GIFT OF MICHAEL REESE Gr-113 Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2007 with funding from IVIicrosoft Corporation http://www.archive.org/details/ageofdrydenOOgarnrich HANDBOOKS OF ENGLISH LITERATURE EDITED BY PROFESSOR HALES THE AGE OF DRYDEN GEORGE BELL & SONS LONDON : YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN AND NEW YORK : 66, FIFTH AVENUE CAMBRIDGE : DEIGIITON, BELL & CO. THE AGE OF DRYDEN BY R. GARNETT, LL.D. UNIVERSITY LONDON GEORGE BELL AND SONS 1895 6c 'IS Us^ax, CHISWICK I'RESS :— CHARLES WHITTINGHAM AND CO. TOOKS COUKT, CHANCERY LANF, LONDON. PREFACE. The plan of a general history of English literature in a series of introductory manuals, each dealing with a well- defined period and individually complete, as set forth in the preface to Mr. Dennis's Age of Pope, is advanced a stage further by the present volume. The period described,, frgmi^ts. chief literary figure, as The Age of Dry den, arid which might with equal pro- priety have been entitled The Age of the Restoration, extends from 1660 to 1700. Some very important writers, such as Milton and Clarendon, the composition or publica- tion of whose principal works falls within this epoch, have been passed over as belonging in style and spirit to the pre- ceding age ; and in a few instances this procedure has been reversed. In the main, however, the last forty years of the seventeenth century constitute the period of literary activity represented, and will be found to be demarcated with unusual precision from both the preceding and the ensuing era. The writer of a literary history embracing works on a great variety of topics will soon discover that he is expected to impart more information than he possesses. If in any PREFACE. measure endowed with the grace of modesty, he will frequently feel compelled to acknowledge with Mr. Edward Q-ibbon Wakefield, when, after having overcome every other difficulty in the foundation of his colony, he came to pro- vide it with a bishop : * I fear I do not very well under- stand this part of the subject myself.' Trusty guides, however, fortunately are not wanting. The author's warmest acknowledgments are due for the assistance he has derived from personal communication with Professor Hales, and from the writings of Macaulay, Matthew Arnold, Mr. Gosse, Professor Saintsbury, Mr. Churton Collins, and Dr. Fowler. He is indebted for the Index to Mr. J. P. Anderson, of the Eeading Room of the British Museum. E. G. October, 1895. CONTENTS. chap. tage Introduction . 1 . I. John Dryden as a Poet 7 ♦tl. Poets contemporary with Dryden . . .42 VlII. Lyric Poetry 67 l\^ Dryden and the Restoration Drama. . . 76 V. Dramatic Poets and Playwrights . . . 101 *• VI. The Later Comedy of the Seventeenth Century 123 VIL Criticism 149 VIII. Philosophy 155 IX. Writers on Government 168 ^X. Histories and Memoirs of Public Transactions 177 >l XI. Autobiography and Biography . . . .195 XII. Divinity 221 XIII. BUNYAN AND OTHER WRITERS OF FiCTION . . 233 XIV. Essayists and Letter Writers, Literary His- torians . . . , 243 XV. Antiquarians and Men of Science . . . 2.j9 XVI. Travellers •. 272 Chronological Table 281 Index 285 THE AGE OF DRYDEN. INTRODUCTION. WCoC The accession of Charles II. as king de facto, which in the political history of England marks a Restoration, in her literary history marks a Revolution. Not that the transition from one mode of writing and thinking to another was instantaneous, or enjoined by legislative or academical decree. It had long been slowly progressing, and its unequivocal triumph would probably have come to pass sooner but for the obstruction to the intellectual life of the nation occasioned by twenty years of civil commo- tion. The magnitude of this impediment appears from the fact that all the wj-itings of even so great a scholar and poet as Milton, produced during this interval, were of a polemical nature. When at last society found sufficient stability to allow its members to write for fame, emo- lument, or the extension of knowledge, it quickly became manifest how wide a gulf yawned between the men of that day and the men of twenty years ago. The new influence, indeed, had long been at work. A comparison, for example, of the last of the old dramatists, Massinger and Shirley, with their predecessors, evinces how much even in their day the stage was losing in poetry, in imagination, and in the charm of musical metre ; how rapidly its personages were degenerating from vital indi- I' THE AGE OF DRYDEK. vidualities into conventional types ; how mucli, on the other hand, always excepting Shakespeare's pieces from the comparison, it was gaining in logic and construction. An txairination c.f othei forms of literature would reveal a similar claiifying process, a steady discouragement of the qupjnt ajfectatio)i which was the bane of Elizabethan literature, combined, tinfortunately, with increasing sterility of fancy, and growing insensibility to the noble harmonies of which English prose is capable. An Elizabethan poet, indeed, Samuel Daniel, had in some of his works almost anticipated the style of the eighteenth century ; in general, however, writers during the period of the Civil "War seem to our apprehension more or less encrusted with the mellow patina of antiquity, conspicuously absent from nearly everyone who wrote under Charles II. Hence the accession of this monarch, in whose person the new taste might be said to be enthroned, is justly regarded as the commencement ojE_Jthe new era. Charles's personal in- fluence on letters was not insignificant. * The king,' says a contemporary, Burnet, ' had little or no literature, but true and good sense, and had got a right notion of style, for he was in France at a time when they were much set on reforming their language. It soon appeared that he had a true taste. So this helped to raise the value of these men [Tillotson and others], when the king ap- proved the style their discourses generally ran in, which was clear, plain, and short.' Burnet, therefore, had no doubt that correct principles of taste had been established in England in Charles II.'s time, and partly by the king's instrumentality — a dictum equivalent to the condemnation of all preceding English literature as barbarous. Such was also the opinion of one of the masters of Enghsh style in the succeeding century, David Hume. Charles 11. was not a man who could under any circum- INTRODUCTION. 3 Stances have sympathized greatly with the poetry of Spenser, or the prose of Ealeigh or Hooker. The native bent of his mind was, moreover, strengthened by contin- gencies, among which Burnet justly gives a foremost place to his residence in France. It must be added that this influence coincided with a movement which, if for the time disadvantageous to English literature, was, neverthe- less, essential if it was to cease to be merely insular.) Until the time of Charles I. this literature, in so far as it owed anything to external patterns of modern date, had been chiefly dependent upon Italy. This might have long continued but for the decay of Italian letters consequent upon the triumph of foreign oppression and spiritual despotism throughout the peninsula. France stepped into the vacant place, and developed a literature qualified to impress other nations no less by its defects than by its virtues, by its want of elevation as well as by its sprightliness and lucidity. Ere long French ideas of style had pervaded Europe, and approximation to French modes was the inevitable qualification for the great mission of human enlightenment which was to devolve upon Britain in the succeeding century. Up to this time the literature of England had resembled that of Spain, original and racy of the soil, grander and more noble than the less dignified literature whose statutes it was to keep and whose laws it was to observe for a season, but on this very account comparatively out of touch with the common needs of men. Had British writers continued to indite the prose of Hooker and Milton, their ideas would have found no entrance into the Continent ; and grievous as was the declension from the poetry and music of these great writers to the sermo pedestris of their successors, this was more than counterbalanced by the acquisition of lucidity, logic, and cogency. The loss was but temporary, the gain 4 THE AGE OF DRYDEN. was everlasting ; for the nineteenth century has found it possible to restore much of the solemn pomp and musical and pictorial charm of Elizabethan English, without part- ing with the clearness and coherence which are indis- pensable for a literature that would deeply affect the world. In becoming for a moment French, English literature first became European — happy that the new influence did not, as elsewhere, penetrate too far, and that when all of good that the foreigner could proffer had been assimilated, speech and style regained their nationality. They did not, however, thus revert to their old channel. * The Eestora- tion,* says Matthew Arnold with justice, * marks the real moment of birth of our modem English prose.' This prose, indeed, has since been vastly enriched by recurrence to antique models, but gains from this source have always been felt to partake of the nature of importation. The vital point of Restoration practice is accepted by all wha do not deliberately aim at the composition of poems in prose. ' It is,* says Arnold, ' by its organism — an organism opposed to length and involvement, and enabling us to be clear, plain, and short — that EngHsh style after the Eesto- ration breaks with the style of the times preceding it, finds the true law of prose, and becomes modem ; becomes, in spite of superficial differences, the style of our own day.* This age of metamorphosis, therefore, is one of the most important in the history of English literature, and if the men of the Restoration could have beheld themselves in t lieir relation, not only to their predecessors, but also to their successors, their complacency would not have been unjustifiable. Their inability to apprehend their tme rela- tion to either was a failing by no means peculiar to them, hut it has exposed them to a double measure of the ridicule of posterity, who roar with laughter over Pepys's dictum that A Midsummer Night's Dream ' seems but a mean thing * INTRODUCTION* ^ after Sir Samuel Tuke*s Adventures of Five Hours, and are hardly more merciful to Dry den's conversion of Para- dise Lost into an opera, jit must be owned that the conception of poetry as something awful, spiritual, and divine, became for a time extinct. Shelley's Defence of Poetry, could such a work have existed, would have seemed even more absurd to that age than Mr. Pepys's critical deliverances do to ours. The excuse is that the particular work assigned to the period was incompatible with a very high standard of poetry. This work, as we have seen, was the regeneration of English prose by the elimination of those elements which unfitted it for clear precise reason- ing and practical business, and the making English a tongue in which Bunyan and Cobbett might be classics equally" with Bacon and Sir Thomas Browne. Such an achievement implies a prosaic age. If the latter part of the seventeenth century could have produced Miltons, these would have continued to write as Milton did : it was there- fore fortunate for the language in the long run that supreme genius should have for the time died out, and have been replaced by a vigorous, terrestrial, unideal genius that, having no oracle, required no tripod. For a time, no doubt, the contrast must have seemed very dismal to any who yet retained a perception of the richness and glory of the Elizabethan epoch. But we, if we compare, not to say the letters of Cromwell, but those of Charles I., with the despatches of Wellington, cannot but be sensible of an enormous advance, not merely in the effectiveness of speech, but in its dignity and simplicity, and of a great enrichment of the language by the newly acquired power to deal with common things, For this the men of the Restoration are to be thanked : and it must be added that their work could not have been done if they had not thoroughly believed in it ; and that this belief necessitated, except in such superior 6 THE AGE OF DRYDEN. minds as Dryden's, contempt for theii* predecessors and a, genuine preference of their sorry foreign models to Shake- speare. The revolution which they effected in matters of taste may be compared to the contemporary revolution in politics. The Restoration government was a sad decline from the enthusiastic visions of Milton and Vane, or even from the wise and sturdy sway of Cromwell. Nevertheless the English nation accepted and maintained it as the best arrangement which the circumstances of the time admitted. So the new style in literature was universally accepted because the old style was for a time effete ; because tasks had been imposed and needs had arisen to which it was unable to respond ; because, in short, a prosaic age craved a prosaic hterature. We look, therefore, on the Eestoration period as anything biit an ideal epoch, but at the same time as a most momen tons, one ; as one to which we are indebted for much of our present command over the resources of our language ; and to which Britain owes very much of her present power over the world. Acquaintance with its leading representatives also proves that, if less picturesque figures than their predecessors, they were not inferior in mental power. And, although the age is justly regarded as in the main an age of prose ; yet, as poets respond most readily to the influences of their time, and are usually in the van of intellectual revolutions, so the leading figure in the literary history even of this epoch of prose is a poet — Dry den, doubtless the most prosaic of all our great poets, but inferior to none in intellectual force ; and one whose poverty and pliability made him the mirror of the less worthy tendencies of his time on the one hand, while his higher aspirations and the force of his genius rendered him no less the? representative of its better quali- ties on the other. With Dry den, therefore, we commence our survey. UNIVERsiTY^ CHAPTER I. JOHN DRYDEN AS A POET. John Dryden was born August 9, 1631, at Aldwinkle All Saints, between Thrapston and Oundle, in Northampton- shire. He was the grandson of Sir Erasmus Dryden, baronet, of Canons Ashby, in the same county; and his father possessed a small landed property, which he trans- mitted to the poet. Dryden maintained a connection with his native county all his life, but it was never close ; of the rest of the world, outside London and Cambridge, he only occasionally saw anything. Few of our great writers have been so thoroughly identified with the metropolis, of which he became an inhabitant at an early age by his entry at Westminster School, the precise date of which is unknown. Locke and South were among his schoolfellows. He must have distinguished himself, having been elected to Cam- bridge in 1650. Before leaving Westminster he had made his first appearance as an author by the publication of a copy of verses on the death from small-pox of his school- fellow Lord Hastings, an unintentional reductio ad ahsurdum of the reigning fashion of extravagant conceits in the style of Marino and Gongora. This composition, otherwise worthless, foreshadows in a manner the whole of Dryden's career. He was not one of the writers who themselves form the taste by which they are ultimately judged, but rather one of those who achieve fame by doing best 8 THE AGE OF DRYDEN. what all desire to be done; the representatives of their age, not its reformers. Little is known of his career at Cambridge except that he was on one occasion ' discom- moned and gated ' for some irregularity, that he took his degree in 1654, and, though obtaining no fellowship, con- tinued to reside until about 1657, when he removed to London, with what precise plans or expectations is un- certain.^ The general knowledge displayed in his critical writings (he scarcely ever, says Johnson, appears to want book-learning but when he mentions books) justifies the conclusion that his time had been employed in study : how greatly his mind had matured was attested by his verses on the death of Cromwell (1658), which, if dis- figured by some conceits, exhibit a more sustained elevation than any contemporaiy except Milton or Marvell could have attained. They were rivalled by his congratulatory verses on the Eestoration (1660), which naturally exposed him to the reproach of inconsistency, but, as Johnson remarks, * If he changed, he changed with the nation.' There can, indeed, be no doubt that the establishment of a settled^ government was approved by the good sense as well as by the loyalty of the country, and although circumstances were to make Dryden the most formidable of political con- troversialists upon paper, his temperament was not that of a polemic, and, save when he had committed himself too far to retreat, he was always ready to acquiesce in what com- mended itself to the general sentiment of his countrymen. The Restoration was also a joyful event to men of letters, if for no other reason than that it re-opened the stage, * He was an ungrateful son of his alma niafer, having pointedly declared his preference for Oxford. Perhaps this disloyalty may 1)6 connected with the appearance at Cambridge of a pamphlet against him, in the form of a mock defence against •' the censure of the Rota," in the same year (1673). JOHN DRYDEN AS A POET. 9 , whicli, while as yet the periodical press was not, afforded the best market and the readiest opportunity for literary talent. Dryden is said to have had a play ready soon after the Restoration, and it is difficult to understand, except from a certain inertness in his constitution, ever most readily responsive to the spur of necessity, why he should have so long delayed his appearance as a dramatist. The determining motive may ultimately have been his marriage (not, apparently, a very fortunate one) to Lady Elizabeth Howard, eldest daughter of the Earl of Berkshire, in December, 1663 ; for in that year he produced his first play, The Wild Gallant, and from that time we find him, for many years, sedulously at work to earn money by a description of literary activity notoriously uncongenial to him. Only one of his numerous plays, he tells us, was written to please himself. The long list includes, The Indian Emperor (1665), in which, instead of reforming the weak blank verse of his day, which would have been a most important service, he fell in with the prevalent fashion of rhymed tragedy ; Tyrannic Love (1669), and The Con- "quesr~tif"Oram>ada (1672), in which he carries rhymed bombast as far as it would go, but at the same time dis- plays surprising energy and vigour; Aurengzehe (1675), also a rhyming play, but a great improvement ; All for Love (1678), and Don Sebastian (1690), examples of a purer taste; and The Spanish Friar (TdS^ and Amphitryon (1690), his best comedies. These pieces, the chief land- marks of his dramatic career, will be subsequently con- sidered. Returning to the incidents of Dryden's life, we find little to chronicle for several years except the births of^ three children, his elevation to the laureateship in 1670, and various literary controversies of no interest at this day except as they served to call forth the admirable 10 THE AGE OF DllYDEX. critical prefaces by which he did more for English prose style than his poetry was at that time effecting for English verse. It is remarkable how late his genius flowered, and how long he was in discovering his proper path. He might never have found it at all but for the accidental coincidence of the political controversies of his time with his official position as poet laureate. This seemed to impose on Drjden the duty of coming to the assistance of the Court, and his recognition of the obligation produced (1681) Absalom and AchitopJiel, which at once gave him the dis- tinction of the greatest satirist our literature had yet ; produced;' 'the most consummate artist in the heroic couplet, and the most cogent reasoner in rhyme. The Medal, occasioned by a medal struck by the City in honour of the failure of the indictment of Shaftesbury, was sug- gested as the subject of a poem by Charles II. The fact has been doubted, and does not rest upon very strong external authority, but is confirmed by a letter from Dry den to the IJreasurer, Hyde, now in the British Museum, shown by internal evidence to have been written after the publication of Absalom and Achitophel, and consequently after the striking of the medal on occasion of Shaftesbury's acquittal. Ip this, after speaking of his expense iu the education of his children, complaining of the irregular receipt of his pension, and remarking that even a quarter in advance * is but the Jesuits* powder to my disease, the fit will return a fortnight hence,* he adds, * I am going to write somewhat by his Majesty's command, and cannot stir into the country for my health and studies till I secure my family from want.* This can hardly have been any- thing but The MedaV The appeal, after some delay, ' Malone thinks that it was the translation of The History of the Lffigue, but Dryden can have hardly deemed country retirement necessary for a work of this nature. JOHN DRYDEN AS A POET. 11 brought Dry(\eii an addition to his pension and a sinecure office in the Customs. ' This was the most active period of Dryden's life as a poet. A personal altercation occasioned by an attack on The Medal by Thomas Shadwell produced Ma cFlecknoe, the bitterest of his satires, and in the same year of 1682 appeared the second ^art of Absalom and Achitophel, chiefly by Nahum Tate, but containing upwards of two hundred lines fvom Dryden's own pen, dealing with his literary antagonists in a style of sovereign mastery. Almost simultaneously appeared Religio Laid, * a serious argument in verse on the credibility of the Christian religion and the merits of the Anglican form of doctrine and church government.' Dryden's mastery over metrical ratiocination made the subject attractive ; but the Church of England had hardly done rejoicing in her champion when she was scandalized by his exodus to the Church of Eome. It is not likely that he was altogether insincere; but it can hardly be doubted that the death of a monarch of taste and parts, who valued him for his genius, and the accession of a successor who valued men only for their theology, and gently hinted the fact by docking his salary of a hundred pounds, had more to do with his resolution than he quite acknowledged to himself. The position of the Protestant laureate of a Popish sovereign called upon to bid Protestants rejoice over the birth of a Popish Prince of Wales, generally in that age believed to have been smuggled into the palace in a warming-pan, would assuredly have presented difficul- ties even to those who found none in extolling George II.'s patronage of the arts. Dryden was too deeply committed to expect anything from the other side. The apology for his conversion was given to the world in his Hind and Panther (1687), a poem displaying even augmented power of reasoning in rhyme, and which might have ranked with 12 THE AGE OF DRYDEN. his best but for the absurdity of the machinery. Soon afterwards the unsoundness of the foundation on which he had built his fortunes was demonstrated by the Eevolu- tion, which deprived him of the laureateship and swept away all official sources of income. But for his change of religion he might have taken the oaths to the new government without censure, but he had broken down the bridges behind him, and seemed for a moment to have left himself no alternative between want and infamy. A third nevertheless remained, hard labour for the book- sellers. To his great honour, Dry den grappled with the situation with all the sturdy tenacity of his lymphatic temperament, and in the same spirit which Scott after- wards displayed under similar circumstances. He may probably have reformed his system of living, which can hardly have been other than extravagant; certain it is that if he could not keep entirely out of debt, he at least kept out of disgrace, and that the years which followed his apparent ruin, if not the most brilliant part of his life, were the most honourable and honoured. It should be added that he appears to have been largely assisted by the generosity of friends, especially Dorset. The work which Dryden now found to do, for which he possessed extraordinary qualifications, and for which there was a genuine demand in the age, was that of translation from the Latin classics. The derivative character of Latin literature was not then recognized, and Roman authors received the veneration due of right only to the greatest of the Greeks. No one doubted that they gave unsur- passable models of style in their respective branches, and not many among Dryden's contemporaries questioned that he had given a definite and durable form to English poetry. In 1667, a few days before the publication of Paradise Lost, Pepys had overheard men saying that there JOHN DRYDEN AS A POET. 13 would never be such another English poet as Cowley, and Dryden now stood in Cowley's place. It seemed then a highly desirable thing to bring these two classics together, and Dryden was perfectly competent to do whatever was expected of him. He would hardly have succeeded so well with the Greek writers, even had his knowledge of the language been more extensive ; but he was well qualified to reproduce the more distinctive qualities of Roman>^ poetry, its dignity, sometimes rising into majesty, its manly sense, its vehemence, pregnancy, and terseness. By A- 1693 he had rendered all Persius, much of Juvenal (the o remainder was supplied by his sons), considerable portions ^' of Ovid, the first book of Homer, and something from Theocritus, Horace, and Lucretius. In this year he com- menced a more ambitious work, a complete version of Virgil. Of the merits of these works we shall speak here- after ; it is sufficient to observe here that they for a long time prescribed the laws of metrical translation in English. It is pleasant to notice how many of them were executed at the country seats of friends, where the old man, dis- charged from the strife of faction and the noise and glare of theatres, relieved his intellectual toil by the simple , ^ amusements of a country life. Virgil was published in 1697, and remained, in the judgment of the age, at the head of all English translations until Pope's Homer came to dethrone it. It was immediately succeeded by a greater work still, his Fablesjirom Chaucer and Boccaccio. Though the representative of the literary taste of his time, Dryden was by no means the representative of its prejudices. He saw much more in Chaucer than his contemporaries were capable of seeing, and, rightly judging that the antiquated^ style of the old poet (who, however, appeared to him much more uncouth than he really was) would effectually keep him out of readers' hands, he determined to modernize and 14 THE AGE OF DRYDEN. adapt some of his stories, to which narrative poems founded on Boccaccio were afterwards added. The undertaking precisely suited the genius of Dryden, which lay more in expressing and adorning what he found ready to hand than in original invention, and his Fables, published in 1699, are deservedly placed at the head of his works. It is of course impossible that they should exhibit the same intellectual strength as his argumentative and satirical poems, but this is more than compensated by their supe- rior attractiveness, the additional scope offered for the dis- play of art, and their comparative freedom from everything that can repel. The same volume contained his greatest lyrical effort, the universally known Alexander's Feast. He received forty pounds for it ; the Virgil is said to have brought him twelve hundred ; for the Fables he got only three hundred. From a private letter of about this date it appears that there was some idea of his receiving assist- ance from the government, which he seems not unwilling to accept, provided that it proves to require no sacrifice of principle. It is not likely that he would have been allowed to die in want ; and indeed, early in 1700, a dramatic per- formance was got up for his benefit. He died shortly afterwards (May 1st, 1700) in narrow pecuniary circum- stances, but in the enjoyment of a more unquestioned literary supremacy among his contemporaries than any Englishman had held before him. The cause of his death was the mortification of a toe inflamed by gout. He was buried in Westminster Abbey. The funeral, for the splen- dour of which Farquhar vouches in a contemporary letter, is said to have been accompanied by tumultuary scenes, but the absence of any reference to these in a malevolent contemporary libel, ascribed to Thomas Brown, is sufficient evidence that they did not occur. ^ There are few English writers of eminence whom it is so JOHN DRYDEN AS A POET. 15 difficult to realize satisfactorily to the mind's eye as Dry den. Personal enough in one respect, his writings are singularly impersonal in another ; he neyer_paists,-iiiid seldom re^ veals himself, and the aid which letters or reminiscences might have afforded is almost entirely wanting. fNo one noted his conversation ; his enemies' attacks andHs friends' panegyrics are equally devoid of those traits of character which might have invested a shadowy outline with life and substance. The nearest approach to a portrait is Con- greve's, which leaves most of the character in the shade, and even this is somewhat suspicious, for Congreve was Dryden's debtor for noble praise, and the vindication of Dryden's repute had been imposed upon him by the poet himself. The qualities, however, which he commends are such as seem entirely rec^iiicilable with the lymphatic tem- perament which, partly /on his own authority (*my con- versation,' he says, * is slow and dull, my humour saturnine and reserved'), we have seen reason to attribute to Dry- /^ den. We are told of his humanity and compassion, of his | readiness to forgive injuries, of a friendship that exceeded his professions, of his diffidence in general society and \^ horror of intrusiveness, of his patience in accepting correc- tions of his own errors, of which he must be allowed to have given a remarkable instance in his submission to Jeremy Collier. All these traits give the impression of one who, though by no means pedantic, was only a wit when he had the pen in his hand, and entirely correspond with his apparent aversion to intellectual labour, except / under the pressure of want or the stimulus of Court favour^ When at length he did warm to his work, we know from himself that thoughts crowded so rapidly upon him that his only difficulty was to decide what to reject. Such a man may well have appeared a negative character to his contem- poraries, and the events of his life were not of a nature to f 16 - THE AGE OF DRYDEN. force his virtues or his failings into notice. We can only say that there is no proof of his having been a bad hus- band ; that there is clear evidence of his having been a good father ; and that, although he took the wrong side in the political and religious controversies of his day, this is no reason why he may not, according to his light, have been a good citizen. His references to illustrious predecessors like Shakespeare and Milton, and promising young mea . j like Congreve, indicate a real generosity of character. JL The moral defects of his writings, coarse licentiousness, y unmeasured invective, and equally unmeasured adulation, \- belong to the age rather than to the man. On the whole, we may say that he was one whom we should probably have esteemed if we could have known him ; but in whom, apart from his writings, we should not have discovered the first literary figure of his generation. Dryden's early poems, the Heroic Stanzas on the death of Cromwell, the Astraea Redux on the Eesto ration, the panegyric of Clarendon, and the verses on the Coronation, are greatly marred for modem readers by extravagant con- ceits, but are sobriety itself compared to thB exploits of contemporary poets, especially the Pindaric. In a more important particular, Dryden, as Scott remarks, has ob- served a singular and happy delicacy. The topic of the Civil War is but slightly dwelt on ; and, although Cromwell is extolled, his eulogist abstains from any reflections against those through whom he cut his way to greatness. Isolated couplets in the other poems occasionally display that perfection of condensed and pointed expression which Dryden habitually attained in his later poems : ' Spain to your gift alone her Indies owes ; For what the powerful takes not, he hestows : And France, tliat did an exile's presence fear, May justly apprehend you still too nQs^v.'—Astraea Rcdux^ JOHN DRYDEN AS A POET. 17 These early attempts, however, were completely thrown into the shade by the Anniis Mirahilis, a poem on the m emor- ,^ able events of 1666, written at Charlton, near Malmes- ' bury, the seat of Lord Berkeley, where Dryden and his family had resorted in 1665 to escape the plague, and pub- lished in February, 1667. The author was then thirty- five, and, judged in t^e'light of his subsequent celebrity, had as yet achieved surprisingly little either in quantity or quality. Youth is generally the most affluent season of poetical activity ; and those poets whose claim to inspira- tion is the most unimpeachable — Spenser, Milton, Words- worth, Shelley — have irradiated their early writings with flashes of genius which their maturer skill hardly enabled them to eclipse. This cannot be said of Dryden, who of our great poets, unless Pope be an exception, pro- bably owed least to inspiration and most to pains and practice. Even Pope at this age had produced The Rape of the Loch, The Temple of Fame, Eloisa to Ahelard, and his translation of the Iliad, enough to have given him a high place among English poets. The Annus Mirahilis was the ^ first production of Dryden that could have insured hi«i remembrance with posterity, and even this is sadly dis- figured with^conceits. After all, the poet finds only two marvels of his wonderful year worthy of record — the Dutch war, which had been going on for two years, and which produced a much greater wonder in the year en- suing, when the Dutch sailed up to Gravesend and burned the English fleet ; and the Grreat Fire of London. The treatment of the former is very tedious and dragging ; there are many striking lines, but more conceits like the follow- ing, descriptive of the English attack upon the Dutch East Indiamen : ' Amidst whole heaps of spices lights a ball, And now their odours armed against them fly ; C 18 THE AGE OF DRYDEN. Some preciously by shattered porcelain fall, And some by aromatic splinters die. ' The second part, treating of the Fire of London, is in- finitely better. Dryden exhibits one of the most certain marks of a good writer, he rises -with his subject. Yet there is no lack of absurdities. The Deity extinguishes the conflagration precisely in the manner in which Dryden would have put out his own candle : * An hollow crystal pyramid he takes. In firmamental waters dipt above ; Of it a broad extinguisher he makes. And hoods the flames that to their quarry drove.* Nothing in Dryden is more amazing than his inequality. This stanza is succeeded by the following : * The vanquished fires withdraw from every place, Or, full with feeding, sink into a sleep ; Each household genius shows again his face. And from the hearths the Uttle Lares creep.' Other quatrains are still better, as, for instance, this on the burning of St. Paul's : * The daring flames peeped in, and saw from far The awful beauties of the sacred quire ; But since it was profaned by civil war, Heaven thought it fit to have it purged by fire.' A thought 80 striking, that the reader does not pause to reflect that the celestial sentence would have been equally applicable to every cathedral in the country. Perhaps the following stanzas compose the passage of most sustained excellence. In them, as in the apostrophe to the Royal Society, in an earlier part of the poem, Dryden appears truly the vates sacer, and his poetry becomes prophecy: JOHN DRYDEN AS A POET. 19 * Methinks already from this chymic flame I see a city of more precious mould ; Rich as the town which gives the Indies name, With silver paved, and all divine with gold. * Already labouring with a mighty fate She shakes the rubbish from her mounting brow, And seems to have renewed her charter's date, Which heaven will to the death of Time allow. * More great than human now, and more august, Now deified she from her fires doth rise ; Her widening streets on new foundations trust, And opening into larger parts she flies. * Before, she like some shepherdess did show. Who sat to bathe her by a river's side ; Not answering to her fame, but rude and low, Nor taught the beauteous arts of modern pride. * Now like a Maiden Queen she will behold From her high turrets hourly suitors come ; The East with incense and the West with gold Will stand like suppliants to receive her doom. * The silver Thames, her own domestic flood. Shall bear her vessels like a sweeping train ; And often wind, as of his mistress proud, With longing eyes to meet her face again. * The wealthy Tagus, and the wealthier Rhine, The glory of their towns no more shall boast ; And Seine, that would with Belgian rivers join. Shall find her lustre stained and traffic lost. * The venturous merchant, who designed more far, And touches on our hospitable shore, Charmed with the splendour of this northern star, Shall here unlade him, and depart no more.' For several years after Annus Mirahilis, Dryden pro- duced but little poetry apart from his dramas. Fashion, 20 THE AGE OF DRYDEN. Court encouragement, and the necessity of providing for his family, had bound him to what was then the most con- spicuous and lucrative form of authorship. In one point of view he committed a great error in addicting himself to the drama. He was not naturally qualified to excel in it, and could only obtain even a temporary success by conde- scending to the prevalent faults of the contemporary stage, its bombast and its indecency. The latter transgression was eventually so handsomely confessed by himself that but little need be said of it. Bombast is natural to two classes of writers, the ardent and the phlegmatic, and those whose emotions require the most working Up are frequently the worst offenders. Such was Dry den's case, and his natural proclivity was much enhanced by his adop- tion of the new fashion of writing in rhyme, beloved at Court, but affording every temptation and every facility for strain- ing after effect in the place of Nature. Mr. Saintsbury justly reminds us that Dryden was not forsaking the blank verse of Shakespeare and Fletcher, the secret of which had long been lost; nevertheless, although, as we shall see when we come to his critical writings, he pleaded very ingeniously for rhyme in 1665, his adoption of it was condemned by his maturer judgment and practice. It was, iy^" however, fortunate in the long run ; his rhyming plays, of which we shall speak in another place, would not have been great successes in any metre, while practice in their composition, and the necessity of expressing the multitude of diverse sentiments required by bustling scenes and crowds of characters, gradually gave him that command of the heroic couplet which bestows such strength and brilliancy on his later writings. His 'fourteen years of dramatic practice,' as Mr. Saintsbury justly says, 'acted as a filtering reservoir for his poetical powers, so that the stream, which, when it ran into them, was the turbid and JOHN DRYDEN AS A POET. 21 rubbish-laden current of Annus Mirahilis, flowed out as impetuous, as strong, but clear and without base admixture, in the splendid verse of Absalom and Achitophd/ ' This great poem, published in November, 1681, at the height of the contest over the Exclusion Bill and its con- sequences, remains to this day the finest example of political satire in English literature. The theme was skilfully selected. James II. had not yet convinced the most sceptical of the justice and wisdom of the Exclusion Bill, and its advocates laboured under the serious disadvan- tage of having no strong claimant for the succession if they prevailed in setting the Duke of York aside. James's son- in-law, the Prince of Orange, would not, it is safe to say, ever have been accepted by the nation as king if James's folly and tyranny had not, years afterwards, given him the opportunity of presenting himself in the character of Deliverer; and, failing him, there was no one but the popular but unfortunately illegitimate Monmouth. The character of Absalom seemed exactly made for this hand- some and foolish prince. The resemblance of his royal father to David, except in matters akin to the affair of Bathsheba, was not quite so obvious. Dryden might almost have been suspected of satirizing his master when he wrote : * When nature prompted, and no law denied Promiscuous use of concubine and bride ; Then Israel's monarch after heaven's own heart His vigorous warmth did variously impart To wives and slaves ; and, wide as his command, Scattered his Maker's image through the land. Of all the numerous progeny was none So beautiful, so brave as Absolon.' ^ It is perhaps worth remarking that, although not yet a Roman Catholic, Dryden in this name employs the orthography, not of the authorized English version, but of the Vulgate. (XJNIVERSITl V ©^ _.... ^ 22 THE AGE OF DRYDEN. The management of Absalom was a difficult matter. With all his transgressions, the rebel Monmouth was still beloved by his father, and Dryden could not have ventured to treat him as his prototype is treated by Scripture. He has extricated himself from the dilemma with abundant dexterity, but at some expense to his poem. The catastrophe required by poetical justice does not come to pass, and the conclusion is tame. All such defects, however, are forgotten, in the splendour of the execution. The versification is the •finest in its style that English literature had yet seen, the perfection of heroic verse. The sense is weighty and massive, as befits such an organ of expression, and, what- ever may be thought of Dryden's flatteries of individuals, there is no reason to doubt the sincerity with which he here expresses, his political convictions. He unquestion- ably belonged to that class of mankind who cannot discern principles apart from persons, and his contempt for abstractions is pointedly expressed in one of his ringing couplets : ' Thought they might ruin him they could create, Or melt him to that golden calf — a state. ' This is not a very high manifestation of the intellect in its application to political questions, but it bespeaks the class of jjersons who provide ballast for the vessel of the state in tempestuous times; and, on the whole, Absalom and Achitophel is a poem which the patriot as well as the admirer of genius may read with complacency. The royal side of the question could not be better put than in these lines placed in the mouth of David : * Thus long have I, by native mercy sway'd. My wrongs dissembled, my revenge delay'd ; So willing to forgive the offending age, So much the father did the king assuage. JOHN DllYDEN AS A POET. 23 But now so far my clemency tliey slight, The offenders question my forgiving right. That one was made for many, they contend ; But 'tis to rule ; for that's a monarch's end. They call my tenderness of blood, ray fear ; Though manly tempers can the longest bear. Yet since they will divert my native course, 'Tis time to shew I am not good by force. Those heap'd affronts, that haughty subjects bring, Are burdens for a camel, not a king. Kings are the public pillars of the state. Born to sustain and prop the nation's weight : If my young Sampson will pretend a call To shake the column, let him share the fall. But oh, that he yet would repent and live ! How easy 'tis for parents to forgive ! With how few tears a pardon might be won From nature pleading for a darling son ! Poor, pitied youth, by my paternal care Raised up to all the height his frame could bear ! Had God ordain'd his fate for empire born, He would have given his soul another turn : GuU'd with a patriot's name, whose modem sense Is one that would by law supplant his prince ; The people's brave, the politician's tool ; Never was patriot yet, but was a fool. Whence comes it, that religion and the laws Should more be Absolom's than David's cause ? His old instructor, ere he lost his place. Was never thought endued with so much grace. Good heavens, how faction can a patriot paint ! My rebel ever proves my people's saint. Would they impose an heir upon the throne ? Let Sanhedrims be taught to give their own. A king's at least a part of government ; And mine as requisite as their consent. Without my leave a future king to choose, Infers a right the present to depose. True, they petition me to approve their choice ; But Esau's hands suit ill with Jacob's voice. 24 THE AGE OF DRYDEN. My pious subjects for my safety pray ; Which to secure, they take my power away. From plots and treasons heaven preserve my years, And save me most from my petitioners ! ' It will be observed that * the right the present to depose,' is mentioned by Dry den as something manifestly prepos- terous, and the derivation of it as a logical corollary from the Exclusion Bill is assumed to be a sufficient redudio ad ahsurdum of the latter. In the view of the majority of the nation, this was sound doctrine until the Revolution, which reduced Dryden's poem from the rank of a powerful political manifesto to that of a brilliant exercise of fancy and dialectic^ As such, it will never cease to please and to impress.r^ The finest passage s are, no doubt, those descriptive ot character, whether carefully studied portraits or strokes against particular foibles imputed to the poet's adversaries, such as this mock apology for the parsimonious kitchen of the Whig sheriff, Slingsby Bethel : * 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 lire.' The elaborate and glowing characters of Achitopliel I (Shaftesbury) and Zimri (Buckingham) it is needless to transcribe, as they are universally known. It may be remarked that the character of the t^rbuleiit_9e drawn in their service, and hence the double purpose which runs through the poem, of vindicating his personal change of conviction and of justifying the political measures to which James had had recourse for establishing the supremacy of his church. All this was perfectly natural ; the extraordinary thing is that so great a master JOHN DRYDEN AS A POET. 29 of ridicule should have been blind to the ludicrous cha-z^i^ racter of the machinery which he devised to carry out his purpose. The comparison of the true church to the milk- whitft Vj infl ^ and of the corrupt church to the beautiful but spotted panlJtigi^might have been employed with propriety as an ornament or illustration of the poem, but the endea- vour to make it the groundwork of the entire piece is preg- nant withabsur dity. Animals may very well be introduced as actors in a fiction upon condition that they behave like animals ; and their faculties may even be expanded to suit the author's purpose so long as their exercise is confined to visible and concrete things ; but t he notion of a pair of Quadrupeds d iscussing^thp 5^aj^(];rflII?f];;J:^r-^jClitioiL-^" the infallibility of thaPx)pe, is only fit for burlesque, and con- stitutes, indeed, a running burlesque upon the poem. Dryden probably took up the idea without sufficient con- sideration, and when he had made some progress in his work he may well have been too enamoured with the beau- tiful but preposterous exordium to surrender it to common sense. Perverse and fantastic as is the plan of his poem, none of his works is richer in beauties of detail. ' In none/ says Macaulay, * can be found passage s mor e patlietic and /A- magnificent, greater ductility and energy of language, or a/ more pleasing and various music' The power of reasoning* in rhyme is little inferior to that displayed in Beligio Laid, and the narrative character of the piece allows of a diversi- fied variety excluded by the simply didactic character of its predecessor. The invective against Calvinists and Socinians, typified by the wolf,and the fox, is an average, and not be- yond an average, example of Dryden's matchless forces Near the end, it will be perceived, he suddenly bethinks himself that, as the apologist of James's ostensible policy, it is his business to recommend not persecution but tolera- tion, and he caps his objurgation with a passage conceived 30 THE AGE OF DRYDEN. in a widely different spirit, a severe though unintentional reflection upon the practice of his own church : * O happy pair, how well you have increased ! What ills in church and state have you redress'd ! With teeth, untried, and rudiments of claws, Your first essay was on your native laws ; Those having torn with ease, and trampled down, ^ Your fangs you fasten'd on the mitred crown, |- And freed from God and monarchy your town. j What though your native kennel still be small, Bounded betwixt a puddle and a wall ; Yet your victorious colonies are sent Where the north ocean girds the continent. Quicken 'd with fire below, your monsters breed In fenny Holland, and in fruitful Tweed ; And, like the first, the last affects to be Drawn to the dregs of a democracy. As, where in fields the fairy rounds are seen, A rank soar herbage rises on the green ; So, springing where those midnight elves advance, Rebellion prints the footsteps of the dance. Such are their doctrines, such contempt they show ^ To heaven above, and to their prince below, !- As none but traitors and blasphemers know. J God, like the tyrant of the skies, is placed, And kings, like slaves, beneath the crowd debased. So fulsome is their food, that flocks refuse To bite, and only dogs for physic use. As, where the lightning runs along the ground. No husbandry can heal the blasting wound ; Nor bladed grass, nor bearded corn succeeds. But scales of scurf and putrefaction breeds ; Such wars, such waste, such fiery tracks of dearth Their zeal has left, and such a teem less earth. But, as the poisons of the deadliest kind Are to their own unhappy coasts confined ; As only Indian shades of sight deprive, And magic plants will but in Colchos thrive So presbytery and pestilential zeal Can only flourish in a commonweal. ■ ^ JOHN DRYDEN AS A POET. 31 From Celtic woods is chased the wolfish crew j But ah ! some pity e'eu to brutes is due ; Their native walks, methinks, they might enjoy, Curb'd of their native malice to destroy. Of all the tyrannies on human kind. The worst is that which persecutes the mind. Let us but weigh at what offence we strike j 'Tis but because we cannot think alike. In punishing of this, we overthrow The laws of nations and of nature too. Beasts are the subjects of tyrannic sway, Where still the stronger on the weaker prey ; Man only of a softer mould is made. Not for his fellows' ruin, but their aid ; Created kind, beneficent and free, The noble image of the Deity. ' Dryden produced yet one more poem in the interest of the/jn Court, his Britannia Bediuiva, an official panegyric on the