
 translation of Virgil. 
 
 Some minor works of Dryden's not mentioned in the 
 last chapter, nor falling under the heads to be noticed in 
 subsequent chapters, may here deserve notice. Some time 
 or other in the reign of James the Second, Dryden wrote 
 to Etherege a poetical epistle, which is its author's only 
 attempt in the easy octosyllabic verse, which Butler had 
 just used with such brilliant success, and which Prior was 
 in a more polished if less vigorous form to use with suc- 
 cess almost equally brilliant a few years later. " Gentle 
 George " Etherege deserved the compliments which Dry- 
 den paid him more than once, and it is only to be wished 
 that the poet's communications with him, whether in verse 
 or prose, had been more frequent. Had they been so, we 
 might have been able to solve what is now one of the 
 most curious problems of English literary history. Though 
 Etherege was a man of fashion, of literary importance, and 
 of a distinguished position in diplomacy he was English 
 minister at Ratisbon, where Dryden addresses him only 
 the circumstances and not the date of his death are known. 
 It is said that in seeing his friends downstairs he over- 
 balanced himself and was taken up dead ; but when this 
 happened no one seems to know. 1 A line in the epistle 
 
 1 In reply to a request of mine, Mr.W. Noel Sainsbury has brought 
 to my notice letters of Etherege in the Record Office and in the Re- 
 ports of the Historical MSS. Commission. In January, 1688-9, Ethe- 
 rege wrote to Lord Preston from Ratisbon. The first letter from hi*
 
 110 DRYDEN. [CHAP. 
 
 seems to show that Etherege had been obliged to take to 
 heavy drinking as a compliment to his German friends, 
 and thus indirectly prophesies the circumstances of his 
 death. But the author or Sir Fopling Flutter and She 
 would if she could hardly deserved such a hugger-mugger 
 end. 
 
 To this time, too, belongs the first Ode on St. Cecilia's 
 Day. It is not a great production, and cannot pretend 
 comparison with the second and more famous piece com- 
 posed on a later occasion. But it is curious how many 
 lines and phrases it has contributed to the list of stock 
 quotations especially curious when it is remembered that 
 the whole piece is only sixty-three lines long. "A heap 
 of jarring atoms," "the diapason closing full in man," 
 " the double, double, double beat of the thundering drum," 
 and several other phrases, survive. The thing was set to 
 music by an Italian composer named Draghi, and seems 
 to have been popular. Besides these and other tasks, Dry- 
 den began at this time a curious work or series of works, 
 which was continued at intervals till his death, which was 
 imitated afterwards by many others, and which in some 
 sort was an ancestor of the modern literary magazine or 
 review. This was the Miscellany, the first volume of which 
 appeared in the beginning of 1684, and the second in the 
 beginning of 1685, though a considerable interval occur- 
 red before a third volume was brought out. These vol- 
 umes contained both old and new poems, mostly of the 
 occasional kind, by Dryden himself, besides many of his 
 
 successor is dated April, 1689. If, then, he died at Ratisbon, this 
 brings the date between narrow limits. There is, however, a rival 
 legend that he followed James into exile. Since this note was writ- 
 ten more letters have, I hear, been found in the British Museum, and 
 Mr. Gosse has the whole subject under treatment.
 
 v.] LIFE FROM 1680 TO 1688. Ill 
 
 translations. But they were by no means limited to his 
 own productions. Many other authors, old and new, were 
 admitted, and to the second volume Charles Dryden, his 
 eldest son, was a contributor. These two years (1684 and 
 1685), it will be observed, were not merely those in which, 
 owing to the non-payment of his appointments, his pe- 
 cuniary straits must have been considerable, but they were 
 also years in which there was a kind of lull between the 
 rapid series of his great satirical works and the collection 
 of verse and prose productions which owe their birth to 
 his conversion. It is somewhat remarkable that Dry- 
 den's abstinence from the stage during this time which 
 was broken only by the Duke of Guise and by the pro- 
 duction of the rather unsuccessful opera, Albion and Alba- 
 nius seems to have been accompanied by a cessation also 
 in his activity as a prologue writer. Both before and af- 
 ter this period prologue writing was a regular source of 
 income and employment to him. There is a famous story 
 of Southern and Dryden which is often quoted, both for 
 its intrinsic interest, and because the variety with which 
 its circumstances are related is rather an instructive com- 
 ment on the trustworthiness of such stories. Every one 
 is supposed to know Pope's reference to the author of 
 Oroonoko as 
 
 " Tom, whom heaven sent down to raise 
 The price of prologues and of plays." 
 
 The story is that Southern in 1682 applied to Dryden 
 for a prologue (which is extant), and was told that the 
 tariff had gone up from two guineas to three " Not out 
 of any disrespect to you, young man, but the players have 
 had my goods too cheap." The figures two and three are 
 replaced in some versions by four and six, in others by
 
 112 DRYDEN. TCHAP.V. 
 
 five and ten. This story gives the date of 1682, and it is 
 remarkable that until 1690, when Dryden once more came 
 on the stage himself with a new play, his prologues and 
 epilogues are very few. Possibly the increased price was 
 prohibitive, but it is more likely that the political strug- 
 gles of the time put all but political verse out of fashion. 
 These compositions had always been famous, or rather in- 
 famous, for their licence of language, and the political ex- 
 cesses of some of Dry den's few utterances of the kind at 
 this time are not creditable to his memory. Hallam's 
 phrase of " virulent ribaldry " is absurd as applied to Ab- 
 salom and Achitophel, or to the Medal. It is only too 
 well in place as applied to the stuff put in the mouth of 
 the actress who spoke the epilogue to the Duke of Guise. 
 The truth is that if they be taken as a whole these prol- 
 ogues and epilogues could be better spared by lovers of 
 Dryden from his works than any other section thereof; 
 and it is particularly to be regretted that Mr. Christie, in 
 his excellent Globe edition of the poems, has admitted 
 them, while excluding the always melodious, and some- 
 times exquisitely poetical songs from the plays, which cer- 
 tainly do not exceed the prologues in licence of language, 
 while their literary merit is incomparably greater.
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 LATER DRAMAS AND PROSE WORKS. 
 
 IT might have seemed, at first sight, that the Revolution 
 would be a fatal blow to Dryden. Being unwilling to 
 take the oaths to the new Government, he lost at once the 
 places and the pensions which, irregularly as they had been 
 paid, had made up, since he ceased to write constantly for 
 the stage, by far the greater part of his income. He was 
 nearly sixty years old, his private fortune was, if not al- 
 together insignificant, quite insufficient for his wants, and 
 he had three sons to maintain and set out in the world. 
 But he faced the ruin of his fortunes, and, what must have 
 been bitterer to him, the promotion of his enemies into his 
 own place, with the steady courage and practical spirit of 
 resource which were among his most creditable character- 
 istics. Not all his friends deserted him, and from Dor- 
 set in particular he received great and apparently constant 
 assistance. The story that this generous patron actually 
 compensated Dryden by an annuity equal in value to his 
 former appointments seems to rest on insufficient founda- 
 tion. The story that when Dryden and Tom Brown dined 
 with Dorset the one found a hundred-pound note and the 
 other a fifty-pound note under his cover, does not do much 
 credit to Dorset's powers of literary arithmetic, nor, even 
 allowing for the simpler manners of the time, to his deli- 
 6
 
 114 DRYDEN. [CHAP. 
 
 cacy of feeling. But Dryden's own words are explicit on 
 the point of his having received assistance from this old 
 friend, and it is said that in certain letters preserved at 
 Knole, and not yet given to the world, there are still more 
 definite acknowledgments. Dryden, however, was never 
 disposed to depend on patrons, even though, like Corneille, 
 he did not think it necessary to refuse their gifts when 
 they presented themselves. Theatrical gains had, it has 
 been said, decreased, unless dramatists took pains to in- 
 crease them by dedication or by the growing practice of 
 placing subscription copies among wealthy friends. Still, 
 a hundred pounds could be depended upon from a good 
 third night and from the bookseller's fee for the book, 
 and a hundred pounds was a matter of considerable im- 
 portance to Dryden just now. For full seven years he 
 had all but abandoned dramatic composition. His con- 
 tributions to Lee's Duke of Guise, which probably brought 
 him no money, and certainly brought him a troublesome 
 controversy, and the opera of Albion and Albanius had 
 been his only attempts on the stage since the Spanish 
 friar. The Duke of Guise, though Dryden's part in it is 
 of no little merit, hardly needs notice here, and Albion and 
 Albanius was a failure. It was rather a masque than an 
 opera, and depended, though there is some good verse in 
 it, rather on elaborate and spiteful gibbeting of the ene- 
 mies of the court than on poetical or dramatic merits. 
 But Dryden's dramatic reputation was by no means im- 
 paired. The first play ordered to be performed by Queen 
 Mary was the Spanish Friar, and this Protestant drama 
 proved a most unfortunate one for her Majesty ; for the 
 audience at that time were extraordinarily quick to seize 
 any kind of political allusion, and, as it happened, there 
 were in the Spanish Friar many allusions of an acciden-
 
 vi.] LATER DRAMAS AND PROSE WORKS. 115 
 
 tal but unmistakable kind to ungrateful children, banished 
 monarchs, and so forth. The eyes of the whole audience 
 were fixed on Mary, and she probably repented of her choice. 
 But Dryden did not long depend on revivals of his old 
 plays. The second year of the new regime saw the pro- 
 duction of Don Sebastian, a tragi-comedy, one scene of 
 which, that between Sebastian and Dorax, is famous in 
 literature, and which as a whole is often ranked above all 
 Dryden's other dramas, though for my own part I prefer 
 All for Love. The play, though at first received with a 
 certain lukewarmness, which may have been due to vari- 
 ous causes, soon became very popular. It was dedicated 
 to Lord Leicester, Algernon Sidney's eldest brother, a very 
 old man, who was probably almost alone among his con- 
 temporaries (with the exception of Dryden himself) in be- 
 ing an ardent admirer of Chaucer. In the preface to the 
 Fables the poet tells us that he had postponed his transla- 
 tion of the elder bard out of deference to Lord Leicester's 
 strongly expressed opinion that the text should be left 
 alone. In the same year was produced a play less origi- 
 nal, but perhaps almost better, and certainly more popular. 
 This was Amphitryon, which some critics have treated 
 most mistakenly as a mere translation of Moliere. The 
 truth is, that the three plays of Plautus, Moliere, and Dry- 
 den are remarkable examples of the power which great 
 writers have of treading in each other's steps without ser- 
 vile imitation. In a certain dry humour Dryden's play 
 is inferior to Plautus, but, as compared with Moliere, it 
 has two features which are decided improvements the 
 introduction of the character of Judge Gripus and the 
 separation of the part of the Soubrette into two. As Don 
 Sebastian had been dedicated to Lord Leicester, an old 
 Cromwellian, so Amphitryon was dedicated to Sir William
 
 116 DRYDEN. [CHAP. 
 
 Leveson Gower, a prominent Williamitc. Neither dedica- 
 tion contains the least truckling to the powers that were, 
 but Dryden seems to have taken a pleasure in showing 
 that men of both parties were sensible of his merit and of 
 the hardship of his position. Besides these two plays an 
 alteration of The Prophetess was produced in 1690, in 
 which Dryden is said to have assisted Betterton. In 1691 
 appeared King Arthur, a masque-opera on the plan of Al- 
 bion and Albanius. Unlike the latter, it has no political 
 meaning; indeed, Dryden confesses to having made con- 
 siderable alterations in it, in order to make it non-political. 
 The former piece had been set by a Frenchman, Grabut, 
 and the music had been little thought of. Purcell under- 
 took the music for King Arthur with much better success. 
 Allowing for a certain absurdity which always besets the 
 musical drama, and which is particularly apparent in that 
 of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century, King 
 Arthur is a very good piece ; the character of Einmeline 
 is attractive, the supernatural part is managed with a skill 
 which would have been almost proof against the wits of 
 the Rehearsal, and many of the lyrics are excellent. Dry- 
 den was less fortunate with his two remaining dramas. 
 In writing the first, he showed himself, for so old a crafts- 
 man and courtier, very unskilful in the choice of a sub- 
 ject. Cleomenes, the banished King of Sparta, could not 
 but awaken the susceptibilities of zealous revolution cen- 
 sors. After some difficulties, in which Laurence Hyde 
 once more did Dryden a good turn, the piece was licensed, 
 but it was not very successful. It contains some fine pas- 
 sages, but the most remarkable thing about it is that there 
 is a considerable relapse into rhyme, which Dryden had 
 abandoned for many years. It contains, also, one of the 
 last, not the least beautiful, and fortunately almost the
 
 TL] LATER DRAMAS AND PROSE WORKS. lit 
 
 most quotable of the exquisite lyrics which, while they 
 prove, perhaps, more fully than anything else, Dryden's al- 
 most unrivalled command of versification, disprove at the 
 same time his alleged incapacity to express true feeling. 
 Here it is : 
 
 " No, no, poor suffering heart, no change endeavour, 
 Choose to sustain the smart, rather than leave her ; 
 My ravished eyes behold such charms about her, 
 I can die with her, but not live without her ; 
 One tender sigh of hers to see me languish, 
 Will more than pay the price of my past anguish : 
 Beware, cruel fair, how you smile on me, 
 'Twas a kind look of yours that has undone me. 
 
 " Love has in store for me one happy minute, 
 And she will end my pain who did begin it ; 
 Then no day void of bliss, of pleasure, leaving, 
 Ages shall slide away without perceiving : 
 Cupid shall guard the door, the more to please us, 
 And keep out time and death, when they would seize us : 
 Time and death shall depart, and say, in flying, 
 Love has found out a way to live by dying." 
 
 Last of all the long list came Love Triumphant, a tragi- 
 comedy, in 1694, which failed completely; why, it is not 
 very easy to say. It is probable that these four plays and 
 the opera did not by any means requite Dryden for his 
 trouble in writing them. The average literary worth of 
 them is, however, superior to that of his earlier dramas. 
 The remarkable thing, indeed, about this portion of his 
 work is not that it is not better, but that it is so good. 
 He can scarcely be said to have had la tete dramatique, 
 and yet in the Conquest of Granada, in Marriage a la 
 Mode, in Aurengzebe, in All for Love, in the Spanish 
 Friar, in Don Sebastian, and in Amphitryon he produced
 
 118 DRYDEN. [CHAP. 
 
 plays which are certainly worthy of no little admiration. 
 For the rest, save in isolated scenes and characters, little 
 can be said, and even those just specified have to be praised 
 with not a little allowance. 
 
 Nevertheless, great as are the drawbacks of these plays, 
 their position in the history of English dramatic literature 
 is still a high and remarkable one. It was Dryden who, 
 if he for the moment headed the desertion of the purely 
 English style of drama, authoritatively and finally ordered 
 and initiated the return to a saner tradition. Even in 
 his period of aberration he produced on his faulty plan 
 such work as few other men have produced on the best 
 plans yet elaborated. The reader who, ignorant of the 
 English heroic play, goes to Dryden for information about 
 it, may be surprised and shocked at its inferiority to the 
 drama of the great masters. But he who goes to it know- 
 ing the contemporary work of Davenant and Boyle, of 
 Howard and Settle, will rather wonder at the unmatched 
 literary faculty which from such data could evolve such 
 a result. The one play in which he gave himself the 
 reins remains, as far as it appears to me, the only play, 
 with the exception of Venice Preserved, which was written 
 so as to be thoroughly worth reading now for 1 50, 1 had 
 almost said for 200 years. The Mourning Bride and the 
 Fair Penitent are worthless by the side of it, and to 
 them may be added at one sweep every tragedy written 
 during the whole eighteenth century. Since the begin- 
 ning of the nineteenth we have indeed improved the poet- 
 ical standard of this most difficult, not to say hopeless, form 
 of composition ; but at the same time we have in general 
 lowered the dramatic standard. Half the best plays writ- 
 ten since the year 1800 have been avowedly written with 
 hardly a thought of being acted ; I should be sorry to say
 
 YI.] LATER DRAMAS AND PROSE WORKS. 119 
 
 how many of the other half have either failed to be acted 
 at all, or, having been acted, have proved dead failures. 
 Now Dryden did so far manage to conciliate the gifts of 
 the play-wright and the poet, that he produced work which 
 was good poetry and good acting material. It is idle to 
 dispute the deserts of his success, the fact remains. 
 
 Most, however, of his numerous hostile critics would 
 confess and avoid the tragedies, and would concentrate 
 their attention on the comedies. It is impossible to help, 
 in part, imitating and transferring their tactics. No apol- 
 ogy for the offensive characteristics of these productions 
 is possible, and, if it were possible, I for one have no care 
 to attempt it. The coarseness of Dryden's plays is unpar- 
 donable. It does not come under any of the numerous 
 categories of excuse which can be devised for other offend- 
 ers in the same kind. It is deliberate, it is unnecessary, 
 it is a positive defect in art. When the culprit, in his oth- 
 erwise dignified and not unsuccessful conjtteor to Collier, 
 endeavours to shield himself by the example of the elder 
 dramatists, the shield is seen at once, and, what is more, 
 we know that he must have seen it himself to be a mere 
 shield of paper. But in truth the heaviest punishment 
 that Dryden could possibly have suffered, the punishment 
 which Diderot has indicated as inevitably imminent on 
 this particular offence, has come upon him. The fouler 
 parts of his work have simply ceased to be read, and his 
 most thorough defenders can only read them for the pur- 
 pose of appreciation and defence at the price of being 
 queasy and qualmish. He has exposed his legs to the ar- 
 rows of any criticaster who chooses to aim at him, and the 
 criticasters have not failed to jump at the chance of so no- 
 ble a quarry. Yet I, for my part, shall still maintain that 
 the merits of Dryden's comedies are by no means incon-
 
 120 DRYDEN. [CHAP. 
 
 siderable ; indeed that, when Shakspeare, and Jonson, and 
 Fletcher, and Etherege, and Wycherley, and Congreve, and 
 Vanbrugh, and Sheridan have been put aside, he has few 
 superiors. The unfailing thoroughness with which he did 
 every description of literary work has accompanied him 
 even here, where he worked, according to his own confes- 
 sion, against the grain, and where he was less gifted by 
 nature than scores of other facile workers who could be 
 named. The one situation which he could manage has 
 been already indicated, and it is surely not a thing to be 
 wholly neglected that his handlings of this situation un- 
 doubtedly preceded and probably suggested the crowning 
 triumph of English comedy the sublime apotheosis of 
 the coquette in Millamant. To produce that triumph Dry- 
 den himself was indeed unable. But from sheer literary 
 skill (the dominant faculty in him) he produced in Dora- 
 lice, and in Melantha, and in Florimel, something not 
 wholly unlike it. So, too, in the central figure of the 
 Spanish Friar he achieved in the same way, by sheer lit- 
 erary faculty and by the skilful manipulation of his pred- 
 ecessors, something like an independent and an original 
 creation. The one disqualification under which Dryden 
 laboured, the disqualification to create a character, would 
 have been in any lesser man a hopeless bar even to the 
 most moderate dramatic success. But the superhuman 
 degree in which he possessed the other and strictly litera- 
 ry gift of adoption and arrangement almost supplied the 
 place of what was wanting, and almost made him the 
 equal of the more facile makers. So close was his study, 
 so untiring his experiments, so sure his command, by dint 
 of practice, of language, and metre, and situation, that he 
 could, like the magicians of Egypt, make serpents almost 
 like, or quite like those of the true dramatic Moses.
 
 vi.] LATER DRAMAS AND PROSE WORKS. 121 
 
 Shakspeare's serpents have eaten his up in time, and the 
 retribution is just, but the credit of the original feat is 
 hardly the less for that. In short, all, or almost all, Dry- 
 den's dramatic work is a tour de force, but then it is such 
 a tour deforce as the world has hardly elsewhere seen. He 
 was " bade to toil on to make them sport," and he obeyed 
 the bidding with perhaps less reluctance than he should 
 have shown. But he managed, as genius always does 
 manage, to turn the hack-work into a possession for ever 
 here and there. Unluckily it was only here and there, 
 and no more can be claimed for it by any rational critic. 
 
 The subject of Dryden's prose work is intimately con- 
 nected with that of his dramatic performances. Had it 
 not been for the interest he felt in matters dramatic, he 
 might never have ventured into anything longer than a 
 preface ; and his prefaces would certainly have lacked the 
 remarkable interest in the history of style and in the his- 
 tory of criticism which they now possess. At the time 
 when he first began to write, the accepted prose style of 
 English was in much greater need of reform and reinforce- 
 ment than the accepted poetical style; or, to speak more 
 properly, there was no accepted prose style at all. Great 
 masters Bacon, Hooker, Clarendon, Milton, Taylor, 
 Hobbes, Bunyan, and some others may be quoted from 
 the first two-thirds of the seventeenth century ; but their 
 excellences, like the excellences of the writers of French 
 prose somewhat earlier, were almost wholly individual, and 
 provided in no way a model whereby the average writer 
 might form himself for average purposes. Now, prose is 
 above all things the instrument of the average purpose. 
 Poetry is more or less intolerable if it be not intrinsical- 
 ly and peculiarly good ; prose is the necessary vehicle of 
 thought Up to Dryden's time no such generally avail- 
 I 6*
 
 122 DRYDEN. [CHAP. 
 
 able vehicle had been attempted or achieved by any one. 
 Clarendon had shown how genius can make the best of 
 the worst style, which from any general point of view his 
 must probably be pronounced to be. In his hands it is 
 alternately delightful or tolerable; in the hands of any- 
 body else it would be simply frightful. His parentheses, 
 his asides, his endless involutions of phrase and thought, 
 save themselves as if by miracle, and certainly could not be 
 trusted so to save themselves in any less favoured hands. 
 Bacon and Hooker, the former in an ornate, the latter in a 
 simple style, reproduce classical constructions and forms in 
 English. Taylor and Milton write poetry in prose. Quaint- 
 ness and picturesque matter justify, and more than justify, 
 Fuller and Browne. Bunyan puts the vernacular into print 
 with a sublime assurance and success. Hobbes, casting off 
 all ornament and all pretence of ornament, clothes his naked 
 strength in the simplest garment of words competent to 
 cover its nakedness. But none of these had elaborated, or 
 aimed at elaborating, a style suited for every-day use for 
 the essayist and the pamphleteer, the preacher and the lay 
 orator, the historian and the critic. This was what Dry- 
 den did with little assistance from any forerunner, if it were 
 not Tillotson, to whom, as we know from Congreve, he ac- 
 knowledged his indebtedness. But Tillotson was not a 
 much older man than Dryden himself, and at least when 
 the latter began to write prose, his work was neither bulky 
 nor particularly famous. Nor in reading Tillotson, though 
 it is clear that he and Dryden were in some sort working 
 on the same lines, is it possible to trace much indebtedness 
 on the part of the poet. The sometime archbishop's ser- 
 mons are excellent in their combination of simplicity with 
 a certain grace, but they are much less remarkable than 
 Dryden's own work for the union of the two. The great
 
 vi.] LATER DRAMAS AND PROSE WORKS. 123 
 
 fault of the elders had been, first, the inordinate length of 
 their sentences ; secondly and this was rather a cause of 
 the first fault than an additional error their indulgence 
 in parenthetic quotations, borrowed arguments, and other 
 strengtheners of the position of the man who has to rely 
 on authority ; thirdly, the danger to which they were al- 
 ways exposed, of slipping into clumsy classicisms on one 
 side, or inelegant vernacular on the other. Dryden avoid- 
 ed all these faults, though his avoidance was not a matter 
 of a day or a year, nor was it, as far as can be made out, 
 altogether an avoidance of malice prepense. Accident fa- 
 voured him in exactly the reverse way to that in which it 
 had favoured the reformer of French prose half a century 
 or so before. Balzac had nothing to say, and therefore was 
 extremely careful and exquisite in his manner of saying it. 
 Dryden had a great deal to say, and said it in the plain, 
 straightforward fashion which was of all things most likely 
 to be useful for the formation of a workman-like prose 
 style in English. 
 
 The influences of the post-Restoration period which, by 
 their working, produced the splendid variety and efficiency 
 of prose in the eighteenth century the century, par excel- 
 lence, of prose in English were naturally numerous ; but 
 there were four which had an influence far surpassing that 
 of the rest. These four were the influences of the pul- 
 pit, of political discussion, of miscellaneous writing partly 
 fictitious, partly discursive and lastly, of literary criticism. 
 In this last Dryden himself was the great authority of the 
 period, and for many years it was in this form that he at 
 once exercised himself and educated his age in the matter 
 of prose writing. Accident and the circumstances of the 
 time helped to give him a considerable audience, and an 
 influence of great width, the critical spirit being extensive-
 
 124 DRYDEN. [CHAP. 
 
 ly diffused at the time. This critical spirit was to a great 
 extent a reflection of that which, beginning with Malherbe, 
 and continuing with the institution and regulation of the 
 Academy, had for some time been remarkable in France. 
 Not long after the Restoration one of the subtlest and 
 most accomplished of all French critics took up his resi- 
 dence in England, and gave further impulse to the fashion 
 which Charles himself and many other cavaliers had al- 
 ready picked up. Saint Evremond lived in England for 
 some forty years, and during the greater part of that time 
 was an oracle of the younger men of wit and pleasure 
 about London. Now Saint Evremond was a remarkable 
 instance of that rare animal, the born critic ; even nowa- 
 days his critical dicta are worthy of all attention. He had 
 a kind of critical intuition, which is to be paralleled only 
 by the historical and scientific intuition which some of the 
 greatest historians and men of science have had. With 
 national and characteristic indolence he never gave himself 
 the trouble to learn English properly, and it is doubtful 
 whether he could have read a single English play. Yet 
 his critical remarks on some English poets, not borrowed 
 from his friends, but constructed from their remarks, as a 
 clever counsel would construct a pleading out of the infor- 
 mation furnished him, are extraordinarily acute and accu- 
 rate. The relish for literary discussion which Saint Evre- 
 mond shows was no peculiarity of his, though he had it in 
 super-eminent measure. It was fashionable in France, and 
 he helped to make it fashionable in England. 
 
 I have seen this style of criticism dismissed contempt- 
 uously as "trifling;" but this is only an instance of the 
 strange power of reaction. Because for many years the 
 plan of criticising by rule and line was almost exclusively 
 pursued, and, as happens in the case of almost all exclusive
 
 vi.] LATER DRAMAS AND PROSE WORKS. 126 
 
 pursuits, was followed too far, it seems to some people 
 nowadays, that criticism ought to be confined to the ex- 
 pression, in more or less elegant language, of the feelings 
 of admiration or dislike which the subject criticised may 
 excite in the critic's mind. The critic ought to give this 
 impression, but he ought not to leave the other task unat- 
 tempted, and the result of leaving it unattempted is to be 
 found in the loose and haphazard judgments which now 
 too often compose what is called criticism. The criticism 
 of the Gallic School, which Dryden and Saint Evremond 
 helped so much to naturalize in England, was at least not 
 afraid of giving a reason for the faith that was in it. The 
 critics strove to examine the abstract value of this or that 
 literary form, the propriety of this or that mode of expres- 
 sion, the limits to be imposed on the choice and disposition 
 of this or that subject. No doubt this often resulted in 
 looking merely at the stopwatch, as Sterne's famous phrase 
 has it. But it often resulted in something better, and it 
 at least produced something like reasonable uniformity of 
 judgment. 
 
 Dryden's criticisms took, as a rule, the form of prefaces 
 to his plays, and the reading of the play ensured, to some 
 considerable extent, the reading of the preface. Probably 
 the pattern may be found in Corneille's Examens. Nor 
 must it be forgotten that the questions attacked in these 
 disquisitions were of real interest at the time to a large 
 number of persons; to a very much larger number rela- 
 tively, perhaps even to a much larger number absolutely, 
 than would now be the case. The first instance of a con- 
 siderable piece of prose written by Dryden was not, indeed, 
 a preface, though it was of the nature of one. The Essay 
 on Dramatic Poesy was written, according to its own show- 
 ing, in the summer of 1665, and published two or three
 
 126 DRYDEN. [CHAP. 
 
 years later. It takes the form of a dialogue between in- 
 terlocutors, who are sufficiently identified with Dorset, Sed- 
 ley, Sir Robert Howard, and Dryden himself. The argu- 
 ment turns on various questions of comparison between 
 classical French and English dramas, and especially between 
 English dramas of the old and of the newer type, the lat- 
 ter of which Dryden defends. It is noticeable, however, 
 that this very essay contained one of the best worded and 
 best thought-out of the author's many panegyrics upon 
 Shakspeare. Viewed simply from the point of view of style 
 this performance exhibits Dryden as already a considerable 
 master of prose, though, so far as we know, he had had no 
 practice in it beyond a few Prefaces and Dedications, if 
 we except the unacknowledged hackwork which he is some- 
 times said to have performed for the bookseller Herring- 
 man. There is still something of the older, lengthy sen- 
 tence, and of the tendency to elongate it by joint on joint 
 as fresh thoughts recur to the writer. But these elonga- 
 tions rarely sacrifice clearness, and there is an almost total 
 absence, on the one hand, of the cumbrous classical con- 
 structions of the elders ; on the other, of the quaint collo- 
 quialisms which generally make their appearance when this 
 more ambitious style is discarded. The Essay was quickly 
 followed by a kind of reply from Sir Robert Howard, and 
 Dryden made a somewhat sharp rejoinder to his brother- 
 in-law in the defence of the Essay which he prefixed to his 
 play of The Indian Emperor. He was evidently very an- 
 gry with Sir Robert, who had, indeed, somewhat justified 
 Shadwell's caricature of him as " Sir Positive At-All ;" and 
 this anger is not without effects on the style of the de- 
 fence. Its sentences are sharper, shorter, more briskly and 
 flippantly moulded than those of the Essay. Indeed, about 
 this time the time of his greatest prosperity Dryden
 
 TL] LATER DRAMAS AND PROSE WORKS. 127 
 
 seems to have passed, somewhat late in life, through a pe- 
 riod of flippancy. He was for a few years decidedly pros- 
 perous, and his familiarity with men of rank and position 
 seems a little to have turned his head. It was at this time, 
 and at this time only, that he spoke disrespectfully of his 
 great predecessors, and insinuated, in a manner which, I 
 fear, must be called snobbish, that his own familiarity with 
 such models of taste and deportment as Rochester put him 
 in a very superior position for the drawing of character 
 to such humble and home-keeping folks as the old drama- 
 tists. These prefaces and dedications, however, even where 
 their matter is scarcely satisfactory, show an ever-growing 
 command of prose style, and very soon the resipiscence of 
 Dryden's judgment, and the result of his recently renewed 
 study of the older writers. The Preface to All for Love, 
 though short, and more familiar in style than the earlier 
 work, is of excellent quality ; and the same may be said 
 of those to Troilus and Cressida and the Spanish Friar, 
 the latter of which is especially characteristic, and contains 
 some striking remarks on the old dramatists. The great 
 poetical works of the period between 1680 and 1687 are 
 also attended by prose introductions, and some of these 
 are exceedingly well done. The Epistle to the Whigs, 
 which forms the preface to the Medal, is a piece of po- 
 litical writing such as there had been hitherto but very 
 little in English, and it was admirably followed up by 
 the Vindication of the Duke of Guise. On the other 
 hand, the preface to Religio Laid, though partly also 
 polemical, is a model of what may be called the exposi- 
 tory style. Dryden obtained no great credit for his con- 
 troversy with Stillingfleet, his Life of St. Francis Xavier, 
 or his History of the League, all of which were directly or 
 indirectly controversial, and concerned with the political
 
 128 DRYDEN. [CHAP. 
 
 events of the time. As his lengthiest prose works, how- 
 ever, they can hardly be passed over without notice. 
 
 The Revolution, in throwing Dryden back upon purely 
 literary pursuits, did him no more harm in the way of 
 prose than of poetical composition. Not a few of his 
 Translations have prose prefaces of peculiar excellence pre- 
 fixed. The sketch of Satire which forms the preface to 
 the Juvenal is one of the best of its author's performances. 
 The jEneid is introduced by an admirable dedication to 
 Mulgrave ; but the essay on the Georgics, though it is not, 
 indeed, Dryden's own, is almost more interesting in this 
 connexion than if it were; for this essay came from the 
 pen of no less a person than Addison, then a young man 
 of five-and-twenty, and it enables us to judge of the in- 
 debtedness of the Queen Anne men to Dryden, in prose as 
 well as in poetry. It would be a keen critic who, knowing 
 Addison only from the Spectator, could detect his hand in 
 this performance. But it does not require much keenness 
 in any one who knows Dryden's prose and Addison's, to 
 trace the link of connexion which this piece affords. It 
 lies much nearer to the former than the latter, and it 
 shows clearly how the writer must have studied those 
 "prefaces of Dryden" which Swift chose to sneer at. As 
 in poetry, however, so in prose, Dryden's best, or almost 
 his best work, was his last. The dedication of the Fables 
 to the Duke of Ormond is the last and the most splendid 
 of his many pieces of polished flattery. The preface which 
 follows it is the last and one of the best examples of his 
 literary criticism. 
 
 It has been justly observed of Dryden's prose style that 
 it is, for the style of so distinguished a writer, singularly 
 destitute of mannerism. If we father any particular piece 
 upon him without knowing it to be his, it is not, as in the
 
 VI.] LATER DRAMAS AND PROSE WORKS. 129 
 
 case of most writers, because of some obvious trick of ar- 
 rangement or phraseology. The truth is, or at least the 
 probability, that Dryden had no thought of inventing or 
 practising a definite prose style, though he had more than 
 once a very definite intention in his practice of matters 
 poetical. Poetry was with him, as, indeed, it should be, 
 an end in itself ; prose, as perhaps it should also be for 
 the most part, only a means to an end. He wanted, from 
 time to time, to express his ideas on certain points that in- 
 terested him ; to answer accusations which he thought un- 
 just ; to propitiate powerful patrons ; sometimes, perhaps, 
 merely to discharge commissions with which he had been 
 intrusted. He found no good instrument ready to his hand 
 for these purposes, and so, with that union of the practical 
 and literary spirit which distinguished him so strongly, he 
 set to work to make one. But he had no special predi- 
 lection for the instrument, except in so far as it served its 
 turn, and he had, therefore, no object in preserving any 
 special peculiarities in it except for the same reason. His 
 poetical and dramatic practice, and the studies which that 
 practice implied, provided him with an ample vocabulary, 
 a strong, terse method of expression, and a dislike to ar- 
 chaism, vulgarity, or want of clearness. He therefore let 
 his words arrange themselves pretty much as they would, 
 and probably saw no object in such devices as the balanc- 
 ing of one part of a sentence by another, which attracted 
 so many of his successors. The long sentence, with its 
 involved clauses, was contrary to his habit of thought, and 
 would have interfered with his chief objects clearness and 
 precision. Therefore he, in the main, discarded it ; yet if 
 at any time a long and somewhat complicated sentence 
 seemed to him to be appropriate, he did not hesitate to 
 write one. Slipshod diction and cant vulgarities revolted
 
 130 DRYDEN. [CHAP. 
 
 his notions of correctness and elegance, and therefore he 
 seldom uses them ; yet there are not very many writers in 
 whom colloquialisms occasionally occur with happier effect. 
 If a fault is to be found with his style, it probably lies in 
 a certain abuse of figures and of quotation, for both of 
 which his strong tincture of the characteristics of the first 
 half of the century may be responsible, while the former, 
 at least, is natural to a poet. Yet, on the whole, his style, 
 if compared either with Hooker and Clarendon, Bacon and 
 Milton, on the one hand, or with Addison, and still more 
 the later eighteenth century writers, on the other, is a dis- 
 tinctly plain and homely style. It is not so vernacular as 
 Bunyan or Defoe, and not quite so perfect in simplicity as 
 Swift. Yet with the work of these three writers it stands 
 at the head of the plainer English prose styles, possessing 
 at the same time a capacity of magnificence to which the 
 others cannot pretend. As there is no original narrative 
 of any length from Dryden's hand in prose, it is difficult 
 to say whether he could have discharged satisfactorily this 
 part of the prose-writer's functions. The Life of Xavier 
 is good, but not of the best. For almost any other func- 
 tion, however, the style seems to be well adapted. 
 
 Now this, it must be remembered, was the great want 
 of the day in matter of prose style a style, namely, that 
 should be generally flexible and capable of adaptation, not 
 merely to the purposes of the erudite and ambitious, but 
 to any purpose for which it might be required, and in 
 which the vernacular and the literary elements should be 
 properly blended and adjusted. It is scarcely too much 
 to say that if, as some critics have inclined to think, the 
 influence of Dryden tended to narrow the sphere and 
 cramp the efforts of English poetry, it tended equally to 
 <mlarge the sphere and develope the energies of English
 
 vi.] LATER DRAMAS AND PROSE WORKS. 131 
 
 prose. It has often been noticed that poets, when they 
 have any faculty for prose writing, are among the best of 
 prose writers, and of no one is this more true than it is of 
 Dryden. 
 
 Set prose passages of laboured excellence are not very 
 common with Dryden. But the two following, the first 
 being the famous character of Shakspeare from the Essay 
 on Dramatic Poesy, the second an extract from the preface 
 to the Fables, will give some idea of his style at periods 
 separated by more than thirty years. The one was his 
 first work of finished prose, the other his last : 
 
 " As Neander was beginning to examine ' The Silent Woman,' 
 Eugenius, earnestly regarding him ; I beseech you, Neander, said he, 
 gratify the company, and me in particular, so far, as before you speak 
 of the play, to give us a character of the author ; and tell us frankly 
 your opinion, whether you do not think all writers, both French and 
 English, ought to give place to him. I fear, replied Neander, that in 
 obeying your commands I shall draw some envy on myself. Besides, 
 in performing them, it will be first necessary to speak somewhat of 
 Shakspeare and Fletcher, his rivals in poesy ; and one of them, in my 
 opinion, at least his equal, perhaps his superior. To begin then with 
 Shakspeare. He was the man who of all modern, and perhaps an- 
 cient poets, had the largest and most comprehensive soul. All the 
 images of nature were still present to him, and he drew them not la- 
 boriously, but luckily ; when he describes anything, you more than 
 see it, you feel it too. Those who accuse him to have wanted learn- 
 ing, give him the greater commendation : he was naturally learned ; 
 he needed not the spectacles of books to read nature ; he looked in- 
 wards, and found her there. I cannot say he is everywhere alike ; 
 were he so, I should do him injury to compare him with the greatest 
 of mankind. He is many times flat, insipid his comick wit degen- 
 erating into clenches, his serious swelling into bombast. But he id 
 always great when some great occasion is presented to him ; no man 
 can say he ever had a fit subject for his wit, and did not then raise 
 himself as high above the rest of poets, 
 
 'Quantum lenta aolent inter viburna cupressi.'
 
 132 DRYDEN. [CHAP. 
 
 The consideration of this made Mr. Hales of Eton say, that there was 
 no subject of which any poet ever writ but he would produce it much 
 better done in Shakspeare ; and however others are now generally 
 preferred before him, yet the age wherein he lived, which had con- 
 temporaries with him, Fletcher and Jonson, never equalled them to 
 him in their esteem ; and in the last king's court, when Ben's repu- 
 tation was at highest, Sir John Suckling, and with him the greater 
 part of the courtiers, set our Shakspeare far above him." 
 
 "As for the religion of our poet, 1 he seems to have some little bias 
 towards the opinions of Wickliffe, after John of Gaunt, his patron ; 
 somewhat of which appears in the ' Tale of Pierce Plowman ;' yet I 
 cannot blame him for inveighing so sharply against the vices of the 
 clergy in his age : their pride, their ambition, their pomp, their ava- 
 rice, their worldly interest, deserved the lashes which he gave them, 
 both in that and in most of his Canterbury Tales. Neither has his 
 contemporary, Boccace, spared them. Yet both those poets lived in 
 much esteem with good and holy men in orders ; for the scandal 
 which is given by particular priests reflects not on the sacred func- 
 tion. Chaucer's Monk, his Canon, and his Friar took not from the 
 character of his Good Parson. A satirical poet is the check of the 
 laymen on bad priests. We are only to take care that we involve 
 not the innocent with the guilty in the same condemnation. The 
 good cannot be too much honoured, nor the bad too coarsely used ; 
 for the corruption of the best becomes the worst. When a clergy- 
 man is whipped, his gown is first taken off, by which the dignity of 
 his order is secured. If he be wrongfully accused, he has his action 
 of slander: and it is at the poet's peril if he transgress the law. 
 But they will tell us that all kind of satire, though never so well de- 
 served by particular priests, yet brings the whole order into con- 
 tempt. Is then the peerage of England anything dishonoured when 
 a peer suffers for his treason? If he be libelled, or any way de- 
 famed, he has his scandalum magnatum to punish the offender. 
 They who use this kind of argument seem to be conscious to them- 
 selves of somewhat which has deserved the poet's lash, and are less 
 1 Chaucer.
 
 TI.] LATER DRAMAS AND PROSE WORKS. 133 
 
 concerned for their publick capacity than for their private ; at least, 
 there is pride at the bottom of their reasoning. If the faults of men 
 in orders are only to be judged among themselves, they are all in 
 some sort parties ; for, since they say the honour of their order is 
 concerned in every member of it, how can we be sure that they will 
 be impartial judges ? How far I may be allowed to speak my opin- 
 ion in this case, I know not ; but I am sure a dispute of this nature 
 caused mischief in abundance betwixt a King of England and an 
 Archbishop of Canterbury , one standing up for the laws of his land, 
 and the other for the honour (as he called it) of God's church ; 
 which ended hi the murder of the Prelate, and hi the whipping of his 
 Majesty from post to pillar for his penance. The learned and in- 
 genious Dr. Drake has saved me the labour of enquiring into the 
 esteem and reverence which the priests have had of old ; and I would 
 rather extend than diminish any part of it ; yet I must needs say 
 that, when a priest provokes me without any occasion given him, I 
 have no reason, unless it be the charity of a Christian, to forgive 
 him : prior lasit is justification sufficient in the civil law. If I an- 
 swer him in his own language, self-defence, I am sure, must be allow- 
 ed me ; and if I carry it farther, even to a sharp recrimination, some- 
 what may be indulged to human frailty. Yet my resentment has not 
 wrought so far, but that I have followed Chaucer in his character of 
 a holy man, and have enlarged on that subject with some pleasure, 
 reserving to myself the right, if I shall think fit hereafter, to describe 
 another sort of priests, such as are more easily to be found than the 
 Good Parson ; such as have given the last blow to Christianity in 
 this age, by a practice so contrary to their doctrine. But this will 
 keep cold till another tune. In the mean while I take up Chaucer 
 where I left him." 
 
 These must suffice for examples of the matter as well 
 as of the manner of the literary criticism which forms 
 the chief and certainly the most valuable part of Dryden's 
 prose works. The great value of that criticism consists 
 in its extremely appreciative character, and in its constant 
 connexion with the poet's own constructive work. There 
 is much in it which might seem to expose Dryden to the 
 charge of inconsistency. But the truth is, that his literary
 
 134 DRYDEN. [CHAP. vi. 
 
 opinions were in a perpetual state of progress, and there- 
 fore of apparent flux. Sometimes he wrote with defective 
 knowledge, sometimes, though not often, without think- 
 ing the subject out, sometimes (and this very often) with a 
 certain one-sidedness of view having reference rather to the 
 bearing of the point on experiments he was then trying or 
 about to try, than to any more abstract considerations. He 
 never aimed at paradox for its own sake, but he never 
 shrank from it ; and, on the whole, his criticisms, though 
 perhaps nowadays they appeal rather to the expert and 
 the student than to the general reader, are at least as in- 
 teresting for their matter as for their form. The impor- 
 tance of the study of that form in the cultivation of a ro- 
 bust English style has never been denied.
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 PERIOD OF TRANSLATION. 
 
 IT is in most cases a decidedly difficult problem to settle 
 the exact influence which any writer's life and circum- 
 stances have upon his literary performances and career. 
 Although there are probably few natures so absolutely 
 self-sufficing and so imperial in their individuality that 
 they take no imprint from the form and pressure of the 
 time, the exact force which that pressure exercises is near- 
 ly always very hard to calculate. In the case of Dryden, 
 however, the difficulty is fortunately minimized. There 
 was never, it may safely be said, so great a writer who was 
 so thoroughly occasional in the character of his greatness. 
 The one thing which to all appearance he could not do, 
 was to originate a theme. His second best play, accord- 
 ing to the general judgment, his best as I venture to 
 think, is built, with an audacity to which only great genius 
 or great folly could lead, on the lines of Shakspeare. His 
 longest and most ambitious poem follows, with a surpris- 
 ing faithfulness, the lines of Chaucer. His most effective 
 piece of tragic description is a versified paraphrase the 
 most magnificent paraphrase, perhaps, ever written of 
 the prose of Boccaccio. Even in his splendid satires he is 
 rarely successful, unless he has what is called in modern 
 literary slang a very definite " peg " given him to hang his
 
 136 DRYDEN. [CHAP. 
 
 verse upon. Absalom and Achitopkel is little more than 
 a loosely connected string of characters, each owing no 
 doubt something, and what is more, a great deal, to the 
 poet, but originally given to, and not invented by him. 
 No fashion of poetry can be farther aloof from Dryden's 
 than that which, as in the case of Shelley, spins great 
 poems purely out of its own brain. His strong and pow- 
 erful mind could grind the corn supplied to it into the 
 finest flour, but the corn must always be supplied. The 
 exquisite perfection of his smaller lyrics forbids us to set 
 this down as in any sense a drawback. It was rather a 
 strong inclination to the one office than an incapacity for 
 the other. What is more to the purpose, this peculiarity 
 is very closely connected with Dryden's fitness for the posi- 
 tion which he held. The man who is to control the peace- 
 able revolution of a literature, who is to shape a language 
 to new uses, and help writers for a century after his death 
 to vocabulary, rhythm, and style, in prose as well as in 
 verse, is perhaps all the better off for not being too spon- 
 taneous or original in his choice of subjects. But however 
 this may be, there is no doubt that outward circumstances 
 always had a great, and the greatest, influence upon the de- 
 velopment of Dryden's genius. There was in some respects 
 a quality about this genius for which it would be hard to 
 find an appropriate name. To call such a mind and such 
 a talent as Dryden's parasitic, would be ridiculous. Yet in 
 any lesser man the same characteristics would undoubtedly 
 receive that appellation. It seems always to have been, if 
 not necessary, at any rate satisfactory to him, to follow some 
 lines which had been already l?id down, to accept a depart- 
 ure from some previous work, to match himself closely with 
 some existing performance. It appears almost as if, in his 
 extraordinary care for the manner of his poetical work, he
 
 vn.] PERIOD OF TRANSLATION. 187 
 
 felt it an advantage to be relieved of much trouble about 
 the matter. The accusations of plagiarism which his fran- 
 tic enemies constantly brought against him were, in any 
 discreditable sense, as idle as accusations of plagiarism 
 usually are ; but they had considerably more foundation 
 in literal fact than is usual with such accusations. He 
 had a habit of catching up phrases sometimes from the 
 works of men to whom he was anything but compliment- 
 ary, and inserting them, much improved, it is true, for the 
 most part, in his own work. I have come across a curi- 
 ous instance of this, which I do not remember to have seen 
 anywhere noticed. One of the most mortifying incidents 
 in Dryden's literary career was the already mentioned com- 
 position by his rival, though not exactly enemy, Crowne, 
 of the Masque of Calisto. There seems to be little doubt, 
 though the evidence is not entirely conclusive, that 
 Crowne's share in this work was due to Rochester, who 
 afterwards made himself obnoxious to Dryden's wrath in 
 a still more unpardonable manner. Under these circum- 
 stances we certainly should not expect to find Dryden 
 borrowing from Calisto. Yet a whole line in Macflecknoe, 
 " The fair Augusta much to fears inclined," is taken, with 
 the addition of the adjective and the adverb, from a song 
 of Crowne's : " Augusta is to fears inclined." This tem- 
 perament made the work of translation one peculiarly 
 suitable to Dryden. He had, as early as 1684, included 
 several translations in his first volume of Miscellanies, and 
 he soon perceived that there was plenty of demand for 
 more of the same ware. Except his great editor, it is 
 doubtful whether any man of letters ever knew the pub- 
 lic taste better than Dryden. The call for translations of 
 the ancients was quite natural and intelligible. Direct 
 classical study was considerably on the wane. So far, in- 
 K 7 10
 
 138 DRYDEN. [CHAP. 
 
 deed, as one sex was concerned, it had practically gone 
 out of fashion altogether, and women of the accomplish- 
 ments of Lady Jane Grey or Queen Elizabeth were now 
 thought monsters. Even as regards men, a much smaller 
 proportion of the upper classes were able to read the 
 classics in the original than had once been the case. Busi- 
 ness, court life, employment in a standing army and navy, 
 and many other distractions called men early away from 
 their studies. Yet the interest felt, or supposed to be felt, 
 in classical literature was at least as great as ever. The 
 classics were still considered as literary models and pat- 
 terns; and the famous controversy between the ancients 
 and the moderns which arose about this time helped to 
 inspire a desire for some acquaintance with the former in 
 the easy, fashionable verse which Dry den had himself 
 created. In 1693 he gave to the world the whole of Per- 
 sius and much of Juvenal, the latter being completed by 
 his sons and some friends. In the same year some more 
 versions of Ovid and a little of Homer appeared ; and in 
 1693 also his greatest work of translation, the Virgil, was 
 begun. This was the only one of Dryden's works for 
 which he received not wholly inadequate remuneration, 
 and this remuneration was attained chiefly by the method 
 of subscription. Besides these authors, his translations 
 include extracts from Theocritus and Lucretius, a very few 
 Odes of Horace, and a considerable portion of the Meta- 
 morphoses of Ovid, which appeared last of all in the well- 
 known volume of Fables. The merits and peculiarities of 
 Dryden's translation are easily estimated. It has been ex- 
 cellently remarked in the Preface of a recent prose trans- 
 lation of the Odyssey, that there can be no final translation 
 of Homer, because the taste and literary habits of each age 
 demand different qualities in poetry. There is no need to
 
 VH.] PERIOD OF TRANSLATION. 139 
 
 limit this remark to Homer, or indeed to poetry. The 
 work of the translator is to bridge over the interval be- 
 tween his author and his public, and therefore the con- 
 struction and character of the bridge must necessarily dif- 
 fer, according to the instruction and demands of the pub- 
 lic. Dryden could not give exact accuracy, though he 
 was by no means such a bad scholar as Pope. But his 
 public did not want exact accuracy, and would not have 
 been grateful for it. He did not whether he was or was 
 not able give them classical flavour and local colour, but 
 for these they would have been still less grateful. What 
 they wanted, and what he could give them as no other 
 man then living could, was the matter of the original, tol- 
 erably unadulterated, and dressed up in the splendid dic- 
 tion and nervous verse which he had himself taught them 
 to love. The parallel between the characteristics of the 
 translation and the simple device whereby Jacob Tonson 
 strove to propitiate the ruling powers in the illustrations 
 to the Virgil is indeed obvious enough. Those illustra- 
 tions displayed "old Nassau's hook-nosed head on pious 
 ^Eneas' shoulders." The text itself displayed the head of 
 Dryden on the shoulders of Virgil. 
 
 Even before the Miscellany of 1684, translations from 
 Dryden's hands had been published. There appeared in 
 1680 a version of Ovid's fferoides, to which he gave a 
 preface and a translation of two epistles, besides collabo- 
 rating with Mulgrave in a third. The preface contains 
 some good criticism of Ovid, and a defence of the man- 
 ner of translation which with little change Dryden himself 
 constantly employed. This he defines as being equally 
 remote from verbal fidelity and from mere imitation. He 
 also lays down a canon as to the necessary equipment of 
 a translator, which, if it could be despotically enforced,
 
 140 DRYDEN. [CHAP. 
 
 would be a remarkable boon to reviewers. " No man is 
 capable of translating poetry who, besides a genius to that 
 art, is not a master both of his author's language and of 
 his own. Nor must we understand the language only of 
 the poet, but his particular turn of thoughts and expres- 
 sions, which are the characters that distinguish, and as it 
 were individuate him from all other writers." These first 
 translations are interesting because they are the first, and 
 for the sake of contrast with the later and more perfect 
 work of the same kind. In some respects Ovid was an 
 unfortunate author for Dryden to select, because his pe- 
 culiarities tempted a relapse into the faults of the heroic- 
 play style. But, on the other hand, Dryden's practice in 
 the heroic play fitted him very well to translate Ovid. A 
 few lines from the close of Canace to Macareus may be 
 given as an instance 
 
 " And now appeared the messenger of death ; 
 Sad were his looks, and scarce he drew his breath, 
 To say, ' Your father sends you ' (with that word 
 His trembling hands presented me a sword ;) 
 ' Your father sends you this ; and lets you know 
 That your own crimes the use of it will show.' 
 Too well I know the sense those words impart ; 
 His present shall be treasured in my heart. 
 Are these the nuptial gifts a bride receives ? 
 And this the fatal dower a father gives ? 
 Thou God of marriage, shun thy own disgrace, 
 And take thy torch from this detested place ! 
 Instead of that, let furies light their brands, 
 And fire my pile with their inf ernal hands ! 
 With happier fortune may my sisters wed, 
 Warned by the dire example of the dead. 
 For thee, poor babe, what crime could they pretend ? 
 How could thy infant innocence offend ?
 
 m] PERIOD OF TRANSLATION. 141 
 
 A guilt there was ; but, oh, that guilt was mine ! 
 Thou suffer'st for a sin that was not thine. 
 Thy mother's grief and crime ! but just enjoyed, 
 Shewn to my sight, and born to be destroyed ! 
 Unhappy offspring of my teeming womb ! 
 Dragged headlong from thy cradle to thy tomb ! 
 Thy unoffending life I could not save, 
 Nor weeping could I follow to thy grave ; 
 Nor on thy tomb could offer my shorn hair, 
 Nor shew the grief which tender mothers bear. 
 Yet long thou shalt not from my arms be lost ; 
 For soon I will o'ertake thy infant ghost. 
 But thou, my love, and now my love's despair, 
 Perform his funerals with paternal care ; 
 His scattered limbs with my dead body burn, 
 And once more join us in the pious urn. 
 If on my wounded breast thou droppest a tear, 
 Think for whose sake my breast that wound aid bear ; 
 And faithfully my last desires fulfil, 
 As I perform my cruel father's will." 
 
 The Miscellanies of 1684 and 1685 contained a con- 
 siderable number of translations from many different au- 
 thors, and those of 1693 and 1694 added yet more. Al- 
 together, besides Ovid and Virgil, specimens of Horace, 
 Homer, Theocritus, and Lucretius are in these translations, 
 while the more ambitious and complete versions of Juve- 
 nal and Virgil swell the total (in Scott's edition) to four 
 volumes, containing perhaps some 30,000 lines. 
 
 It could hardly be expected that in translating authors 
 of such different characters, and requiring in a poetical 
 translator so many different gifts, Dryden should be al- 
 together and equally successful. The Juvenal and the 
 Virgil deserve separate notice ; the others may be briefly 
 reviewed. All of them are, according to the general con- 
 ception of translation which Dryden had formed, decidedly
 
 142 DRYDEN. [CHAP. 
 
 loose, and by no means adhere to the original. Indeed, 
 Dryden not unfrequently inserts whole lines and passages 
 of his own, a proceeding scarcely to be reconciled with the 
 just-mentioned conception. On the whole, he is perhaps 
 most successful with Ovid. The versions of Horace are 
 few, and by no means excessively Horatian, but they are 
 almost all good poems in Dryden's statelier rhythm. The 
 version into a kind of Pindaric of the twenty-ninth ode of 
 the third book is particularly good, and contains the well- 
 known paraphrase of resigno quce dedit (" I puff the pros- 
 titute away"), which was such a favourite with Thackeray 
 that he puts it into the mouth, if I remember rightly, of 
 more than one of his characters. Indeed, the three last 
 stanzas of this are well worth quotation 
 
 " Happy the man, and happy he alone, 
 He, who can call to-day his own ; 
 He who, secure within, can say, 
 To-morrow do thy worst, for I have lived to-day ; 
 Be fair, or foul, or rain, or shine, 
 The joys I have possessed, in spite of fate, are mine : 
 Not heaven itself upon the past has power, 
 But what has been, has been, and I have had my hour. 
 
 1 Fortune, that with malicious joy 
 Does man, her slave, oppress, 
 
 Proud of her office to destroy, 
 Is seldom pleased to bless : 
 
 Still various and unconstant still, 
 
 But with an inclination to be il!, 
 
 Promotes, degrades, delights in strife, 
 
 And makes a lottery of life. 
 
 I can enjoy her while she's kind ; 
 
 But when she dances in the wind,
 
 PERIOD OF TRANSLATION. 143 
 
 And shakes the wings and will not stay, 
 
 I puff the prostitute away : 
 
 The little or the much she gave is quietly resigned ; 
 
 Content with poverty, my soul I arm, 
 
 And virtue, though hi rags, will keep me warm. 
 
 "Whatis'ttome, 
 
 Who never sail in her unfaithful sea, 
 If storms arise and clouds grow black, 
 If the mast split, and threaten wreck ? 
 Then let the greedy merchant fear 
 
 For his ill-gotten gain ; 
 And pray to gods that will not hear, 
 While the debating winds and billows bear 
 
 His wealth into the main. 
 For me, secure from fortune's blows, 
 Secure of what I cannot lose, 
 
 In my small pinnace I can sail, 
 Contemning all the blustering roar ; 
 
 And running with a merry gale, 
 With friendly stars my safety seek, 
 Within some little winding creek, 
 And see the storm ashore." 
 
 Least successful of all, perhaps, are the Theocritean 
 translations. The idyllic spirit was not one of the many 
 which would come at Dryden's call, and certain peculiari- 
 ties of Theocritus, harmless enough in the original, are 
 accentuated and magnified in the copy in a manner by no 
 means pleasant. A thing more unfortunate still was the 
 selection made from Lucretius. No one was ever better 
 qualified to translate the greatest of Roman poets than 
 Dryden ; and had he given us the whole, it would probably 
 have been the best verse translation in the language. As 
 it is, he has done few things better than the selections 
 from the second and third books ; but that from the fourth
 
 144 DRYDEN. [CHAP. 
 
 has, justly or unjustly, tainted the whole in the eyes of 
 most critics. It reproduces only too nakedly the original 
 where it would be better left alone, and it fails almost 
 entirely even to attempt the sombre fury of sentiment, the 
 inexpressible agony of regret, which transfuse and redeem 
 that original itself. The first book of Homer and part of 
 the sixth were avowedly done as an experiment, and it is 
 difficult to be very sorry that the experiment was not pur- 
 sued farther. But the versions of Ovid's Metamorphoses 
 are very good. They, however, belong more properly to 
 the next period, that of the Fables. 
 
 Dryden's Juvenal is not the least remarkable, and has 
 been in some ways among the most fortunate of his works. 
 It is still, if there be any such, the standard verse transla- 
 tion of the great Roman satirist, and this although much 
 of it is not Dryden's. His two elder sons assisted him in 
 the work, as well as some friends. But the first, third, 
 sixth, tenth, and sixteenth satires are his own, as well as 
 the whole of the Persius. The book was published in 
 1693, addressed to Dorset, with a prefatory essay or dis- 
 course on satire, which is of great interest and value. It 
 is somewhat discursive, as is Dryden's wont, and the erudi- 
 tion which it contains is, as is also his wont, anything 
 but invariably accurate. But it contains some precious 
 autobiographic information, much capital criticism, and 
 some of the best passages of its author's prose. He dis- 
 tinguishes between his own idea of satire and Juvenal's, 
 approaching the former to that of Horace, which, how- 
 ever, is scarcely a tenable position. But, as has been suf- 
 ficiently pointed out already, there are actually many and 
 grave differences between the satire of Dryden and that 
 of Juvenal. The former rarely or never even simulates 
 indignation ; the latter constantly and invariably expresses
 
 vn.] PERIOD OF TRANSLATION. 145 
 
 it. Still, the poetical resemblances between the two men 
 are sufficiently close to make the expectation of a valuable 
 version pretty confident, nor is that expectation disap- 
 pointed. For a wonder Dry den resists, for the most part, 
 his unhappy tendency to exaggerate the coarseness of his 
 subjects, and to choose their coarsest parts in preference 
 to others. No version of Juvenal could be other than 
 shocking to those accustomed only to modern standards 
 of literary language; but this version is perhaps less so 
 than might be expected. The vigorous stamp of Dryden's 
 verse is, moreover, admirably suited to represent the orig- 
 inal, and the chief fault noticeable in it a fault not un- 
 common with Dryden in translating is an occasional 
 lapse into an unpoetical vernacular, with the object, doubt- 
 less, of representing the text more vividly to English read- 
 ers. The Persius is in this respect better than the 
 Juvenal, though the peculiar dryness of flavour of the 
 singular original is scarcely retained. 
 
 It is not known exactly when Dryden first conceived 
 the idea of working up the scattered fragments of Vir- 
 gilian translation which he had as yet attempted into a 
 whole. The task, however, was regularly begun either at 
 the end of 1693 or the beginning of 1694, and it occupied 
 the best part of three years. A good deal of interest was 
 generally felt in the proceeding, and many friends helped 
 the poet with books or literary assistance of one kind or 
 another. A great deal of it, too, was written during 
 visits to hospitable acquaintances in the country. Much 
 of it was doubtless done in Northamptonshire and Hun- 
 tingdonshire, at the houses of Mrs. Creed and of Driden of 
 Chesterton. There is, indeed, a universally repeated tra- 
 dition that the first lines were written with a diamond on 
 a window in this latter mansion. The house was pulled 
 V*
 
 146 DRYDEN. [CHAP. 
 
 down some seventy years ago, and a curious argument 
 against the truth of the legend has been made out of the 
 fact that the pane was not preserved. Demolition, how- 
 ever, is not usually careful of its prey. Much was certainly 
 written at Denham Court, in Buckinghamshire, the seat of 
 Sir William Bowyer, whose gardens are commemorated in 
 a note on the Georgics. The seventh book of the JEneid 
 was done at Burleigh, Dryden having long had some con- 
 nexion with the Exeter family. He had, it may be men- 
 tioned, always been fond of writing in the country. Ton- 
 son, the publisher, was exceedingly anxious that the book 
 should be dedicated to William III., and Dryden speaks as 
 if certain anticipations of gain had been held out to him 
 in such a case. But he was unfalteringly determined to 
 do nothing that would look like an abandonment of his 
 principles. No single person received the honor of the 
 dedication ; but each division of the work was inscribed 
 to a separate patron. The Eclogues fell to the lot of Lord 
 Clifford, Dryden's co-religionist, and son of the " fierce and 
 brave" if not very high-principled member of the Cabal 
 to whom Amboyna had been dedicated long before. The 
 Georgics were inscribed to Lord Chesterfield, a dedication 
 which, with Dryden's subsequent reception and acknowl- 
 edgment of a present from Chesterfield, is at least deci- 
 sive against the supposed connexion between Lady Eliza- 
 beth and the Earl having been known to the poet. Mul- 
 grave, now Marquis of Normanby, had the ^Eneid. The 
 book was published in July, 1697, and the edition was 
 sold off almost within the year. Dryden speaks to his 
 sons, who were now at Rome, where they had employment 
 in the Pope's household, with great pleasure of its success. 
 It is, in truth, a sufficiently remarkable book. It was, no 
 doubt, rather ironical of fate to assign Homer to Pope,
 
 vii.] PERIOD OF TRANSLATION. 147 
 
 who was of all poets the least Homeric, and Virgil to Dry- 
 den, than whom not many poets have been more un-Vir- 
 gilian. Pope would have done the Mantuan, whom in 
 many things he resembles, excellently. Dryden has done 
 him excellently too, only that the spirit of the translation 
 is entirely different from that of the original. To say 
 after Wordsworth that Dryden " spoils" all the best pas- 
 sages is quite unfair. But Wordsworth had no special 
 faculty of criticism in the classical languages, and was 
 of all recorded poets the most niggardly of praise, and 
 the most prone to depreciation of others. Of the three 
 parts as wholes the Georgics are perhaps done best, the 
 Eclogues worst, the -^Eneid with most inequality. Yet the 
 best passages of the epic are the best, beyond all doubt, of 
 the whole version. A certain delicacy of touch, which Vir- 
 gil especially requires, and of which Dryden was sufficient- 
 ly master in his more original work, has often failed him 
 here, but the bolder and more masculine passages are rep- 
 resented with a great deal of success. Those who believe, 
 as I confess I myself believe, that all translation is unsat- 
 isfactory, and that poetical translation of poetry is nearly 
 impossible, must of course always praise such work as this 
 with a very considerable reservation. But when that res- 
 ervation is made, there remains plenty of fairly disposa- 
 ble praise for this, Dryden's most considerable undertak- 
 ing of a single and complete kind. The older translations 
 have so far gone out of general reading in England that 
 citation is in this case almost indispensable, as well for the 
 purpose of showing what Dryden actually did give his 
 readers in this famous book, as for that of exhibiting the 
 progress he had made since the Ovid of sixteen years be- 
 fore. The passage I have chosen is the well-known open- 
 ing of the descent into hell in the sixth book, which has
 
 148 DRYDEN. [CHAP. 
 
 not many superiors either in the original or in the version. 
 The subject was one that Dryden could handle well, where- 
 as his Dido sometimes shows traces of incongruity 
 
 " She said, and passed along the gloomy space ; 
 The prince pursued her steps with equal pace. 
 Ye realms, yet unrevealed to human sight ! 
 Ye gods, who rule the regions of the night ! 
 Ye gliding ghosts ! permit me to relate 
 The mystic wonders of your silent state. 
 Obscure they went through dreary shades, that led 
 Along the waste dominions of the dead. 
 Thus wander travellers in woods by night, 
 By the moon's doubtful and malignant light, 
 When Jove in dusky clouds involves the skies, 
 And the faint crescent shoots by fits before their eyes. 
 Just in the gate, and in the jaws of hell, 
 Revengeful Cares and sullen Sorrows dwell, 
 And pale Diseases and repining Age, 
 Want, Fear, and Famine's unresisted rage ; 
 Here Toils, and Death, and Death's half-brother Sleep, 
 (Forms terrible to view) their centry keep ; 
 With anxious Pleasures of a guilty mind, 
 Deep Frauds before, and open Force behind ; 
 The Furies' iron beds ; and Strife, that shakes 
 Her hissing tresses, and unfolds her snakes. 
 Full in the midst of this infernal road, 
 An elm displays her dusky arms abroad : 
 The god of sleep there hides his heavy head, 
 And empty dreams on every leaf are spread. 
 Of various forms unnumbered spectres more, 
 Centaurs, and double shapes, besiege the door. 
 Before the passage, horrid Hydra stands, 
 And Briareus with all his hundred hands ; 
 Gorgons, Geryon with his triple frame ; 
 And vain Chimsera vomits empty flame. 
 The chief unsheathed his shining steel, prepared, 
 Though seized with sudden fear, to force the guard,
 
 m] PERIOD OF TRANSLATION. 149 
 
 Offering his brandished weapon at their face ; 
 Had not the Sibyl stopped his eager pace, 
 And told him what those empty phantoms were- 
 Forms without bodies, and impassive air." 
 
 Owing to the existence of some letters to Tonson, 
 Walsh, and others, more is known about the pecuniary 
 side of this transaction than about most of Dryden's mon- 
 ey affairs. Tonson was an exceedingly hard bargain- 
 driver, and there is extant a curious letter of his, in which 
 he complains of the number of verses he has for his 
 money, a complaint which, as we shall see when we come 
 to the Fables, was at any rate in that case grossly unjust. 
 The book was published by subscription, as Pope's Homer 
 was subsequently, but the terms were not nearly so profit- 
 able to the poet. A hundred and two five -guinea sub- 
 scribers had each his arms printed at the foot of one of 
 the hundred and two plates. Others who subscribed only 
 two guineas merely figured in a list of names. But except 
 a statement by Dryden in a letter that " the thirty shil- 
 lings upon every book remains with me," the proportion in 
 which the subscriptions were divided between author and 
 publisher is unknown. He had, however, as Malone thinks, 
 501. for each book of the ^Eneid as Mr. Christie and Mr. 
 Hooper think, 5QI. for each two books and no doubt 
 there was some similar payment for the Eclogues and 
 Georgics. Altogether Pope heard that he made 1200/. by 
 the Virgil. Presents too were doubtless sent him by Clif- 
 ford and Mulgrave, as well as by Chesterfield. But Ton- 
 son's payments were anything but satisfactory, and Lord 
 Macaulay has extracted much evidence as to the state of 
 the coinage from Dryden's indignant letters on the subject. 
 At one time he complains that in some money changed 
 for Lady Elizabeth by Tonson, " besides the clipped money
 
 150 DRYDEN. [CHAP. 
 
 there were at least forty shillings brass." Then he ex- 
 pects " good silver, not such as he had formerly," and will 
 not take gold, of course because of the renewed risk of 
 bad money in change. Then complaints are made of Ton- 
 son for refusing subscriptions (which shows that a consid- 
 erable portion of the subscription-money must have gone 
 to the poet), for declining to pay anything for notes, 
 and so on. The most complimentary thing to Tonson in 
 the correspondence is the remark, "All of your trade are 
 sharpers, and you not more than others." In the next 
 letter, however, the suspicion as to the goodness of Ton- 
 son's money returns "If you have any silver which will 
 go, my wife will be glad of it." Elsewhere there is a half- 
 apologetic allusion to a "sharp" letter which seems not to 
 have been preserved. But Dry den had confidence enough 
 in his publisher to make him do various pieces of fiduciary 
 business for him, such as to receive his rents which had 
 been brought up from Northamptonshire by the Towces- 
 ter carrier, to get bills to pay a suspicious watchmaker who 
 would not take gold, and the like. He, too, was the in- 
 termediary by which Dryden sent letters to his sons who 
 were now in Rome, and he is accused of great carelessness 
 and perhaps something worse in connexion with these let- 
 ters. In another epistle we hear that "the printer is a 
 beast," an accusation which it is to be feared has been 
 repeated frequently since by impatient authors. After- 
 wards, in rather Landorian style indeed, there are resem- 
 blances more than one between the two, and Landor was 
 a constant admirer of Dryden he " vows to God that if 
 Everingham, the printer, takes not care of this impression, 
 he shall never print anything more for him." These 
 letters to Tonson about the Virgil and the Fables are 
 among the most interesting memorials of Dryden that we
 
 vn.j PERIOD OF TRANSLATION. 161 
 
 possess, and they are, with those to Mrs. Steward, almost 
 the only letters of his which give much personal detail. 1 
 Perhaps it is not superfluous to say that allusions in them 
 to his wife are frequent, and show nothing either of any 
 ill-feeling between the two, or of any neglect of household 
 duty on her part. To one of the letters to his sons is a 
 long postscript from Lady Elizabeth, in perhaps the most 
 remarkable orthography that even English epistolary his- 
 tory has to show, but affectionate and motherly enough. 
 
 During the period which the last two chapters cover, 
 Dryden had as usual not failed to undertake several minor 
 and miscellaneous literary tasks. Eleonora,'va. 1692, was 
 one of his least successful pieces in a literary point of view, 
 but perhaps the most successful of all as a piece of journey- 
 work. The poem is an elegy on the Countess of Abing- 
 don ; it was ordered by her husband, and paid for munifi- 
 cently. There are but 377 verses, and the fee was five 
 hundred guineas, or on Tonson's method of calculation 
 some seven or eight-and-twenty shillings a line a rate 
 which would have seemed to Jacob sinful, as encouraging 
 poets to be extortionate with honest tradesmen. The 
 piece is laboured and ill - sustained. If it deserved five 
 hundred guineas, the Anne Killigrew ode would certainly 
 have been cheap at five thousand. But not long after- 
 wards a poem to Sir Godfrey Kneller, which may or may 
 not have been exchanged for something of the other ar- 
 tist's craft, showed that Dryden had in no way lost his fac- 
 ulty of splendid flattery. Perhaps before and perhaps af- 
 ter this came the incomparable address to Congreve on the 
 
 1 As, for instance, how (he is writing from Northamptonshire) \ 
 party of benighted strangers came in, and he had to give up his bed 
 to them, to which bed they would have gone supperless, had he not 
 "taken a very lusty pike that day."
 
 152 DRYDEN. [CHAP. vn. 
 
 failure of the Double Dealer, which is and deserves to 
 be one of Dryden's best -known works. Congreve and 
 Southern, the leading comic writer and the leading tragic 
 writer of the younger generation, were among the princi- 
 pal of the band of sons (in Ben Jonson's phrase) whom 
 Dryden had now gathered round him. In one of his let- 
 ters there is a very pleasant picture of the two young men 
 coming out four miles to meet the coach as he returned 
 from one of his Northamptonshire visits, and escorting him 
 to his house. This was in 1695, and in the same year 
 Dryden brought out a prose translation of Du Fresnoy's 
 Art of Painting, with a prefatory essay called a " Parallel 
 of Poetry and Painting." There is not very much in- 
 trinsic value in this parallel, but it has an accidental in- 
 terest of a curious kind. Dryden tells us that it occupied 
 him for twelve mornings, and we are therefore able to cal- 
 culate his average rate of working, since neither the mat- 
 ter nor the manner of the work betokens any extraordina- 
 ry care, nor could it have required extraordinary research. 
 The essay would fill between thirty and forty pages of the 
 size of this present. Either in 1695 or in 1696 the poet 
 also wrote a life of Lucian, intended to accompany a trans- 
 lation of the Dialogues made by various hands. This too, 
 which did not appear till after the author's death, was 
 something of a " pot-boiler ;" but the character of Dryden's 
 prose work was amply redeemed by the " Discourse on 
 Epic Poetry," which was the form that the dedication of 
 the jEneid to Mulgrave took. This is not unworthy to 
 rank with the " Essay on Dramatic Poesy " and the " Dis- 
 course on Satire."
 
 CHAPTER VIH. 
 
 THE FABLES. 
 
 IT was beyond a doubt his practice in translation, and the 
 remarkable success that attended it, which suggested to 
 Dryden the last, and one of the most singular, but at the 
 same time the most brilliantly successful of all his poetical 
 experiments. His translations themselves were in many 
 cases rather paraphrases than translations. He now con- 
 ceived the idea of a kind of composition which was to be 
 avowedly paraphrase. With the unfailing catholicity of 
 taste which is one of his finest literary characteristics, he 
 had always avoided the ignorant contempt with which the 
 age was wont to look on mediaeval literature. Even Cow- 
 ley, we are told, when requested by one of his patrons to 
 give an opinion on Chaucer, confessed that he could not 
 relish him. If, when he planned an Arthurian epic, Dry- 
 den had happened to hit on the idea of " transversing " 
 Mallory, we might have had an additional star of the first 
 magnitude in English literature, though his ability to pro- 
 duce a wholly original epic may be doubted. At sixty- 
 seven, writing hard for subsistence, he could not think of 
 any such mighty attempt as this. But he took certain 
 tales of Chaucer, and certain novels of Chaucer's master, 
 Boccaccio, and applied his system to them. The result 
 
 was the book of poems to which, including as it did many 
 L 11
 
 164 DRYDEN. [CHAP. 
 
 Ovidian translations, and much other verse, he gave the 
 name of Fables, using that word in its simple sense of sto- 
 ries. It is not surprising that this hook took the town 
 by storm. Enthusiastic critics, even at the beginning of 
 the present century, assigned to Theodore and Honoria " a 
 place on the very topmost shelf of English poetry." Such 
 arrangements depend, of course, upon the definition of poe- 
 try itself. But I venture to think that it would be almost 
 sufficient case against any such definition, that it should 
 exclude the finest passages of the Fables from a position a 
 little lower than that which Ellis assigned to them. It so 
 happens that we are, at the present day, in a position to 
 put Dryden to a specially crucial test which his contempo- 
 raries were unable to apply. To us Chaucer is no longer 
 an ingenious and intelligent but illegible barbarian. We 
 read the Canterbury Tales with as much relish, and with 
 nearly as little difficulty, as we read Spenser, or Milton, or 
 Pope, or Byron, or our own living poets. Palamon and 
 Arcite has, therefore, to us the drawback if drawback it 
 be of being confronted on equal terms with its original. 
 Yet I venture to say that, except in the case of those un- 
 fortunate persons whose only way of showing appreciation 
 of one thing is by depreciation of something else, an ac- 
 quaintance with the Knighfs Tale injures Dryden's work 
 hardly at all. There could not possibly be a severer test 
 of at least formal excellence than this. 
 
 The Fables were published in a folio volume which, ac- 
 cording to the contract with Tonson, was to contain 10,000 
 verses. The payment was 300 f of which 250 guineas 
 were paid down at the time of agreement, when three- 
 fourths of the stipulated number of lines were actually 
 handed over to the publisher. On this occasion, at least, 
 Jacob had not to complain of an unduly small considera-
 
 TIII.] THE FABLES. 156 
 
 tion. For Dryden gave him not 2500, but nearly 5000 
 verses more, without, as far as is known, receiving any in- 
 crease of his fee. The remainder of the 300/. was not to 
 be paid till the appearance of a second edition, and this 
 did not actually take place until some years after the poet's 
 death. Pope's statement, therefore, that Dryden received 
 " sixpence a line " for his verses, though not formally ac- 
 curate, was sufficiently near the truth. It is odd that one 
 of the happiest humours of Tom the First (Shadwell) oc- 
 curring in a play written long before he quarrelled with 
 Dryden, concerns this very practice of payment by line. 
 In the Sullen Lovers one of the characters complains that 
 his bookseller has refused him twelvepence a line, when the 
 intrinsic worth of some verses is at least ten shillings, and 
 all can be proved to be worth three shillings " to the veri- 
 est Jew in Christendom." So that Tonson was not alone 
 in the adoption of the method. As the book finally ap- 
 peared, the Fables contained, besides prefatory matter and 
 dedications, five pieces from Chaucer (Palamon and Arctic, 
 the Cock and the Fox, the Flower and the Leaf, the Wife 
 of Bath's Tale, the Character of a Good Parson), three 
 from Boccaccio (Sigismonda and Guiscardo, Theodore and 
 Honoria, Cymon and Iphigenia), the first book of the Iliad, 
 some versions of Ovid's Metamorphoses in continuation of 
 others previously published, an JZpistle to John Driden, the 
 second St. Cecilia Ode, commonly called Alexander's Feast, 
 and an Epitaph. 
 
 The book was dedicated to the Duke of Ormond in a 
 prose epistle, than which even Dryden never did anything 
 better. It abounds with the fanciful expressions, just stop- 
 ping short of conceit, which were such favourites with him, 
 and which he managed perhaps better than any other writ- 
 er. He holds of the Ormond family, he tells the Duke,
 
 156 DRYDEN. [CHAP. 
 
 by a tenure of dedications, having paid that compliment to 
 his Grace's grandfather, the great Duke of Ormond, and 
 having celebrated Ossory in memorial verses. Livy, Pub- 
 licola, and the history of Peru are brought in perhaps 
 somewhat by the head and shoulders ; but this was sim- 
 ply the fashion of the time, and the manner of the doing 
 fully excused it. Even this piece, however, falls short, in 
 point of graceful flattery, of the verse dedication of Pala- 
 mon and Arcite to the Duchess. Between the two is the 
 preface, which contains a rather interesting history of the 
 genesis of the Fables. After doing the first book of 
 Homer "as an essay to the whole work," it struck Dryden 
 that he would try some of the passages on Homeric sub- 
 jects in the Metamorphoses, and these in their turn led to 
 others. When he had sufficiently extracted the sweets of 
 Ovid, " it came into my mind that our old English poet 
 Chaucer in many things resembled him ;" and then, " as 
 thoughts, according to Mr. Hobbes, have always some con- 
 nexion," he was led to think of Boccaccio. The preface 
 continues with critical remarks upon all three authors and 
 their position in the history of their respective literatures, 
 remarks which, despite some almost unavoidable ignorance 
 on the writer's part as to the early condition and mutual 
 relationship of modern languages, are still full of interest 
 and value. It ends a little harshly, but naturally enough, 
 in a polemic with Blackmore, Milbourn, and Collier. Not 
 much need be said about the causes of either of these de- 
 bates. Macaulay has told the Collier story well, and, on 
 the whole, fairly enough, though he is rather too compli- 
 mentary to the literary value of Collier's work. That 
 redoubtable divine had all the right on his side, beyond a 
 doubt, but he sometimes carried his argument a good deal 
 too far. Dryden, however, could not defend himself, and
 
 Tin.] THE FABLES. 157 
 
 be knew this, and did not attempt it, though he could not 
 always refrain, now and afterwards, from indulging in lit- 
 tle flings at Collier. Blackmore had two causes of quarrel 
 with Dryden one the same as Collier's, the other a polit- 
 ical one, the poetical knight being a staunch Whig. Mil- 
 bourn was an obscure country clergyman, who had at one 
 time been a great admirer of Dryden, as a letter of his still 
 extant, in which he orders the poet's works to be sent to 
 him, shows. He had, however, fallen foul of the Virgil, 
 for which he received from Dryden due and perhaps more 
 than due castigation. 
 
 Enough has been already said of the translations of 
 Homer and Ovid. The latter, however, are, as far as mere 
 verse goes, among the best of all the translations. Pala- 
 mon and Arcite, however, and all the other contents of the 
 book are of a very different order of interest. Dryden had 
 an extreme admiration for this story, which as the subject 
 for an epic he thought as good as either Homer's or Vir- 
 gil's. Nowadays most people have left off considering 
 the technical value of different subjects, which is no doubt 
 a misfortune. But it is easy to see that the legend, with 
 its interesting incidents, its contrast of character, its revo- 
 lutions, and so forth, does actually come very near to the 
 perfect idea of the artificial epic. The comparative nullity 
 of the heroine would have been thought no drawback in 
 ancient art. Dryden has divided the story into three 
 books, and has, as usual, paraphrased with the utmost free- 
 dom, but he has kept closer to the dimensions of the orig- 
 inal than is his wont. His three books do not much ex- 
 ceed the length of the original tale. In the different 
 parts, however, he has used his own discretion in amplify- 
 ing or contracting exactly as he thinks proper, and the 
 comparison of different passages with the original thus
 
 158 DRYDEN. [CHAP. 
 
 brings out in a manifold way the idiosyncrasies of the two 
 writers. Perhaps this is nowhere more marked than in 
 the famous description of the Temple of Mars. As far 
 as the temple itself goes, Dryden has the upper hand, but 
 he is beaten when it comes to " the portraiture which was 
 upon the wall." Sometimes he has simply adopted Chau- 
 cer's very words, sometimes he has done otherwise, and 
 then he has almost always done worse. The " smiler with 
 the knife under the cloak" is very inadequately replaced 
 by three whole lines about hypocrisy. If the couplet 
 
 "Amiddes of the temple sate Mischance, 
 And Discomfort and sory Countenance," 
 
 be contrasted with 
 
 " In midst of all the dome Misfortune sate, 
 And gloomy Discontent and fell Debate," 
 
 the comparatively otiose epithets which in the next cen- 
 tury were to be the curse of the style, strike the eye and 
 ear very forcibly. Indeed, in this most finished work of 
 Dryden's nothing is easier than to see the strength and the 
 weakness of the method he had introduced. In his hands 
 it turns almost always to strength. But in thus boldly 
 bringing his work side by side with Chaucer's, he had 
 indicated the divergence which was to be carried farther 
 and farther by his followers, until the mot propre was lost 
 altogether in a washy sea of elegant epithets and flowing 
 versification. That time, however, was far off, or might 
 have seemed to be far off, to a reader of the Fables. It is 
 only when Chaucer is actually compared that the defects, 
 or rather the possibilities of defect, rise to the eye. If 
 Palamon and Arcite be read by itself, it is almost entirely 
 delightful, and, as has been said already, it will even bear 
 the strain of comparison. For the loss is counterbalanced
 
 Yin.] THE FABLES. 169 
 
 by gain, gain of sustained strength and greater perfection 
 of workmanship, even though we may know well enough 
 that Dryden's own idea of Chaucer's shortcomings in versi- 
 fication was a mere delusion. 
 
 The Nun's Priest's Tale was also not very much ex- 
 tended, though it was considerably altered in Dryden's 
 version, entitled The Cock and the fox. Dryden's fond- 
 ness for the beast-story had, as we have seen already, drawn 
 upon him the reprehension of Messrs. Prior and Montague, 
 critics of severe and cultivated taste. It has just been sug- 
 gested that a great loss has been sustained by his not hav- 
 ing taken the fancy to transverse some Arthurian stories. 
 In the same way, if he had known the original Roman de 
 Renart, he would doubtless have made good use of it. The 
 Cock and the Fox itself is inferior to many of the branches 
 of the old tree, but it has not a few merits, and the story 
 of the two friends is one of the very best things of the 
 kind. To this Dryden has done ample justice. But in 
 the original not the least attractive part is the solemn pro- 
 fusion of learned names and citations characteristic of the 
 fourteenth century, which the translator has in some cases 
 thought it better to omit. It may not be quite clear 
 whether Chaucer, who generally had a kind of satirical un- 
 dercurrent of intention in him, was serious in putting these 
 into the mouths of Partlet and Chanticleer or not, but still 
 one misses them. On the other hand, Dryden has made 
 the most of the astrological allusions; for it must be re- 
 membered that he had a decided hankering after astrology, 
 like many of the greatest men of his century. Of this 
 there is evidence quite apart from Mrs. Thomas's stories, 
 which also deal with the point. 
 
 The third of Dryden's Chaucerian versions is one of the 
 most charming of all, and this, though the variations from
 
 160 DRYDEN. [CHAR 
 
 the original are considerable, and though that original is 
 itself one of the most delightful works of the kind. 1 I 
 have read, perhaps as much as most Englishmen, the French 
 fourteenth-century poetry on which so much of Chaucer's 
 is modelled, but I hardly know either in French or English 
 a poem more characteristic, and more delightfully charac- 
 teristic of the fourteenth century than the Flower and the 
 Leaf. The delight in a certain amiable kind of natural 
 beauty, the transference of the signs and symbols of that 
 beauty to the service of a fantastic and yet not unnatural 
 poetry of love, the introduction of abstract and supernatu- 
 ral beings to carry out, sometimes by allegory and some- 
 times by personification, the object of the poet, are all ex- 
 emplified in this little piece of some 500 or 600 lines, in 
 a manner which it would be hard to match in Froissart or 
 Guillaume de Machault. Yet Dryden has asserted his 
 power of equalling the virtue of the original in what may 
 be called an original translation. The two poems differ 
 from one another considerably in details of machinery and 
 imagery. Chaucer is happier in his descriptions of nature, 
 Dryden in the representation of the central personages. 
 But both alike have the power of transporting. Even now, 
 when so much of his language and machinery have become 
 hackneyed, Dryden can exert this power on those who are 
 well acquainted with mediaeval literature, who have felt its 
 strange fascination, and the ease with which it carries off 
 the reader into unfamiliar and yet delightful lands, where 
 nothing is disturbing and unreasonable, and yet everything 
 is surprising and unhackneyed. How much more strongly 
 this power must have been exerted on a singularly prosaic 
 age, in which the majority of persons would, like Prior 
 
 1 I do not here concern myself with the hypothesis of the spun- 
 ouaness of this poem.
 
 THI.] THE FABLES. 161 
 
 and Montague, have cast aside as nonsense worthy only of 
 children the gracious, shadowy imaginations of mediaeval 
 thought, we in the nineteenth century can hardly put our- 
 selves in the condition to estimate. But it must always 
 remain one of Dryden's highest titles to fame that he was 
 able thus to make extremes meet. He seems, indeed, to 
 have had not only the far from ordinary faculty of recog- 
 nising good literature wherever he met it, but the quite ex- 
 traordinary faculty of making other people recognise it too 
 by translating it into the language which they were capa- 
 ble of comprehending. A passage may be worth quoting : 
 
 " To this the dame replied : ' Fair daughter, know 
 That what you saw was all a fairy show ; 
 And all those airy shapes you now behold 
 Were human bodies once, and clothed with earthly mould. 
 Our souls, not yet prepared for upper light, 
 Till doomsday wander in the shades of night ; 
 This only holiday of all the year, 
 We, privileged, in sunshine may appear ; 
 With songs and dance we celebrate the day, 
 And with due honours usher in the May. 
 At other times we reign by night alone, 
 And posting through the skies pursue the moon ; 
 But when the morn arises, none are found, 
 For cruel Demogorgon walks the round, 
 And if he finds a fairy lag in light, 
 He drives the wretch before, and lashes into night. 
 
 " ' All courteous are by kind ; and ever proud 
 With friendly offices to help the good. 
 In every land we have a larger space 
 Than what is known to you of mortal race ; 
 Where we with green adorn our fairy bowers, 
 And even this grove, unseen before, is ours. 
 Know farther, every lady clothed in white, 
 And crowned with oak and laurel every knight, 
 8
 
 162 DRYDEN. [CHAP. 
 
 Are servants to the Leaf, by liveries known 
 
 Of innocence ; and I myself am one. 
 
 Saw you not her so graceful to behold, 
 
 In white attire, and crowned with radiant gold ? 
 
 The sovereign lady of our land is she, 
 
 Diana called, the queen of chastity ; 
 
 And, for the spotless name of maid she bears, 
 
 That Agnus castw in her hand appears ; 
 
 And all her train, with leafy chaplets crowned, 
 
 Were for unblamed virginity renowned ; 
 
 But those the chief and highest in command 
 
 Who bear those holy branches in their hand, 
 
 The knights adorned with laurel crowns are they, 
 
 Whom death nor danger ever could dismay, 
 
 Victorious names, who made the world obey : 
 
 Who, while they lived, in deeds of arms excelled, 
 
 And after death for deities were held. 
 
 But those who wear the woodbine on their brow, 
 
 Were knights of love, who never broke their vow ; 
 
 Finn to their plighted faith, and ever free 
 
 From fears, and fickle chance, and jealousy. 
 
 The lords and ladies, who the woodbine bear, 
 
 As true as Tristram and Isotta were.' " 
 
 Why Dryden selected the Wife of Bath's Tale among 
 his few translations from Chaucer, it is not very easy to 
 say. It is a sufficiently harmless fabliau, but it cannot be 
 said to come up in point of merit to many others of the 
 Canterbury Tales. The enemies of our poet would doubt- 
 less say that he selected it because of the unfavourable 
 opinions as to womankind which it contains. But then 
 those same enemies would find it difficult to say why he 
 did not choose instead the scandalous prologue which 
 unites opinions of womankind at least as unfavourable 
 with other matter of the sort which hostile criticism sup- 
 poses to have been peculiarly tempting to Dryden. In the 
 actual tale as given in the Fables there is some alloy of
 
 TIII.] THE FABLES. 168 
 
 this kind, but nothing that could be at all shocking to the 
 age. The length of the story is in proportion more am- 
 plified than is the case with the others. Probably the 
 argumentative gifts of the old hag who turned out not to 
 be an old hag attracted Dryden, for he was always at his 
 best, and must have known that he was always at his best, 
 in passages of the kind. The pleading of the crone is one 
 of his best efforts. A certain desultoriness which is to 
 be found in Chaucer is changed into Drydeu's usual chain 
 of serried argument, and it is much less surprising in the 
 translation than in the original that the knight should 
 have decided to submit at once to such a she-lawyer. But 
 the " wife " herself has something to complain of Dryden. 
 Her fancy for widowhood is delicately enough put in the 
 original : 
 
 " [Sende] grace to overlive them that we wed." 
 
 Dryden makes it much blunter : 
 
 " May widows wed as often as they can, 
 And ever for the better change their man." 
 
 The Character of a Good Parson admits itself to be 
 " enlarged " from Chaucer, and, indeed, the termination, 
 to the extent of some forty lines, is wholly new, and writ- 
 ten with special reference to the circumstances of the 
 time. To this character there is a pleasant little story 
 attached. It seems from a letter to Pepys that the diarist 
 had himself recommended the character in the original to 
 Dryden's notice. When the verses were done, the poet 
 told Pepys of the fact, and proposed to bring them for 
 his inspection. The answer contained a sentence which 
 displays a much greater antipathy to parsons than that 
 which, if we may believe Lord Macaulay, who perhaps
 
 164 DRYDEN. [CHAP. 
 
 borrowed the idea from Stillingfleet or Collier, Dryden 
 himself felt. Pepys remarks that he hopes " from your 
 copy of this good parson to fancy some amends made me 
 for the hourly offence I bear with from the sight of so 
 many lewd originals." What particular trouble Pepys 
 had to bear at the hands of the lewd originals it would 
 be hard to say. But time-server as he had once been 
 he was in all probability sufficiently Jacobite at heart to 
 relish the postscript in Dryden's version. This transfers 
 the circumstances of the expulsion of the Nonjurors to the 
 days of Richard the Second and Henry of Bolingbroke. 
 Nor, had there still been a censorship of the press, is it at 
 all probable that this postscript would have been passed for 
 publication. The following verses are sufficiently pointed : 
 
 " Conquest, an odious name, was laid aside ; 
 When all submitted, none the battle tried. 
 The senseless plea of right by providence 
 Was by a flattering priest invented since, 
 And lasts no longer than the present sway, 
 But justifies the next which comes in play. 
 The people's right remains ; let those who dare 
 Dispute their power when they the judges are." 
 
 The character itself is also very much enlarged ; so much 
 so that the original can only be said to have furnished the 
 heads for it. Dryden has done few better things. 
 
 The selections from Boccaccio, like those from Chaucer, 
 may or may not have been haphazard. The first, at any 
 rate, which has been, as a rule, the worst thought of, ex- 
 plains itself sufficiently. The story of Tancred and Sigis- 
 munda, perhaps, afforded room for " loose descriptions ;" 
 it certainly afforded room for the argument in verse of 
 which Dryden was so great a master. Although the hints 
 of the original have been somewhat coarsely amplified, the
 
 nn.] THE FABLES. 166 
 
 speech of Sigismunda is still a very noble piece of verse, 
 and her final address to her husband's heart almost better. 
 Here is a specimen : 
 
 " ' Thy praise (and thine was then the public voice) 
 First recommended Guiscard to my choice : 
 Directed thus by thee, I looked, and found 
 A man I thought deserving to be crowned ; 
 First by my father pointed to my sight, 
 Nor less conspicuous by his native light ; 
 His mind, his mien, the features of his face, 
 Excelling all the rest of human race : 
 These were thy thoughts, and thou couldst judge aright, 
 Till interest made a jaundice in thy sight. 
 Or, should I grant thou didst not rightly see, 
 Then thou wert first deceived, and I deceived by thee. 
 But if thou shalt allege, through pride of mind, 
 Thy blood with one of base condition joined, 
 'Tis false, for 'tis not baseness to be poor : 
 His poverty augments thy crime the more ; 
 Upbraids thy justice with the scant regard 
 Of worth ; whom princes praise, they should reward. 
 Are these the kings intrusted by the crowd 
 With wealth, to be dispensed for common good ? 
 The people sweat not for their king's delight, 
 To enrich a pimp, or raise a parasite ; 
 Theirs is the toil ; and he who well has served 
 His country, has his country's wealth deserved. 
 Even mighty monarchs oft are meanly born, 
 And kings by birth to lowest rank return ; 
 All subject to the power of giddy chance, 
 For fortune can depress or can advance ; 
 But true nobility is of the mind, 
 Not given by chance, and not to chance resigned. 
 
 " ' For the remaining doubt of thy decree, 
 What to resolve, and how dispose of me ; 
 Be warned to cast that useless care aside 
 Myself alone will for myself provide.
 
 166 DRYDEN. [CHAP. 
 
 If, in thy doting and decrepit age, 
 Thy soul, a stranger in thy youth to rage, 
 Begins in cruel deeds to take delight, 
 Gorge with my blood thy barbarous appetite ; 
 For I so little am disposed to pray 
 For life, I would not cast a wish away. 
 Such as it is, the offence is all my own ; 
 And what to Guiscard is already done, 
 Or to be done, is doomed, by thy decree, 
 That, if not executed first by thee, 
 Shall on my person be performed by me. 
 
 " 'Away ! with women weep, and leave me here, 
 Fixed, like a man, to die without a tear ; 
 Or save, or slay us both this present hour, 
 'Tis all that fate has left within thy power.' " 
 
 The last of the three, Cymon and Iphigenia, has been a 
 great favourite. In the original it is one of the most un- 
 interesting stories of the Decameron, the single incident of 
 Cymon's falling in love, of which not very much is made, 
 being the only relief to a commonplace tale of violence 
 and treachery, in which neither the motives nor the char- 
 acters of the actors sufficiently justify them. The Italian, 
 too, by making Iphigenia an unwilling captive, takes away 
 from Cymon the only excuse he could have had. The three 
 charming lines with which Dryden's poem opens 
 
 !' Old as I am, for lady's love unfit, 
 The power of beauty I remember yet, 
 Which once inflamed my soul, and still inspires my wit," 
 
 have probably bribed a good many readers, and certainly 
 the whole volume of the Fables is an ample justification 
 of the poet's boast, not only as regards beauty of one kind, 
 but of all. The opening triplet is followed by a diatribe 
 against Collier, which at first seems in very bad taste ; but 
 it is made, with excellent art, to lead on to a description of
 
 TIII.] THE FABLES. 187 
 
 the power of love, to which the story yokes itself most nat- 
 urally. Nor is any praise too high for the description of 
 the actual scene in which Cymon is converted from his 
 brutishness by the sight of Iphigenia, an incident of which, 
 as has been said, the original takes small account. But 
 even with the important alterations which Dryden has in- 
 troduced into it, the story, as a story, remains of but sec- 
 ond-rate interest. 
 
 Nothing of this sort can be said of Theodore and ffono- 
 ria. I have said that Ellis's commendation of it may be 
 excessive ; but that it goes at the head of all the poetry 
 of the school of which Dryden was a master is absolutely 
 certain. The original here is admirably suggestive: the 
 adaptation is more admirable in its obedience to the sug- 
 gestions. It has been repeatedly noticed with what art 
 Dryden has gradually led up to the horror of the phan- 
 tom lady's appearance, which is in the original introduced 
 in an abrupt and casual way ; while the matter-of-factness 
 of the spectre's address, both to Theodore himself and to 
 the friends who wish afterwards to interfere in his vic- 
 tim's favour, is most happily changed in the English poem. 
 Boccaccio, indeed, master as he was of a certain kind of 
 pathos, did not, at least in the Decameron, succeed with 
 this particular sort of tragedy. His narrative has alto- 
 gether too much of the chronicle in it to be fully impres- 
 sive. Here Dryden's process of amplification has been of 
 the utmost service. At almost every step of the story he 
 has introduced new touches which transform it altogether, 
 and leave it, at the close, a perfect piece of narrative of 
 the horrible kind. The same abruptness which has been 
 noticed in the original version of the earlier part of the 
 story appears in the later. In Dryden, Honoria, impressed 
 with the sight, and with Theodore's subsequent neglect of
 
 168 DRYDEN. [CHAP. 
 
 her, dreams of what she has seen, and thinks over what 
 she has dreamt, at last, and only at last, resolving to sub- 
 due her pride and consent to Theodore's suit. Boccaccio's 
 heroine goes straight home in a business-like manner, and 
 sends " a trusty damsel " that very evening to inform her 
 lover that she surrenders. This is, to say the least, sud- 
 den. In short, the comparison is here wholly in favour of 
 the English poet. Nor, if we drop the parallel, and look 
 at Theodore and Honoria merely by itself, is it less ad- 
 mirable. 
 
 The purely original poems remain to be noticed. Of 
 the Epistle to John Driden we know that Dryden him- 
 self thought highly, while the person to whom it was ad- 
 dressed was so pleased with it that he gave him " a noble 
 present," said by family tradition to have been 500/., but 
 which Malone, ex sua conjectura, reduces to 100. John 
 Driden was the poet's cousin, and his frequent host at 
 Chesterton. He was a bachelor, his house being kept by 
 his sister Honor ; he was a member of Parliament, and an 
 enthusiastic sportsman. Chesterton had come into the 
 Dryden family by marriage, and John Driden inherited 
 it as the second son. The poem contains, in allusion to 
 Driden's bachelorhood, one of those objurgations on mat- 
 rimony which have been interpreted in a personal sense, 
 but which are, in all probability, merely the commonplaces 
 of the time. Besides wives, physicians were a frequent 
 subject of Dryden's satire ; and the passage in this poem 
 about the origin of medicine has been learnt by almost 
 every one. It might not have been written but for Black - 
 more's sins, for Dryden had, in the postscript to his Virgil, 
 paid an elaborate compliment to two ornaments of the 
 profession. But it is naturally enough connected with a 
 compliment to his cousin's sportsmanship. Then there is
 
 vm.] THE FABLES. 169 
 
 what might be called a " Character of a good Member of 
 Parliament," fashioned, of course, to suit the case of the 
 person addressed, who, though not exactly a Jacobite, was 
 a member of the Opposition. The poem ends with a 
 most adroit compliment at once to the subject and to the 
 writer. These complimentary pieces always please pos- 
 terity with a certain drawback, unless, like the lines to 
 Congreve, and the almost more beautiful lines on Oldham, 
 they deal with merits which are still in evidence, and are 
 not merely personal. But the judgment of Dorset and 
 Montague, who thought of this piece and of the exquisite 
 verses to the Duchess of Ormond that he " never writ bet- 
 ter," was not far wrong. 
 
 The only piece that remains to be noticed is better 
 known even than the Epistle to John Driden. Alexander's 
 Feast was the second ode which Dryden wrote for the 
 " Festival of St. Cecilia." He received for it 40/., which, 
 as he tells his sons that the writing of it " would be 
 noways beneficial," was probably unexpected, if the state- 
 ment as to the payment is true. There are other legendary 
 contradictions about the time occupied in writing it, one 
 story saying that it was done in a single night, while an- 
 other asserts that he was a fortnight in composing or cor- 
 recting it. But, as has been frequently pointed out, the 
 two statements are by no means incompatible. Another 
 piece of gossip about this famous ode is that Dryden at 
 first wrote Lais instead of Thais, which " small mistake " 
 he bids Tonson in a letter to remember to alter. Little 
 criticism of Alexander's Feast is necessary. Whatever 
 drawbacks its form may have (especially the irritating 
 chorus), it must be admitted to be about the best thing of 
 its kind, and nothing more can be demanded of any poetry 
 than to be excellent in its kind. Dryden himself thought 
 M 8* 12
 
 170 DRYDEN. [CHAP. 
 
 it the best of all his poetry, and he had a remarkable fac- 
 ulty of self-criticism. 
 
 This volume of poems was not only the last that Dry- 
 den produced, but it also exhibits his poetical character in 
 its very best and most perfect form. He had, through all 
 his long literary life, been constantly a student, always his 
 own scholar, always correcting, varying, re-arranging, and 
 refining. The citations already given will have shown at 
 what perfection of metre he had by this time arrived. 
 Good as his early (if not his earliest) works are in this 
 respect, it must be remembered that it was long before he 
 attained his greatest skill. Play-writing in rhyme and 
 blank verse, practice in stanzas, and Pindarics, and irreg- 
 ular lyrical measures, all went to furnish him with the ex- 
 perience he required, and which certainly was not in his 
 case the school of a fool. 
 
 Beginning with a state of pupilage to masters who were 
 none of the best, he subsequently took little instruction, 
 except of a fragmentary kind, from any living man except 
 Milton in poetry, and, as he told Congreve, Tillotson in 
 prose. But he was none the less constantly teaching him- 
 self. His vocabulary is naturally a point of great impor- 
 tance in any consideration of his influence on our literature. 
 His earliest work exhibits many traces of the scholastic 
 and pedantic phraseology of his immediate forerunners. 
 It is probable that in his second period, when his activity 
 was chiefly dramatic, he might have got rid of this, had 
 not the tendency been strengthened by the influence of 
 Milton. At one period, again, the Gallicizing tendencies 
 of the time led him to a very improper and inexcusable 
 importation of French words. This, however, he soon 
 dropped. In the meridian of his powers, when his great 
 satires were produced, these tendencies, the classical and
 
 Tin.] THE FABLES. 171 
 
 the Gallican, in action and re-action with his full command 
 of English, vernacular and literary, produced a dialect 
 which, if not the most graceful that the language has ever 
 known, is perhaps the strongest and most nervous. Little 
 change takes place in the last twenty years, though the 
 tendency to classicism and archaism, strengthened it may 
 be by the work of translation, not unfrequently reappears. 
 In versification the great achievement of Dryden was the 
 alteration of what may be called the balance of the line, 
 causing it to run more quickly, and to strike its rhymes 
 with a sharper and less prolonged sound. One obvious 
 means of obtaining this end was, as a matter of course, the 
 isolation of the couplet, and the avoidance of overlapping 
 the different lines one upon the other. The effect of this 
 overlapping, by depriving the eye and voice of the expec- 
 tation of rest at the end of each couplet, is always one of 
 two things. Either the lines are converted into a sort of 
 rhythmic prose, made musical by the rhymes rather than 
 divided by them, or else a considerable pause is invited at 
 the end of each, or of most lines, and the cadence of the 
 whole becomes comparatively slow and languid. Both 
 these forms, as may be seen in the works of Mr. Morris, 
 as well as in the older writers, are excellently suited for 
 narration of some considerable length. They are less well 
 suited for satire, for argument, and for the moral reflec- 
 tions which the age of Dryden loved. He, therefore, set 
 himself to elaborate the couplet with its sharp point, its 
 quick delivery, and the pistol-like detonation of its rhyme. 
 But there is an obvious objection, or rather there are sev- 
 eral obvious objections which present themselves to the 
 couplet. It was natural that to one accustomed to the 
 more varied range of the older rhythm and metre, there 
 might seem to be a danger of the snip-snap monotony
 
 172 DRYDEN. [CHAP. 
 
 into which, as we know, it did actually fall when it passed 
 out of the hands of its first great practitioners. There 
 might also be a fear that it would not always be possible 
 to compress the sense of a complete clause within the nar- 
 row limits of twenty syllables. To meet these difficulties 
 Dryden resorted to three mechanical devices the hemi- 
 stich, the Alexandrine, and the triplet ; all three of which 
 could be used indifferently to eke out the space or to give 
 variety of sound. The use of the hemistich, or fragment- 
 ary line, appears to have been based partly on the well- 
 known practice of Virgil, partly on the necessities of 
 dramatic composition where the unbroken English couplet 
 is to English ears intolerable. In poetry proper the hemi- 
 stich is anything but pleasing, and Dryden, becoming con- 
 vinced of the fact, almost discarded it. The Alexandrine 
 and the triplet he always continued to use, and they are 
 to this day the most obvious characteristics, to a casual 
 observer, of his versification. To the Alexandrine, judi- 
 ciously used, and limited to its proper acceptation of a verse 
 of twelve syllables, I can see no objection. The metre, 
 though a well-known English critic has maltreated it of 
 late, is a very fine one ; and some of Dryden's own lines 
 are unmatched examples of that " energy divine " which 
 has been attributed to him. In an essay on the Alex- 
 andrine in English poetry, which yet remains to be writ- 
 ten, and which would be not the least valuable of contri- 
 butions to poetical criticism, this use of the verse would 
 have to be considered, as well as its regular recurrent em- 
 ployment at the close of the Spenserian stanza, and its 
 continuous use, of which not many poets besides Drayton 
 and Mr. Browning have given us considerable examples. 
 An examination of the Polyolbion and of Fifine at the 
 Fair, side by side, would, I think, reveal capacities some-
 
 vm.] CORRESPONDENCE. 173 
 
 what unexpected even in this form of arrangement. But 
 so far as the occasional Alexandrine is concerned, it is not 
 a hyperbole to say that a number, out of all proportion, of 
 the best lines in English poetry may be found in the clos- 
 ing verses of the Spenserian stave as used by Spenser him- 
 self, by Shelley, and by the present Laureate, and in the 
 occasional Alexandrines of Dryden. The only thing to 
 be said against this latter use is, that it demands a very 
 skilful ear and hand to adjust the cadence. So much for 
 the Alexandrine. 
 
 For the triplet I must confess myself to be entirely 
 without affection. Except in the very rare cases when its 
 contents come in, in point of sense, as a kind of paren- 
 thesis or aside, it seems to me to spoil the metre, if any- 
 thing could spoil Dryden's verse. That there was some 
 doubt about it even in the minds of those who used it, 
 may be inferred from the care they generally took to ac- 
 company it in print with the bracket indicator, as if to 
 invite the eye to break it gently to the ear. So strong 
 was Dryden's verse, so well able to subdue all forms to 
 its own measure, that in him it mattered but little ; in his 
 followers its drawbacks at once appeared. 
 
 A few personal details not already alluded to remain as 
 to Dryden's life at this time. To this period belongs the 
 second and only other considerable series of his letters. 
 They are addressed to Mrs. Steward, a cousin of his, 
 though of a much younger generation. Mrs. Steward was 
 the daughter of Mrs. Creed, the already-mentioned inde- 
 fatigable decorator of Northamptonshire churches and 
 halls, and she herself was given to the arts of painting and 
 poetry. She had married Mr. Elmes Steward, a mighty 
 sportsman, whose house at Cotterstock still exists by the 
 roadside from Oundle to Peterborough. The correspond-
 
 174 DRYDEN. [CHAP. 
 
 ence extends over the last eighteen months of the poet's 
 life, beginning in October, 1698, and not ending till a 
 week or two before his death in the spring of 1700. Mrs. 
 Steward is said to have been about eight-and-twenty at the 
 time, and beautiful. The first letter speaks of a visit soon 
 to be paid to Cotterstock after many invitations, and is 
 rather formal in style. Thenceforward, however, the epis- 
 tles, sometimes addressed to Mr. Steward (Dryden not in- 
 frequently spells it Stewart and Stuart), and sometimes to 
 his wife, are very cordial, and full of thanks for presents 
 of country produce. On one occasion Dryden " intends " 
 that Lady Elizabeth should " taste the plover he had re- 
 ceived," an incident upon which, if I were a commentator, 
 I should build a legend of conjugal happiness quite as 
 plausible, and probably quite as well founded, as the legend 
 of conjugal unhappiness which has actually been construct- 
 ed. Then there are injurious allusions to a certain par- 
 son's wife at Tichmarsh, who is "just the contrary "of Mrs. 
 Steward. Marrow puddings are next acknowledged, which 
 it seems were so good that they had quite spoiled Charles 
 Dryden's taste for any other. Then comes that sentence, 
 " Old men are not so insensible of beauty as, it may be, 
 you young ladies think," which was elsewhere translated 
 into eloquent verse, and the same letter describes the 
 writer as passing his time " sometimes with Ovid, some- 
 times with our old English poet Chaucer." More ac- 
 knowledgments of presents follow, and then a visit is 
 promised, with the prayer that Mrs. Steward will have 
 some small beer brewed for him without hops, or with a 
 very inconsiderable quantity, because the bitter beer at 
 Tichmarsh had made him very ill. The visit came off in 
 August, 1699, and it is to be hoped that the beer was not 
 bitter. After his return the poet sends, in the pleasant old
 
 vm.] CORRESPONDENCE. 175 
 
 fashion, a history of his journey back to London, whither 
 the stage coach took him out of his way, whereby, not 
 passing certain friends' houses, he missed " two couple of 
 rabbits, and Mr. Cole's Ribadavia wine," a stirrup cup of 
 the latter being probably intended. In November occurs 
 the famous description of himself as " a man who has 
 done his best to improve the language, and especially the 
 poetry," with much literary and political gossip, and occa- 
 sional complaints of bad health. This letter may perhaps 
 be quoted as a specimen : 
 
 "Nov. 7, 1699. 
 
 " MADAM, Even your expostulations are pleasing to me ; for 
 though they show you angry, yet they are not without many expres- 
 sions of your kindness ; and therefore I am proud to be so chidden. 
 Yet I cannot so farr abandon my own defence, as to confess any idle- 
 ness or forgetfulness on my part. What has hind'red me from write- 
 ing to you was neither ill health, nor, a worse thing, ingratitude ; but 
 a flood of little businesses, which yet are necessary to my subsist- 
 ance, and of which I hop'd to have given you a good account before 
 this time : but the Court rather speaks kindly of me, than does any- 
 thing for me, though they promise largely ; and perhaps they think 
 I will advance as they go backward, in which they will be much de- 
 ceiv'd ; for I can never go an inch beyond my conscience and my 
 honour. If they will consider me as a man who has done my best to 
 improve the language, and especially the poetry, and will be content 
 with my acquiescence under the present government, and forbearing 
 satire on it, that I can promise, because I can perform it ; but I can 
 neither take the oaths, nor forsake my religion ; because I know not 
 what church to go to, if I leave the Catholique ; they are all so di- 
 vided amongst themselves in matters of faith necessary to salvation, 
 and yet all assumeing the name of Protestants. May God be pleased 
 to open your eyes, as he has open'd mine ! Truth is but one ; and 
 they who have once heard of it can plead no excuse if they do not 
 embrace it. But these are things too serious for a trifling letter. If 
 you desire to hear anything more of my affaire, the Earl of Dorsett 
 and your cousin Montague have both seen the two poems to the 
 Duchess of Ormond and my worthy cousin Driden ; and are of opin-
 
 176 DRYDEN. [CHAP.VIII. 
 
 ion that I never writt better. My other friends are divided in their 
 judgments which to preferr ; but the greater part are for those to 
 my dear kinsman ; which I have corrected with so much care, that 
 they will now be worthy of his sight, and do neither of us any dis- 
 honour after our death. 
 
 " There is this day to be acted a new tragedy, made by Mr. Hop- 
 kins, and, as I believe, in rhime. He has formerly written a play 
 in verse, called Eoadicea, which you fair ladyes lik'd ; and is a poet 
 who writes good verses, without knowing how or why ; I mean, he 
 writes naturally well, without art, or learning, or good sence. Con- 
 greve is ill of the gout at Barnet Wells. I have had the honour of 
 a visite from the Earl of Dorsett, and din'd with him. Matters in 
 Scotland are in a high ferment, and next door to a breach betwixt 
 the two nations ; but they say from court that France and we are 
 hand and glove. 'Tis thought the king will endeavour to keep up a 
 standing army, and make the stirr in Scotland his pretence for it ; my 
 cousin Driden and the country party, I suppose, will be against it ; 
 for when a spirit is raised, 'tis hard conjuring him down again. You 
 see I am dull by my writeing news ; but it may be my cousin Creed 
 may be glad to hear what I believe is true, though not very pleasing. 
 I hope he recovers health in the country, by his staying so long in it. 
 My service to my cousin Stuart, and all at Oundle. 
 " I am, faire Cousine, 
 
 " Your most obedient servant, 
 
 "JOHN DRYDEN. 
 " For Mrs. Stewart, Att 
 
 Cotterstock, near Oundle, 
 
 In Northamptonshire, 
 
 These. 
 To be left at th Post-house in Dandle."
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 DRYDEN'S life lasted but a very short time after the publi- 
 cation of the Fables. He was, if not a very old man, close 
 upon his seventieth year. He had worked hard, and had 
 probably lived no more carefully than most of the men of 
 his time. Gout, gravel, and other disorders tormented him 
 sorely. The Fables were published in November, 1699, 
 and during the winter he was more or less ill. As has 
 been mentioned, many letters of his exist in reference to 
 this time, more in proportion than for any other period of 
 his life. Besides those to Mrs. Steward, there are some 
 addressed to Mrs. Thomas, a young and pretty literary 
 lady, who afterwards fell among the Philistines, and who 
 made use of her brief intimacy with the Dryden family to 
 romance freely about it, when in her later days she was 
 indigent, in prison, and, what was worse, in the employ of 
 Curll. One of these letters contains the frankest and most 
 graceful of Dryden's many apologies for the looseness 
 of his writings, accompanied by a caution to " Corinna " 
 against following the example of the illustrious Aphra 
 Behn, a caution which was a good deal needed, though un- 
 fortunately fruitless. In the early spring of 1700, or, ac- 
 cording to the calendar of the day, in the last months of 
 1699, some of Dryden's admirers got up a benefit per-
 
 178 DRYDEN. [CHAP. 
 
 formance for him at the Duke's Theatre. Fletcher's Pil- 
 grim was selected for the occasion, revised by Vanbrugh, 
 and with the addition of a lyrical scene by Dryden him- 
 self. He also wrote for the occasion a secular masque to 
 celebrate the opening of a new century: the controversy 
 on the point whether 1700 belonged to the seventeenth 
 century or the eighteenth not having, it seems, arisen. 
 The performance took place, but the date of it is uncer- 
 tain, and it has been thought that it was not till after 
 Dryden's death. This happened in the following wise: 
 During the months of March and April Dryden was very 
 ill with gout. One toe became much inflamed, and not be- 
 ing properly attended to, it mortified. Hobbs, the surgeon, 
 was then called in, and advised amputation, but Dryden 
 refused on the score of his age, and the inutility of pro- 
 longing a maimed existence. The mortification spreading 
 farther, it was a case for amputation of the entire leg, 
 with probably dubious results, or else for certain death. 
 On the 30th of April the Postboy announced that " John 
 Dryden, Esq., the famous poet, lies a-dying," and at three 
 o'clock the next morning he died very quietly and peace- 
 fully. 
 
 His funeral was sufficiently splendid. Halifax is said 
 to have at first offered to discharge the whole cost him- 
 self, but other friends were anxious to share it, among 
 whom Dorset and Lord Jeffreys, the Chancellor's son, are 
 specially mentioned. The body was embalmed, and lay 
 in state at the College of Physicians for some days. On 
 the 13th of May the actual funeral took place at West- 
 minster Abbey, with a great procession, preceded at the 
 College by a Latin oration from Garth, the President, and 
 by the singing of Exegi Monumentum to music. Years 
 afterwards " Corinna " forged for Curll a wild account of
 
 ix.] CONCLUSION. 179 
 
 the matter, of which it is sufficient to say that it lacks the 
 slightest corroboration, and is intrinsically improbable, if 
 not impossible. It may be found in most of the biogra- 
 phies, and Malone has devoted his usual patient industry 
 to its demolition. Some time passed before any monu- 
 ment was erected to Dryden in Poet's Corner, where he 
 had been buried by Chaucer and Cowley. Pepys tells us 
 that Dorset and Montague were going to do it. But they 
 did not. Some time later Congreve complimented the 
 Dnke of Newcastle on having given order for a monu- 
 ment, a compliment which his Grace obtained at a re- 
 markably cheap rate, for the order, if given, was never 
 executed. Finally, twenty years after his death, the Duke 
 of Buckinghamshire, better known under his former title 
 of Lord Mulgrave, came to the rescue, it is said, owing to 
 a reflection of Pope's on Dryden's "rude and nameless 
 stone." The monument was not magnificent, but at any 
 rate it saves the poet from such dishonour as there may 
 be in a nameless grave. The hymn sung at his funeral 
 probably puts that matter most sensibly. 
 
 Dryden's wife lived until 1714, and died a very old 
 woman and insane. Her children, like her husband, had 
 died before her. Charles, the eldest, was drowned in the 
 Thames near Datchet, in 1704; John, the second, hardly 
 outlived his father a year, and died at Rome in 1701 ; the 
 third, Erasmus Henry, succeeded, in 1710, to the family 
 honours, but died in the same year. The house of Canons 
 Ashby is still held by descendants of the family, but in 
 the female line ; though the name has been unbroken, and 
 the title has been continued. 
 
 Something has already been said about the character of 
 Lady Elizabeth Dryden. It has to be added here that the 
 stories about her temper and relations with her husband
 
 180 DRYDEN. [CHAJ>, 
 
 and his friends, bear investigation as little as those about 
 her maidenly conduct. Most of them are mere hearsays, 
 and some not even that. Dryden, it is said, must have 
 lived unhappily with his wife, for he is always sneering at 
 matrimony. It is sufficient to say that much the same 
 might be said of every writer (at least for the stage) be- 
 tween the Restoration and the accession of Anne. Even 
 the famous line in Absalom and Achitophel, which has 
 caused such scandal, is a commonplace as old at least as 
 Jean de Meung and the Roman de la Rose. When Ma- 
 lone, on the authority of a Lady Dryden who lived a hun- 
 dred years later, but without a tittle of documentary evi- 
 dence, tells us that Lady Elizabeth was a shrew, we really 
 must ask what is the value of such testimony ? There is 
 one circumstantial legend which has been much relied on. 
 Dryden, it is said, was at work one day in his study, when 
 his wife came in, and could not make him listen to some- 
 thing she had to say. Thereupon said she, in a pet, " I 
 wish I were a book, and then perhaps you would pay me 
 some attention." " Then, my dear," replied this graceless 
 bard, " pray be an almanac, that I may change you at the 
 end of the year." The joke cannot be said to be brilliant ; 
 but, taking it as a true story, the notion of founding a 
 charge of conjugal unhappiiiess thereon is sufficiently ab- 
 surd. Mrs. Thomas's romancings are worthy of no credit, 
 and even if they were worthy of any, do not bear much 
 upon the question. All that can be said is, that the few 
 allusions to Lady Elizabeth in the poet's letters are made 
 in all propriety, and tell no tale of disunion. Of his chil- 
 dren it is allowed that he was excessively fond, and his per- 
 sonal amiability is testified to with one consent by all his 
 friends who have left testimonies on the subject. Con- 
 greve and " Granville the Polite " both mention his modest
 
 a.] CONCLUSION. 181 
 
 and unassuming demeanour, and the obligingness of his 
 disposition. Pope, it is true, has brought against him the 
 terrible accusation that he was " not a genteel man," be- 
 ing " intimate with none but poetical men." The fact on 
 which the charge seems to be based is more than dubious, 
 and Pope was evidently transferring his own conception of 
 Grub Street to the times when to be a poetical man cer- 
 tainly was no argument against gentility. Rochester, Mul- 
 grave, Dorset, Sedley, Etherege, Roscommon, make a very 
 odd assortment of ungenteel poetical friends. 
 
 It is astonishing, when one comes to examine the mat- 
 ter, how vague and shadowy our personal knowledge of 
 Dryden is. A handful of anecdotes, many of them un- 
 dated and unauthenticated except at third and fourth hand, 
 furnish us with almost all that we do know. That he was 
 fond of fishing, and prided himself upon being a better 
 fisherman than Durfey ; that he took a good deal of snuff; 
 and that he did not drink much until Addison, in the last 
 years of his life, induced him to do so, almost exhausts 
 the lists of such traits which are recorded by others. His 
 " down look," his plumpness, his fresh colour are points 
 in which tradition is pretty well supported by the portraits 
 "^vhich exist, and by such evidence as can be extracted 
 from the libels against him. The famous picture of him 
 at Will's, which every one repeats, and v.hich Scott has 
 made classical in the Pirate, is very likely true enough to 
 fact, and there is no harm in thinking of Dryden in the 
 great coffee-house, with his chair in the balcony in sum- 
 mer, by the fire in winter, passing criticisms and paying 
 good-natured compliments on matters literary. He had, 
 he tells Mrs. Steward, a very vulgar stomach thus par- 
 tially justifying Pope's accusations and liked a chine of 
 bacon better than marrow puddings. He dignified Sam-
 
 182 DRYDEN. [CHAP. 
 
 uel Pepys with the title of Padron Mio, and was invited 
 by Samuel to eat a cold chicken and a salad with him in 
 return. According to one of the aimless gossiping stories, 
 which are almost all we possess, he once stayed with Mul- 
 grave at the great Yorkshire domain whence the title was 
 derived, and was cheated by Mulgrave at bowls a story 
 not so unbelievable as Mr. Bell seems to think, for every- 
 body cheated at play in those days ; and Mulgrave's dis- 
 inclination to pay his tradesmen, or in any other way to 
 get rid of money, was notorious. But even the gossip 
 which has come down to us is almost entirely literary. 
 Thus we are told that when he allowed certain merits to 
 " starch Johnny Crowne " so called because of the unal- 
 terable stiffness and propriety of his collar and cravat he 
 used to add that " his father and Crowne's mother had 
 been great friends." It is only fair to the reputation of 
 Erasmus Dryden and of Mrs. Crowne to add that this must 
 have been pure mischief, inasmuch as it is always said that 
 the author of Sir Courtly Nice was born in Nova Scotia. 
 His well-feigned denunciation of Smith and Johnson, his 
 tormentors, or rather the tormentors of his Eidolon Bayes, 
 as " the coolest and most insignificant fellows " he had 
 ever seen on the stage, may be also recalled. Again, there 
 is a legend that Bolingbroke, when a young man, came in 
 one morning to see him, and found that he had been sit- 
 ing up all night writing the ode on St. Cecilia's Day. An- 
 other time Bolingbroke called on him, and was asked to 
 outstay Jacob Tonson, so as to prevent some apprehended 
 incivility from the truculent Jacob. The story of his vex- 
 ation at the liberty taken with him by Prior and Monta- 
 gue has been already mentioned more than once, but may 
 be regarded with very considerable suspicion. Most fa- 
 mous perhaps of all such legends is that which tells of the
 
 ix.] CONCLUSION. 183 
 
 unlucky speech, " Cousin Swift, you will never be a poet," 
 than which never was there anything more true or more 
 unfortunate. Yet the enmity which, though it has been 
 exaggerated, the greatest English man of letters in the 
 next generation felt towards his kinsman ought not to be 
 wholly regretted, because it has produced one of the most 
 touching instances of literal devotion which even a com- 
 mentator ever paid to his idol. Swift, it must be remem- 
 bered, has injuriously stigmatized Dryden's prefaces as 
 
 being 
 
 " Merely writ at first for filling, 
 To raise the volume's price a shilling." 
 
 Hereupon Malone has set to, and has gravely demonstrated 
 that, as the price at which plays were then issued was fixed 
 and constant, the insertion of a long preface instead of a 
 short one, or indeed of any preface at all, could not have 
 raised the volume's price a penny. Next to Shadwell's 
 criticism on Macflecknoe, I think this may be allowed to be 
 the happiest example recorded in connexion with the life 
 of Dryden of the spirit of literalism. 
 
 Such idle stuff as these legends mostly are is indeed 
 hardly worth discussion, hardly even worth mentioning. 
 The quiet scenery of the Nene Valley, in which Dryden 
 passed all the beginning and not a little of the close of his 
 life ; the park at Charlton ; the river (an imaginary asso- 
 ciation perhaps, but too striking a one to be lost) on which 
 Crites and Eugenius and Neander rowed down past the 
 " great roar of waters " at London Bridge, and heard the 
 Dutch guns as they talked of dramatic poesy ; the house 
 in Gerrard Street ; the balcony and coffee-room at Will's ; 
 the park where the king walked with the poet ; and, last 
 of all, the Abbey : these are the only scenes in which Dry- 
 den can be pictured even by the most imaginative lover
 
 184 DRYDEN. [CHAP. 
 
 of the concrete picturesque. Very few days of his life 
 of nearly seventy years emerge for us from the mass by 
 virtue of any definite and detailed incident, the account of 
 which we have on trustworthy authority. It is a com- 
 monplace to say that an author's life is in his works. 
 But in Dryden's case it is a simple fact, and therefore a 
 biography of him, let it be repeated at the close as it was 
 asserted at the beginning, must consist of little but a dis- 
 cussion and running comment on those works, and on the 
 characteristics, literary and personal, which are discoverable 
 in them. 
 
 It only now remains to sum up these characteristics, 
 which it must never be forgotten are of even more value 
 because of the representative character of Dryden than 
 because of his individual eminence. Many as are the 
 great men of letters who have illustrated English litera- 
 ture from the beginning to the present day, it may safely 
 be said that no one so represented his time and so in- 
 fluenced it as the man of letters whom we have been dis- 
 cussing. There are greater names in our literature, no 
 doubt ; there are others as great or nearly so. But at no 
 time that I can think of was there any Englishman who, 
 for a considerable period, was so far in advance of his 
 contemporaries in almost every branch of literary work 
 as Dryden was during the last twenty years of the seven- 
 teenth century. To turn a satiric couplet of his own, by 
 the alteration of a single word, from an insult to a com- 
 pliment, we may say that he, at any rate during his last 
 decade, 
 
 " ID prose and verse was owned without dispute 
 Within the realms of English absolute." 
 
 But his representative character in relation to the men of 
 his time was almost more remarkable than his intellectual
 
 ix] CONCLUSION. 185 
 
 and artistic superiority to them. Other great men of let 
 ters, with perhaps the single exception of Voltaire, have 
 usually, when they represented their time at all, represent- 
 ed but a small part of it. With Dryden this was not the 
 case. Not only did the immense majority of men of let- 
 ters in his later days directly imitate him, but both then 
 and earlier most literary Englishmen, even when they did 
 not imitate him, worked on the same lines and pursued 
 the same objects. The eighteen volumes of his works 
 contain a faithful representation of the whole literary 
 movement in England for the best part of half a century, 
 and what is more, they contain the germs and indicate tho 
 direction of almost the whole literary movement for nearly 
 a century more. 
 
 But Dryden was not only in his literary work a typical 
 Englishman of his time, and a favourably typical one ; 
 he was almost as representative in point of character. 
 The time was not the most showy or attractive in the 
 moral history of the nation, though perhaps it looks to 
 us not a little worse than it was. But it must be admit- 
 ted to have been a time of shameless coarseness in lan- 
 guage and manners; of virulent and bloodthirsty party- 
 spirit; of almost unparalleled self-seeking and political 
 dishonesty; and of a flattering servility to which, in the 
 same way, hardly any parallel can be found. Its chief 
 redeeming features were, that it was not a cowardly age, 
 and, for the most part, not a hypocritical one. Men seem 
 frequently to have had few convictions, and sometimes to 
 have changed them with a somewhat startling rapidity ; 
 but when they had them, they had also the courage of 
 them. They hit out with a vigour and a will which to 
 this day is refreshing to read of ; and when, as sometimes 
 happened, they lost the battle, they took their punishment, 
 N 9 1S
 
 186 DRYDEN. [CHAP. 
 
 as with perhaps some arrogance we are wont to say, like 
 Englishmen. Dryden had the merits and the defects 
 eminently ; but the defects were, after all, in a mild and 
 by no means virulent form. His character has had ex- 
 ceedingly hard measure since. During the last ten years 
 of his life, and for the most part of the half-century suc- 
 ceeding his death, his political principles were out of 
 favour, and this naturally prejudiced many persons against 
 his conduct even at the time when his literary eminence 
 was least questioned. In Johnson and in Scott, Dryden 
 found a brace of the doughtiest champions, as heartily 
 prepossessed in his favour as they were admirably armed 
 to fight his battles. But of late years he has again fallen 
 among the Philistines. It was obviously Lord Macaulay's 
 game to blacken the greatest literary champion of the 
 cause he had set himself to attack ; and I need not say 
 with what zest and energy Macaulay was wont to wield 
 the tar-brush. Some years later Dryden had the good 
 fortune to meet with an admirable editor of his poems. 
 I venture to think the late Mr. Christie's Globe edition 
 of our poet one of the very best things of the kind that 
 has ever been produced. From the purely literary point 
 of view there is scarcely a fault to be found with it. But 
 the editor unfortunately seems to have sworn allegiance 
 to Shaftesbury before he swore allegiance to Dryden. 
 He reconciled these jarring fealties by sacrificing the char- 
 acter of the latter, while admitting his intellectual great- 
 ness. An article to which I have more than once referred 
 in the Quarterly Review puts the facts once more in a 
 clear and fair light. But Mr. Green's twice-published his- 
 tory has followed in the old direction, and has indeed out- 
 Macaulayed Macaulay in reckless abuse. I believe that I 
 have put the facts at least so that any reader who takes
 
 ix.] CONCLUSION. 187 
 
 the trouble may judge for himself of the private conduct 
 of Dryden. His behaviour as a public man has also been 
 dealt with pretty fully ; and I think we may safely con- 
 clude that in neither case can the verdict be a really unfa- 
 vourable one. Dryden, no doubt, was not austerely virtu- 
 ous. He was not one of the men who lay down a compre- 
 hensive scheme of moral, political, and intellectual conduct, 
 and follow out that scheme, come wind, come weather. It 
 is probable that he was quite aware of the existence and 
 alive to the merits of cakes and ale. He was not an 
 economical man, and he had no scruple in filling up gaps 
 in his income with pensions and presents. But all these 
 things were the way of his world, and he was not exces- 
 sive in following it. On the other hand, all trustworthy 
 testimony concurs in praising his amiable and kindly dis- 
 position, his freedom from literary arrogance, and his will- 
 ingness to encourage and assist youthful aspirants in liter- 
 ature. Mercilessly hard as he hit his antagonists, it must 
 be remembered that he was rarely the first to strike. On 
 the whole, putting aside his licence of language, which is 
 absolutely inexcusable, but for which it must be remem- 
 bered he not only made an ample apology, but such-amends 
 as were possible by earnestly dissuading others from fol- 
 lowing his example, we shall be safe in saying that, though 
 he was assuredly no saint, there were not so very many 
 better men then living than John Dryden. 
 
 A shorter summary will suffice for the literary aspect of 
 the matter ; for Dryden's peculiarities in this respect have 
 already been treated fully enough. In one of his own last 
 letters he states that his life-object had been to improve 
 the language, and especially the poetry. He had accom- 
 plished it. With our different estimate of the value of 
 old English literature, we cannot, indeed, adopt Johnson's
 
 188 DRYDEN. [CHAT. 
 
 famous metaphor, and say that " he found English of brick 
 and left it of marble." The comparison of Hamlet and 
 Macbeth to " brick," with Don Sebastian and the Spanish 
 Friar for " marble," would be absurd. But in truth the 
 terms of the comparison are inappropriate. English as 
 Dryden found it and it must be remembered that he 
 found it not the English of Shakspeare and Bacon, not 
 even the English of such survivals as Milton and Taylor, 
 but the English of persons like Cowley, Davenant, and their 
 likes was not wholly marble or wholly brick. No such 
 metaphor can conveniently describe it. It was rather an 
 instrument or machine which had in times past turned out 
 splendid work, but work comparatively limited in kind, 
 and liable to constant flaws and imperfections of more or 
 less magnitude. In the hands of the men who had lately 
 worked it, the good work had been far less in quantity and 
 inferior in quality ; the faults and flaws had been great 
 and numerous. Dryden so altered the instrument and its 
 working that, at its best, it produced a less splendid result 
 than before, and became less suited for some of the high- 
 est applications, but at the same time became available for 
 a far greater variety of ordinary purposes, was far surer 
 in its working, without extraordinary genius on the part of 
 the worker, and was almost secure against the grosser im- 
 perfections. The forty years' work whieh is at once the 
 record and the example of this accomplishment is itself 
 full of faults and blemishes, but they are always committed 
 in the effort to improve. Dryden is always striving, and 
 consciously striving, to find better literary forms, a better 
 vocabulary, better metres, better constructions, better style. 
 He may in no one brancli have attained the entire and 
 flawless perfection which distinguishes Pope as far as he 
 goes ; but the range of Dryden is to the range of Pope as
 
 ix.] CONCLUSION. 189 
 
 that of a forest to a shrubbery, and in this case priority 
 is everything, and the priority is on the side of Dryden. 
 He is not our greatest poet; far from it. But there is 
 one point in which the superlative may safely be applied 
 to him. Considering what he started with, what he ac- 
 complished, and what advantages he left to his successors, 
 he must be pronounced, without exception, the greatest 
 craftsman in English letters, and as such he ought to be 
 regarded with peculiar veneration by all who, in however 
 humble a capacity, are connected with the craft. 
 
 This general estimate, as well as much of the detailed 
 criticism on which it is based, and which will be found in 
 the preceding chapters, will no doubt seem exaggerated to 
 not a few persons, to the judgment of some at least of 
 whom I should be sorry that it should seem so. The truth 
 is, that while the criticism of poetry is in such a disorderly 
 state as it is at present in regard to general principles, it 
 cannot be expected that there should be any agreement 
 between individual practitioners of it on individual points. 
 So long as any one holds a definition of poetry which re- 
 gards it wholly or chiefly from the point of view of its 
 subject-matter, wide differences are unavoidable. But if 
 we hold what I venture to think the only Catholic faith 
 with regard to it, that it consists not in a selection of sub- 
 jects, but in a method of treatment, then it seems to me 
 that all difficulty vanishes. We get out of the hopeless 
 and sterile controversies as to whether Shelley was a great- 
 er poet than Dryden, or Dryden a greater poet than Shel- 
 ley. For my part, I yield to no man living in rational ad- 
 miration for either, but I decline altogether to assign marks 
 to each in a competitive examination. There arc, as it 
 seems to me, many mansions in poetry, and the great poets 
 live apart in them. What constitutes a great poet is su-
 
 190 DRYDEN. [CHAP. 
 
 premacy in his own line of poetical expression. Such 
 supremacy must of course be shown in work of sufficient 
 bulk and variety, on the principle that one swallow does 
 not make a summer. We cannot call Lovelace a great 
 poet, or Barnabe Barnes; perhaps we cannot give the 
 name to Collins or to Gray. We must be satisfied that 
 the poet has his faculty of expression well at command, 
 not merely that it sometimes visits him in a casual man- 
 ner ; and we must know that he can apply it in a sufficient 
 number of different ways. But when we see that he can 
 under these conditions exhibit pretty constantly the poet- 
 ical differentia, the power of making the common uncom- 
 mon by the use of articulate language in metrical arrange- 
 ment so as to excite indefinite suggestions of beauty, then 
 he must be acknowledged a master. 
 
 When we want to see whether a man is a great poet or 
 not, let us take him in his commonplaces, and see what he 
 does with them. Here are four lines which are among 
 the last that Dryden wrote ; they occur in the address to 
 the Duchess of Ormond, who was, it must be remembered, 
 by birth Lady Margaret Somerset : 
 
 " daughter of the rose, whose cheeks unite 
 The differing titles of the red and white, 
 Who heaven's alternate beauty well display, 
 The blush of morning and the milky way." 
 
 The ideas contained in these lines are as old, beyond all 
 doubt, as the practice of love-making between persons of 
 the Caucasian type of physiognomy, and the images in 
 which those ideas are expressed are in themselves as well 
 worn as the stones of the Pyramids. But I maintain that 
 any poetical critic worth his salt could, without knowing 
 who wrote them, but merely from the arrangement of the
 
 ix.] CONCLUSION. 191 
 
 words, the rhythm and cadence of the line, and the manner 
 in which the images are presented, write " This is a poet, 
 and probably a great poet," across them, and that he would 
 be right in doing so. When such a critic, in reading the 
 works of the author of these lines, finds that the same touch 
 is, if not invariably, almost always present; that in the 
 handling of the most unpromising themes, the mots rayon- 
 nants, the mots de lumiere are never lacking ; that the sug- 
 gested images of beauty never fail for long together ; then 
 he is justified in striking out the " probably," and writing 
 " This is a great poet." If he tries to go farther, and to 
 range his great poets in order of merit, he will almost cer- 
 tainly fail. He cannot count up the beauties in one, and 
 then the beauties in the other, and strike the balance ac- 
 cordingly. He can only say, " There is the faculty of pro- 
 ducing those beauties ; it is exercised under such condi- 
 tions, and with such results, that there is no doubt of its 
 being a native and resident faculty, not a mere casual in- 
 spiration of the moment ; and this being so, I pronounce 
 the man a poet, and a great one." This can be said of 
 Dryden, as it can be said of Shelley, or Spenser, or Keats, 
 to name only the great English poets who are most dis- 
 similar to him in subject and in style. All beyond this 
 is treacherous speculation. The critic quits the assistance 
 of a plain and catholic theory of poetry, and developes 
 all sorts of private judgments, and not improbably private 
 crotchets. The ideas which this poet works on are more 
 congenial to his ideas than the ideas which that poet works 
 on ; the dialect of one is softer to his ear than the dialect 
 of another ; very frequently some characteristic which has 
 not the remotest connexion with his poetical merits or 
 demerits makes the scale turn. Of only one poet can it 
 be safely said that he 'is greater than the other great poets,
 
 192 DRYDEN. [CHAP. ix. 
 
 for the reason that in Dryden's own words he is larger 
 and more comprehensive than any of them. But with the 
 exception of Shakspeare, the greatest poets in different 
 styles are, in the eyes of a sound poetical criticism, very 
 much on an equality. Dryden's peculiar gift, in which no 
 poet of any language has surpassed him, is the faculty of 
 treating any subject which he does treat poetically. His 
 range is enormous, and wherever it is deficient, it is possi- 
 ble to see that external circumstances had to do with the 
 apparent limitation. That the author of the tremendous 
 satire of the political pieces should be the author of the 
 exquisite lyrics scattered about the plays ; that the special 
 pleader of Religio Laid should be the tale-teller of Pala- 
 mon and Arcite, are things which, the more carefully I 
 study other poets and their comparatively limited perfec- 
 tion, astonish me the more. My natural man may like 
 Kubla Khan, or the Ode on a Grecian Urn, or the Ode 
 on Intimations of Immortality, or World! Life! 
 Time ! with an intenser liking than that which it feels for 
 anything of Dryden's. But that arises from the pure ac- 
 cident that I was born in the first half of the nineteenth 
 century, and Dryden in the first half of the seventeenth. 
 The whirligig of time has altered and is altering this re- 
 lation between poet and reader in every generation. But 
 what it cannot alter is the fact that the poetical virtue 
 which is present in Dryden is the same poetical virtue 
 that is present in Lucretius and in ^Eschylus, in Shelley 
 and in Spenser, in Heine and in Hugo. 
 
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